Birds and poetry (1 Viewer)

AnnieW · Feb 23, 2004

There's something about the war poets - they seem to combine the best that mankind has to offer with the worst. Here's one written by Siegfried Sassoon in 1918.

Thrushes

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering;
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;
Who hears the cry of God in everything,
And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.

Siegfried Sassoon

scampo · Feb 23, 2004

" they seem to combine the best that mankind has to offer with the worst."

Yes, out of a living Hell arose some of our finest verse. I'm so lucky to be able to teach war poetry both at GCSE and A-level. They always go down well with students.

No birds mentioned, I'm afraid, but here is a famous poem by Wilfred Owen that ranks up there with the best:

Futility

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen

AnnieW · Feb 23, 2004

scampo said:
"

No birds mentioned, I'm afraid, but here is a famous poem by Wilfred Owen that ranks up there with the best:

I studied Wilfred Owen at O’ Level – he wrote in a way that immediately engaged me, I found his writing very visual. Futility was a poem the moved me to tears then (although secretly, as I was trying to be a cool teenager

) - and can still today, if I am in the wrong (or should that be right ??) mood; I think the last 3 lines are three of the most memorable of any poem I have read.

I’m hopeless with dates, and generally can’t remember which poet was writing in which century (apart from the real modern ones). But I do remember that Wilfred Owen was killed in action in France on November the 4th 1918 – the week before Armistice Day. He was aged 25, which makes this poem all the more poignant:

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

Here’s another that at least mentions a bird to bring the thread back on topic !!

Elegy in April and September

Hush, thrush! Hush, missen-thrush, I listen...
I heard the flush of footsteps through the loose leaves,
And a low whistle by the water's brim.

Still! Daffodil! Nay, hail me not so gaily,-
Your gay gold lily daunts me and deceives,
Who follow gleams more golden and more slim.

Look, brook! O run and look, O run!
The vain reeds shook? - Yet search till gray sea heaves,
And I will stray among these fields for him.

Gaze, daisy! Stare through haze and glare,
And mark the hazardous stars all dawns and eves,
For my eye withers, and his star wanes dim.

Close, rose, and droop, heliotrope,
And shudder, hope! The shattering winter blows.
Drop, heliotrope, and close, rose...

Mourn, corn, and sigh, rye.
Men garner you, but youth's head lies forlorn.
Sigh, rye, and mourn, corn...

Brood, wood, and muse, yews,
The ways gods use we have not understood.
Muse, yews, and brood, wood...

Wilfred Owen

AnnieW · Feb 23, 2004

I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve just had a very bad day at work that my thoughts have turned to war, but this one has also just popped into my head !! Rosenberg was the son of Jewish immigrants and is one of the lesser-known war poets. He was also an accomplished artist. Despite being very anti-war, he joined Bantams, a special battalion made up of men who were too short to be accepted into other regiments. He died on the Western Front on April 1918. In this poem, Rosenberg illustrates how the human spirit can be lifted with the joy of the natural world, even in the depths of extreme horror :

Returning, We Hear the Larks

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lies there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp -
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy - joy - strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song -
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

Isaac Rosenberg

scampo · Feb 23, 2004

It's wonderful to read poems that others have chosen - a kind of serendiptiy (now that's one of my favourite words... never used it in years!).

Here's a beautiful and moving poem that that used to be in our GCSE anthology and, yes, it mentions a bird. Gillian Clarke lives in Wales - you can visit her home page at: http://gillianclarke.co.uk/ . Her poem lifts the heart and has deep resonances:

MIRACLE ON SAINT DAVID’S DAY

“They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude”
“The Daffodils” by W. Wordsworth

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
with daffodils. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
The rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.
I am reading poetry to the insane.

An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coal as I need.
A beautiful chestnut–haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic

on a good day, they tell me later.
In a cage of first March sun a woman
sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.
In her neat clothes the woman is absent.
A big, mild man is tenderly led

to his chair, He has never spoken.
His labourer’s hands on his knees,
he rocks gently to the rhythms of the poems.
I read to their presences, absences,
to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.

