In The Old Man's House
The mad churl at the headstone,
The vane’s point, south,
The bright burn, the sad sin
At the carlin’s mouth.
The young field on the old day
By the age-old tarn,
The bloodstone by the highway
Where the wind breasts down;
Athame, set on a black cloth
By the five point star,
The cup brims, the dye sets
By the sharp hoar briar.
The thatch-rot at the damp wall
Of the dark stone hut,
The lampwick at the breastbone
Where the old man sat,
The sharp prick of the hoar briar
The thumb’s blood-spray,
The last flickering lamplight
Where the old shades play;
The long slash and the slow hush
At the breath’s death joust,
The wind shrieks at red rags
In the old man’s house.
20 October 1977
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Breath Of The Briar
I
O briar-scents, on yon wet wing
Of warm South-west wind brushing by,
You mind me of the sweetest thing
That ever mingled frank and shy:
When she and I, by love enticed,
Beneath the orchard-apples met,
In equal halves a ripe one sliced,
And smelt the juices ere we ate.
II
That apple of the briar-scent,
Among our lost in Britain now,
Was green of rind, and redolent
Of sweetness as a milking cow.
The briar gives it back, well nigh
The damsel with her teeth on it;
Her twinkle between frank and shy,
My thirst to bite where she had bit.
poem by George Meredith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Getting To The Point
Its out of control (out of control)
And theres nothing I can do now
Out of control (out of control)
Spinning softly through the blue now
And look beyond these walls
As the meaning starts to dawn
Its getting to the point
Getting to the point.
Its out of control (nothing I can do)
Like a fire that keeps on burning
And nobody knows (what Im going through)
And the thoughts just keep returning
And all you had to say
Was that you were gonna stay
Its getting to the point
Getting to the point.
Chorus:
Its getting to the point
Where nobody can stop it now
Its getting to the point
Of no return
And all that I can do
Is stand and watch it now
Watch it burn, burn, burn
Its getting to the point
Where reasons are forgotten
Its getting to the point
Where no one knows
And all that I can do
Is say Im sorry
But thats the way it goes...
Getting to the point.
Forever
Is a long, long way
Forever
Takes your breath away
Id like to talk about it, try to understand
Its getting to the point
Getting to the point.
Repeat chorus
Its getting to the point (getting to the point)
Getting to the point (getting to the point)
Its getting to the point (getting to the point)
Getting to the point.
song performed by by Electric Light Orchestra
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Four Places Of Sorrow
There is sorrow for me in the North, where the black wind blows,
(Hush, O Wind of the dirges, O Voice of the restless dead!)
The ache of its cruel keening thro' my heart like an arrow goes,
I see in the tossing waters the sheen of a dear bright head.
There is sorrow for me in the South, where the white wind sings,
(Hush, O Wind of all lovers, crooning a laugh and a cry!)
On the pain of a dream love-haunted breaks the music of wings,
Seagulls, sweeping and swaying, saw ye my dead drift by?
There is sorrow for me in the East, where the red wind burns,
(Hush, O Wind of remorse, O Wind of the scourging flame!)
Under its slow cold dawning the soul of the drowned returns
And wan, in the startled daybreak, a ghost from the sea he came.
There is sorrow for me in the West, where the brown wind raves,
(Hush, O Wind from the bogs, O memory-freighted Wind!)
He is spindrift hither and thither, sport of unweary waves:
Would that my heart were close on his heart, my eyes on his eyes were blind!
poem by Anna Johnston MacManus
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Love and Friendship
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree --
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most contantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who wil call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.
poem by Emily Jane Brontë
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The Old Prison
The rows of cells are unroofed,
a flute for the wind's mouth,
who comes with a breath of ice
from the blue caves of the south.
O dark and fierce day:
the wind like an angry bee
hunts for the black honey
in the pits of the hollow sea.
Waves of shadow wash
the empty shell bone-bare,
and like a bone it sings
a bitter song of air.
Who built and laboured here?
The wind and the sea say
-Their cold nest is broken
and they are blown away-
They did not breed nor love,
each in his cell alone
cried as the wind now cries
through this flute of stone.
poem by Judith Wright
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Love and Friendship
Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?
The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again,
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now,
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That, when December blights thy brow,
He still may leave thy garland green.
poem by Emily Brontë from Selections from the literary remains of Emily and Anne Brontë (1850)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Southern Wind
The Southern wind is blowing
From the south
The wind is very strong
The trees are shaking
The leaves are falling
What a forceful wind!
On the wind-vane is pointing towards the south....
poem by by unknown author
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Birds
The fierce musical cries of a couple of sparrowhawks hunting
on the headland,
Hovering and darting, their heads northwestward,
Prick like silver arrows shot through a curtain the noise of the
ocean
Trampling its granite; their red backs gleam
Under my window around the stone corners; nothing gracefuller,
nothing
Nimbler in the wind. Westward the wave-gleaners,
The old gray sea-going gulls are gathered together, the northwest
wind wakening
Their wings to the wild spirals of the wind-dance.
