To My Name-Child
1
Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.
In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
2
Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Related quotes
You Can't Blame Louis
One small town boy whose dreams were higher
Thought up a plan
To be a city man
Out in the world
Bright burned the fire
Through every door
He was so sure
Than he ran into a problem
He heard the voice inside him say
"do you believe that what you have is what you need"
You can't blame louis
Oh, louis
He found a girl
His heart's desire
She was the first
She quenched the thirst
His social whirl
Did not inspire
Her live divine
Soon lost its shine
Now he's counting every hour
Wondering where she spent the night
She doesn't slow, it seems he'll never know
You can't blame louis
Oh, louis
You can't blame louis
Oh, louis
Take a day and trace a thought to where it all began
Wondering how you felt at every turn
Even thought reality was not part of the plan
By reaching out you lit the spark forever
Louis thought he'd find the answer
In a world that has no soul
He moved on, to learn onother song
You can't blame louis
Oh, louis
song performed by by Level 42
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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English Eyes
What youre sayin it never really crossed my mind
I hear playin and everybodys keepin time
Im recallin that girl I met in london town
She was strange, young and tender and narrowed all my choices down
Chorus:
We ran away into the night hypnotized
You carved your name right next to mine, english eyes
I was tryin to read her lips and knew the time was drawing near
I forgot what she said but I remember how she whispered in my ear
I can hear laughter coming from the places we once knew
There were stories from a stranger out of nowhere but they seemed so true
Chorus
English eyes, english eyes
(instrumental break)
English eyes
Red sky warning, girl you really put a spell on me
Never told me bout the daddy you refused to please
You took the bishop when the king was standing right in front of you
Theres nothing in it if I cant have a girl with eyes like you
Chorus repeats 2x
English eyes, yeah, english eyes, english eyes
song performed by by Toto
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Una
Roving, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams;
Still for journeys she is dressed;
We wander far by east and west.
In the homestead, homely thought;
At my work I ramble not;
If from home chance draw me wide,
Half-seen Una sits beside.
In my house and garden-plot,
Though beloved, I miss her not;
But one I seek in foreign places,
One face explore in foreign faces.
At home a deeper thought may light
The inward sky with chrysolite,
And I greet from far the ray,
Aurora of a dearer day.
But if upon the seas I sail,
Or trundle on the glowing rail,
I am but a thought of hers,
Loveliest of travellers.
So the gentle poet's name
To foreign parts is blown by fame;
Seek him in his native town,
He is hidden and unknown.
poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Envoy For "A Child's Garden Of Verses"
WHETHER upon the garden seat
You lounge with your uplifted feet
Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;
Or whether on the sofa you,
No grown up person being by,
Do some soft corner occupy;
Take you this volume in your hands
And enter into other lands,
For lo! (as children feign) suppose
You, hunting in the garden rows,
Or in the lumbered attic, or
The cellar - a nail-studded door
And dark, descending stairway found
That led to kingdoms underground:
There standing, you should hear with ease
Strange birds a-singing, or the trees
Swing in big robber woods, or bells
On many fairy citadels:
There passing through (a step or so -
Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)
From your nice nurseries you would pass,
Like Alice through the Looking-Glass
Or Gerda following Little Ray,
To wondrous countries far away.
Well, and just so this volume can
Transport each little maid or man
Presto from where they live away
Where other children used to play.
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see if you but look
Through the windows of this book
Another child far, far away
And in another garden play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is still on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away;
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Strange
strange
thought i knew you well
thought i had read the sky
thought i had read a change
in your eyes to strange
woke up to a world
that i am not a part
except when i can play
it's stranger
after all what were you really looking for
and i wonder when will i learn
blue isn't red everybody knows this
and i wonder when will i learn
when will i learn
guess i was in
deeper than i thought i was
if i have enough love
for the both of us
"just stay"
you said "we'll build a nest"
so i left my life
tried on your friends
tried on your opinions.
so when the bridges froze
and you did not come home
i put our snowflake
under a microscope
after all what was i really looking for
and i wonder when will i learn
maybe my wish knew better than i did
and i wonder so strange now
i'm finally in
the party has begun
it's not like i can't feel you still
but strange what i will leave behind
you call me one more time
but now i must be leaving
song performed by by Tori Amos from Scarlet's Walk
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some Children Say
Yours Is now a different world, some children say?
