Originally posted by BowmannDon't tell anyone (I have a reputation to maintain, after all), but I think these are interesting. I like the progression in this one, and understand it. I need to reread the first one again.
[b]A Study of Reading Habits
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I c ...[text shortened]... eeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
1960[/b]
Mr Bleaney
'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook
Behind the door, no room for books or bags—
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try
Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits—what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why
He kept on plugging at the four aways—
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.
But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.
1955
Faith Healing
Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
Within whose warm spring rain of loving care
Each dwells some twenty seconds. Now, dear child,
What's wrong, the deep American voice demands,
And, scarcely pausing, goes into a prayer
Directing God about this eye, that knee.
Their heads are clasped abruptly; then, exiled
Like losing thoughts, they go in silence; some
Sheepishly stray, not back into their lives
Just yet; but some stay stiff, twitching and loud
With deep hoarse tears, as if a kind of dumb
And idiot child within them still survives
To re-awake at kindness, thinking a voice
At last calls them alone, that hands have come
To lift and lighten; and such joy arrives
Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a crowd
Of huge unheard answers jam and rejoice—
What's wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:
By now, all's wrong. In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures. An immense slackening ache,
As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,
Spreads slowly through them—that, and the voice above
Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.
1960
This is how I remember it (although some lines could be mixed up!)
Mask Of Anarchy:
Percy Bysche Shelley
Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep had fallen on you,
Ye are many, they are few.
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity,
Declare with measured words that ye,
Are as God has made ye free.
The old laws of England they,
Who's reverend heads with age are grey,
Children of a wiser day,
And who's solemn voice must be,
Thine own echo... Liberty!
Sunny Prestatyn
INAPPROPRIATE POST
Sorry, your post has been deemed inappropriate and has been automatically removed.
If you would like to protest against this decision, please send feedback and explain in detail why you believe your post should not be removed.
Note: Repeatedly posting inappropriate material could result in a forum posting ban or account termination.
1962
Originally posted by BowmannBest one you've posted so far.
[b]Sunny Prestatyn
INAPPROPRIATE POST
Sorry, your post has been deemed inappropriate and has been automatically removed.
If you would like to protest against this decision, please send feedback and explain in detail why you believe your post should not be removed.
Note: Repeatedly posting inappropriate material could result in a forum posting ban or account termination.
1962[/b]