' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

[Brayon]

6 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

I have to do my homework on Urania... What struck me about it this morning is how many early Gay Rights pioneers in the 19th century referred to themselves as Uranians. Would this be something Tennyson knew in the 1830-40s when writing this? IDK, but it is interesting  

You made me curious AC, and I just did a quick Google search. I found this on Uranian Poetry on the Wiki:

Quote

The Uranians were a small and clandestine group of male homosexual poets who published works between 1858, when William Johnson Cory published Ionica, and 1930. Although most of them were English, they had counterparts in the United States and France.

So, it could be possible that Alfred, Lord Tennyson had a hand in them.

 

EDIT: Sauce - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranian_poetry

Edited May 6, 2020 by Brayon
Linked sauce

[Lyssa]

29 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

I have to do my homework on Urania... What struck me about it this morning is how many early Gay Rights pioneers in the 19th century referred to themselves as Uranians. Would this be something Tennyson knew in the 1830-40s when writing this? IDK, but it is interesting  

Well, this essay confirms at least that Karl Heinrich Ulrichs studied Tennyson. Maybe it was also the other way around. 🙂 

[AC Benus]

6 hours ago, Brayon said:

The Uranians were a small and clandestine group of male homosexual poets

A, I don't abide the H-word, and I think none of us should. When I tried to apply gay and LGBT to the article, it said I was vandalizing the piece. In complaint of this, this is what I wrote on their complaint page: 

2600:1700:9DA0:E480:6903:C9C2:68F1:15F7

Username

2600:1700:9DA0:E480:6903:C9C2:68F1:15F7 (talk · contribs) (filter log)

Page you were editing

[[2]] (filter log)

Description

"homosexual" is an outdated term of derision for people of the LGBT minority. Insisting on using this term, which is one applied to a group, and not their self-chosen means of identification, is an act of bigotry. Other minorities do have to think their kids will see them reduced to "negros" in wiki articles, nor people of Asian descent as "orientals." What justification can you provide to defend your naked anti-gay sentiment? LGBT people need to be able to speak to their youth about our issues without projected issues drawn from past times, just as every other minority. Unfair, so change, today.

Date and time

01:07, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Comments

[AC Benus]

I think we should all be activists when we see this on Wiki, try to correct it, and when blocked - say why it matters. LGBTQ youth need it, and deserve it  

[AC Benus]

 

38.

With weary steps I loiter on,

    Though always under altered skies

    The purple from the distance dies,

My prospect and horizon gone.

 

No joy the blowing season gives,

    The herald melodies of spring,

    But in the songs I love to sing

A doubtful gleam of solace lives.

 

If any care for what is here

    Survive in spirits rendered free,

    Then are these songs I sing of thee

Not all ungrateful to thine ear.

 

 

39.

Old warder of these buried bones,

    And answering now my random stroke

    With fruitful cloud and living smoke,

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones

 

And dippest toward the dreamless head,

    To thee too comes the golden hour

    When flower is feeling after flower;

But Sorrow -- fixt upon the dead,

 

And darkening the dark graves of men --

    What whispered from her lying lips?

    Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,

And passes into gloom again.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by AC Benus

[Mikiesboy]

22 hours ago, AC Benus said:

I think we should all be activists when we see this on Wiki, try to correct it, and when blocked - say why it matters. LGBTQ youth need it, and deserve it  

hmmm, since we are locked up at home.. maybe we should track it down

[AC Benus]

 

 

39.

Could we forget the widowed hour

    And look on Spirits breathed away,

    As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

 

When crowned with blessing she doth rise

    To take her latest leave of home,

    And hopes and light regrets that come

Make April of her tender eyes;

 

And doubtful joys the father move,

    And tears are on the mother's face,

    As parting with a long embrace

She enters other realms of love;

 

Her office there to rear, to teach,

    Becoming as is meet and fit

    A link among the days, to knit

The generations each with each;

 

And, doubtless, unto thee is given

    A life that bears immortal fruit

    In those great offices that suit

The full-grown energies of heaven.

 

Aye me, the difference I discern!

