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The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland
by William Butler YeatsHE stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover’s vows
Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth
Sang that somewhere to north or west or south
There dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race
Under the golden or the silver skies;
That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot
It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit:
And at that singing he was no more wise.
He mused beside the well of Scanavin,
He mused upon his mockers: without fail
His sudden vengeance were a country tale,
When earthy night had drunk his body in;
But one small knot-grass growing by the pool
Sang where — unnecessary cruel voice —
Old silence bids its chosen race rejoice,
Whatever ravelled waters rise and fall
Or stormy silver fret the gold of day,
And midnight there enfold them like a fleece
And lover there by lover be at peace.
The tale drove his fine angry mood away.
He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;
And might have known at last unhaunted sleep
Under that cold and vapour-turbaned steep,
Now that the earth had taken man and all:
Did not the worms that spired about his bones
proclaim with that unwearied, reedy cry
That God has laid His fingers on the sky,
That from those fingers glittering summer runs
Upon the dancer by the dreamless wave.
Why should those lovers that no lovers miss
Dream, until God burn Nature with a kiss?
The man has found no comfort in the grave.
THE CHEAT OF CUPID; OR, THE UNGENTLE GUEST
by Robert HerrickOne silent night of late,
When every creature rested,
Came one unto my gate,
And knocking, me molested.Who’s that, said I, beats there,
And troubles thus the sleepy?
Cast off; said he, all fear,
And let not locks thus keep ye.For I a boy am, who
By moonless nights have swerved;
And all with showers wet through,
And e’en with cold half starved.I pitiful arose,
And soon a taper lighted;
And did myself disclose
Unto the lad benighted.I saw he had a bow,
And wings too, which did shiver;
And looking down below,
I spied he had a quiver.I to my chimney’s shine
Brought him, as Love professes,
And chafed his hands with mine,
And dried his dropping tresses.But when he felt him warm’d,
Let’s try this bow of ours
And string, if they be harm’d,
Said he, with these late showers.Forthwith his bow he bent,
And wedded string and arrow,
And struck me, that it went
Quite through my heart and marrowThen laughing loud, he flew
Away, and thus said flying,
Adieu, mine host, adieu,
I’ll leave thy heart a-dying.Concerning Women Who Deserve To Be Praised
Know, O Vizir (and the mercy of God be with you!), that there are women of all sorts; that there are such as are worthy of praise, and such is deserve nothing but contempt.
In order that a woman may be relished by men, she must have a perfect waist, and must be plump and lusty. Her hair will be black her forehead wide, she will have eyebrows of Ethiopian blackness, large black eyes, with the whites in them very limpid. With cheek of perfect oval, she will have an elegant nose and a graceful mouth; lips and tongue vermilion; her breath will be of pleasant odour, her throat long, her neck strong, her bust and her belly large; her breasts must be full and firm, her belly in good proportion, and her navel well-developed and marked; the lower part of the belly is to be large, the vulva projecting and fleshy, from the point where the hairs grow, to the buttocks; the conduit must be narrow and not moist, soft to the touch, and emitting a strong heat and no bad smell; she must have the thighs and buttocks hard, the hips large and full, a waist of fine shape, hands and feet of striking elegance, plump arms, and well-developed shoulders.
If one looks at a woman with those qualities in front, one is fascinated; if from behind, one dies with pleasure. Looked at sitting, she is a rounded dome; lying, a soft-bed; standing, the staff of a standard.
Such a woman is cherished by all men.
From THE PERFUMED GARDEN (Nefzaoui)
Edgar Allan Poe
The RavenOnce upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.’Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –
This it is, and nothing more,’Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,’ said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you’ – here I opened wide the door; –
Darkness there, and nothing more.Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!’
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!’
Merely this and nothing more.Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,’ said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –
‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door –
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.’But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,’ said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of “Never-nevermore.”‘But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.’This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,’ I cried, `thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he has sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –
On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –
Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting –
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!@cymorill wrote:
Platonic Love
We dine at Adorno and return to my Beauvoir.
She compliments me on my Bachelard pad.
I pop in a Santayana CD and Saussure back to the couch.
On my way, I pull out two fine Kristeva wine glasses.
I pour some Merleau-Ponty and return the Aristotle to Descartes.
After pausing an Unamuno, I wrap my arm around her Hegel.
