30 poems: Number 14
May. 17th, 2010 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerDear, dear, I've fallen far behind.
Here's one from a favourite.
He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Horace Rumpole was fond of Tennyson (who wasn't? one of the most quoted poeats), and loved to see himself as Ulysses:
"Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,"
She Who Must Be Obeyed never seemed to see the joke. :-) But it's hard not to be moved by the closing:
"Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
You can even hear him (Tennyson, not Rumpole) reading his famous "Charge of the Light Brigade".
Here's one from a favourite.
He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Horace Rumpole was fond of Tennyson (who wasn't? one of the most quoted poeats), and loved to see himself as Ulysses:
"Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,"
She Who Must Be Obeyed never seemed to see the joke. :-) But it's hard not to be moved by the closing:
"Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
You can even hear him (Tennyson, not Rumpole) reading his famous "Charge of the Light Brigade".
