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Dcepello

Member
Ithaca

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a Summer dawn to enter
with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.
Constantine P. Cavafy
 
Ode
BY ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
 
I don't usually respond to posts that were written years ago by members who are no longer here, but a poem that means a lot to me is appropriate to share right now, for people like 3mom's mother and everyone else who is fighting and putting their own concerns behind them so they can help others.

This poem was written by Rudyard Kipling and I thought it was a response to his awe while watching people who were building the Brooklyn Bridge, or somehow or other related to the Brooklyn Bridge. But it's really related to engineers and construction workers in Canada, or so says Wikipedia.

I also don't usually love poems about men and their contributions because women make so many life-giving and sacrificial gestures and we are very much not credited or praised. But it just happens that until very recently, it was pretty much exclusively men who built America, so I admire them. Of course women were not allowed to do what was considered men's work but that has changed a little and with any luck there will be parity someday.


A Poem for the Engineers:
The Sons of Martha
Rudyard Kipling (1907)
The Sons of Mary seldom bother,
for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favor their mother
of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once,
and because she was rude to the lord her guest,
Her sons must wait upon Mary's Sons,
world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and
cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care
that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly, it is their care
to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land
and main.
They say to mountains "Be ye removed. "They say to the
lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved - They are not
afraid of that which is high
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit - Then is the bed
of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping
and unaware.
They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and
repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: They feed him, hungry
behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, They stumble into his
terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn
him till evenfall.
To these from birth is belief forbidden; from these till
death is relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden - under the earthline their altars are-
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to
restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a
city's drouth.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little
before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His pity allows them to drop their
job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and
the desert they stand.
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days
may be long in the land.
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood
to make a path fair or flat-Lo,
it is black already with blood some Son of Martha
spilled for that!
Not a ladder from earth to heaven, not as witness to any
creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their
common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they know the
angels are on their side.
They know in them is the grace confessed, and for them are
the mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet - they hear the word - they see how
truly the promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord,
and - the Lord he lays it on Martha's Sons!
 
Here is a segment of another poem I love because Whitman's observances of human beings is so sensate and he had a special fondness for people who labored.

I don't know if any of his words were affected by his own volunteer medic services to wounded soldiers during the Civil War, but whatever sort of character was inside his soul drove him to leave his home and travel to a horrible place, filled with death, in order to offer some kind of service to the wounded and dying.

And of course these two stanzas are just a small part of his epic work, Leaves of Grass.

I Sing the Body Electric
By Walt Whitman

1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.
 
I don't usually respond to posts that were written years ago by members who are no longer here, but a poem that means a lot to me is appropriate to share right now, for people like 3mom's mother and everyone else who is fighting and putting their own concerns behind them so they can help others.

This poem was written by Rudyard Kipling and I thought it was a response to his awe while watching people who were building the Brooklyn Bridge, or somehow or other related to the Brooklyn Bridge. But it's really related to engineers and construction workers in Canada, or so says Wikipedia.

I also don't usually love poems about men and their contributions because women make so many life-giving and sacrificial gestures and we are very much not credited or praised. But it just happens that until very recently, it was pretty much exclusively men who built America, so I admire them. Of course women were not allowed to do what was considered men's work but that has changed a little and with any luck there will be parity someday.


A Poem for the Engineers:
The Sons of Martha
Rudyard Kipling (1907)
The Sons of Mary seldom bother,
for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favor their mother
of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once,
and because she was rude to the lord her guest,
Her sons must wait upon Mary's Sons,
world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and
cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care
that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly, it is their care
to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land
and main.
They say to mountains "Be ye removed. "They say to the
lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved - They are not
afraid of that which is high
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit - Then is the bed
of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping
and unaware.
They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and
repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: They feed him, hungry
behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, They stumble into his
terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn
him till evenfall.
To these from birth is belief forbidden; from these till
death is relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden - under the earthline their altars are-
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to
restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a
city's drouth.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little
before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His pity allows them to drop their
job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and
the desert they stand.
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days
may be long in the land.
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood
to make a path fair or flat-Lo,
it is black already with blood some Son of Martha
spilled for that!
Not a ladder from earth to heaven, not as witness to any
creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their
common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they know the
angels are on their side.
They know in them is the grace confessed, and for them are
the mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet - they hear the word - they see how
truly the promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord,
and - the Lord he lays it on Martha's Sons!
So what’s wonderful is that my moms name is Martha-and my sister’s name is Mary.
 
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG

by: Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran—
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad—
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wond'ring neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost its wits
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light
That showed the rogues they lied,—
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!
 
i don't know why that poem reminded me of another (maybe the mob mentality) but here's a poem that's both spoken and sung in the same performance:

Save the Life of My Child

"Good God! Don't jump!"
A boy sat on the ledge.
An old man who had fainted was revived.
And everyone agreed it would be a miracle indeed
If the boy survived.

"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.
The woman from the supermarket
Ran to call the cops.
"He must be high on something, " someone said.
Though it never made The New York Times.
In The Daily News, the caption read,

"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.
A patrol car passing by
Halted to a stop.
Said officer MacDougal in dismay:
"The force can't do a decent job
'Cause the kids got no respect
For the law today (and blah blah blah)."

"Save the life of my child!"
Cried the desperate mother.
"What's becoming of the children?"
People asking each other.
When darkness fell, excitement kissed the crowd
And made them wild
In an atmosphere of freaky holiday.
When the spotlight hit the boy,
The crowd began to cheer,
He flew away.

"Oh, my Grace, I got no hiding place."

"Oh, my Grace, I got no hiding place."
 
My favorite Poem:

I carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart]

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

I fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you



here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart



i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
 
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