He is suddenly standing, silently,
huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
the labourer’s voice recites “The Daffodils”

The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

Forty years ago, in a Valleys’ school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered here was a music
of speech and that once he had something to say.

When he’s done, before the applause, we observe
the flowers’ silence. A thrush sings
and the daffodils are flame.

Gillian Clarke

tracker · Feb 23, 2004

AnnieW said:
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song -
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

I like the sense of relief and maybe silent appreciation from those three lines. At least thats what i got from them. Im still chewing over the following four lines.

Thanks Annie,

tracker

christineredgate · Feb 23, 2004

Thankyou all again for some lovely poetry .Here is Norman Nicholson's
" Boo to A Goose"

" You could'nt say Boo to a Goose"my grandmother said
When skittered howling in from the back street-my head
With a bump the size of a conker from a stick that someone that
someone threw,
Or my eyes rubbed red
From fists stuffed in to plug the blubbing"Not Boo to a Goose",she said,
But she coddled me in the kitchen,gave me bread
Spread with brown sugar- her forehead
Beneath a slashed,ash-grey bark of hair,
Puckered in puzzle at this old fashioned child
Bright enopugh at five to read the ears off
His five unlettered uncles,yet afraid
Of every giggling breeze that blew.
" There's nowt to be scared about",she said,
" A big lad like you!"

But not as big as a goose-
or not the geese I knew,
Free-walkers of Slagbank Green.
From morning-lessonbell to suppertime
They claimed lop-sided common-rights between
Tag-ends of sawn-off,two-up-two down streets
And the creeping screes of slag.
They plucked their acres clean
Off all but barley-grass and mud.Domesticated but never tamed,
They peeked down on you from their high
Spiked periscopes.No dog would sniff within a hundred yards
Of their wing menaced ground.
At the first sound
Of a bicycle ring they'd tighten ranks,
Necks angled like bayonets,throttles sizzling,
And skein for the bare knees and the cranking shanks.
They were guarded like Crown Jewls.If any man were seen
To point a finger to a feather
He'd end up with boot leather for his dinner.
They harried girls in dreams-and my lean
Spinning-wheel legs were whittled even thinner
From trundling round the green's extremest hem
To keep wide of their way,
No use daring me to say
" Boo "to them.

The girls grew up and the streets fell down;
Gravel and green went under slag;the town
Was eroded into the past.But half a century later
Three geese-two wild,streaked brown-grey-brown
As the bog-cottoned peat,and one white farm-yard fly-off-
Held sentry astride a Shetland lochan.The crumbled granite
Tumbled down brae and voe-side to the tide,s
Constricted entry;the red throated diver jerked it's clown-
Striped neck,ducked and disappeared and perked up from the water
A fly-cast further on.The three geese took no notice.
But the moment I stepped from the hide of the car
The white one stiffened,swivelled,lowered its trajectory
And threatened towards me.Then
Under the Artic's summer arc of blue,
With a quick blink that blacked out fifty years
and a forgotten fear repeating in my stomach,
I found myself staring,level-along and through,
The eyes of that same slagbank braggart
I couldn't say "BOO" to.
Norman Nicholson.
As I have been reading this poem whils't typing it,I would say that Norman Nicholson must have spent many hours watching the birds in his home area here in Cumbria.
How many of us were scared of the Geese with their long necks when we were small.

headington7 · Feb 23, 2004

Birds mentioned..

A wonderful poem by Edward Thomas,killed tragically in WW 1, is Adlestrop.

Yes,I remember Adlestrop -
The name,because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly.It was late June.

