Topic: Poetry Corner

[Raul!]

^^^^^

That Betjeman is absolutely brilliant. Had never seen that before - thanks for that.

His namesake Fuller is too.  My favourite love poem:

Valentine

By John Fuller

The things about you I appreciate
May seem indelicate:
I'd like to find you in the shower
And chase the soap for half an hour.
I'd like to have you in my power
And see your eyes dilate.
I'd like to have your back to scour
And other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
To chase you screaming up a tower
Or make you cower
By asking you to differentiate
Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I'd like successfully to guess your weight
And win you at a fete.
I'd like to offer you a flower.

I like the hair upon your shoulders,
Falling like water over boulders.
I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.
Your collar-bones have great potential
(I'd like all your particulars in folders
Marked Confidential).

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,
I like the way your lips disclose
The neat arrangement f your teeth
(Half above and half beneath)
In rows.
I like your eyes, I like their fringes.
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.
Your upper arms drive me berserk.
I like the way your elbows work,
On hinges.

I like your wrists, I like your glands,
I like the fingers on your hands.
I'd like to teach them how to count,
And certain things we might exchange,
Something familiar for something strange.
I'd like to give you just the right amount
And get some change.

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup.
I like your legs when you unwind them.
Even in trousers I don't mind them.
I like each softly-moulded kneecap.
I like the little crease behind them.
I'd always know, without recap,
Where to find them.

I like the sculpture of your ears.
I like the way your profile disappears
Whenever you decide to turn and face me.
I'd like to cross two hemispheres
And have you chase me.
I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.
I'd like you to embrace me.

I'd like to see you ironing your skirt
And cancelling other dates.
I'd like to button up your shirt.
I like the way your chest inflates.
I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt
Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.

I'd like you even if you were malign
And had a yen for sudden homicide.
I'd let you put insecticide
Into my wine.
I'd even like you if you were the Bride of Frankenstein
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's Jekyll and Hyde.
I'd even like you as my Julian
Of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan.
How melodramatic
If you were something muttering in attics
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean mathematics.
You are the end of self-abuse.
You are the eternal feminine.
I'd like to find a good excuse
To call on you and find you in.
I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin.
And see you grin.
I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe,
I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin,
I'd like to make you reproduce.
I'd like you in my confidence.
I'd like to be your second look.
I'd like to let you try the French Defence
And mate you with my rook.
I'd like to be your preference
And hence
I'd like to be around when you unhook.
I'd like to be your only audience,
The final name in your appointment book,
Your future tense.

[Scally McBeal]

There's so much to like in that as well, Raul.

My favourite love poem is a bit of a sad one. It's Brian Patten's "Angel Wings" and sums up nicely how easy it is to ruin a relationship by not believing how lucky you are...

In the morning I opened the cupboard
and found inside it a pair of wings,
a pair of angel's wings.
I was not naive enough to believe them real.
I wondered who had left them there.

I took them out the cupboard,
brought them over to the light by the window
and examined them.
You sat in the bed in the light by the window grinning.

'They are mine,' you said;
You said that when we met
you'd left them there.

I thought you were crazy.
Your joke embarrassed me.
Nowadays even the mention of the word angel
embarrasses me.

I looked to see how you'd stuck the wings together.
Looking for glue, I plucked out the feathers.
One by one I plucked them till the bed was littered,

'They are real,' you insisted,
your smile vanishing.
And on the pillow your face grew paler.
Your hands reached to stop me but
for some time now I have been embarrassed by the word angel.

For some time now in polite or conservative company
I have checked myself from believing
anything so untouched and yet so touchable
had a chance of existing.

I plucked then
till your face grew even paler;
intent on proving them false
I plucked
and your body grew thinner.
I plucked till you all but vanished.

Soon beside me in the light,
beside the bed in which you were lying
was a mass of torn feathers;
glueless, unstitched, brilliant,
reminiscent of some vague disaster.

In the evening I go out alone now.
You say you can no longer join me.
You say
Ignorance has ruined us,
disbelief has slaughtered.

You stay at home
listening on the radio
to sad and peculiar music,
who fed on belief,
who fed on the light I'd stolen.

Next morning when I opened the cupboard
out stepped a creature,
blank, dull, and too briefly sensual
it brushed out the feathers gloating.
I must review my disbelief in angels.

