Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Carpe Diem / Seize the Day

   “I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dropped it carelessly. Ah! I didn’t know I held opportunity.” — Hazel Lee

“I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…..to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau in Walden, quoted by the character Neil in the movie “Dead Poets Society”

Midweek Motif ~ Carpe Diem / Seize the Day

Today’s motif prompts to write about cherishing each moment, making most of the golden chance, seizing the day, living as best and fully as possible.

Remembering Jean-Paul Sartre in this connection: ‘There is only one day left, always starting over; it is given to us at dawn, and taken away from us at dusk’.

It could be the seizing of a moment of beauty or anything precious. It’s a “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May” theme telling one to have the courage to say a complete, burning ‘yes’ to life.

Have a Carpe Diem mindset for today’s theme and write your poem of ‘now’.

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

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 would 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 vaults, 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 skin 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-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball,
And tear our pleasure with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

This living hand, now warm and capable

by John Keats

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 would wish thy own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

When I Was One-and-Twenty

by A.E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

      But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

      But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And ’tis true, ’tis true.

Figs from Thistles: First Fig

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

One Heart

by Li-Young Lee

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Money)

                                                                  

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Nature: Her Words

  “Just living is not enough….one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” — Hans Christian Andersen

Photo: Sumana Roy

 Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. 'From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass

we shall return. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are

drawn to our doom" — Nikola Tesla

Midweek Motif ~ Nature: Her Words

We are back to Nature with our eyes open and heart ready to receive.

She is everywhere even within one self. Watch, listen and feel Her.

You might pay Her a visit by the riverside, sea-beach, or deep forest, mountains, in your innermost being or just might open the window and let Her in.

Captivate the form Nature reveals to you: animate, inanimate.

You might assume Her voice if you wish to and tell Her story: 

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

On The Grasshopper and Cricket

by John Keats

The Poetry of earth is never dead:    

  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,    

  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run    

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;    

That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead       

  In summer luxury,—he has never done    

  With his delights; for when tired out with fun    

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.    

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:    

  On a lone winter evening, when the frost      

    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills    

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,    

  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,    

    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

      Nature Is What We See

   by Emily Dickinson 

"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity. 

  A Minor Bird

by Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away,

And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door

When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Respect) 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Predator and Prey

"We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake,and trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails; all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!"---Edward Abbey

Source

Midweek Motif ~ Predator & Prey

Is not the cowardly, predatoryspirit of Stalin concealed within us,when we do not seek truth,and only fear the new?I rush at untruth like a devil,Will never give up the battle with the old,But how can we live here, when within us                                Stalin is not dead.

The lines are an excerpt from the Russian poet Boris Chichibabin’s poem By The banner Of Happiness I Swear.

Life exists with both the spirits of predators and preys. As in animal kingdom so in human society.
The most interesting point is that predators and preys evolve together. One, in order to eat and the other to avoid being eaten. 


Think on this theme of Predator and Prey and write your poem.

A few poems to inspire:

La Belle Dame sans Merci

by John Keats

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 

       Alone and palely loitering? 
The sedge has withered from the lake, 
       And no birds sing. 
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
       So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel’s granary is full, 
       And the harvest’s done. 
I see a lily on thy brow, 
       With anguish moist and fever-dew, 
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
       Fast withereth too. 
I met a lady in the meads, 
       Full beautiful—a faery’s child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
       And her eyes were wild. 
I made a garland for her head, 
       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 
She looked at me as she did love, 
       And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed, 
       And nothing else saw all day long, 
For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
       A faery’s song. 
She found me roots of relish sweet, 
       And honey wild, and manna-dew, 
And sure in language strange she said— 
       ‘I love thee true’. 
She took me to her Elfin grot, 
       And there she wept and sighed full sore, 
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
       With kisses four. 
And there she lullèd me asleep, 
       And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!— 
The latest dream I ever dreamt 
       On the cold hill side. 
                     

     (The rest is here)

                 The Eagle

                  by Alfred Tennyson

             He clasps the crag with crooked hands; 

         Close to the sun in lonely lands, 
         Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. 
         The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; 
         He watches from his mountain walls, 
         And like a thunderbolt he falls. 

Epitaph on A Tyrant

by W.H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community

              (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Cats)

The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

Ode to a Nightingale

BY JOHN KEATS

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

         But being too happy in thine happiness,—

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

                        In some melodious plot

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

                        And purple-stained mouth;

         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

         What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                        And leaden-eyed despairs,

         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

                        But here there is no light,

         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

         Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

                        And mid-May's eldest child,

         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

         I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

         To take into the air my quiet breath;

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                        In such an ecstasy!

