I like to take moments in the torrid whirl of my life to be still and quiet with God. It's not easy. This is one day in the year when I look for such a moment and also to take stock on a year gone by. I find that this poem helps, capturing the moment perfectly.
May I take this moment to wish you a blessed and happy new year. Call by and catch up once in a while.
Peace Dave.
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 vine-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 me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-throated evensong Of joy illimited.
An ancient thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With 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.
Thomas Hardy
Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts
Saturday
Friday
Emontional Connection.
Having got as far as I have with the new poem I discussed it with my wife (yes all the good ones are married !) today. If you have missed out on this thread clicking the title will take you back a day and there are four days held on my page. Basically I want to write a poem for my priest who is leaving the parish at the end of the month. Unusually for me I have deviated from the usual way I write. Instead of building on a inspired idea and developing it I attempted to create on a theme building a frame work to guide me. Check my previous posts for more details. The bottom line is that the framework idea failed and inspiration walked in like a prodigal son looking for a fatted calf sandwich. This set up a few questions for me which bubbled up with my wife today.
One thing that became apparent was that I had no emotional link to my framework style poem. It's not something I have considered in depth before but as usual my wife has hit upon a core truth. As humans we build an emotional bond with all sorts of things, cars are a good example as are pets and music. The same emotional bonds that form families and links together friends allows such bonds to form. Unconsciously I bond with my poems and the ones that I don't bond with are never written. This may seem like an odd concept and it took me a bit of time to accept it.
We need to have emotional bonds it's a part of being human and as a poet communication of the emotions that we use to bond with is a part of what I do. People will not like a poem that they have no emotional bond with no matter how grammatically perfect it is or how thoughtfully constructed. For me that bond cannot be passed on in a poem if I have not first made it myself. This all make some sense to me but you may have other ideas. If you do I would like to hear them, let me know.
Peace Dave.
One thing that became apparent was that I had no emotional link to my framework style poem. It's not something I have considered in depth before but as usual my wife has hit upon a core truth. As humans we build an emotional bond with all sorts of things, cars are a good example as are pets and music. The same emotional bonds that form families and links together friends allows such bonds to form. Unconsciously I bond with my poems and the ones that I don't bond with are never written. This may seem like an odd concept and it took me a bit of time to accept it.
We need to have emotional bonds it's a part of being human and as a poet communication of the emotions that we use to bond with is a part of what I do. People will not like a poem that they have no emotional bond with no matter how grammatically perfect it is or how thoughtfully constructed. For me that bond cannot be passed on in a poem if I have not first made it myself. This all make some sense to me but you may have other ideas. If you do I would like to hear them, let me know.
Peace Dave.
Saturday
Opening Line
Things are going well for the poem I am creating for my priest. You may recall that he is leaving the parish at the end of the year and this is my parting gift, hopefully. (Click the title to go to a previous post.)
I think that whatever the content I will use either separatly styled opening and closing stanzas or opening and closing quotes. My thinking here is to give a serious edge to a poem that really will be fairly light hearted. I always like the style of poem that attempts to define a surreal or sujective topic as if it were fact. Today I scribbled this line which in some form may be an opening line.
How close you are becomes what's key,
You cannot lead and still be free.
This sets a serious tone and steps for me neatly into the theme of spatial awareness in a purely abstract way which I can define later. I'm not happy with the scan at the moment and these lines will have to change before they are used. But this is a start, I have started to write and so things are underway. I have my deadline which is December 31st and all I have to do is create a suitable, iconic poem that he will enjoy reading - no problem. A few prayers needed I think.
Peace Dave.
I think that whatever the content I will use either separatly styled opening and closing stanzas or opening and closing quotes. My thinking here is to give a serious edge to a poem that really will be fairly light hearted. I always like the style of poem that attempts to define a surreal or sujective topic as if it were fact. Today I scribbled this line which in some form may be an opening line.
How close you are becomes what's key,
You cannot lead and still be free.
This sets a serious tone and steps for me neatly into the theme of spatial awareness in a purely abstract way which I can define later. I'm not happy with the scan at the moment and these lines will have to change before they are used. But this is a start, I have started to write and so things are underway. I have my deadline which is December 31st and all I have to do is create a suitable, iconic poem that he will enjoy reading - no problem. A few prayers needed I think.
Peace Dave.
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