Poetry

[LMcD]

One for your collection, McD.

Faintheart In A Railway Train

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I said, " Get out to her do I dare? "
But I kept my seat in my search for a plan,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there!

Thomas Hardy from Late Lyrics and Earlier 1922

A B A A B
B C D B E - but I've no idea whether that's an unusual scheme or whether it has a name.

[LMcD]

I think it’s MCMXIV - 1914 . If I remember the poem is about innocence and joining up. You’re right all those poems are masterpieces - particularly An Arundel Tomb .

You're right, of course ... and to think I studied Latin to 'A' level!
I've just read it again. How many poems get to mention Villa Park and the Oval in the same breath, I wonder.
I also notice that marriages and a bank holiday - August this time - also crop up.

[Padraig]

A B A A B
B C D B E - but I've no idea whether that's an unusual scheme or whether it has a name.

I read the poem as a six line stanza followed by a quatrain, in the scheme ABAAB/B, CDBC, with a complete change of rhythm after the fourth line. Clackety clack/slow down/followed by pensive speculation?
I think, to corrupt a golf saying, poetry for show, novels for dough.

[johncorrigan]

One for your collection, McD.

Faintheart In A Railway Train

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I said, " Get out to her do I dare? "
But I kept my seat in my search for a plan,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there!

Thomas Hardy from Late Lyrics and Earlier 1922

Hadn't thought of Hardy as a poet before, Padraig...it would appear I have missed something...else.

On a much less romantic front - or is it? - here's MacCaig returning home on a train in '88.



London to Edinburgh

I'm waiting for the moment
when the train crosses the Border
and home creeps closer
at seventy miles an hour.

I dismiss the last four days
and their friendly strangers
into the past
that grows bigger every minute.

The train sounds urgent as I am,
it says home and home and home.
I light a cigarette
and sit smiling in the corner.

Scotland, I rush towards you
into my future that,
every minute,
grows smaller and smaller.

Norman MacCaig

[LMcD]

I read the poem as a six line stanza followed by a quatrain, in the scheme ABAAB/B, CDBC, with a complete change of rhythm after the fourth line. Clackety clack/slow down/followed by pensive speculation?
I think, to corrupt a golf saying, poetry for show, novels for dough.

You're absolutely right - I should have realized why there's a full stop at the end of line 7. (I forgot to mention that I failed 'O' level Eng Lit).

[LMcD]

Hadn't thought of Hardy as a poet before, Padraig...it would appear I have missed something...else.

On a much less romantic front - or is it? - here's MacCaig returning home on a train in '88.



London to Edinburgh

I'm waiting for the moment
when the train crosses the Border
and home creeps closer
at seventy miles an hour.

I dismiss the last four days
and their friendly strangers
into the past
that grows bigger every minute.

The train sounds urgent as I am,
it says home and home and home.
I light a cigarette
and sit smiling in the corner.

Scotland, I rush towards you
into my future that,
every minute,
grows smaller and smaller.

Norman MacCaig

Goodness - those last two lines come as a bit of a shock, even though we already know that 'the past is getting bigger every minute'. Can this perhaps be viewed as a final journey home in more than one sense - and is it too fanciful to wonder whether this is 'that last cigarette'?
Hardy - 'The Darkling Thrush' is, rightly in my view, one of his most popular poems. Britten's 'Winter Words' might also tempt you to explore further.

[gradus]

I am drawn to Fern Hill but find it difficult. Can anyone help?

[Ein Heldenleben]

[QUOTE=gradus;857557]I am drawn to Fern Hill but find it difficult. Can anyone help?

This is a pretty standard reading of the poem.

https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/dylan-thomas/fern-hill

Thomas has been criticised for the wordy vagueness of his writing almost as if his easy rhetoric gets in the way of any precision of either scene or emotion . Also the twist in the tale ( very much a Hardy trait ) is a bit tacked on and to be honest predictable . Why not just enjoy the childhood memory? Or if you can’t - say something original about it as Wordsworth managed to do.I still like the poem though.

[gradus]

Thanks for the link just what I needed.

[johncorrigan]

Goodness - those last two lines come as a bit of a shock, even though we already know that 'the past is getting bigger every minute'. Can this perhaps be viewed as a final journey home in more than one sense - and is it too fanciful to wonder whether this is 'that last cigarette'?

I've not seen many photos of Norman without a fag in hand, McD...he would have been 78 when he wrote this, eight years before he died...I couldn't imagine him giving up the ciggies.

I recalled that he wrote another poem about trains - had to go look for it - it's a much younger MacCaig from 1966, and more suspicious of the travel; but it's still got a great last line.

Sleeping compartment

I don't like this, being carried sideways
through the night. I feel wrong and helpless - like
a timber broadside in a fast stream.

Such a way of moving may suit
that odd snake the sidewinder
in Arizona: but not me in Perthshire.

I feel at right angles to everything,
a crossgrain in existence. - It scrapes
the top of my head and my footsoles.

