PAGE 3: THOMAS HARDY * CHARLOTTE MEW * ROBERT BROWNING * JONES VERY * JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER * ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING * THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK * FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN * CHARLES LAMB * MATTHEW ARNOLD * ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON * CHARLES TURNER (a.k.a. Tennyson) * LEWIS CARROLL * RUDYARD KIPLING * ALFRED LORD TENNYSON * SIR WALTER SCOTT

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Thomas Hardy’s “During Wind and Rain” read by Ken Follett:

During Wind and Rain

      They sing their dearest songs—
      He, she, all of them—yea,
      Treble and tenor and bass,
         And one to play;
      With the candles mooning each face. . . .
         Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

      They clear the creeping moss—
      Elders and juniors—aye,
      Making the pathways neat
         And the garden gay;
      And they build a shady seat. . . .
         Ah, no; the years, the years,
See, the white storm-birds wing across.

     They are blithely breakfasting all—
      Men and maidens—yea,
      Under the summer tree,
         With a glimpse of the bay,
      While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .
         Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

      They change to a high new house,
      He, she, all of them—aye,
      Clocks and carpets and chairs
         On the lawn all day,
      And brightest things that are theirs. . . .
         Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

Richard Burton reads Hardy’s “Channel Firing”:

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening....

“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! 
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? 
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" — 
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. 

— "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, 
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; 
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" — 
"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she. 

— "At home in the barton you said thee' and thou,' 
And thik oon,' and theäs oon,' and t'other'; but now 
Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" — 
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. 

— "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak 
But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, 
And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" — 
"We never do work when we're ruined," said she. 

— "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, 
And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem 
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" — 
"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. 

— "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, 
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" — 
"My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be, 
Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

"Had he and I but met 
            By some old ancient inn, 
We should have sat us down to wet 
            Right many a nipperkin! 

            "But ranged as infantry, 
            And staring face to face, 
I shot at him as he at me, 
            And killed him in his place. 

            "I shot him dead because — 
            Because he was my foe, 
Just so: my foe of course he was; 
            That's clear enough; although 

            "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, 
            Off-hand like — just as I — 
Was out of work — had sold his traps — 
            No other reason why. 

            "Yes; quaint and curious war is! 
            You shoot a fellow down 
You'd treat if met where any bar is, 
            Or help to half-a-crown."

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here, up and be gone

Where I could not follow

With wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

Never to bid good-bye,

Or lip me the softest call,

Or utter a wish for a word, while I

Saw morning harden upon the wall,

Unmoved, unknowing

That your great going

Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house

And think for a breath it is you I see

At the end of the alley of bending boughs

Where so often at dusk you used to be;

Till in darkening dankness

The yawning blankness

Of the perspective sickens me!

You were she who abode

By those red-veined rocks far West,

You were the swan-necked one who rode

Along the beetling Beeny Crest,

And, reining nigh me,

Would muse and eye me,

While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,

And ere your vanishing strive to seek

That time’s renewal? We might have said,

“In this bright spring weather

We’ll visit together

Those places that once we visited.”

Well, well! All’s past amend,

Unchangeable. It must go.

I seem but a dead man held on end

To sink down soon. . . .  O you could not know

That such swift fleeing

No soul foreseeing—

Not even I—would undo me so!

by Thomas Hardy, 1840–1928

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     Three summers since I chose a maid,
     Too young maybe—-but more’s to do
     At harvest-time than bide and woo.
              When us was wed she turned afraid
     Of love and me and all things human;
     Like the shut of a winter’s day
     Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman—-
            More like a little frightened fay.
                    One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

     “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
     ’Should properly have been abed;
     But sure enough she wadn’t there
     Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
     We chased her, flying like a hare
     Before out lanterns. To Church-Town
              All in a shiver and a scare
     We caught her, fetched her home at last
              And turned the key upon her, fast.

     She does the work about the house
     As well as most, but like a mouse:
              Happy enough to chat and play
              With birds and rabbits and such as they,
              So long as men-folk keep away.
     “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
     When one of us comes within reach.
              The women say that beasts in stall
              Look round like children at her call.
              I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

     Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
     Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
     Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
     To her wild self. But what to me?

