MTheads

Day Three Red Hat

  red hat red matroshka

red hat red matroshka

     red hat red matroshka

 red hat red matroshka

                                 red

hat            re d matroshka re

      d ha     t  ma  t ro shk a

r e        dma t  o s                             kare

 

He Must Be Wicked To Deserve Such Pain

This is a great story poem by Robert Browning.  Here's the whole thing.  The line is from Shakespeare's King Lear, so says Wikipedia.

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

My first thought was, he lied in every word.  

   That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

   Askance to watch the working of his lie 

On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford 

Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored

   Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

[...] 

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

   In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

   Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there:

   Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

[...]

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;

   He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

Is It Something I Said??

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--

I hold it towards you.

John Keats 1819-20

A nice poem for a cold Moscow evening.  It makes one want to know the whole story, if there is one.

Try an Insecticidal Soap

The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

William Blake, 1794

Mr. Blake took his gardening seriously.  You should read his tulip blight poem.

I love scary poems.  I have a little volume of scary poems called Poems Bewitched and Haunted by Everyman's Library Pocket Poets which I read frequently. 

The Inchworm

Here's a little poem written by my son and me.  Prepare to be moved.

The Inchworm

The inchworm climbs the chair, 

To reach up to the pear;

-- Oh no, he falls!

-- Down, down, down

But since he has a seemingly gelatinous body it doesn't hurt him.

The inchworm climbs the chair,

To reach up to the pear;

-- Oh no, he falls!

-- Flip, flop, flack,

This time he lands on a tack.

What Came Before

I think Dante was inspired to write that second half of the poem, and then he quickly wrote the first half just to fill it out and give the poem some context.  The second half is so much better, and contains the punch that makes the poem worth reading, in my opinion.  I think of that last line a lot -- The woodspurge has a cup of three.  It's the perfect little trite thing to consider when events are too tremendous to comprehend.

What We Remember

The Woodspurge

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

I had walked on at the wind's will, --

I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was, --

My lips drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run

Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun,

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be

Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me, --

The woodspurge has a cup of three..

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Ever Feel Like This?

The World is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,  

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth (1807)

I can appreciate Wordsworth's yearning to be overcome by a wonder and awe of the world greater than that allowed to us in this modern, cerebral, and sardonic world.  Not for us the ecstasies and the despairs of ancient peoples.  Probably for the better, but still...

What about those polls showing that citizens in first world countries are less happy with life than those in less developed ones.  How about the fact that so many people take anti-depressants, more for ennui and daily stress than for a true despair of not making it through the latest famine or flood.  Is something missing from our modern lives?  Wordsworth thought so.

Christmas Poesy

The Burning Babe

As I in hoarie Winters night stoode shivering in the snow,

Surpris'd I was with sodaine heate, which made my hart to glow;

And lifting up a fearefull eye, to view what fire was neare,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the ayre appeare;

Who scorched with excessive heate, such floods of teares did shed,

As though his floods should quench his flames, which with his teares

  were fed:

Alas (quoth he) but newly borne, in fierie heates I frie,

Yet none approach to warme their harts or feele my fire, but I;

My faultlesse breast the furnace is, the fuell wounding thornes:

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoake, the ashes, shame and

  scornes;

The fewell Justice layeth on, and Mercie blowes the coales,

The mettall in this furnace wrought, are mens defiled soules:

For which, as now on fire I am to worke them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood.

With this he vanisht out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto minde, that it was Christmasse day.

Robert Southwell S.J.  (1602)

This is one of my favorite Christmas poems.  It's kind of creepy and moving at the same time.  Poetry, especially the old kind, is one of my favorite things to read.  But it's a lonely taste as I meet so few people who really like poetry.  I ask almost everyone I know at some point.  I don't read it like an academic.  I read it like I watch exciting movies, with the design to be entertained first.  I don't study them particularly or try to wring every bit of hidden knowledge from them.  I enjoy their meanderings and surprises and cleverness.

Love This Little Poem

Weare I a Kinge I coude commande content;

Weare I obscure unknowne shoulde be my cares,

And weare I ded no thoughtes shoulde me torment,

Nor wordes, nor wronges, nor loves, nor hopes, nor feares.

   A dowtefull choyse of these thinges one to crave,

   A Kingdom or a cottage or a grave.

Anonymous but thought to be Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford