POEMS - With Tongue In Cheek

[maxine]

Ellie Goulding

trust me

[keithgood838]

I wrote the following lines on the occasion of an ex-office colleague
recently passing the milestone of an eightieth birthday. Please forum
friends feel free to quote the poem, unattributed, should you wish to
pay tribute to a mature acquaintance. The lines in quotes are taken
from a classic love poem by seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell.
Entitled, To His Coy Mistress it is written, aptly, in rhyming couplets and is
accessible on the internet.


TEMPUS FUGIT

'It's only a number,'
has become a common cry
yet we wonder why,
like flocks of migrating birds,
the years take off and fly.
The way to defy
'time's winged chariot hurrying' by
is by keeping a glad song in our heart
and a twinkle in our eye.

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

WINTER

The wintry wast extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae:
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest - they must be best,
Because they are your Will!
Then all I want (Oh! do not grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.

Robert Burns
(1759-1796)

[Eman]

Love it Keith!! I remember studying Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" in college and our professor seemed like he was getting "stimulated" reading it..

[keithgood838]

I hope you mean 'stimulated' in the literary sense, Eman.

SONNET
On hearing a thrush sing on a morning walk,
written 25 January 1793, the birthday of the author

Sing on, sweet Thrush, upon the leafless bough;
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to your strain:
See aged Winter, 'mid his surly reign,
As thy blythe carol clears his furrow'd brow.

So in lone Poverty's dominion drear
Sits meek Content with light unanxious heart,
Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring aught to hope or fear.

I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds the orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys,
What wealth could never give nor take away!

Yet come, thou child of poverty and care;
The mite high Heaven bestow'd, that mite with thee I'll share.

Robert Burns
(1759-1796)

[Eman]

No Keith, more like starting to hyperventilate you get the picture! We were all kinda snickering at the time. I felt sorry for the people at the front of the class. ha ha.. Great poem though!!

[keithgood838]

Hi Eman. We have just endured the wettest January
since records began. The following is reminder of how
mornings in Britain can be, courtesy of a favourite poet
of mine. (I have had a surfeit of being greeted by overcast
skies, mist or heavy rain each start of day.)

MORNING

The morning comes, the drops of dew
Hang on the grass and bushes too;
The sheep more eager bite the grass
Whose moisture gleams like drops of glass;
The heifer licks in grass and dew
That makes her drink and fodder too.
The little bird his morn-song gives,
His breast wet with the dripping leaves,
Then stops abruptly just to fly
And catch the wakened butterfly,
That goes to sleep behind the flowers
Or backs of leaves from dews and showers.
The yellow-hammer, haply blest,
Sits by the dyke upon her nest;
The long grass hides her from the day,
The water keeps the boys away.
The morning sun in round and red
As crimson curtains round a bed,
The dewdrops hang on barley horns
As beads the necklace thread adorns,
The dewdrops hang wheat-ears upon
Like golden drops against the sun.
Hedge-sparrows in the bush cry 'tweet',
O'er nests larks winnow in the wheat,
Till the sun turns gold and gets more high,
And paths are clean and grass gets dry,
And longest shadows pass away.
And brightness is the blaze of day.

John Clare
(1793-1864)

[Eman]

Keith, that's a very descriptive poem of how the weather is today in San Diego. Our rains haven't started yet but it's gray and overcast. I do remember the rains in England when I would visit, but nothing was as bad as the rain in the Philippines. Now that was horrible, power outages etc you really needed to stock up on supplies during the rainy season!!

[ROBERT M.]

Eman, the weather looked nice during the Davis Cup tie between the US and GB ...................by the way, we beat the US for the first time since 1935

[keithgood838]

Here's a classic love poem:

TO HIS COY MISTRESS

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore,while the youthful hue
Sits on thy face like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we can make him run.

Andrew Marvell
(1621-1678)

[Don Cooper]

Quite a lot of tongue-in-cheek goes on today...

[Eman]

Take me back to my College Days

[keithgood838]

Yes guys, while love was in the air yesterday,
it was overshadowed by more turbulent emotions:

BRITAIN'S BACKLASH
(Winter's warning 2014)

Look, it wasn't so unexpected:
did we really think that in persisting
with the pollution of her air,
and, with our greenhouse gases packing
her upper atmosphere,
Mother Earth would be unaffected?
Well, we have only ourselves to blame
and we're guaranteed more of the same
while our planet stays disrespected ...

Keith Good

[keithgood838]

CINDERELLA COMPOSERS

In our rapturous acclamation
of, say, an interpretative ballad performance
a la the late mellifluous Matt Monro,
we fail to focus our collective spotlight
on the complimentary contribution
of the accompanist on the piano.

Likewise the unsung stalwarts
of the bespoke theme tune, those
tunesmiths, maestros of the incidental music
that underpins television shows.

We wish we could lay before you a red carpet
and bestow upon you a tears-evoking,
to-be-held-triumphantly aloft statuette.
But please take pride of place
beneath the glitter-ball right now
and take a belated but well-merited bow ...

Keith Good

[Eman]

Nicely done originals Keith!! Love them!!