     The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
              The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,
     One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
              A magpie’s spotted feathers lie
     On the black earth spread white with rime,
     The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
              What’s Christmas-time without there be
              Some other in the house than we!

              She sleeps up in the attic there
              Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair
     Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
     The soft young down of her, the brown,
The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!

ROOMS

I remember rooms that have had their part
     In the steady slowing down of the heart.
The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,
The little damp room with the seaweed smell,
And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—
     Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.
But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,
Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem 
       to sleep again
     As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed
     Out there in the sun—in the rain.

                  —and he cried with a loud voice:
                  Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
                                 (Revelation)


They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the 
       branches as they fall,
The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud 
       common laughs of the men, above it all.


I remember one evening of a long past Spring
Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead
       rat in the mud of the drive.
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.


The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
   On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
     Green and high
     And lonely against the sky.
         (Down now!—)
     And but for that,   
     If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought 
       of him again.


It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole 
     of the whispering loveliness away
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.


It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the 
       planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,   
     In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the 
       great seas.
     There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
     They must have heard the sparrows flying,   
And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
     But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
     ‘Hurt not the trees.’

Two poems by Robert Browning:

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, 
Looking as if she were alive. I call 
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands 
Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said 
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read 
Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 
But to myself they turned (since none puts by 
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 
How such a glance came there; so, not the first 
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not 
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot 
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps 
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps 
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint 
Must never hope to reproduce the faint 
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff 
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 
For calling up that spot of joy. She had 
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, 
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er 
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, 
The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
The bough of cherries some officious fool 
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
She rode with round the terrace—all and each 
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked 
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked 
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame 
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 
In speech—which I have not—to make your will 
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this 
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, 
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let 
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— 
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose 
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, 
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without 
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; 
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet 
The company below, then. I repeat, 
The Count your master’s known munificence 
Is ample warrant that no just pretense 
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; 
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed 
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go 
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, 
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

A video of poem “The Dead” by Jones Very:

I see them crowd on crowd they walk the earth 
Dry, leafless trees no Autumn wind laid bare, 
And in their nakedness find cause for mirth, 
And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare; 
No sap doth through their clattering branches flow, 
Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear; 
Their hearts the living God have ceased to know, 
Who gives the spring time to th'expectant year; 
They mimic life, as if from him to steal 
His glow of health to paint the livid cheek; 
They borrow words for thoughts they cannot feel, 
That with a seeming heart their tongue may speak; 
And in their show of life more dead they live 
Than those that to the earth with many tears they give.

by Jones Very, 1813–1880

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THE HUNTERS OF MEN

HAVE ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunting of men?
The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;
Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunting of men!
Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!
The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,
Just screening the politic statesman behind;
The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.
And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,
For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid:
Her foot's in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,
How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!
Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,
In this 'land of the brave and this home of the free.'
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,
All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;
Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay!
Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?
Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when
All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?
Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.
The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,
Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.
Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more
Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore:
What right have they here in the home of the white,
Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom and Right?
Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again
Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!
Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are melting away?
The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,
There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.
Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.
Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?

*****************************************************

Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

“How Do I Love Thee?” (Sonnets From the Portuguese 43)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 
For the ends of being and ideal grace. 
I love thee to the level of every day's 
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 
I love thee freely, as men strive for right. 
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. 
I love thee with the passion put to use 
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, 
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

************************************

Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner

The poor man's sins are glaring; 
In the face of ghostly warning 
He is caught in the fact 
Of an overt act-- 
Buying greens on Sunday morning. 

The rich man's sins are hidden 
In the pomp of wealth and station; 
And escape the sight 
Of the children of light, 
Who are wise in their generation. 

The rich man has a kitchen, 
And cooks to dress his dinner; 
The poor who would roast 
To the baker's must post, 
And thus becomes a sinner. 

The rich man has a cellar, 
And a ready butler by him; 
The poor must steer 
For his pint of beer 
Where the saint can't choose but spy him. 

The rich man's painted windows 
Hide the concerts of the quality; 
The poor can but share 
A cracked fiddle in the air, 
Which offends all sound morality. 

