Sorry about the ear-worm....here's another one:-

It goes to the tune of 'Gentle Gifts' - I think that is an Amish song:

Now, I'm not a Christian, but this one melds with the pagan so beautifully:


I danced in the morning when the world was young
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he

I danced for the scribes and the Pharisees
They wouldn't dance, they wouldn't follow me
I danced for the fishermen James and John
They came with me so the dance went on

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he

I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame
The holy people said it was a shame
They ripped, they stripped, they hung me high
Left me there on the cross to die

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he

I danced on a Friday when the world turned black
It's hard to dance with the devil on your back
They buried my body, they thought I was gone
But I am the dance, and the dance goes on

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he

They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the life that will never, never die
I'll live in you if you'll live in me
I am the Lord of the dance, said he

Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he

giselle wrote:
I suspect political satire because at least one of the editors (Heaney) has some definite political views re Irish nationalism.

This tune reminds me of the Irish Stage Musical - 'River Dance'.

The Artist

Mr T.
bareheaded
in a soiled undershirt
his hair standing out
on all sides
stood on his toes
heels together
arms gracefully
for the moment
curled above his head.
Then he whirled about
bounded
into the air
and with an entrechat
perfectly achieved
completed the figure.
My mother
taken by surprise
where she sat
in her invalid's chair
was left speechless.
Bravo! she cried at last
and clapped her hands.
The man's wife
came from the kitchen:
What goes on here? she said.
But the show was over.

William Carlos Williams

I found this poem flowed a little easier reading here without the staggered lines, though it might lose something of the feeling of things not quite lining up anymore in those aging years of life. I love the picture of this very old man suddenly having a moment of physical clarity as he performs a movement that his muscles have long forgotten. I love the reaction of 'my mother'. Bravo.

Well it has finally happened to me - I fell of the email for this thread. I can't believe how many poems I've gotten behind and here I was wondering why no poems were being posted. My book finally arrived. There is a handy little glossary in the back for those hard to find words that appear in the poems.

I am too many poems behine to hit them all in this post. I found the comments on "Animal Alphabet" to be helpful. I liked "Anger lay by me all night long" and love, love the ee cummings, "anyone live in a pretty how town." I'll catch me up the rest of the way later this evening.

Oh Saffron, Welcome Back!!


As I came in by Fiddich-side,


On a May moming,
I spied Willie MacKintosh,
An hour before the dawning.
"Turn again, turn again,
Turn again I bid ye;
If ye burn Auchendown,
Huntley he will heid ye,"
As I came in by Auchendown,
On a May morning,
Auchendown was in a bleeze,
An hour before the dawning.
"Crawing, crawing,
For a' your crowse crawing,
Ye brunt your crop and tint your wings
An hour before the dawning."

"Heid me or hang me,
That sall never fear me;
I'll burn Auchendown
Before the life leaves me."

Anon (A Scottish Ballad)

I found this explanation, below, whilst searching for this poem on the web.

Following the murder of the Earl of Murroy, the MacIntoshes of the clan Chattan pillaged a castle and killed four men on an estate belonging to the Earl of Huntley. In retaliation, Huntley laid waste the lands of Clan Chottan. Returning home from this engagement he surprised the MacIntoshes spoiling his lands at Cabrach and, in the ensuing fight, killed sixty of them.

Hurrah! A proper poem:-

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

Oh, this is a great poem. I've read it through quite a few times today. Who speaks the truth?: The optimistic young lover who believes in the everlasting all-conquering power of love or the cynical old clocks (time) who foretell the future: the loss of love and passion in marriage, the real truths of the fairy-tale endings, the longings for more in life, and the eventual cheating heart of the lover.
The last verse I take to mean that the lovers, like all before them, will not listen, and should not listen. 'And the deep river ran on' is the continuity of life that defies time. Or maybe that is not quite right. Anyone else?

The next is an interesting poem, I think, but complicated. And so, I have attached rather a long commentary. Sorry it's so long!

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme
Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Summary

The kingfisher, one of the most colorful birds in England, “catches fire” as the light brings its plumage to a bright radiance. Similarly, the iridescent wings of the dragonfly glint with a flame-like beauty. These two optical images are followed by three aural ones: the tinkling sound of pebbles tossed down wells, the plucking of strings on a musical instrument, and the ringing of bells as the “bow” swings like a pendulum to strike the metal side. Each of these objects does exactly what its nature dictates, in a kind of (unwilled) self-assertion. More generally, every “mortal thing” might be thought to do the same: to express that essence that dwells inside (“indoors”) of it. “Selves” (assumedly from the infinitive “to self,” or “to selve,”) is Hopkins’s coined verb for that self-enacting, and he elaborates upon this process in the lines that follow: to “self” is to go oneself, to speak and spell “myself,” to cry, “What I do is me: for that I came.”

