' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

[Lyssa]

35 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

5.

One writes, that `Other friends remain,'

   That `Loss is common to the race' --

   And common is the commonplace,

And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

 

That loss is common would not make

   My own less bitter, rather more:

   Too common! Never morning wore

To evening, but some heart did break.

 

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

   Who pledgest now thy gallant son;

   A shot, ere half thy draught be done,

Hath stilled the life that beat from thee.

 

O mother, praying God will save

   Thy sailor -- while thy head is bowed,

   His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud

Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

 

Ye know no more than I who wrought

   At that last hour to please him well;

   Who mused on all I had to tell,

And something written, something thought;

 

Expecting still his advent home;

   And ever met him on his way

   With wishes, thinking, `here to-day,'

Or `here to-morrow will he come.'

 

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,

   That sittest ranging golden hair;

   And glad to find thyself so fair,

Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

 

For now her father's chimney glows

   In expectation of a guest;

   And thinking `this will please him best,'

She takes a ribbon or a rose;

 

For he will see them on to-night;

   And with the thought her colour burns;

   And, having left the glass, she turns

Once more to set a ringlet right;

 

And, even when she turned, the curse

   Had fallen, and her future Lord

   Was drowned in passing thro' the ford,

Or killed in falling from his horse.

 

O what to her shall be the end?

   And what to me remains of good?

   To her, perpetual maidenhood,

And unto me no second friend.

Tennyson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpjy5siUJ2Q

 

Book of John 14:

 

"If ye love me, keep my commandments,

and I will pray the Father, and he shall

give you another partner (comforter),

that he may bide with you for ever,

ev'n in the spirit of truth."

 

"That loss is common would not make

   My own less bitter, rather more:" That is so true. And this year brought already to much of it, worldwide and to my family.  Thanks for sharing it. Muha

[AC Benus]

 

7.

Dark house, by which once more I stand

   Here in the long unlovely street,

   Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

 

A hand that can be clasped no more—

   Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

   And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

 

He is not here; but far away

   The noise of life begins again,

   And ghastly through the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Tennyson

[Mikiesboy]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

A hand that can be clasped no more—

   Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

   And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

beautiful, but so sad ... the longing for the missing one is palpable.

[Parker Owens]

9 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Dark house, by which once more I stand

   Here in the long unlovely street,

   Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

These lines made me want to weep. There's a reason my father and grandfather memorized Tennyson.

[AC Benus]

 

8.

A happy lover who has come

   To look on she who loves him well,

   Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell,

And learns her gone and far from home;

 

He saddens, all the magic light

   Dies off at once from bower and hall,

   And all the place is dark, and all

The chambers emptied of delight:

 

So find I every pleasant spot

   In which we two were wont to meet,

   The field, the chamber, and the street,

For all is dark where thou art not.

 

Yet as that other, wandering there

   In those deserted walks, may find

   A flower beat with rain and wind,

Which once she fostered up with care;

 

So seems it in my deep regret,

   O my forsaken heart, with thee

   And this poor flower of poesy

Which little cared for fades not yet.

 

But since it pleased a vanished eye,

   I go to plant it by his tomb,

   That if it can, it there may bloom,

Or, lying, there at least may die.

Tennyson

 

 

[Parker Owens]

9 hours ago, AC Benus said:

So seems it in my deep regret,

   O my forsaken heart, with thee

   And this poor flower of poesy

Which little cared for fades not yet.

And by your care, it continues to flourish and grow. Thank you. 

[AC Benus]

 

9.

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore

   Sailest the placid ocean-plains

   With my lost Arthur's loved remains,

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

 

So draw him home to those that mourn

   In vain; a favourable speed

   Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead

Through prosperous floods his holy urn.

 

All night no ruder air perplex

   Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright

   As our pure love, through early light

Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

 

Sphere all your lights around, above;

   Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;

   Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,

My friend, the brother of my love;

 

My Arthur, whom I shall not see

   Till all my widowed race be run;

   Dear as the mother to the son,

More than my brothers are to me.

