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The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

A platform to express and share your enthusiasm and passion for poetry. What are your treasured poems and poets? Don't hesitate to showcase the poems you've penned yourself!
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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Now here is one I really do like, and an unusual subject. Retired Racehorses?

At Grass

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
To fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Philip Larkin
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Dawn

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Re: Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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Very peaceful.... could be a picture of old age period could it not?

..."and not a fieldglass sees them home..." is so sweetly poetic
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."--Jesus
"For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world--to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice."--Jesus
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DWill

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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And just before that,

"they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,"

Larkin is so easy to listen to.
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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DWill wrote:

"they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,"

Larkin is so easy to listen to.
I know!! Larkin's experience of retirement must be like mine!! 'Cos I think it's great!!

DAWN! So really nice to have you back....stick around...won't you?? Please. xx
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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realiz

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Re: Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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I know!! Larkin's experience of retirement must be like mine!!
Good to hear this. So many people look foreward to retirement, but often it does not turn out to be what they'd hoped for. This poem does paint a beautiful picture of the retired life, very appealing, but as I read it I thought about the opposite feeling. The horses, old and forgotten, lonely, missing the excitement, the rush, the attention, of the earlier years, like the lonely retiree missing the feeling of being needed and wanted and useful, of being young and powerful and part of the masses.

The final line seems a reminder that the past cannot be escaped completely:
With bridles in the evening come.
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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There are a lot of factors which go to make up a happy retirement. I still go and help out at the bookstore, at least once a week. Also, being able to help out with the care of our grandchildren, is helpful in making us still feel part of the scene.

So I still feel part of the world, but I think I have learnt to prioritise and not to let the world intrude more than absolutetly necessary.

Maybe the 'bridle bearer' becomes welcome when the World appears so 'unbridled' to those of us from a previous generation.

Here is a powerful one:-

At the Bomb Testing Site
By William E. Stafford 1914–1993


At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.

It was looking at something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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This is an excerpt from a play by W B Yeats. I've put a link at the end in case you wanted to read the whole work.

At the grey round of the hill

At the grey round of the hill
Music of a lost kingdom
Runs, runs and is suddenly still.
The winds out of Clare-Galway
Carry it: suddenly it is still.

I have heard in the night air
A wandering airy music;
And moidered in that snare
A man is lost of a sudden,
In that sweet wandering snare.

What finger first began
Music of a lost kingdom.
They dreamed that laughed in the sun.
Dry bones that dream are bitter,
They dream and darken our sun.

Those crazy fingers play
A wandering airy music;
Our luck is withered away,
And wheat in the wheat-ear withered,
And the wind blows it away.

II

My heart ran wild when it heard
The curlew cry before dawn
And the eddying cat-headed bird;
But now the night is gone.
I have heard from far below
The strong March birds a-crow,
Stretch neck and clap the wing,
Red cocks, and crow.


[The end]
William Butler Yeats's play: The Dreaming Of The Bones

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/54285/
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Saffron

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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Hello, hello. I really have not abandoned the poetry forum. I've been absent due to many family commitments over the past two weeks - my daughter's return from 5 months in New Zealand, my mother's 73rd b-day, youngest daughter's senior prom, and on and on. I'm back. It will take me a few days to get up to speed, fortunately, I have a nice long holiday weekend to catch up.
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froglipz

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Re: Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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Welcome back Saffron, enjoy your holiday weekend and no worries about catching up, just jump back in anywhere :)
~froglipz~

"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested"

Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The A Poems

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William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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