A world that lost it's way as thought advances?
May it never be, that we must give less thought,
to those with more in thought or how the thoughtless.
Why not let the children pray, where children play.
When you are old and Grey because of what you said,
and where then will you stay, from what you made?
poem by Is It Poetry
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Russian Family History
I was born in a peaceful time and place
My father just out of uniform
The draft and ration books thrown away
Abundance grew in our English garden
The empire was dissolving but its ties
For worse or better would long endure
As a future traveller to many lands
I would discover and learn to explore.
From the port of Odessa they had come
Leaving Smorgon village, carrying its name
Settling down to toil, in London's East End
Never to talk of Russia again
Jenny, Louis, Violet, Peg,
The children of the ships of 1904
Building a platform of support
For the generations to follow them
Trotsky left town, Mosely came by
To beat on their doors and smash their store
They had out-run the Cossacks, how could they yield
To bully-boys imitating Nazi hordes
And sixty years on, summer of '91
A great-grandchild of those who sailed
Sat with his parents at the TV set
Transfixed by a ballet in mid-pirouette
Gorbachev confronted, then overthrown
The Empire and its collectives torn down
While Nizhni-Novgorod, from where forefathers fled
Lay poverty-soaked, children dying and dead
Now the earth has opened its secrets so far
The danger is that it will all split apart
Its passengers spilled from the side of the Ark
Butterflies, mammals and cities alike
It's a pity we remember less than we forget
For as a child, learning from the Rabbi's tongue
I had a small sense of our history's ballet,
More agile than empires in the long run.
poem by Frank Bana
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Foreign Lands
You may roam the wide seas over, follow, meet, and cross the sun,
Sail as far as ships can sail, and travel far as trains can run;
You may ride and tramp wherever range or plain or sea expands,
But the crowd has been before you, and you’ll not find ‘Foreign Lands;’
For the Early Days are over,
And no more the white-winged rover
Sinks the gale-worn coast of England bound for bays in Foreign Lands.
Foreign Lands are in the distance dim and dreamlike, faint and far,
Long ago, and over yonder, where our boyhood fancies are,
For the land is by the railway cramped as though with iron bands,
And the steamship and the cable did away with Foreign Lands.
Ah! the days of blue and gold!
When the news was six months old—
But the news was worth the telling in the days of Foreign Lands.
Here we slave the dull years hopeless for the sake of Wool and Wheat
Here the homes of ugly Commerce—niggard farm and haggard street;
Yet our mothers and our fathers won the life the heart demands—
Less than fifty years gone over, we were born in Foreign Lands.
When the gipsies stole the children still, in village tale and song,
And the world was wide to travel, and the roving spirit strong;
When they dreamed of South Sea Islands, summer seas and coral strands—
Then the bravest hearts of England sailed away to Foreign Lands,
‘Fitting foreign’—flood and field—
Half the world and orders sealed—
And the first and best of Europe went to fight in Foreign Lands.
Canvas towers on the ocean—homeward bound and outward bound—
Glint of topsails over islands—splash of anchors in the sound;
Then they landed in the forests, took their strong lives in their hands,
And they fought and toiled and conquered—making homes in Foreign Lands,
Through the cold and through the drought—
Further on and further out—
Winning half the world for England in the wilds of Foreign Lands.
Love and pride of life inspired them when the simple village hearts
Followed Master Will and Harry—gone abroad to ‘furrin parts’
By our townships and our cities, and across the desert sands
Are the graves of those who fought and died for us in Foreign Lands—
Gave their young lives for our sake
(Was it all a grand mistake?)
Sons of Master Will and Harry born abroad in Foreign Lands!
Ah, my girl, our lives are narrow, and in sordid days like these,
I can hate the things that banished ‘Foreign Lands across the seas,’
But with all the world before us, God above us—hearts and hands,
I can sail the seas in fancy far away to Foreign Lands.
poem by Henry Lawson
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Monterey, I remember, but I seem to remember the Fillmore West, that we played the week before Monterey. That was much more memorable for me. The first time in San Francisco. They were good gigs.
quote by Roger Daltrey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Thoughts of Home
I watched them from the window, thy children at their play,
And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away,
And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child’s own buoyant gladness
Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness;
And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago,
Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.