Tennyson

 

[AC Benus]

I bet right now you can go to the wiki page for In Memoriam and see Gay-deniers (or LGBT erasure) going on shamelessly. Their technique to convoluted the obvious, and it works like this: Tennyson was not an H-word (a psychopathic sex pervert, per the dictionary definition), so obviously In Memoriam is about 'friendship.' And then they put their own thick icing on top by saying "There is no evidence that he was that way." 

All of it may be expected from the dominate society, because if you notice, no National Poet can Gay: not Shakespeare, or Tennyson; not Whitman or Frost; not Homer or Cavafy. However, it upsets me to no end to see Gay people themselves use the H-word to actively deny their own patrimony. That's a defeatist, weak-ass disgrace; no wonder our minority is still the butt of all of their discriminatory 'jokes.'

The truth is, first hand material, like Tennyson's own words, can always speak for themselves. They also speak for the poet who cannot ridicule their own ridiculers, or those who would take the poets' love and drag it through the demented mud patch labeled on us by 19th century quack psychiatrists. All we've ever wanted is to be left in peace. Let's take things back, all right?      

[AC Benus]

One aspect of In Memoriam 9 is utterly fascinating to me. In the 4th stanza, "brother" is used in a Classical sense of "partner." Try is for yourself - read the line again but insert "partner" instead of brother, and see the meaning stays the same.

All ancient societies used "brothers" to denote male couples. Naturally, this was not limited to Gay pairings. Straight couples lovingly referred to each other as brother and sister, and Lesbian couples as "sisters." 

But the interesting thing is, Tennyson uses brothers again in the poem in the family sense of siblings in the last line. Such a pair of uses is unusual to say the least

 

[AC Benus]

 

10.

I hear the noise about thy keel;

   I hear the bell struck in the night:

   I see the cabin-window bright;

I see the sailor at the wheel.

 

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,

   And travelled men from foreign lands;

   And letters unto trembling hands;

And, thy dark freight, a vanished life.

 

So bring him; we have idle dreams:

   This look of quiet flatters thus

   Our home-bred fancies. O to us,

The fools of habit, sweeter seems

 

To rest beneath the clover sod,

   That takes the sunshine and the rains,

   Or where the kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God;

 

Than if with thee the roaring wells

   Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;

   And hands so often clasped in mine,

Should toss with tangle and with shells.

 

11.

Calm is the morn without a sound,

   Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

   And only through the faded leaf

The chestnut pattering to the ground:

 

Calm and deep peace on this high world,

   And on these dews that drench the furze,

   And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold:

 

Calm and still light on yon great plain

   That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,

   And crowded farms and lessening towers,

To mingle with the bounding main:

 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,

   These leaves that redden to the fall;

   And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

 

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

   And waves that sway themselves in rest,

   And dead calm in that noble breast

Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

Tennyson

 

 

[MichaelS36]

22 hours ago, AC Benus said:

I bet right now you can go to the wiki page for In Memoriam and see Gay-deniers (or LGBT erasure) going on shamelessly. Their technique to convoluted the obvious, and it works like this: Tennyson was not an H-word (a psychopathic sex pervert, per the dictionary definition), so obviously In Memoriam is about 'friendship.' And then they put their own thick icing on top by saying "There is no evidence that he was that way." 

All of it may be expected from the dominate society, because if you notice, no National Poet can Gay: not Shakespeare, or Tennyson; not Whitman or Frost; not Homer or Cavafy. However, it upsets me to no end to see Gay people themselves use the H-word to actively deny their own patrimony. That's a defeatist, weak-ass disgrace; no wonder our minority is still the butt of all of their discriminatory 'jokes.'

The truth is, first hand material, like Tennyson's own words, can always speak for themselves. They also speak for the poet who cannot ridicule their own ridiculers, or those who would take the poets' love and drag it through the demented mud patch labeled on us by 19th century quack psychiatrists. All we've ever wanted is to be left in peace. Let's take things back, all right?      