Her hair smells of wild Lukacs and Labriola.
Our small talk expands to include Dewey, Moore and Kant.
I confess to her what’s in my Eckhart. We Locke.
By this point, we’re totally Blavatsky.
We stretch out on the Schopenhauer.
She slips out of her Lyotard and I fumble with my Levi-Strauss.
She unhooks her Buber and I pull off my Spinoza.
I run my finger along her Heraclitus as she fondles my Bacon.
She stops to ask me if I brought any Kierkegaard. I nod.
We Foucault.
She lights a cigarette and compares Foucault to Lacan.
I roll over and Derrida.Curt Anderson
That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt.
At the border of the forest – dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, – the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea.
Rimbaud
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.2.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.4.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.Pub Quiz Champion Of the World
Well, I first knew the Dalston Rocket Monday night pub quiz
was getting out of hand
when I was in the Amazon
suspended in rainforest canopy
increasing my knowledge of tropical plant taxonomy
Swinging from tree to tree collecting flora,
I’d got into a nice rhythm in the harness,
muttering to myself
Henry VIII’s litany of wives:
“Divorced, beheaded, died,
Divorced, beheaded, survived”
and so didn’t see him until
our knuckles clashed
both snatching at
the same single blossom.
I looked up
and found myself nose-to-nose
with Clive Datchett,
yes, that Clive Datchett,
I recognised him from Millionaire and 15-1,
And the Dalston Rocket Monday night pub-quiz
he’s a pro
who lives by draining multiple-choice Trivial Pursuit machines
of coins, of options,
and here he was swinging away in harness
clutching the star-shaped pink blossom
of what was almost certainly
Dalberga Fabaceae,
or Brazilian tulip,
but which now I’d never know for sure.
Next Wednesday on the Zambizi River
there was Clive Dachett again
and as our motor-launches passed in opposite directions,
he was trash-talking me:
“Linlithgow,” he said,
“While I’m around you’re Mt Kenya, you’re Lake Victoria.”
Oh, the allusion was not lost on me:
Africa’s second highest mountain,
Its second largest lake.
“Datchett,” I shouted, “You’re Bobo Dioulasso!”
Yeah, he had to go and look that one up.
Second biggest city
in Burkina-Faso,
Africa’s smallest country.
Got him with a left! Got him with a right!“Question number 37”, calls the Quizmaster the following Monday at the Dalston Rocket,
And me, I’ve got more answers than questions…
Canada has the longest coastline.
Japan’s got the fastest train.
Faberge make the eggs.
Paul McCartney’s first name is James.
A billion seconds is thirty-two years long.
The Grand Hotel and the Brighton Bomb.
Everyone else will put Teflon,
But I know it’s Le Creuset.
People look from me to Datchett,
And then from Datchett to me.
Bonus questions: three, five, twenty-seven and forty-two.
Dead-heat
Tie-break.
Guess who?
Myself and Clive Datchett.
Head-to-head.
The rammed pub falls silent.
What, asks the quizmaster,
is the name of the undercover CIA agent in Peshawar,
who has infiltrated furthest into Al Q’aida?
All around the room secret servicemen draw guns from shoulder-holsters
I dive over the bar
amid booming sprays of glass,
as the 15-round Glock 22’s bullets
burst the optics into a glass tsunami,
the floor foaming gin,
I shout out:
“Jawal Al-Ansari!”
Both hands on the kitty I grabbed it and ran.
£135, that’s four pound short,
Team J never dibbed in.
Next week I’ll have a word.
But come next Monday when I get to the Dalston Rocket
Chloe the landlady was waiting outside for me.
She says, “You’re barred.”
“Barred?” I says, “What did I do?”
She says, “The Pub Quiz is getting out of hand,”
I says, “I’m innocent
All I did I set out to know more than anyone ever had,
Is that so wrong?
I mean, what was the Enlightenment
if not the bringing together
of everything anyone ever knew
in hopes we’d then know what to do next?
Voltaire, Napoleon, Robespierre…?
Church and state divided, the people enlightened – “
She said “If I have that sort of trouble then I lose my licence.”
I stood between the dripping petunia baskets
she’d just watered
Wrong side of the black portcullis.
The accumulation of all that knowledge?
How does it help me now?
I mean knowledge – it’s not wisdom is it?
So I stopped going to pub quizzes
and instead I set up a society for the pursuit of wisdom.
