The Poets' and Poetry-Lovers' Corner

[Frelga]

Rodia, was the original poem in Polish? Could you post it here? My Polish is rusty but not yet entirely gone.

Ethel, thank you for posting the painting, I didn't see it before.

I am utterly frustrated by my inability to find or make good translations of my favorite poems.

[Ethel]

Wow, about those poems inspired by the Breughel painting! I don't think I'd have come up with those deep thoughts myself at just looking at the picture, but I think it's very convincing!
(Ethel, who wrote the one you quoted?)

WH Auden wrote it.

And I'm glad you like the Shakespeare. I find it incredibly vivid and realistic. You can almost see Dick blowing on his nails, and the frozen milk, and Marian's red nose... and I wouldn't mind some of those hissing roasted crabs.

[Rodia]

Rodia, was the original poem in Polish? Could you post it here? My Polish is rusty but not yet entirely gone.

My pleasure.

Wciąż o Ikarach głoszą - choć doleciał Dedal,
jakby to nikłe pierze skrzydłem uronione
chuda chłopięca noga zadarta do nieba
- znaczyła wszystko. Jakby na obronę
dano nam tyle męstwa, co je ćmy gromadą
skwiercząc u lampy objawiają...
- Jeśli
poznawszy miękkość wosku umiemy dopadać
wybranych brzegów - mijają nas w pieśni.
Tak jak mijają chłopa albo mu się dziwią,
że nie patrzy w Ikary...
Breughel, co osiwiał
pojmując ludzi, oczy im odwracał
od podniebnych dramatów. Wiedział, że nie gapić
trzeba się nam w Ikary, nie upadkiem smucić
- choćby najwyższy...
- A swoje ucapić.
- Czy Dedal, by ratować Ikara, powrócił?

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Listen to ordinary people reading their favorite poems, and add your own recordings.

http://www.coudal.com/verse.php

BrianIs AtYou

[Lalaith]

Oooh, poetry!!!!

So does anyone else do this incredibly geeky thing? I bought the most beautiful journal I could find (the first was an Anne of Green Gables illustrated journal, the second is a reproduction of the Book of Kells), and I copy into it my favorite poems and quotes. This includes all sorts of quotes (many of them Tolkien), poems by famous people (again, many are Tolkien's), poems by TORCers, poems by myself, passages from books that I love, etc.

Hopkins is fantastic. Keats is wonderful. Yeats. Tennyson. I love them all.

Here's one from Tennyson:


The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story,
The long light shakes across the lakes;
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle, answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! How thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar.
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying
Blow, bugle, answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.


Lali

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

I enjoy poetry, especially poetry put to music.

Eighteen years ago I became acquained with the songs of Gerald Finzi set to the poems of Thomas Hardy.

My favorite Hardy poem, and one that touches me very deeply, is this:

The Sigh

Little head against my shoulder,
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
And up-eyed;
Till she, with a timid quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
It implied.
- Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November,
And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half regretting
That she sighed.


I hope that you will all one day hear Finzi's setting of it.