With you all the way, AC.  Be Gay...be proud. Remind others what our world today would be like without these poets, then and today. Without the artists, authors, doctors, scientists … if Tennyson was writing about a pal, then I am not GAY!  And I most assuredly am.  

[Mikiesboy]

On 4/16/2020 at 11:27 AM, AC Benus said:

Sphere all your lights around, above;

   Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;

   Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,

My friend, the brother of my love;

 

My Arthur, whom I shall not see

   Till all my widowed race be run;

   Dear as the mother to the son,

More than my brothers are to me.

You have to be willfully blind as not see what he is talking about here.  it saddens me to my core, that love like this is ridiculed and shoved away as 'they were just good friends'.  They were not only friends ... and saying otherwise was is wrong on so many levels.   It cheats their memory and even us today, who need to know our history, those who came before us.

Thanks AC ..

[AC Benus]

 

12.

Lo, as a dove when up she springs

   To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,

   Some dolorous message knit below

The wild pulsation of her wings;

 

Like her I go; I cannot stay;

   I leave this mortal ark behind,

   A weight of nerves without a mind,

And leave the cliffs, and haste away

 

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,

   And reach the glow of southern skies,

   And see the sails at distance rise,

And linger weeping on the marge,

 

And saying; `Comes he thus, my friend?

   Is this the end of all my care?'

   And circle moaning in the air:

'Is this the end? Is this the end?'

 

And forward dart again, and play

   About the prow, and back return

   To where the body sits, and learn

That I have been an hour away.

 

13. 

Tears of the widower, when he sees

   A late-lost form that sleep reveals,

   And moves his doubtful arms, and feels

Her place is empty, fall like these;

 

Which weep a loss for ever new,

   A void where heart on heart reposed;

   And, where warm hands have prest and closed,

Silence, till I be silent too.

 

Which weep the comrade of my choice,

   An awful thought, a life removed,

   The human-hearted man I loved,

A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

 

Come, Time, and teach me, many years,

   I do not suffer in a dream;

   For now so strange do these things seem,

Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

 

My fancies time to rise on wing,

   And glance about the approaching sails,

   As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,

And not the burthen that they bring.

Tennyson

 

 

[MichaelS36]

6 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Tears of the widower, when he sees

I've noticed he refers to the widower/widowed often … obviously they were just friends.... 

Edited April 18, 2020 by MichaelS36

[AC Benus]

 

14.

If one should bring me this report,

   That thou hadst touched the land today,

   And I went down unto the quay,

And found thee lying in the port;

 

And standing, muffled round with woe,

   Should see thy passengers in rank

   Come stepping lightly down the plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;

 

And if along with these should come

   The man I held as half-divine;

   Should strike a sudden hand in mine,

And ask a thousand things of home;

 

And I should tell him all my pain,

   And how my life had drooped of late,

   And he should sorrow o'er my state

And marvel what possessed my brain;

 

And I perceived no touch of change,

   No hint of death in all his frame,

   But found him all in all the same,

I should not feel it to be strange.

Tennyson

 

[AC Benus]

15.

To-night the winds begin to rise

   And roar from yonder dropping day:

   The last red leaf is whirled away,

The rooks are blown about the skies;

 

The forest cracked, the waters curled,

   The cattle huddled on the lea;

   And wildly dashed on tower and tree

The sunbeam strikes along the world:

 

And but for fancies, which aver

   That all thy motions gently pass

   Athwart a plane of molten glass,

I scarce could brook the strain and stir

 

That makes the barren branches loud;

   And but for fear it is not so,

   The wild unrest that lives in woe

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

 

That rises upward always higher,

   And onward drags a labouring breast,

   And topples round the dreary west,

A looming bastion fringed with fire.

 

16.

What words are these have falle'n from me?

   Can calm despair and wild unrest

   Be tenants of a single breast,

Or sorrow such a changeling be?

 

Or cloth she only seem to take

   The touch of change in calm or storm;

   But knows no more of transient form

In her deep self, than some dead lake

 

That holds the shadow of a lark

   Hung in the shadow of a heaven?