We did ayahuasca cermonies,
visited terminal wards,
read Dorothy Rowe
fasted, cultivated our gardens,
all that.
Tuesday nights upstairs at the Betsy Trotwood pub
there’d we’d be –
the swami, the sufi, imam and ex-con,
the rabbi, the shaman, philosphy Don,
the widow who fostered her own grandchild,
the pre-lingual boy brought up in the wild.
In retrospect awarding points for correct answers was where it all went wrong.
Oh, and inviting Clive Datchett along.
It got, you could say, competitive.
First question.
Give one example of how nature
prefers co-operation to competition.
While writing “tropical forests in their climax phase,”
Datchett’s eyes met mine and we both looked away in shame.
Three points for naming
one social
one economic
and one political force
that militates against reflection, thus reducing knowledge
to the acquisition of gobbets of information for use in quizzes.
The serpent is not knowledge but competition.
Had Adam been humiliating Eve in the Eden quiz?
“Sssuppothhh”, said the serpent, “a quesssstion came up about sssssomething other than the naming of plantssss and beassts which Adam doess so well at…?
Hmmm?
What then, my pretty naked one?
Here’ssss how much he knowth about pop muthic, for exsssample” said the serpent,
coiling himself into a big zero.
Tie-break
head-to-head at last.
Me and the U’wa shaman.
(Datchett was nowhere.
Couldn’t make the leap to the transcendantal, could he?
Didn’t have it in him.)
The tie-break wasn’t a question so much as a spiritual task:
First to enter the realm of Nothingness
And sit on the eternal lotus leaf
at the centre of the peace which passeth understanding,
Wins.The decision went against me.
“How can you say I lost?” I shouted.
“I didn’t only become the lotus leaf,
I worked out its circumference and diameter, too!”
“He who sits on lotus with slide-rule,”
Said the swami, “sinks into the pond.”
You know that sound of enlightened laughter?
The ironic appreciation of truth?
Well it hurts and it cuts like a bastard
When the butt of the wise joke is you.
And it didn’t help
when Clive Datchett start throwing L-signs at me.
What’s that L-sign about, asked the sufi,
and Datchett said the “L” sign he threw stood for Learning.
” “And the double ‘L'” the imam asks Datchett,
“that you made when he got to the door?”
“A bookcase,” said Datchett, “a bookcase,”
and bent his false eyes to the floor.Then a breakdown.
It hurt to use my brain for anything.
I let my mind go blank
and memory disolve
like chalk teeth in Steradent.*****
You will see me in the Rocket most afternoons,
sitting by the extinct fireplace.
I read Take A Break, OK! or Heat
if there’s one lying around,
sometimes, if I’m feeling brave or foolish,
the sports pages, but usually not,
they’re too near the crossword and the puzzles, aren’t they?
Not just the Rocket,
I like to sit in any pub with no triv or quiz machines
nothing more harmful than vending machines.
Coin-in-the-slot vending machines
first introduced for loose tobacco
in England, 1615.
Careful.
You see what I mean?
But the doctor says I’m so much better
That I can even go to the odd pub quiz now and then.
So for the last few weeks I’ve actually been going to the Dalston Rocket.
Chloe’s not there any more.
I sometimes do quite well on the picture round
if it’s someone who’s been in Heat or Take A Break!
Most people get those, though, don’t they?
Sometimes I pull one out of the locker:
Mill Reef! Edict of Nantes!
When I pull one out like that,
Dalston Rocket pub-quiz first-timers
who only asked me to join their team out of politeness,
look at me strangely
try and high-five me,
but I watch their palm
fade from the air like a firework
before I’ve figured out what’s happening,
what I’m supposed to do in return.
But I enjoy the game so much more now,
a smile in the corners of my mouth,
when in answer to some question
Like how do we know we exist?
Or how do we tell right from wrong?
I say to the team:
“Ooh, I know this…”
And then I say,
“… Oh, no it’s gone.”By Peter Linlithgow, Ex-Pub-Quiz Champion Of the World via Mr Robert Newman
liking it pikey
Your all far more cleverer than me, but I do enjoy reading all the posts. But I think it would be rude to reply so I dont, so this is my one and only norty reply to say well done and keep em coming, they dont go un-noticed (nothing round here does by me) 8) :wink:
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