   How often shall her old fireside

    Be cheered with tidings of the bride,

How often she herself return,

 

And tell them all they would have told,

    And bring her babe, and make her boast,

    Till even those that missed her most

Shall count new things as dear as old:

 

But thou and I have shaken hands,

    Till growing winters lay me low;

     My paths are in the fields I know.

And thine in undiscovered lands.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

No. 39 hits me hard today ... the orange blossoms present an image of what a girl with them in her hair for her wedding day ... the shaken hands means clasped hands as on Alfred and Henry's own wedding day ... and then the long silence of the widow mentioned in the opening line of the poem is reaffirmed by the conclusion of "But thou and I have shaken hands / Till growing winters lay me low."

Edited May 8, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

6 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

But thou and I have shaken hands,

    Till growing winters lay me low;

     My paths are in the fields I know.

And thine in undiscovered lands.

I can hear the spent, sad voice of the poet reading this, and the sorrowed silence after. 

[AC Benus]

 

40.

Thy spirit ere our fatal loss

    Did ever rise from high to higher;

    As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,

As flies the lighter through the gross.

 

But thou art turned to something strange,

    And I have lost the links that bound

    Thy changes; here upon the ground,

No more partaker of thy change.

 

Deep folly! yet that this could be --

    That I could wing my will with might

    To leap the grades of life and light,

And flash at once, my friend, to thee.

 

For tho' my nature rarely yields

To that vague fear implied in death;

Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,

The howlings from forgotten fields;

 

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor

    An inner trouble I behold,

    A spectral doubt which makes me cold,

That I shall be thy mate no more,

 

Tho' following with an upward mind

    The wonders that have come to thee,

    Through all the secular to-be,

But evermore a life behind.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

41.

I vex my heart with fancies dim:

    He still outstript me in the race;

    It was but unity of place

That made me dream I rank'e with him.

 

And so may Place retain us still,

    And he the much-beloved again,

    A lord of large experience, train

To riper growth the mind and will:

 

And what delights can equal those

    That stir the spirit's inner deeps,

    When one that loves but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows?

 

 

42.

If Sleep and Death be truly one,

    And every spirit's folded bloom

    Through all its interval gloom

In some long trance should slumber on;

 

Unconscious of the sliding hour,

    Bare of the body, might it last,

    And silent traces of the past

Be all the colour of the flower:

 

So then were nothing lost to man;

    So that still garden of the souls

    In many a figured leaf enrolls

The total world since life began;

 

And love will last as pure and whole

    As when he loved me here in Time,

    And at the spiritual prime

Rewaken with the dawning soul.

Tennyson

Edited May 10, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

43.

How fares it with the happy dead?

  For here the man is more and more;

  But he forgets the days before

God shut the doorways of his head.

 

The days have vanished, tone and tint,

  And yet perhaps the hoarding sense

  Gives out at times (he knows not whence)

A little flash, a mystic hint;

 

And in the long harmonious years

  (If Death so taste Lethean springs),

  May some dim touch of earthly things

Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.

 

If such a dreamy touch should fall,

  O, turn thee round, resolve the doubt;

  My guardian angel will speak out

In that high place, and tell thee all.

 

 

44.

The baby new to earth and sky,

  What time his tender palm is prest

  Against the circle of the breast,

Has never thought that "this is I:"

 

But as he grows he gathers much,

  And learns the use of "I," and "me,"

  And finds "I am not what I see,

And other than the things I touch."

 

So rounds he to a separate mind

  From whence clear memory may begin,

  As through the frame that binds him in

His isolation grows defined.

 

This use may lie in blood and breath,

  Which else were fruitless of their due,

  Had man to learn himself anew

Beyond the second birth of Death.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

45.

We ranging down this lower track,

  The path we came by, thorn and flower,

  Is shadowed by the growing hour,

Lest life should fail in looking back.

 

So be it: there no shade can last

  In that deep dawn behind the tomb,

  But clear from marge to marge shall bloom

The eternal landscape of the past;

 

A lifelong tract of time revealed;

  The fruitful hours of still increase;

  Days ordered in a wealthy peace,

And those five years its richest field.