   Or has the shock, so harshly given,

Confused me like the unhappy bark

 

That strikes by night a craggy shelf,

   And staggers blindly ere she sink?

   And stunned me from my power to think

And all my knowledge of myself;

 

And made me that delirious man

   Whose fancy fuses old and new,

   And flashes into false and true,

And mingles all without a plan?

Tennyson

 

 

 

[Mikiesboy]

Thank you, AC for posting all these wonderful poems.

[AC Benus]

I'm thinking it good to break them out and not binge-read them. This way I am seeing more structure to the arrangement Tennyson chose, and some of the poems are breathtakingly good. There is so much love here 

[AC Benus]

 

17. 

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze

   Compelled thy canvas, and my prayer

   Was as the whisper of an air

To breathe thee over lonely seas.

 

For I in spirit saw thee move

   Through circles of the bounding sky,

   Week after week: the days go by:

Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

 

Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,

   My blessing, like a line of light,

   Is on the waters day and night,

And like a beacon guards thee home.

 

So may whatever tempest mars

   Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;

   And balmy drops in summer dark

Slide from the bosom of the stars.

 

So kind an office hath been done,

   Such precious relics brought by thee;

   The dust of him I shall not see

Till all my widowed race be run.

Tennyson 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

I hear the breeze soughing in the sails and rigging, feel the slow rise and fall of the dark ocean swell; here is the voice of grief and yearning for the beloved. 

[AC Benus]

 

18.

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand

   Where he in English earth is laid,

   And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.

 

'Tis little; but it looks in truth

   As if the quiet bones were blest

   Among familiar names to rest

And in the places of his youth.

 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head

   That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,

   And come, whatever loves to weep,

And hear the ritual of the dead.

 

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,

   I, falling on his faithful heart,

   Would breathing through his lips impart

The life that almost dies in me;

 

That dies not, but endures with pain,

   And slowly forms the firmer mind,

   Treasuring the look it cannot find,

The words that are not heard again.

Tennyson

 

 

[Mikiesboy]

19 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

 

 

That dies not, but endures with pain,

   And slowly forms the firmer mind,

   Treasuring the look it cannot find,

The words that are not heard again.

Tennyson

 

 

Beautiful, filled with love and longing ...

[AC Benus]

 

19.

The Danube to the Severn gave

   The darkened heart that beats no more;

   They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

 

There twice a day the Severn fills;

   The salt sea-water passes by,

   And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

 

The Wye is hushed nor moved along,

   And hushed my deepest grief of all,

   When filled with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

 

The tide flows down, the wave again

   Is vocal in its wooded walls;

   My deeper anguish also falls,

And I can speak a little then.

Tennyson

 

 

[Parker Owens]

17 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

 

19.

The Danube to the Severn gave

   The darkened heart that beats no more;

   They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

 

There twice a day the Severn fills;

   The salt sea-water passes by,

   And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

 

The Wye is hushed nor moved along,

   And hushed my deepest grief of all,

   When filled with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

 

The tide flows down, the wave again

   Is vocal in its wooded walls;

   My deeper anguish also falls,

And I can speak a little then.

Tennyson

 

 

The melancholy water flows in this: beautiful, timeless and reflective. 

[AC Benus]

 

20.

The lesser griefs that may be said,

   That breathe a thousand tender vows,

   Are but as servants in a house

Where lies the master newly dead;

 

Who speak their feeling as it is,

   And weep the fullness from the mind:

   `It will be hard,' they say, `to find

Another service such as this.'

 

My lighter moods are like to these,

   That out of words a comfort win;

   But there are other griefs within,

And tears that at their fountain freeze;

 

For by the hearth the children sit

   Cold in that atmosphere of Death,

   And scarce endure to draw the breath,

Or like to noiseless phantoms flit;

 

But open converse is there none,

   So much the vital spirits sink

   To see the vacant chair, and think,

'How good! how kind! and he is gone.'

Tennyson