   -- Brian Patten

[BIGdavalad]

Armalite, street lights, nightsights
Searching the roofs for a sniper, a viper, a fighter
Death in the shadows he'll maim you, he'll wound you, he'll kill you
For a long forgotten cause
On not so foreign shores
Boys baptised in war
Boys baptised in war

Morphine, chill scream, bad dream
Serving as numbers on dogtags, flakrags, sandbags
Your girl has married your best friend, loves end, poison pen
Your flesh will always creep, tossing turning sleep
The wounds that burn so deep, burn so deep

Your mother sits on the edge of the world when the cameras start to roll
Panoramic viewpoint resurrect the killing fold
Your father drains another beer, he's one of the few that cares
Crawling behind a Saracen's hull from the safety of his living room chair
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons

And so as I patrol in the valley of the shadow of the Tricolour I must fear evil
For I am but mortal and mortals can only die
Asking questions, pleading answers from the nameless faceless watchers
That parade the carpeted corridors of Whitehall
Who orders desecration, mutilation, verbal masturbation in the guarded bureaucratic wombs
Minister, Minister care for your children
Order them not into damnation
To eliminate those who would trespass against you
For whose is the kingdom, the power, the glory for ever and ever
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen

"Halt who goes there!" - " Death!!"
"Approach ... friend"
You're just another coffin on its way down the emerald aisle
When your children's stony glances mourn
Your death in a terrorist's smile
The bomber's arm placing fiery gifts on the supermarket shelves
Alley sings with shrapnel detonate a temporary hell
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons

From the dolequeue to the regiment a profession in a flash
But remember Monday signings when from door to door you dash
On the news a nation mourns you unknown soldier count the cost
For a second you'll be famous but labelled posthumous

Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down
Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down
Ring-a-ring-o-roses
Ring-a-ring-o-roses
Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down

Forgotten Son
Forgotten Son
Forgotten Son
They're still forgotten, they're still still forgotten
Peace on earth and mercy mild, Mother Brown has lost her child
Just another Forgotten Son

[hooded claw]

Einstein’s eyes
were filled with tears
when he heard about Hiroshima.

Mr. Tamihi
Had no eyes left
To show his grief.

[BIGdavalad]

The Preservation of Man

The horse and mule live thirty years
And know nothing of wines or beers.
The goat and sheep at twenty die
With never a taste of scotch or rye.
The cow drinks water by the ton
And at eighteen is mostly done.
The dog at sixteen cashes in
Without the aid of rum or gin.
The cat in milk or water soaks
And then in twelve short years it croaks.
The modest, sober bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for nogs then dies at ten.
All animals are strictly dry
They sinless live and swiftly die.
But sinful, ginful, rum soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten
And some of us, the mighty few,
Stay pickled 'til we're ninety-two.

[Boston-Sox]

If you ever take a Four Penny Bus to Garston
It may be at the closing of the day
You can smell the lovely odour from the Gas Works
Or watch the Sun go down on Scouseland Bay.

Oh the wind that blows across the sea from Stanlow
The Perfume on the Jetty as it blows
And the kiddies in the back street playing conkers
Speak a language that the strangers do not know

But things are not so bad in dear old Garston
No fag ends in the gutter do we see
And if Im to live a life in next year after
I shall live in dear old Scouseland by the sea.

[Boston-Sox]

IF YOU EVER GO ACROSS THE SEA TO LIVERPOOL
Then maybe at the closing of your  day
You can see the Moon rise over Garston Gasworks
And watch the Sun go down on Dingle Bay

Just to see again the Ferries on the Mersey
The cars on William Brown Street in a jam
And to sit beside your Judy in the Scala
And get her bevvied in the "Legs Of Man"

Theres a Man who stands opposite the Adelphi
He stands there all day long, hes in his prime
But I think he,ll have to get some clothes on
Before they let him in at opening time

Oh I watch the Orange Lodge Parade to Southport
That one day in the year, they think its grand
And I see the kids who sit outside the boozer
With a conny-onny butty full of sand

Oh the winds that blow across the streets of Great Homer
Are perfumed by the pigs cheeks as they blow
And the Women selling papers on the corner
Speak a language that the Clergy do not know

[BIGdavalad]

I stand and look at the village,
The heat reflecting on the clouds above,
My radio crackles and out comes the message,
We're not moving forward.