I looked upon thy children, and I thought of all and each,
Of my brother and my sister, and our rambles on the beach,
Of my mother’s gentle voice, and my mother’s beckoning hand,
And all the tales she used to tell of the far, far English land;
And the happy, happy evening hours, when I sat on my father’s knee,
Oh! many a wave is rolling now betwixt that seat and me!
And many a day has passed away since, I left them o’er the sea,
And I have lived a life since then of boyhood’s thoughtless glee;
Yet of the blessed times gone by not seldom would I dream,
And childhood’s joy, like faint far stars, in memory’s heaven would gleam,
And o’er the sea to those I loved my thoughts would often roam,
But never knew I until now the blessings of a home!
I used to think when I was there that my own true home was here,
But home is not in land or sky, but in those whom each holds dear.
The evening’s cooling breeze is fanning my temples now,
But then my frame was languid, and heated was my brow,
And I longed for England’s cool, and for England’s breezes then,
But now I would give full many a breeze to be back in the heat again.
But when cold strange looks without, and proud high thoughts within,
Are weaving round my heart the woof of selfishness and sin;
When self begins to roll a far, a worse and wider sea
Of careless and unloving thoughts between those friends and me,
I will think upon these moments, and call to mind the day
When I watched them from the window, thy children at their play.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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yes, what if God does not speak english at all?
you were not born yesterday
and probably heard it before
that if your God does not speak english
then he must not be God
of course, something arrogant
hangs in the air
of this effortless superiority that
'englishers'
'english-plongplangs'
clai m, which, of course, we
always oppose and dub
as prettry dumb silly
but anyhow, yes, we are asked again
what if?
what if, this God, does not really speak English?
well, of course, he is still God
and he must not have considered the english language
that important
and i agree, even if i speak it,
i still have this language
of my soul,
albeit, in english, for you,
who does not speak my own language,
yes, of course, for you to perhaps
understand,
but i like it though, this thought
that God does not speak
the english language, lest, he may sound
so englishly, oh well,
arrogant.....
dear God
do you really...not speak english?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The English Language
English reminds me of a language too bold,
Speaking this tongue is like a magical realm.
In this realm we spoke too audaciously and lovingly,
To be free and caring about the old, the very youngest old,
A fine and cosy people of strength in the body,
That soon overpowered the standards of everyday life.
English is a spoken language of England,
The old refrain from the seas of language and thought,
For the seas mix their sentences and paragraphs,
Too tired is the sea of too many friends of the water,
Water is fighting for words that carry meaning
With the life to save a slave who asks for the life of meaning.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Spooky
do you remember lying on the ground
you were smart and spooky
we rented a car and left our bags
and drove outside the city
i remember the view
it was the stars and you
we thought that this was the one
both of our ships had come
when i went away you made me a book
full of goodnight letters
i answered each one
and we made plans
for when we'd be together
but when we wanted more
i told you i wasn't sure
it started a storm, it started a storm
you think it's all my fault
i think it's all your fault
that we were never so together, so together
everywhere we went, was everywhere we went
some people thought we were fighting
trying to read eachother's writing
how, how can you resurrect, straight into a wreck
how, how can you resurrect, straight into a wreck
song performed by by Nada Surf
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Then I Met You
Then I met you
Thought that Id be happy
Going to be so happy
Living life alone and never sharing anything
Thought that I was finished
Thought that I was complete
Thought that I was whole instead of being half of something
Thought that I was growing
Growing older, wiser
Understanding why this world held nothing for my spirit
Thought that I was destined
Destined to be nothing
Destined to be nothing in this world and then I met you.
I met you
Thought that God had failed me
Thought my prayers were useless
Thought that he would never give the chance for me to praise him
Thought the book was written
Thought the game had ended
Thought the song was sung and I could never sing another
Thought my faith was misplaced
Thought my back was broken
Broken by a weight that I was never fit to carry
Thought I knew this city
Thought I knew all about it
And then one night I went to morningside and you were waiting
I met you
song performed by by Proclaimers
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Grammar School Days
Once I saw a black and white photo
taken by a Japanese tourist -
English schoolboys sauntering
down a street in London
on their way to grammar school.
