“What Will Your Verse Be?”

 

This  comes courtesy of blogger Dyan Diamond who posted this

http://wordpress.com/read/post/id/45100490/1504/

Being both curious and not a little inspired I had to look it up, first the wonderfully imaged advertisement, then the Walt Whitman poem which is voiced so perfect-well by Robin Williams.

So ,take a peek at the ad, remember I am not a great fan of I-pads (but shamelessly use one when it suits me!) and then read the original below.

Muse with me and as I did, whether it is better to have the images put before you – as is done so creatively in the ad – or to simply imagine your own.

I don’t even know what I think myself any more.

O Me! O Life!

By Walt Whitman 1819–1892 Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

“We Are Not Rubbish Pickers*”

Sat back earlier today to watch some mind-numbing pre-Christmas telly. Seemed to be a good idea after some usual seasonal stress.

But what I settled on, after some channel hopping was disturbing, wonder-filled and astounding, even though I had missed the first half an hour or so.

A documentary film entitled Waste Land.

Write O Poet! Write!

Write O Poet! Write!.

All Else

“Sun, sea air and patience Watson: all else will come”

 

Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, The Lion’s Mane)

Stopping By Woods …

Whose woods these are I think I know.  

His house is in the village though;  

He will not see me stopping here  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

My little horse must think it queer  

To stop without a farmhouse near  

Between the woods and frozen lake  

The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake  

To ask if there is some mistake.  

The only other sound’s the sweep  

Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.  

But I have promises to keep,  

And miles to go before I sleep,  

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Life That I Have

The Life That I Have

 

 The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

 

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

 

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

Leo Marks

… it is not the critic who counts …

 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Rooseveldt

 

 

Wait for Me

Wait for me and I’ll come back,

Wait and I will come;

Wait through Autumn’s yellow rains

And it’ s tedium.

Steel your heart and do not grieve

Wait through winter’s haze

Wait through wind and raging storm;

Wait through summer’s blaze.

Wait when others wait no more.

When my letters stop

Wait with hope that never wanes

Wait and don’t give up.

 

Wait for me! Let those who don’t –

Once I’m back with you –

Let them say that it was luck

That has seen us through.

You and I alone will know

That I safely came,

Spiting every kind of death,

Through that lethal flame

Just because you learned to wait;

Staunchly, stubbornly,

And, like no one else on earth,

Waited, love, for me.

 

Konstantin Simonov