Our looks grow old,
Our hearts start to pound,
We hear the screams,
And the rifles roar.

C'mon we have to go there,
A soldier cries,
No no, says the officer,
We have our orders here.

We are a peacekeping force not here to fight,
We shall watch and report of theses peoples plight,
But intervene is not what for us is right,
So we shall watch genocide tonight.

In the morning we entered a burning village,
Women, children and young men too,
Lie burnt, mutilated and charred for us to view,
Why wear this blue badge - it serves no purpose

When watching is all we can do.

Martin Metcalf
UN
Bosnia 1992

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

Almost posted this in Thought for today but's it's probably better here:

William Blake

The Garden of Love
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briers my joys and desires.

[Hinesy]

The Red Wheelbarrow   
by William Carlos Williams 

 
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
 


or



This Is Just To Say   
by William Carlos Williams 

 
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
 



Or any good Haiku - capturing a moment in words. A photograph through poetry. there's a belter which I'll post later.

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

This Is Just To Say  
by William Carlos Williams 
 
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Strangely enough I was just reading that last night while hunting for the William Blake one I posted earlier.

You can't beat a good Haiku, I know a lad, who lurks on here somewhere who did Haiku match reports for all our games one season. Superb.

First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father's face.

- Murakami, Kijo

[Scally McBeal]

Has anyone put Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" on here yet? I feel as though it should fall to one of the agnostics on here to do it. That's one of the greats. I came across it again at the weekend because Ian McEwan quotes it in "Saturday". Such atmosphere in that poem.

[blurred]

Haven't read any Brian Patten for ages, shall have to dig out some of his books I've got knocking around the place. He's awesome.

[Hinesy]

Actually its not a Haiku but all the same it perfectly describes lust and hope and love :

"Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter."


mevlana c rumi.


tops.

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

Has anyone put Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" on here yet? I feel as though it should fall to one of the agnostics on here to do it. That's one of the greats. I came across it again at the weekend because Ian McEwan quotes it in "Saturday". Such atmosphere in that poem.

Much as I enjoyed Tomred's alternative viewpoint I decided to post the original as I'm ashamed to say I'd not read it before Scally pointed it out.  Beautiful if profoundly depressing.

Dover Beach
- Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[neil4ad]

Has anyone read anything by the poet Erich Fried -- translated from German, but still beautiful (and heartbreaking):

Without You

Not nothing
without you
but not the same

Not nothing
without you
but perhaps less

Not nothing
but less
and less

Perhaps not nothing
without you
but not much more


My choice

Suppose I lose you
and must then decide
whether to see you once more
and I know:
the next time
you'll bring me
ten times more sorrow
and ten times less happiness

What would I choose?

I would be madly happy
to see you again.

[BIGdavalad]

A Dead Statesman

I could not dig:  I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

from Epitaphs of The War 1914- 1918

Rudyard Kipling

[benoeveno]

Without You

Not nothing
without you
but not the same

Not nothing
without you
but perhaps less

Not nothing
but less
and less

Perhaps not nothing
without you
but not much more


My choice

Suppose I lose you
and must then decide
whether to see you once more
and I know:
the next time
you'll bring me
ten times more sorrow
and ten times less happiness

What would I choose?

I would be madly happy
to see you again.

oh my god..i love these poems...

[benoeveno]

and my recent fave:

I and me and you
   
 
I am the redeemer
I will search your soul
to look for all you've given
and seek for all you hold

I will give no quarter
no inkling shall you find
of weakness nor of favour
as I explore your mind

No sympathy nor anger
no pity and no shame
no laughter tears or empathy
no reason to explain

No humour nor no sorrow
no tenderness nor pain
I seek the true epitome
of all that you remain

I am everything you've seen
everything you knew
all that's out and in and been
I and me and you.