The next stanza extends this concept from object to man. “Justices” (from the made-up infinitive “to justice”) becomes the verb for that which the just man does or enacts. He harbors a grace (bestowed by God) that reveals itself in all his “goings” or everyday activities. And he acts before God as the being that God sees him as, which is Christ, who is both man and God. Christ dwells everywhere—in bodies and in the expressions of human eyes. It is the beauty lent by Christ’s presence that makes “the features of men’s faces” lovely in God’s sight.
Form

The poem is an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet: 14 lines divided into an octave and a sestet. Hopkins’s variations on straight iambic pentameter enhance the ideas the poem expresses, and the poem provides one of the best examples of his dexterous use of musical effects. For example, examine the third line: “As tumbled over rim in roundy wells.” While the line is neat iambic pentameter, the iambs fall in such a way that they split the words “tumbled,” “over,” and “roundy.” This splitting (which Hopkins called “counterpoint”) effects a regular, quick, and broken feel, and re-creates beautifully the reverberations of stones plunking down a well. The pattern by which the consonants and vowels are repeated and varied replicates the subtle but discernible change in pitch as pebbles of different shapes and sizes strike the water below. Contrastingly, the even accents in the phrase “each tucked string tells” issue forth in plucking regularity and sonorousness. In the poem as a whole, the disproportionately large number of accented words complements the conceptual emphasis on the “thisness,” or individuality, of each thing.
Commentary

This poem offers perhaps the most direct illustration of Hopkins’s theory of “inscape.” The term is hard to define precisely—even Hopkins struggled to articulate it—and critics have carped at length over its exact meaning. Coined on the model of the word “landscape,” the term refers to the unifying designs by which the unique interior essences of a thing are held together. The word does not merely refer to what is particular and individual about an object, but posits a kind of inner order or pattern by which these individual essences form a kind of harmonious composition. Moreover, inscapes imply a creator; by paying close enough attention to observe inscapes, one might hope to be lifted to a closer contemplation of God. Hopkins often took the idea of inscape as a standard for the kind of order and beauty that poetry might hope to achieve. The rich density and careful patterning of his poems reflect, therefore, a theological belief in a world whose character is one of subtle and magnificent design.

As with many of Hopkins’s sonnets, this poem turns from a physical first part to a spiritual, moral, or theological second part. More specifically, the poem shifts its focus from being (the mere passive possession of essential, defining characteristics) to the more active notion of self-expression, and then to action itself. Hopkins first draws on the physical being of kingfishers, dragonflies, and stones: each aspect he describes is a part of the unchanging nature of the object. However, the sound of the bell moves us more into the realm of deliberate self-expression. Hopkins uses the word “tongue” to link the involuntary ringing to the conscious power of speech. The bell’s ringing is equivalent to a “fling[ing] out of its broad name,” because the sound is so unique to the bell that it defines the object the way a name defines a thing. All of the world’s objects possess and assert uniqueness in the way the bell does, Hopkins declares. And though the objects he has mentioned so far are all insensate or unconscious, he prepares us for the next stanza by extending the characteristic to “each mortal thing.” The use of “selves” as a verb is one of the most remarkable things about this poem; by making the noun “self” into an action word, Hopkins enacts his thematic shift from the idea of substance or essence to a phase of activity and purpose.

Now in the sestet Hopkins makes the promised extension from inanimate object to human being; yet the self-asserting that seemed such an inevitable process for the objects described in the octave takes on a different character when applied to man. The process is complicated for human beings, because human beings possess a moral capacity. Thus the enacting of the self cannot happen unconsciously or automatically; rather, it means becoming one’s highest self, or acting to the highest of one’s capacity. A man is not just, Hopkins asserts, until he behaves justly, or “justices.” Furthermore, the implication is that he is not fully a man unless he does so—that being just is part of the essence of man, insofar as the striving for moral perfection is part of his basic existence. Hopkins then extends this concept to the theological idea of God’s immanence in the world, and the Christian belief that Christ dwells within the hearts of men. It is by the grace of God that humans are what they are; more specifically, it was through divine grace that Christ came to redeem men from sin. Hopkins therefore asks that men “keep grace.” This phrase describes the humble acceptance of God’s grace that is the first gesture of Christian life. This acceptance will lend grace to their everyday comings and goings, and will allow man to act “in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is”—that is, to become one with Christ and so fulfill the purpose of his being. Through Christ, this daily activity can become truth, and the loveliness of bodies and faces can correspond to a loveliness of soul in a perfect Christian inscape.

At first blush I like it, although I am not nearly done chewing it yet...

I have to admit that I like this poem much, much more after having its meaning enlarged upon by the long commentary.

I got the drift of what he was saying....but was missing so much of its 'inwardness???'.