Fresh as the air, salt as the foam, play birds in the bright wind,
fly falcons
Forgetting the oak and the pinewood, come gulls
From the Carmel sands and the sands at the river-mouth, from
Lobos and out of the limitless
Power of the mass of the sea, for a poem
Needs multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all flesh-eaters,
musically clamorous
Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly
Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed
beaks, from the sharp
Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Love’s Fitfulness
You say that I am fitful. Sweet, 'tis true;
But 'tis that I your fitfulness obey.
If you are April, how can I be May,
Or flaunt bright roses when you wear sad rue?
Shine like the sun, and my sky will be blue;
Sing, and the lark shall envy me my lay:
I do but follow where you point the way,
And what I feel you doing, straight must do.
The wind might just as well reproach the vane,
As you upbraid me for my shiftings, dear:
Blow from the south, and south I shall remain;
If you keep fixed, be sure I shall not veer.
Nay, on your change my changes so depend,
If ends your love, why then my love must end.
poem by Alfred Austin
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The Deserted House
To the sweet memory of Sidney Lanier
The old house stands deserted, gray,
With sharpened gables high in air,
And deep-set lattices, all gay
With massive arch and framework rare;
And o’er it is a silence laid,
That feeling, one grows sore afraid.
The eaves are dark with heavy vines;
The steep roof wears a coat of moss;
The walls are touched with dim designs
Of shadows moving slow across;
The balconies are damp with weeds,
Lifting as close as streamside reeds.
The garden is a loved retreat
Of melancholy flowers, of lone
And wild-mouthed herbs, in companies sweet,
’Mid desolate green grasses thrown;
And in its gaps the hoar stone wall
Lets sprays of tangled ivy fall.
The pebbled paths drag, here and there,
Old lichened faces, overspun
With silver spider-threads—they wear
A silence sad to look upon:
It is so long since happy feet
Made them to thrill with pressure sweet.
’Mid drear but fragrant shrubs there stands
A saint of old made mute in stone,
With tender eyes and yearning hands,
And mouth formed in a sorrow lone;
’Tis thick with dust, as long ago
’Twas thick with fairest blooms that grow.
Swallows are whirring here and there;
And oft a little soft wind blows
A hundred odors down the air;
The bees hum ’round the red, last rose;
And ceaselessly the crickets shrill
Their tunes, and yet, it seems so still.
Or else, from out the distance steals,
Half heard, the tramp of horses, or
The bleak and harsh stir of slow wheels
Bound cityward; but more and more,
As these are hushed, or yet increase,
About the old house clings its peace.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
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Round The Compass Twice With The Wind
The wind’s in a whirl
In a cyclonic spin,
A mischievous girl
With intentions to sin.
With sharp cloven hoofs,
This she-devil conspires
To tear from our roofs
All the chimneys and tiles.
The wind’s in the north,
A philosopher’s stone,
For all that it’s worth,
Turning water to bone.
It’s longing to tell
Bedtime stories at night
To earth, in its spell,
Tucked in blankets of white.
The wind’s in the south,
Bringing soothing, warm balm
Breathed out from its mouth,
An oasis of calm,
Negating the strife
Of the winter’s harsh fling
And bringing new life
To the meadows in spring.
The wind’s in the east
As it tears through the sky,
A mythical beast
That’s inclined to be dry.
It fanned all the flames
To devour London town
By banks of the Thames,
Eaten down to the bone.
The wind’s in the west
Bringing drink after drought,
Salvation, so blest,
For each thirsty, green shoot.
High up, on the hills,
With a gardener’s hand,
It fills lakes and rills
From its watering can.
The wind, it is still
So, without it, the fog
Can flourish so chill
And develop as smog,
Whose dark, dismal gloom
Hangs about like a shroud
Of petrol-blue fume
In a thick, choking cloud.
The wind’s in a whirl
As it rises again
And longs to unfurl
All its might and its main
To break and destroy
Every tree in its path,
An imp of a boy
With a hideous laugh.
The wind’s in the north
And all nature’s in thrall
But yearns to break forth
From the ice-prison’s wall
But, under the gaze
Of a gaoler so grim,
There can be no ways
Of escaping from him.
The wind’s in the south:
Flames shoot out of the length
Of dragon-like mouth
Enervating our strength.
We accept defeat:
Shelter cannot supply
Escape from its heat
As we swelter and fry.
The wind’s in the east
And it bears, in its blast,
Hard hail’s sharp white teeth
On our gardens to cast.
Its bitterness blows,
In its underhand way,
Like thorns of sweet rose
Or a needle in hay.
The wind’s in the west,
A purveyor of rain,
From cloud treasure-chest,
From Atlantic’s domain,
With rich rainbow jewels,
He entices the girls
With deep, diamond pools
Filled with pure, raindropp pearls.
The wind, it is still;
It has run out of breath.