To forget outside is no help either -
then I become a blockage
in the long gut of the train.

I try to think I'm an Alice in Wonderland
mountaineer bivouacked
on a ledge five feet high.

It's no good. I go sidelong.
I rock sideways ... I draw in my feet
To let Aviemore pass.

Norman MacCaig

[LMcD]

I've not seen many photos of Norman without a fag in hand, McD...he would have been 78 when he wrote this, eight years before he died...I couldn't imagine him giving up the ciggies.

I recalled that he wrote another poem about trains - had to go look for it - it's a much younger MacCaig from 1966, and more suspicious of the travel; but it's still got a great last line.

Sleeping compartment

I don't like this, being carried sideways
through the night. I feel wrong and helpless - like
a timber broadside in a fast stream.

Such a way of moving may suit
that odd snake the sidewinder
in Arizona: but not me in Perthshire.

I feel at right angles to everything,
a crossgrain in existence. - It scrapes
the top of my head and my footsoles.

To forget outside is no help either -
then I become a blockage
in the long gut of the train.

I try to think I'm an Alice in Wonderland
mountaineer bivouacked
on a ledge five feet high.

It's no good. I go sidelong.
I rock sideways ... I draw in my feet
To let Aviemore pass.

Norman MacCaig

If anyone needs to be convinced that poetry is best enjoyed when read out loud, this should do it. Actually, I ended up performing it as I read it!

[johncorrigan]

On BBC Alba last night, a programme from 2002 about the life, the conflict between love and duty, and the landscape and culture, which the formed the backdrop to the poetry of Sorley MacLean, that great Bard of Hebridean Gaeldom. I hadn't realised that he stopped writing after he was invalided out of the North Africa Campaign, re-emerging in later time to write that monumental work 'Hallaig' about the clearances in the village he was brought up in on Raasay. Among others, contribution in there from Seamus Heaney; and beautiful scenery too from Skye and Raasay.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nxk0t/sorley-maclean

[Padraig]

Today bought a newly published slim vol of Emily Dickinson's poems. That put me in mind of a poem I had intended to post earlier, which, in turn, was prompted by the story of a Long-Covid sufferer who had had a bad time. ED was not the healthiest of poets herself and manages to combine her own illness and thoughts with the seasonal changes in her garden.

My first well Day - since many ill -
I asked to go abroad,
And take the Sunshine in my hands
And see the things in Pod -

A'blossom just - when I went in
To take my Chance with pain -
Uncertain if myself, or He,
Should prove the strongest One.

The Summer deepened, while we strove -
She put some flowers away -
And Redder cheeked Ones - in their stead -
A fond illusive way -

To Cheat Herself, it seemed she tried -
As if before a Child
To fade Tomorrow - Rainbow held
The Sepulchre, could hide.

She dealt a fashion to the Nut -
She tied the Hoods to Seeds -
She dropped bright scraps of Tint, about -
And left Brazilian Threads

On every shoulder that she met -
Then both her hands of haze
Put up - to hide her parting Grace
From our unfitted eyes -
My loss by sickness - Was it Loss?
Or that Etherial Gain
One earns by measuring the Grave -
Then - measuring the Sun.

Emily Dickinson 1862 pub 1935

[johncorrigan]

Kathleen Jamie has been appointed the fourth Scots Makar, succeeding Jackie Kay. In 2014 Kathleen decided to write a poem a week, following the cycle of the year. These poems make up the excellent book, 'The Bonniest Companie'.

Soledades

Having lost my copy of Machado’s Soledades, I search the garden. It’s March, blustery, daffodils nod, and already blossom’s sprigging on next door’s pear. I’ve a hunch I left the book by the old railway sleeper that serves as a bench, and further, that the same breeze as makes the frogspawn quiver in our sandpit-turned-pond, as flaps the laundry, has snatched the book away. And sure enough, it’s there, tossed beneath the beech hedge and open at a particular page, as though the breeze, riffling through, has spotted his own name among the master’s lines: ‘The deepest words of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind’……

Kathleen Jamie 2014

[antongould]

Kathleen Jamie has been appointed the fourth Scots Makar, succeeding Jackie Kay. In 2014 Kathleen decided to write a poem a week, following the cycle of the year. These poems make up the excellent book, 'The Bonniest Companie'.

Soledades

Having lost my copy of Machado’s Soledades, I search the garden. It’s March, blustery, daffodils nod, and already blossom’s sprigging on next door’s pear. I’ve a hunch I left the book by the old railway sleeper that serves as a bench, and further, that the same breeze as makes the frogspawn quiver in our sandpit-turned-pond, as flaps the laundry, has snatched the book away. And sure enough, it’s there, tossed beneath the beech hedge and open at a particular page, as though the breeze, riffling through, has spotted his own name among the master’s lines: ‘The deepest words of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind’……

Kathleen Jamie 2014

Excellent jc