Birds and poetry (10 Viewers)

[Bascar]

And here is the Hardy poem, written nearly 70 years later, after he and his wife had visited the same locality where Shelley had received his inspiration.


Shelley's Skylark
(The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887)

Somewhere afield here something lies
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust
That moved a poet to prophecies -
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,
And made immortal through times to be; -
Though it only lived like another bird,
And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell -
A little ball of feather and bone;
And how it perished, when piped farewell,
And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,
Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,
Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue
Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find
That tiny pinch of priceless dust,
And bring a casket silver-lined,
And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,
And consecrate it to endless time;
For it inspired a bard to win
Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

Thomas Hardy


Andrew

 

[Tanny]

Thank you Andrew, I appreciate these poems, they have rhythm and are very descriptive. so much so that one can visualize the scene and atmosphere.
Tanny

 

[Mac Aree]

I think we'd all agree with that, Charles but with major qualifications.

Hi Steve,
Excellent thread! Great mixture.. This is my first comment ..
I started when I saw your quote of the Maya Angelou poem Caged Bird. I heard a program about her on BBC years ago and the quote refreshed the memory. I must get that book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". Then that amazing one "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".... Anyway it all crystalised a few thoughts going round in my head visa've the US election and from the various wonderful posted comments, thoughts and excellent poems, flying round here, it inspired me to produce the following piece below. I suppose it's just another of this time. It's sort of an answer to that caged bird and the changed world. It could almost be a blues song. I may change the title, couple of nice rhymes though.

Best regards,

Brian

I Made My Cage From What I See
______________________________BMA V1-10 16-11-08
I made this cage
I made it for me
I made it from
What I see

I saw how
The land lies
A bird for a perch
Not for skies

All my roads
Led to dead-ends
I see now those
Ends were bends

I can see
In sun’s free air
One like me
Fly’n up there

I’am sing’n though
These bars of mine
Frustration songs for too
Long a time

I’am in this cage
Liv’n on birdseed
What will I be liv’n on
If I’m freed?

My wings were clipped
So can I fly?
Hey he made it out there
But can I?

Is it a plane or bird?
No it’s Omamaman
With three words
“Yes we can”

 

[Merlin]

Good one Brian,
regards
Merlin

 

[Bascar]

Nice poem, Brian, well done. And a warm welcome to Bird Forum and the thread.

It’s interesting your mentioning Maya Angelou and the recent US election for I saw her interviewed on the night of the election. She is now aged 80 and looking strong and fit. I remembered that early posting of the Caged Bird and looked out some more of her poems. This is one that I particularly like:

Alone

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou


Thanks Tanny for your comments on the skylark poems. I entirely agree with you about the importance of rhythm in poetry.

Andrew

 

[christineredgate]

Andrew many thanks for your poem"Alone".Deep thinking.

 

[Bascar]

A type of poem that I find fascinating is the villanelle, described in Wikipedia as:

‘…a poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the 1800s from the imitation of French models. A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.’

One of the best-known villanelles is Dylan Thomas’s great poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’. The lines in bold and italics illustrate how the form works in terms of repetition and structure:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Here are two more poems in this style, the first by Thomas Hardy and the second, a celebrated modern, and slightly less rigid, version by the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop.


The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again (Villanelle)

"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!

"Of such strange tidings what think ye,
O birds in brown that peck and preen?
Men know but little more than we!

"When I was borne from yonder tree
In bonds to them, I hoped to glean
How happy days are made to be,

"And want and wailing turned to glee;
Alas, despite their mighty mien
Men know but little more than we!

"They cannot change the Frost's decree,
They cannot keep the skies serene;
How happy days are made to be

"Eludes great Man's sagacity
No less than ours, O tribes in treen!
Men know but little more than we
How happy days are made to be."

Thomas Hardy



One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


Andrew

 

[dolphinbride]

Andrew, I love them all, thank you. Especially the Elizabeth Bishop.. Also loved the Robert Service poems, Merlin.

xxoo

 

[ivywall]

Baskar -
I really like the sonnet as a poetry form. It's very strict and rigid and makes you think about rhythm, rhyme and the sound of what you make - because you have to speak it to yopurself to make it work.
One of mine (that isn't about birds) but reminds us of the respect we should have of the other inhabitants of of shared world - I hope it may remind us that we are not the only important species around.

Love Sonnet 2

I love to feel your warmth and heart beat strong.
The strength you give to me instils my soul
With inspiration to surmount all wrongs-
To battle wars and once again make whole
Our world. For far too many do not think
As you- so happy and so humorous.
Our life can disappear within a blink-
So we should grasp so hard and firm because
You are a Titan and your faithfulness
Defames all Church, exposes the Old Lies
Of who it is who cares and who cares less.
For without family we all must die.
So let us laugh headlong into death’s fog
A lesson taught so well by you, our dog.

 

[Bascar]

A good poem, ivywall, and a nice final couplet. Thank you for sharing it.

I agree with you about the sonnet – it does require great discipline and compression of language. I know I have posted this before but it is one of my favourite sonnets and I always think of it at this season.

That Time of Year

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare

Andrew

 

[Bascar]

Hi Kristina, I’m glad you liked the Elizabeth Bishop villanelle. I think it’s a wonderful poem. Here is another poem from her dedicated to her friend Louise Crane:


Letter To N.Y.