Each valley and hill
Is as silent as death.
The vertical smoke
Rises straight as a rod
As tall chimneys spoke
Sooty prayers to God.
poem by C. Richard Miles
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Autumnal Nightfall
Round Autumn's mouldering urn
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale
And stars in beauty burn.
'Tis the year's eventide.
The wind, like one that sighs in pain
O?er joys that ne'er will bloom again
Mourns on the far hillside.
And yet my pensive eye
Rests on the faint blue mountain long;
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.
The moon unveils her brow;
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light
The valley sleeps below.
Upon the hazel gray
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung
And o?er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay.
I stand deep musing here,
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.
The air breathes chill and free:
A spirit in soft music calls
From Autumn's gray and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.
The hoar and mantled oak,
With moss and twisted ivy brown,
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.
That fountain's hollow voice
Echoes the sound of precious things;
Of early feeling's tuneful springs
Choked with our blighted joys.
Leaves, that the night-wind bears
To earth's cold bosom with a sign,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years.
The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,--
But not my joys again.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?
quote by Emily Bronte
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Lily Has A Smooth Stalk
The lily has a smooth stalk,
Will never hurt your hand;
But the rose upon her briar
Is lady of the land.
There's sweetness in an apple tree,
And profit in the corn;
But lady of all beauty
Is a rose upon a thorn.
When with moss and honey
She tips her bending briar,
And half unfolds her glowing heart,
She sets the world on fire.
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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Critic
Critic is like knife
Whether slim, whether heavy
Whether long, whether short
Whether blunt, whether sharp
Amateur slash, or right to the point
Kill slowly, or end it quickly
How effective the knife depends on people who accept it
poem by Maria Sudibyo
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Train Journey
Glassed with cold sleep and dazzled by the moon,
out of the confused hammering dark of the train
I looked and saw under the moon's cold sheet
your delicate dry breasts, country that built my heart;
and the small trees on their uncoloured slope
like poetry moved, articulate and sharp
and purposeful under the great dry flight of air,
under the crosswise currents of wind and star.
Clench down your strength, box-tree and ironbark.
Break with your violent root the virgin rock.
Draw from the flying dark its breath of dew
till the unliving come to life in you.
Be over the blind rock a skin of sense,
under the barren height a slender dance...
I woke and saw the dark small trees that burn
suddenly into flowers more lovely that the white moon.
poem by Judith Wright
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The Best Pipe
In vain you fervently extol,
In vain you puff, your cutty clay.
A twelvemonth smoked and black as coal,
'Tis redolent of rank decay
And bones of monks long passed away—
A fragrance I do not admire;
And so I hold my nose and say,
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Macleod, whose judgment on the whole
Is faultless, has been led astray
To nurse a high-born meerschaum bowl,
For which he sweetly had to pay.
Ah, let him nurse it as he may,
Before the colour mounts much higher,
The grate shall be its fate one day.
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
The heathen Turk of Istamboul,
In oriental turban gay,
Delights his unbelieving soul
With hookahs, bubbling in a way
To fill a Christian with dismay
And wake the old Crusading fire.
May no such pipe be mine, I pray;
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Clay, meerschaum, hookah, what are they
That I should view them with desire?
Both now, and when my hair is grey,
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Heart Of The Sunrise
(jon anderson/chris squire/bill bruford)
Love comes to you and you follow
Lose one on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with its arms
All around me
Lost on a wave and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
Lost in the city
Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decide
Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Lost on a wave that youre dreaming
Dram on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with its arms all around
Me
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city
Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decided
Straightt light moving and removing
Sharpness of the colour sun shine
Straight light searching all the meanings
Of the song
Long last treatment of the telling that
Relates to all the words sung
Dreamer easy in the chair that really fits
You
Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the sun with its arms all around
Me
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city
song performed by by Yes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Heart Of The Sunrise
(jon anderson/chris squire/bill bruford)
Love comes to you and you follow
Lose one on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with its arms
All around me
Lost on a wave and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
Lost in the city
Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decide
Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Lost on a wave that youre dreaming
Dram on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with its arms all around
Me
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city
Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decided
Straightt light moving and removing
Sharpness of the colour sun shine
Straight light searching all the meanings
Of the song
Long last treatment of the telling that
Relates to all the words sung
Dreamer easy in the chair that really fits
You
Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
Sharp-distance
How can the sun with its arms all around
Me
Sharp-distance
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city
song performed by by Yes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Bloodstone
Ive been trying
Theres no denying.
Its sending me
Out of my mind.
Ive seen reason
Change to treason.
Its losing its sense
Of all kind.
How much longer will it take
For the world to see.
We should learn to live
And simply let it be.
Bloodstone, bloodstone.
In the night time
Wake in fright.
Im so scared of the game
Thats being played.
Start to wonder
Whats going under.
And how many deals
Have been made.
Bloodstone.
I cant take it.
You got me living
On a bloodstone
I dont want that bloodstone.
song performed by by Judas Priest
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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