The Rattle Bag: The K-M Poems

Penelope · Fri Apr 29, 2011 8:44 am

227. Kerr's Ass - Patrick Kavanagh
228. The Knight's Tomb - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
229. Lament for Tadhg Cronin's Children - Michael Hartnett
230. Landscapes - T S Eliot
New Hampshire
Virginia
Usk
Rannoch by Glencoe
Cape Ann
231. The Last Words of My English Grandmother - William Carlos Williams
232. The Leaden Eyed - Vachel Lindsay
233. Legend - Judith Wright
234. The Legs - Robert Graves
235. Lepanto - G K Chesterton
236. The Lie - Sir Walter Raleigh
237. Like Rain it sounded till it curved - Emily Dickinson
238. Lines for an Old Man - T S Eliot
239. The Lion for Real - Allen Ginsberg
240. Little Fish - D H Lawrence
241. the Little Mute Boy - Federico Garcia Lorca
242. Little Trotty Wagtail - John Clare
243. Lizard - D H Lawrence
244. The Locust - anon
245. Lollocks - Robert Graves
246. London - William Blake
247. Lonely the sea-bird lies at her rest - W B Yeats
248. Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell - William Blake
249. Lore - R S Thomas
250. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now - A E Houseman
251. The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall - Edward Dyer
252. Macavity: the Mystery Cat - T S Eliot
253. Mad Gardener's Song - Lewis Carol
254. Mad Tom's Song - anon
255. maggie and milly and molly and may - e e cummings
256. the Maldive Shark - Herman Melville
257. Man and Bat - D H Lawrence
258. The Man He Killed - Thomas Hardy
259. Manners - Elizabeth Bishop
260. The Marvel - Keith Douglas
261. Mary Stuart - Edwin Muir
262. from The Mask of Anarchy - Percy Bysshe Shelley
263. Masses - Cesar Vallejo
264. The Meadow Mouse - Theodore Roethke
265. Meditation on the A30 - Sir John Betjeman
266. Memorabilia - Robert Browning
267. Memories of Verdun - Alan Dugan
268. Memory of My Father - Patrick Kavanagh
269. Merlin - Edwin Muir
270. Methought that I had broken from the Tower - William Shakespeare
271. The Midnightmouse - Christian Morgenstern
272. The Mill-Pond - Edward Thomas
273. The Minimal - Theodore Roethke
274. Mips and ma the mooly moo - Theodore Roethke
275. Monkeyland - Sandor Weores
276. The Moon and a Cloud - W H Davies
277. Moonrise - Gerard Manley Hopkins
278. More Light! More Light! - Anthony Hecht
279. Mosquito - D H Lawrence
280. The Mosquito Knows - D H Lawrence
281. Mountain Lion - D H Lawrence
282. Mouse's Nest - John Clare
283. Mushrooms - Sylvia Plath
284. My Cat, Jeoffrey - Christopher Smart
285. My father played the melodeon - Patrick Kavanagh

That's it! The Names of the Hare is the next one and that is where Saffron's list begins.
Saffron, if you want to combine all these posts into one list, that's OK, but I felt safer doing it this way.

realiz · Thu Dec 29, 2011 12:46 pm

Legend

by Judith Wright 1949

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle
and a black dog running behind.
Cobwebs snatched at his feet,
rivers hindered him,
thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind
and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,
but he didn't mind.
I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out
any spider I meet,
said he to his dog and his rifle.

The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks
with his old black hat on his head.
Mountains jumped in his way,
rocks rolled down on him,
and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead.
And the rain came down like mattocks.
But he only said,
I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day,
and he went on over the paddocks.

When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling,
Up came the night ready to swallow him,
like the barrel of a gun,
like an old black hat,
like a black dog hungry to follow him.
Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing
and the grass lay down to pillow him.
His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling.

But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain,
just as his heart foretold.
He ran like a hare,
he climbed like a fox;
he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold -
like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain,
like a ring of gold.
The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare,
and the grass stood up again on the mountain.

The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulder
instead of his broken gun.
Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him,
and the rainbow shone as brightly as the sun.
All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder,
nobody else has done
anything equal to it. He went home as easy as could be
with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder.

giselle · Sat Dec 31, 2011 10:45 am

"Like Rain it sounded till it curved"

Like Rain it sounded till it curved
And then I knew t'was Wind-
It walked as wet as any Wave
But swept as dry as sand-
When it had pushed itself away
To some remotest Plain
A coming of Hosts was heard
That was indeed the Rain-
It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools
It warbled in the Road-
It pulled the spigot from the Hills
And let the Floods abroad-
It loosened the acres, lifted seas
The sites of Centres stirred
Then like Elijah rode away
Upon a Wheel of Cloud.

Emily Dickinson

realiz · Tue Jan 03, 2012 1:18 pm

Ah, good one, Giselle. Good idea, too. We can just pick through the rest of the Rattle Bag and post the ones that speak to us.

Here is another:

Lonely The Seabird Lies at Her Rest

Lonely the seabird lies at her rest,
Blown like a down-blenched parcel of spray
Upon the wind, or follows her prey
Under a great wave's hollowing crest.

God has not appeared to the birds.

The ger-eagle has chosen his part
In blue-deep of the upper air
Where one-eyed day can meet his stare;
He is content with his savage heart.

God has not appeared to the birds.

But where have last year's cygnets gone?
The lake is empty: why do they fling
White wing out beside white wing?
What can a swan need but a swan?

God has not appeared to the birds.

by William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

giselle · Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:46 pm

Yes, I think picking the Rattlebag plums, as they ripen, is much better than a tedious A_Z process. I like this Yeats poem, I had considered posting it but Emily D won out. I particularly like the line "What can a swan need but a swan?"

Here are a couple of Yeats quotes that I like:

"Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence."

from Long-Legged Fly

"Even when the poet seems most himself…he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete."

from Essays and Introductions

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