For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

Elizabeth Bishop


Andrew

 

[Bascar]

THE WOOD-PILE

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther--and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went down. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather--
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled--and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

Robert Frost

Andrew

 

[dolphinbride]

Andrew, "Letter To N.Y." is wonderful, thank you.. Frost isn't so bad either

Crumbs To The Birds

A bird appears a thoughtless thing,
He's ever living on the wing,
And keeps up such a carolling,
That little else to do but sing
A man would guess had he.

No doubt he has his little cares,
And very hard he often fares,
The which so patiently he bears,
That, listening to those cheerful airs,
Who knows but he may be

In want of his next meal of seeds?
I think for that his sweet song pleads.
If so, his pretty art succeeds.
I'll scatter there among the weeds
All the small crumbs I see.

Charles Lamb

Kristina

 

[Bascar]

Thanks, Kristina, for that lovely Lamb poem. Although I am familiar with his essays, I hadn’t come across any of his poetry, indeed didn’t know he had published any! I have just looked him up and come across a few more, including this one which I like.


The Old Familiar Faces

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces--

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb


Association of ideas – it’s not an exact parallel but the ‘all, all are gone’ refrain reminded me of this poem by Yeats, where he recalls some of the most influential figures in his life in a series of wonderful vignettes.

BEAUTIFUL LOFTY THINGS

Beautiful lofty things: O'Leary's noble head;
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd:
'This Land of Saints,' and then as the applause died out,
'Of plaster Saints'; his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.
Standish O'Grady supporting himself between the tables
Speaking to a drunken audience high nonsensical words;
Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,
Her eightieth winter approaching: 'Yesterday he threatened my life.
I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,
The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,
Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.

W B Yeats


Andrew

 

[christineredgate]

I overheard this poem being recited by the author in our local farm shop.He had just a list of capital letters on a page,from which came the following poem.
Noises Of The Night.
Night was falling,they were needing food
Owls were searching to feed their brood.
In and out of the field they'd glide
Silently flying side by side.
Ears and eyes fixed to the ground
Searching for mice that should make a sound.
Oe'r the meadow,oe'r the hill,
Food was scarce,with chicks to fill.
The mice were beginning to hibernate,
Hard was the weather,such was their fate.
Each snap of a twig,or rustle of grass,
Nothing but the wind,alas,alas.
In the nest the young sit and wait,
Gullets are empty as they contemplate.
Hoot call!!,the owls,they've caught their prey,
The noises of the night shall live another day.
An acrostic poem
by G. Lupton.

Mr Lupton very kindly copied his poem for me and gave permission for me to submit it here.
I really do like this verse.One can see the Owls hunting silently,and one can just picture the owlets sitting in their nest ,waiting expectantly for their food.
I hope others enjoy reading this simple poem.

 

[Tanny]

The Owl, a silent wanderer of the night, so silent in its hunt. Any poem of the Owl is welcomed and enjoyed. Thank you Christine for finding this one for us.

 

[Bascar]

Mr Lupton very kindly copied his poem for me and gave permission for me to submit it here.
I really do like this verse.One can see the Owls hunting silently,and one can just picture the owlets sitting in their nest ,waiting expectantly for their food.
I hope others enjoy reading this simple poem.

I do like it, Christine, thanks for posting it. It’s always nice to see new poets on the thread.

‘In and out of the field they'd glide
Silently flying side by side.
Ears and eyes fixed to the ground
Searching for mice that should make a sound.’

- a fine description of this efficient hunter at work.


Andrew

 

[Bascar]

Here are two more poems concerning owls.


The Ancients of the World

The salmon lying in the depths of Llyn Llifon
Secretly as a thought in a dark mind,
Is not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd
Who tells her sorrow nightly on the wind.

The ousel singing in the woods of Cilgwri,
Tirelessly as a stream over the mossed stones,
Is not so old as the toad of Cors Fochno
Who feels the cold skin sagging round his bones.

The toad and the ousel and the stag of Rhedynfre,
That has cropped each leaf from the tree of life,
Are not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd,
That the proud eagle would have to wife.

R.S. Thomas


This Night

This night, as I sit here alone,
And brood on what is dead and gone,
The owl that's in this Highgate Wood,
Has found his fellow in my mood;
To every star, as it doth rise -
Oh-o-o! Oh-o-o! he shivering cries.

And, looking at the Moon this night,
There's that dark shadow in her light.
Ah! Life and death, my fairest one,
Thy lover is a skeleton!
"And why is that?" I question - "why?"
Oh-o-o! Oh-o-o! the owl doth cry.

William Henry Davies


Andrew

 

[christineredgate]

Thanks,Tanny and Bascar.Owls are very special birds.The hunters of the night.

 

[Tanny]

TWYLIGHT.

The evening light is slowly falling and all the world is still,
Then I hear a Nightingale calling with such a wonderful trill.
He’s singing to his drowsy love as she sits in the ancient tree.
And the sun sinks from above to sleep over the rim of the sea.

And as the evening shadows creep and all the world goes to rest.
Small folk waking from their sleep start out on there nightly quest.

Then silently flying comes the owl, swiftly over the barn,
Out on his usual evening prowl, silently, ghostly, over the tarn.
Then to the moon he hoots his lay, and down the valley a screeching,
Telling the world its end of day and the hours of rest were reaching.

An old poem by my mother but heavily edited by myself.
Tanny.