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

         No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

         In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                        The same that oft-times hath

         Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

                        In the next valley-glades:

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

I featured Keats on October 17th last year, at which time I was a little disenchanted with his poetry, or at least had trouble finding something to use here. That's partly because I didn't want to choose something that many of us might know so well that there could be no element of discovery. Of course, his best poems are the most famous ones, which is why they're so famous. And now here I am giving you the most famous of all!

I'm sure you'll agree it's very beautiful — sensual, musical and evocative. But the particular reason it came to my attention is that Kerry O'Connor recently used it (here) to inspire the poets at 'imaginary garden with real toads' — only she presented it as a YouTube reading by the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

I'm a total fan of the lovely Mr Cumberbatch, whether he's playing Sherlock, or Frankenstein's monster, or anything else at all. He's always brilliant.

I often dislike the way actors read poetry. They don't always seem to understand the nuances and emphases in the same way a poet would. But Benedict Cumberbatch proves once again that he can do no wrong! I don't think I've ever heard a poem read so beautifully. His voice is wonderful and so is his delivery, lingering over the words and giving each one its full value. You feel he really gets what Keats is saying, at the deepest level.  Hearing him, I realise afresh the sad blend, in Keats, of his great love for life and the natural world at the same time as being 'half in love with easeful death'. Life was difficult for Keats.

Some of you will have heard this already at 'imaginary garden', but it's no hardship to listen to it again. It's a treat!

There's a lovely article on Keats himself at The Poetry Foundation, Click the link on his name under the poem title, above.

The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

Ode to Fanny

By John Keats (1795-1821

Physician Nature! Let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
A theme! a theme! great nature! give a theme;
Let me begin my dream.
I come — I see thee, as thou standest there,
Beckon me not into the wintry air.

Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries, —
To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
A smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright,
As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
Lost in soft amaze,
I gaze, I gaze!

Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
What stare outfaces now my silver moon!
Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
Let, let, the amorous burn —
But pr'ythee, do not turn
The current of your heart from me so soon.
O! save, in charity,
The quickest pulse for me.

Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
Voluptuous visions into the warm air;
Though swimming through the dance's dangerous wreath,
Be like an April day,
Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lilly, temperate as fair;
Then, Heaven! there will be
A warmer June for me.

Why, this, you'll say, my Fanny! is not true:
Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
Where the heart beats: confess — 'tis nothing new —
Must not a woman be
A feather on the sea,
Sway'd to and fro by every wind and tide?
Of as uncertain speed
As blow-ball from the mead?

I know it — and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny!
Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where,
Nor, when away you roam,
Dare keep its wretched home,
Love, love alone, his pains severe and many:
Then, loveliest! keep me free,
From torturing jealousy.

Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above
The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour;
Let none profane my Holy See of love,
Or with a rude hand break
The sacramental cake:
Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
If not — may my eyes close,
Love! on their lost repose. 

Like many of us in English-speaking countries, I first encountered Keats at school. I had good English teachers who read verse beautifully, so I loved the Odes and for decades agreed unquestioningly with the view that Keats was the most brilliant of the Romantic poets — or would have been, if his promise had not been cut off at the age of 25 by his tragic death from tuberculosis.

It was quite a surprise, then, when I looked for a Keats poem to share with you, to discover that I don't much like his writing now! This must make me some kind of tasteless idiot, since he is still considered a very important poet by people much more scholarly and famous than me. But he suddenly seems old-fashioned, in ways which not all poets of past eras do.

I found many of the poems over-sentimental. Well, perhaps that's a fault of youth, which he would have outgrown. I also found the thees, thous, wouldsts etc. irritating, and had trouble tolerating what now seems to me his frequent long-windedness.

 'Get to the point!' I want to yell, rather than following his leisurely turns of thought.  Oh dear!

I chose this poem because the intensity of his frustrated passion gives it pace and urgency.  

I guess many of you know something of Keats's life, and his romance with Fanny Brawne, from the movie Bright Star. You can find more details from Wikipedia (link on his name, above). 

There is a longer, even more detailed and literary biography at The Poetry Foundation. And, just when you've accepted that he died because of medical ignorance and/or the stress of his work being unfairly criticised, here is an article by a new biographer, saying it was all his own fault!

HIs portraits are contradictory too, some showing him as romantically handsome, some as a bit gormless, and still others as frankly fat. So I used the death mask, as that must surely be accurate.

Perhaps you won't agree with me about his work. (Few people do.) You can check it out for yourself, or refresh your memory, at PoemHunter. Or you can find many books of his poetry, as well as letters and biographies, at good old Amazon.

Oh, wait — I did find one exceptional poem which still doesn't disappoint. I didn't share it here as it is very well-known and I like to try and give you something which might be new to you. But do read (or re-read) it anyway. It's true — he really did have brilliant promise after all. Unlike some of his other poems, I think On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer is a masterpiece.