The rich man is invisible 
In the crowd of his gay society; 
But the poor man's delight 
Is a sore in the sight, 
And a stench in the nose of piety. 

The rich man has a carriage 
Where no rude eye can flout him; 
The poor man's bane 
Is a third class train, 
With the day-light all about him. 

The rich man goes out yachting, 
Where sanctity can't pursue him; 
The poor goes afloat 
In a fourpenny boat, 
Where the bishop groans to view him.

by Thomas Love Peacock, 1785–1866

*****************************************************

“How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway”

XXIX

How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway 
Have I run forth to Nature as to a friend,--
With some pretext of o’erwrought sight, to spend
My school-time in green meadows far away!
Careless of summoning bell, or clocks that strike,
I marked with flowers the minutes of my day:
For still the eye that shrank from hated hours,
Dazzled with decimal and dividend,
Knew each bleached alder-root that plashed across
The bubbling brook, and every mass of moss;
Could tell the month, too, by the vervain-spike,--
How far the ring of purple tiny flowers
Had climbed; just starting, may-be, with the May,
Half-light, or tapering off at Summer’s end.

by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, 1821–1873

from Sonnets, Second Series

*************************************

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 seemed 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.

by Charles Lamb, 1775-1834

Parental Recollections

A child's a plaything for an hour; 
Its pretty tricks we try 
For that or for a longer space; 
Then tire, and lay it by. 

But I knew one, that to itself 
All seasons could controul; 
That would have mock'd the sense of pain 
Out of a grieved soul. 

Thou, straggler into loving arms, 
Young climber up of knees, 
When I forget thy thousand ways, 
Then life and all shall cease.

***********************************

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

by Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888

(poem written in 1867)

************************************************************

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay a-bed,  
I had two pillows at my head,  
And all my toys beside me lay  
To keep me happy all the day.      

And sometimes for an hour or so    
I watched my leaden soldiers go,  
With different uniforms and drills,  
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;      

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets  
All up and down among the sheets;  
Or brought my trees and houses out,  
And planted cities all about.      

I was the giant great and still  
That sits upon the pillow-hill,  
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 – 1894

This poem is in the public domain.

My Wife

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.  

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.  

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.

by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 – 1894

This poem is in the public domain.

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose top gallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson, cried.
… 'It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,' he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 – 1894

**************************************************************

Brad Craft reads Charles Turner’s sonnet “Letty’s Globe”:

Letty’s Globe

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
And laugh'd, and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,
"Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!"
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

by Charles Turner, 1808-1879

HOW DOTH THE LITTLE CROCODILE

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1832-1898

You are old, Father William (1865)

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –
Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
“I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –
Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –
What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1832-1898

Folksinger Donovan covers Jabberwocky as a song:

Yet another song version by Erutan of the poem originally found in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

JABBERWOCKY

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936, was born in Bombay, India. He wrote fiction as well as poetry.  Unfortunately Kipling was a man of his times, country and prejudices (he coined the phrase “White Man’s Burden”). Here are some of his best poems:

IF—

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936

CITIES AND THRONES AND POWERS

Cities and Thrones and Powers
    Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
    Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth 
    To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
    The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil,
    She never hears,
What change, what chance, what chill, 
    Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
    And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance 
    To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er-kind 
    To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind, 
    As bold as she:
That in our very death, 
    And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 
    "See how our works endure!"

by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936

**********************************************************************************************

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.

   Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

   Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

   Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

   Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Proud Maisie is in the wood, 
Walking so early; 
Sweet Robin sits on the bush, 
Singing so rarely. 

"Tell me, thou bonny bird, 
When shall I marry me?"— 
"When six braw gentlemen 
Kirkward shall carry ye." 

"Who makes the bridal bed, 
Birdie, say truly?"— 
"The gray-headed sexton 
That delves the grave duly. 

"The glowworm o'er grave and stone 
Shall light thee steady; 
The owl from the steeple sing, 
'Welcome, proud lady.'"

by Sir Walter Scott, 1771–1832

TO SEE PAGE 1 OF 19TH CENTURY POETS CLICK [HERE]

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