Charles M. Moore 
 

[Scally McBeal]

Another "Without You" poem, by Liverpool's own Adrian Henri

Without you every morning would be like going back to work
after a holiday
Without you I couldn’t stand the smell of the East Lancs Road.
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by
skeleton crews.
Without you I’d probably feel happy and have no money
and time and nothing to do with it.
Without you I’d have probably to leave my stillborn poems on others
people’s doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper.
Without you there’d never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be
plastic flowers in shop windows
Without you I’d spend my summers picking morosely over the
remains of train crashes,
Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from
my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night,
Without you green apples wouldn’t taste greener,
Without you Mothers wouldn’t let their children play out after
tea,
Without you every musician in the world would forget how to
play the blues,
Without you Public Houses would be public houses again,
Without you the Sunday Times colour supplement would
come out in black-and-white
Without you indifferent colonels would shrug their shoulders
and press the button
Without you they’d stop changing the flowers in Piccadilly
Gardens,
Without you Clark Kent would forget how to become
Superman,
Without you Sunshine Breakfast would only consist of
Cornflakes,
Without you there’d be no colour in Magic colouring books
Without you Mahler’s 8th would only be performed by street
musicians in derelict houses,
Without you they’d forget to put the salt in every packet of
crisps,
Without you it would be an offence punishable by a fine of up
to Ł200 or two months imprisonments to be found in
possession of curry powder,
Without you riot police are massing in quiet sidestreets,
Without you all streets would be one-way the other-way,
Without you there’d be no one not to kiss goodnight when we
quarrel,
Without you the first martian to land would turn round and go
Away again,
Without you they’d forget to change the weather,
Without you blind men would sell unlucky heather,
Without you there would be
no landscape/no stations/no houses,
no chipshops/no quiet villages/no seagulls
on beaches/no hopscotch on pavements/no
night/no morning/there’d be no city no country
Without you.

I always love that line about "one way the other way".
 

[Boston-Sox]

As I was going to St Ives
Imet a man with seven wives
Said he I think it much more fun
Then getting stuck with only one

[Boston-Sox]

Ah yes I wrote the purple cow
Im sorry now I wrote it
But I can tell you anyhow
I,ll kill you if you quote it! 

[Boston-Sox]

I wish I loved the Human Race,
I wish I loved its silly face;...
And when Im introduced to one
I wish I thought what jolly fun! 

[Boston-Sox]

I loved the gentle girl,
But oh, I heaved a sigh,
When first she told me she could see
Out of only one eye 

[Boston-Sox]

You,ll be greeted
by a nice cup of coffee
When you get to heaven
and strains of angelic harmony.

But wouln,t you be devestated
if they only serve decaffeinated
while from the percolators of hell

your soul was assulated
by satan,s fresh espresso smell? 

[Scally McBeal]

You,ll be greeted
by a nice cup of coffee
When you get to heaven
and strains of angelic harmony.

But wouln,t you be devestated
if they only serve decaffeinated
while from the percolators of hell

your soul was assulated
by satan,s fresh espresso smell? 

That one is brilliant! Who's that by?

[Boston-Sox]

Mary Ann has gone to rest,
safe at last on Abraham,s breast,
Wihich may be nuts for Mary Ann,
But is certainly rough on Abraham. 

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

I used to see this everyday on my way to and from work. It covered the entire frontage of the latest swanky appartment development opposite the Liver Buidings.

Lippy loose-limbed liberatingly lyrical
Irreverent inspired je ne sais quoi
Vibrant Visionary with a capital V
Edgy eccentric essentially europhile
Racy restless raw rock 'n' roller
Pacy passionate positively pop
Obsessive optimistic on the go
Off the wall outlandish ee aye addio
Legendary life-giving life-loving Liverpool

- Roger McGough

[Boston-Sox]

it is titled Coffee in heaven by John Agard
Its in The Nations Favourite comic poems
Edited by Griff Rhys Jones 

[neil4ad]

Here is a beautiful poem by the poet Li-Young Lee. (n.b. - I'm not usually such a sop....just completely heartbroken at the moment, thinking about 'what could have been'!) 


Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

[BIGdavalad]

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American in the Royal Canadian Air Force wrote this in a letter to his parents and was killed shortly afterwards in his Spitfire at the age of 19.

[neil4ad]

High Flight

That poem is so incredibly sad given what happened to the young man. It reminds me of the myth of Icarus, which surely must have been a reference point for the poet.

[the invisible man]

 

redpaul..

you write some beautiful words...

Lemmo...

[BIGdavalad]

That poem is so incredibly sad given what happened to the young man. It reminds me of the myth of Icarus, which surely must have been a reference point for the poet.