The steam hissed.Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform.What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows,willow-herb,and grass,
And meadowsweet,and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by,and round him,mistier,
Farther and farther,all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Any excuse to use that poem !
Mervyn.

scampo · Feb 24, 2004

christineredgat said:
As I have been reading this poem whils't typing it, I would say that Norman Nicholson must have spent many hours watching the birds in his home area here in Cumbria.
How many of us were scared of the Geese with their long necks when we were small.

I can still remember having my finger bitten by a white goos as ayoungester. What marvellous memories he recalls.

scampo · Feb 24, 2004

headington7 said:
A wonderful poem by Edward Thomas,killed tragically in WW 1, is Adlestrop.

Yes, I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows,willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him,mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Any excuse to use that poem !
Mervyn.

I think this to be one of the most evocative short poems written in English, Mervyn. Whenever I read it, I am taken away from wherever I am at that moment to some far place. These two lines, as simple as they are, I find truly wonderful:

"The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came..."

I love travelling by train and always have. Although rarely thought of as such, Thomas is certainly a 'War Poet'; his poems depict an England that was, he knew in his heart, about to be changed forever by an evil war.

One of his most moving poems is part of three he wrote from the trenches to his family back in England. The poem he wrote to his wife is so very moving; after he was killed in France, his wife had a nervous breakdown and fought years of depression until a friend suggested she wrote a biography of Edward. She did, and she slowly recovered to live until the 1960s:

And You, Helen

And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.

Edward Thomas

Adey Baker · Feb 24, 2004

Not about birds, but one of Sassoon's finest war poems:

HAVE you forgotten yet?...

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same,—and War's a bloody game....
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget.

scampo · Feb 24, 2004

A wonderful poem, Adey. The repeated line "Have you forgotten yet?" reminded me of the famous lines from the fourth verse of another war poem:

For the Fallen (September 1914)
Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time:
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

AnnieW · Feb 24, 2004

Well, having seemingly set everyone off on the topic of war yesterday ... I had a much better day at work today, and am consequently feeling much more cheerful. So loosely picking up on Christine's childhood memories of geese, as a child I loved Winnie-the-Pooh . I have fond memories of my mum reading it to me before I could read, and then exitedly reading it myself when I could. I had a beautifully illustrated version that contained the two books, "Winnie-the-Pooh" and the "House at Pooh Corner" along with the collected poems "When we Wer Very Young" and "Now we are Six" - these 2 collections were my first exposure to poetry and the simplicity and rhythm of them really captured my imagination - I learned most by heart, and would recite them to whoever would listen at the drop of a hat !! So forgive my indulgence - but here are a few bird related ones (although you really need the fabulous Ernest Shepard illustrations to truely appreciate them) :

The Mirror

Between the woods the afternoon
Is fallen in a golden swoon.
The sun looks down from quiet skies
To where a quiet water lies,
And silent trees stoop down to trees.
And there I saw a white swan make
Another white swan in the lake;
And breast to breast, both motionless,
They waited for the wind's caress ...
And all the water was at ease

A.A. Milne

For those who don't know, the name Pooh originally belonged to a swan. In his introduction to "When we Were Very Young" AA Milne says of the poem above, that :

"Christopher Robin, who feeds this swan in the mornings, has given the name of `Pooh'. This is a very fine name for a swan, because if you call him and he doesn't come (which is a thing swans are good at), then you can pretend you were just saying "Pooh"! to show how little you wanted him"

A sentiment I'm sure many people on this forum would share !!

In the introduction to Winnie-the-Pooh, the following explanation is given for the name transfer :

"IF you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I don't know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh. That was a long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name
with us, as we didn't think the swan would want it any more. Well, when Edward Bear said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was"

Anyway, back to the poems :

The Wrong House

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house,
It has big steps and a great big hall;
But it hasn't got a garden,
A garden,
A garden,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house,
It has a big garden and a great high wall;
But it hasn't got a may-tree,
A may-tree,
A may-tree,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house -
Slow white petals from the may-tree fall;
But it hasn't got a blackbird,
A blackbird,
A blackbird,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and I thought it was a house,
I could hear from the may-tree the blackbird call ....
But nobody listened to it
Nobody
Liked it,
Nobody wanted it at all

AA Milne

The Invaders

In careless patches through the wood
The clumps of yellow primrose stood,
And sheets of white anemones,
Like driven snow against the trees,
Had covered up the violet,
But left the blue-bell bluer yet.