The sky clear of bombers
overhead that September morning-
I thought of Polish schoolboys
as they ran pellmell through rubble
seeking shelter from the German
blitzkreig that same day in September.
Grainy newsprint photos of the dead
and dying in Warsaw ghetto streets
appeared soon enough and replaced
the image of English schoolboys
taken by the tourist on holiday.
A holocaust on the horizon
and we slept on in peaceful dream.
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Rainy beach times
Children playing on a beach,
Nowhere to hide nowhere to seek,
Using there minds to play there games,
Running In the sand on a rainy day,
It dose not matter if the sun doesn't shine,
If the wind blows hard and the sands not dry,
There having fun so that's just fine,
Playing on a beach at two, three, and five,
With sand in there shoes and between there toes,
And wind swept hair and soggy clothes,
They feel no cold only time for fun
The moaning starts when they wet there bum,
It must look like desert to someone so young,
Who's two foot high and full of fun,
What an adventure it must be,
Playing in the sand and feeling free,
I can't remember ever being that high,
But we all must have though's of rainy beach times,
So as I stand here now alone on the beach,
Watching them play no hide and seek,
Spending this moment through children's eyes,
As they have there adventure and a rainy beach times.
Kevin Glenn
29-08-2011
poem by Kevin Glenn
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Lamp Post
The street children under the Pole Star
read the English alphabet.
I heard one said ' twenty six letters too much
if it's half of that
we can learn very fast.'
Very sad to hear a lame boy reads a fairy tale
'Once upon a time there lived a king'.
All of a sudden a police car came
and took them away for suspicion of a looting.
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Peace. A Study
He stood, a worn-out City clerk —
Who'd toil'd, and seen no holiday,
For forty years from dawn to dark —
Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.
He felt the salt spray on his lips;
Heard children's voices on the sands;
Up the sun's path he saw the ships
Sail on and on to other lands;
And laugh'd aloud. Each sight and sound
To him was joy too deep for tears;
He sat him on the beach, and bound
A blue bandana round his ears
And thought how, posted near his door,
His own green door on Camden Hill,
Two bands at least, most likely more,
Were mingling at their own sweet will
Verdi with Vance. And at the thought
He laugh'd again, and softly drew
That Morning Herald that he'd bought
Forth from his breast, and read it through.
poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Let Me Entertain You
To the man playing his music loudly onboard my train:
Both you and I can hear your music, oh so very plain.
It doesn't seem to be appreciated by this here crowd.
Tell me, does your music really need to be quite so loud?
To play loud music in a public place, I would not dare,
But, to me, it is very obvious that you just do not care.
If you bought yourself a pair of groovy new headphones,
Then your fellow travellers, on this train, won't need to moan.
To you, your music will still be heard loud and crystal clear,
But, your music, your fellow passengers will not have to hear.
During their journey, some passengers like to have a chat,
And that's perfectly fine by me: I'm totally okay with that.
Spare a thought for those poor people who are trying to read:
To play your music quite so loudly, is there really any need?
From the people who are trying to read newspapers or books,
You certainly seem to be acquiring some pretty dirty looks.
At first, I thought you'd turned the volume up purely by mistake,
But now I realise that you are doing it just for annoyance sake.
I guess that your sole ambition was to be the star attraction?
I hope you feel you've achieved this by your current actions?
Your fellow passengers, you decided you would like to entertain,
But can't you tell from their faces, they think your music is a pain?
I'm sure many people share my view, but don't want to get involved,
So if you could switch your stereo off, the problem would be resolved.
poem by Angela Wybrow
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for Mr. Ron Mengzi
there is no one in his house
in the tropics who really know how to speak English
so he tries making monologues for himself
talking about his latest affairs
but it gets boring you know
and those in the neighborhood who hear
that he is talking to himself
think that he must have gone crazy
i want to talk to him but i am busy
always busy he complains
for i am the only who knows how to talk in English
but i am busy and so one day
Mr. Ron Mengzi walks towards the pond
and talks to the fish that he brought
from California
and there he had a nice English conversation
with the fish
all in figurative and
codified bubbles.
Some people who read this
do not think about Mr. Ron Mengzi at ll
They now talk about me
asking about my own sanity.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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