 

O Love, thy province were not large,

  A bounded field, nor stretching far;

  Look also, Love, a brooding star,

A rosy warmth from marge to marge.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

I ran across this poem early this morning. I thought the structure was interesting enough to share.

 

I made a posey, while the day ran by:

here will I smell my remnant out, and tie

my life within this band.

But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they

by noon most cunningly did steal away,

and wither'd in my hand.

 

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:

I took, without more thinking, in good part

Time's gentle admonition:

who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,

making my mind to smell my fatal day;

yet sugaring the suspicion.

 

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,

fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,

and after death for cures.

I follow straight without complaints or grief,

since if my scent be good, I care not if

it be as short as yours.

                                              -- George Herbert

[AC Benus]

47 minutes ago, Parker Owens said:

I ran across this poem early this morning. I thought the structure was interesting enough to share.

 

I made a posey, while the day ran by:

here will I smell my remnant out, and tie

my life within this band.

But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they

by noon most cunningly did steal away,

and wither'd in my hand.

 

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:

I took, without more thinking, in good part

Time's gentle admonition:

who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,

making my mind to smell my fatal day;

yet sugaring the suspicion.

 

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,

fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,

and after death for cures.

I follow straight without complaints or grief,

since if my scent be good, I care not if

it be as short as yours.

                                              -- George Herbert

The structure is very interesting. Also interesting was reading a bit about him this morning; thank you for that I'm always in the market to learn a new things or two 

[AC Benus]

 

46.

That each, who seems a separate whole,

  Should move his rounds, and fusing all

  The skirts of self again, should fall

Remerging in the general Soul,

 

Is faith as vague as all unsweet:

  Eternal form shall still divide

  The eternal soul from all beside;

And I shall know him when we meet:

 

And we shall sit at endless feast,

  Enjoying each the other's good:

  What vaster dream can hit the mood

Of Love on earth? He seeks at least

 

Upon the last and sharpest height,

  Before the spirits fade away,

  Some landing-place, to clasp and say,

"Farewell! We lose ourselves in light."

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

47.

If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,

  Were taken to be such as closed

  Grave doubts and answers here proposed,

Then these were such as men might scorn:

 

Her care is not to part and prove;

  She takes, when harsher moods remit,

  What slender shade of doubt may flit,

And makes it vassal unto love:

 

And hence, indeed, she sports with words,

  But better serves a wholesome law,

  And holds it sin and shame to draw

The deepest measure from the chords:

 

Nor dare she trust a larger lay,

  But rather loosens from the lip

  Short swallow-flights of song, that dip

Their wings in tears, and skim away.

 

 

48.

From art, from nature, from the schools,

  Let random influences glance,

  Like light in many a shivered lance

That breaks about the dappled pools:

 

The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,

  The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe,

  The slightest air of song shall breathe

To make the sullen surface crisp.

 

And look thy look, and go thy way,

  But blame not thou the winds that make

  The seeming-wanton ripple break,

The tender-penciled shadow play.

 

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears

  Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,

  Whose muffled motions blindly drown

The bases of my life in tears.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

49.

Be near me when my light is low,

  When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick

  And tingle; and the heart is sick,

And all the wheels of Being slow.

 

Be near me when the sensuous frame

  Is racked with pangs that conquer trust;

  And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

Be near me when my faith is dry,

  And men the flies of latter spring,

  That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

 

Be near me when I fade away,

  To point the term of human strife,

  And on the low dark verge of life

The twilight of eternal day.

 

 

50.

Do we indeed desire the dead

  Should still be near us at our side?

  Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread?

 

Shall he for whose applause I strove,

  I had such reverence for his blame,

  See with clear eye some hidden shame

And I be lessened in his love?

 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue:

  Shall love be blamed for want of faith?

  There must be wisdom with great Death:

The dead shall look me through and through.

 

Be near us when we climb or fall:

  Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours

  With larger other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by AC Benus

[Lyssa]

7 hours ago, AC Benus said:

 

49.

Be near me when my light is low,

  When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick

  And tingle; and the heart is sick,

And all the wheels of Being slow.