I'm sure he knew of the story, I suppose it goes for all military pilots.

My Family

Did you see me on the telly Mum?
When we sailed away,
Laughing, waving, cheering,
Like films of yesterday?

Did you read it in The Sun Pop?
How we pasted them first time.
You told me all about your war,
What do you think of mine?

Did you get the letters home Dear?
How i missed you and was sad.
Did you give my love to Tracy?
Does she miss her funny Dad?

Did you see us on the hillside,
Could you spot which one was me?
Were the flowers very heavy,
For a grown up girl of three?

Paul D. Wapshot. (ex-Para who served in the Falklands)

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

That poem is so incredibly sad given what happened to the young man. It reminds me of the myth of Icarus, which surely must have been a reference point for the poet.

Musee des Beaux Arts    W.H. Auden 

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[neil4ad]

Well done with the Auden/Breughel -- Auden writing as a world conflict begins to intensify...amazing poem

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

One for Monday morning...

Toads
- Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison --
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts --
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines --
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets -- and yet
No one actually starves .

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension !
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you love both.

[Boston-Sox]

I Love my Grand-Children dearly,
And enjoy their visits so.
They always make me happy twice,
When they come and when they go!

[Yorkykopite]

Has anyone put Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" on here yet? I feel as though it should fall to one of the agnostics on here to do it. That's one of the greats. I came across it again at the weekend because Ian McEwan quotes it in "Saturday". Such atmosphere in that poem.

And what a moment in McEwan's book when the poem is recited.

Thanks too VdM for posting it.

It's Tony Harrison for me, especially the poems about his father:

No! Revolution never crossed your mind!
For the kids who never made it through the schools
the Northern working class escaped the grind
as boxers or comedians, or won the pools

Not lucky, no physique, too shy to joke,
you scraped together almost 3 weeks' pay
to buy a cast-off uke that left you broke.
You mastered only two chords, G and A!

That's why when I've heard George Formby that I've wept.
I'd always wondered what that thing was for,
I now know was a plectrum, that you'd kept,
but kept hidden, in your secret condom drawer.

The day of your cremation which I missed
I saw an old man strum a uke he'll never play,
cap splattered with tossed dimes. I made a fist
round my small change, your son, and walked away.

[BIGdavalad]

The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna
 
NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,   
  As his corse to the rampart we hurried;   
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot   
  O'er the grave where our hero we buried.   
 
We buried him darkly at dead of night,            5
  The sods with our bayonets turning,   
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light   
  And the lanthorn dimly burning.   
 
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,   
  Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;     10
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest   
  With his martial cloak around him.   
 
Few and short were the prayers we said,   
  And we spoke not a word of sorrow;   
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,     15
  And we bitterly thought of the morrow.   
 
We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed   
  And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,   
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,   
  And we far away on the billow!     20
 
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that 's gone,   
  And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him—   
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on   
  In the grave where a Briton has laid him.   
 
But half of our heavy task was done     25
  When the clock struck the hour for retiring;   
And we heard the distant and random gun   
  That the foe was sullenly firing.   
 
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,   
  From the field of his fame fresh and gory;     30
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,   
  But we left him alone with his glory.

Charles Wolfe. 1791–1823



Corunna
16 January 1809


Having just completed an exhausting retreat through appalling cold, the British army arrived at Corunna just ahead of the pursuing French under Marshal Soult.

More than 5000 British had died during the cruel march and while discipline had been strained to breaking point, the need to hold the French off while the troops were evacuated by ship to England brought the professionalism back.

Led by Sir John Moore, the redcoats formed a series of defensive lines with the key position being the small village of Elvina.

This point was targeted by Soult and, following a lengthy bombardment, he sent in a heavy attack against the defending 42 and 50th regiments.

The battle for the village was ferocious and it took several hours for the British to drive off the attackers.

An attempt by French cavalry to outflank the British right was defeated by sharpshooting riflemen of the 95th.

A more direct assault on the centre of the defenders was also driven off and, as night fell, the British returned to evacuating the troops.

The cost to the British included some 900 men and the death of Sir John Moore, while the French suffered some 2000 casualties.

The evacuation, however, was a complete success and led to some 27,000 men being saved to fight another day.