Good morning everyone

I picked up this thread last night and a poem by Mary Oliver which I love came to mind. It is:

WILD GEESE

You do not have to  be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the deep rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese ----- harsh and exciting

over and over, announcing your place

in the family of things.

Eilid x

 

Hi Borderslass

What a great idea.

Poetry is another one of my great loves, as you always have to admire these wonderful people that paint with words.

  Over the years I think one poem that has stuck in my mind is Robert Burns - To A Mouse.

 

Being a Londoner it took me a long time to get into Burns until I heard it being read by a Scottish actor. So rather than print the words which is not easy to understand here is a link so you can just sit back a listen to this wonderful poem.

Robert Burns - To A Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy8lehO7nqg

Oh by the way the actor was the wonderful John Laurie (or the scottish bloke from Dad's Army).

 

Robert

That's a beautiful poem Eilid

Thomas Hardy wrote great animal/bird poems

I particularly like this one

The Darkling Thrush

 

I leant upon a coppice gate     When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate     The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky     Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh     Had sought their household fires.
  The land’s sharp features seemed to be     The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,     The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth     Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth     Seemed fervourless as I.
  At once a voice arose among     The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong     Of joy illimited ; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,     In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul     Upon the growing gloom.
  So little cause for carolings     Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things     Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through     His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew     And I was unaware.

Hi Pipit

What a great choice. They just don't come any better than Thomas Hardy.

His last book Jude the Obscure has to be one of the best books of all time. The sad thing being it was also his last.

After getting a pounding on it's release he just stopped writing anymore novels, but what a wonderful list he left us all to enjoy.

Robert

I so agree Robert

I studied TH at school and have always loved his books. It was a joy to discover his poetry too in later years

Pipit

Hi Pip

I love Hardy, especially his poems. This one is so elemental and reminds me in some ways of Mary Webb.

We could create a little anthology to go with the calender of all the beautiful photo's from the forum that you have suggested

Eilid x