 

Be near me when the sensuous frame

  Is racked with pangs that conquer trust;

  And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

Be near me when my faith is dry,

  And men the flies of latter spring,

  That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

 

Be near me when I fade away,

  To point the term of human strife,

  And on the low dark verge of life

The twilight of eternal day.

 

 

50.

Do we indeed desire the dead

  Should still be near us at our side?

  Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread?

 

Shall he for whose applause I strove,

  I had such reverence for his blame,

  See with clear eye some hidden shame

And I be lessened in his love?

 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue:

  Shall love be blamed for want of faith?

  There must be wisdom with great Death:

The dead shall look me through and through.

 

Be near us when we climb or fall:

  Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours

  With larger other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all.

Tennyson

 

 

The repetition of the plead "be near me" makes my heart ache. For the one, who live this in the moment, but is not allowed to have anyone near him.

Carring the names of millions, the dream of billions, the flags of all nations and all the colors. (Versengold)

[AC Benus]

3 hours ago, Lyssa said:

The repetition of the plead "be near me" makes my heart ache. For the one, who live this in the moment, but is not allowed to have anyone near him.

Carring the names of millions, the dream of billions, the flags of all nations and all the colors. (Versengold)

Thanks, Lyssa. I feel Memoriam Nos. 49 and 50 are so deeply heartfelt. No. 50 particularly holds sentiments I've wondered about myself

[AC Benus]

 

51.

I cannot love thee as I ought,

  For love reflects the thing beloved;

  My words are only words, and moved

Upon the topmost froth of thought.

 

"Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,"

  The Spirit of true love replied;

  "Thou canst not move me from thy side,

Nor human frailty do me wrong.

 

"What keeps a spirit wholly true

  To that ideal which he bears?

  What record? not the sinless years

That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:

 

"So fret not, like an idle girl,

  That life is dashed with flecks of sin.

  Abide: thy wealth is gathered in,

When Time hath sundered shell from pearl."

Tennyson

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by AC Benus

[Mikiesboy]

14 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

I cannot love thee as I ought,

  For love reflects the thing beloved;

  My words are only words, and moved

Upon the topmost froth of thought.

i absolutely love this  ... his writing is so smooth and beautiful ...

[AC Benus]

 

52.

How many a father have I seen,

  A sober man, among his boys,

  Whose youth was full of foolish noise,

Who wears his manhood hale and green:

 

And dare we to this fancy give,

  That had the wild oat not been sown,

  The soil, left barren, scarce had grown

The grain by which a man may live?

 

Or, if we held the doctrine sound

  For life outliving heats of youth,

  Yet who would preach it as a truth

To those that eddy round and round?

 

Hold thou the good: define it well:

  For fear divine Philosophy

  Should push beyond her mark, and be

Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

 

 

53.

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good

  Will be the final goal of ill,

  To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

 

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

  That not one life shall be destroyed,

  Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

 

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

  That not a moth with vain desire

  Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another's gain.

 

Behold, we know not anything;

  I can but trust that good shall fall

  At last -- far off -- at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

 

So runs my dream: but what am I?

  An infant crying in the night:

  An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

54.

The wish, that of the living whole

  No life may fail beyond the grave,

  Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

 

Are God and Nature then at strife,

  That Nature lends such evil dreams?

  So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life;

 

That I, considering everywhere

  Her secret meaning in her deeds,

  And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

 

I falter where I firmly trod,

  And falling with my weight of cares

  Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope through darkness up to God,

 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

  And gather dust and chaff, and call

  To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

 

55.

"So careful of the type?" but no.

  From scarped cliff and quarried stone

  She cries, "A thousand types are gone:

I care for nothing, all shall go.

 

"Thou makest thine appeal to me:

  I bring to life, I bring to death:

  The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more." And he, shall he,

 

Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,

  Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

  Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

 

Who trusted God was love indeed

  And love Creation's final law --

  Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shrieked against his creed --

 

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

  Who battled for the True, the Just,

  Be blown about the desert dust,

Or sealed within the iron hills?

 

No more? A monster then, a dream,

  A discord. Dragons of the prime,

  That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music matched with him.

 

O life as futile, then, as frail!

  O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

  What hope of answer, or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil.

Tennyson

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by AC Benus