Along the narrow carpet ride,
With primroses on either side,
Between their shadows and the sun,
The cows came slowly, one by one,
Breathing in the morning air
And leaving it still sweeter there.
And one by one, intent upon
Their purposes, they followed on
In ordered silence ... and were gone.

But all the little wood was still,
And if it waited so, until
Some blackbird on an outpost yew,
Watching the slow procession through,
Lifted his yellow beak at last
To whistle that the line had passed ....
Then all the wood began to sing
In morning anthem to the spring.

AA Milne

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep your Harry Potters ... children's literature doesn't get any better than this (I still read the books today when I am feeling jaded with the world, and they never fail to lift the spirits !!)

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

AnnieW · Feb 24, 2004

christineredgat said:
As I have been reading this poem whils't typing it,I would say that Norman Nicholson must have spent many hours watching the birds in his home area here in Cumbria.
How many of us were scared of the Geese with their long necks when we were small.

Yep - I can realte to that !!! I was bitten by a Cereopsis Gosse called Cynthia at Martin Mere whilst on a school trip. I was wary of geese for years afterwards.

AnnieW · Feb 24, 2004

scampo said:
It's wonderful to read poems that others have chosen - a kind of serendiptiy (now that's one of my favourite words... never used it in years!).

Couldn't agree more Steve, this thread has been a delight. It's like opening a new anthology each day - with some old favourites and some new delights. Your insight & knowledge has also been an education (where were you in 1982 when I was doing O'Levels ??).

Christine, I'm not sure if you knew what you had started way back on the 14th Feb with your rather innocent "How many poems can you think of where birds are either the main topic of the poem or they are given a mention." But thanks from me for starting it

:clap: Annie

Nerine · Feb 24, 2004

I have always loved Pooh, Annie!

Oh, the butterflies are flying,
Now the winter days are dying,
And the primroses are trying
To be seen.

And the turtle-doves are cooing,
And the woods are up and doing,
For the violets are blue-ing
In the green.

Oh, the honey-bees are gumming
On their little wings, and humming
That the summer, which is coming,
Will be fun.

And the cows are almost cooing
And the turtle-doves are mooing,
Which is why a Pooh is poohing
In the sun.

For the spring is really springing;
You can see a skylark singing,
and the blue-bells, which are ringing,
Can be heard.

And the cuckoo isn't cooing,
For he's cucking and he's ooing,
And a Pooh is simply poohing
Like a bird.

A A MIlne

AnnieW · Feb 24, 2004

Nerine said:
I have always loved Pooh, Annie!

Nerine - you have exquisite taste o

headington7 · Feb 24, 2004

Winnie the Pooh eat your heart out !

As we are cheered up a bit,how about a wonderfully silly one ?
A Parroty of a Poem by David Clayton

The Carpet fights
and squawks all nights
It swears and
chews the door.
I wonder if Dad
spelt it right
when he ordered
parakeet floor ?

Mervyn.

headington7 · Feb 24, 2004

Pie Corbett

Pie Corbett is appearing in the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in March,so in his honour...

GREEDY BIRD

shoveller

UNFIT BIRD

Puffin

MISERABLE BIRD

Grouse

scampo · Feb 24, 2004

AnnieW said:
Couldn't agree more Steve, this thread has been a delight. ...where were you in 1982 when I was doing O' Levels ??)Annie

In 1982? Hmm... not a bad vintage. I would have been travelling the globe courtesy of a pharmaceutical company. I didn't teach till I was in my early forties, about seven years ago.
:clap:

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