They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
My thoughts
In Image, Sound, and (Occasional) Word Ask me anything
In Image, Sound, and (Occasional) Word Ask me anything
April 21, 2013
“Drummer Hodge” by Thomas Hardy
December 22, 2012
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
December 8, 2012
October 21, 2012
"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"
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"
— Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden (via venus-infleurs)
(via thewreckageofmen)
September 4, 2012
"
You try to be faithful
And sometimes you’re cruel.
You are mine. Then, you leave.
Without you, I can’t cope.
And when you take the lead,
I become your footstep.
Your absence leaves a void.
Without you, I can’t cope.
You have disturbed my sleep,
You have wrecked my image.
You have set me apart.
Without you, I can’t cope.
— Rumi (via fuckyeahrumi)
(Source: fuckyeahrumi)
August 25, 2012
"After despair, many hopes flourish
just as after darkness,
thousands of suns open and start to shine."
just as after darkness,
thousands of suns open and start to shine."
—
Rumi
(via fuckyeahrumi)
(Source: fuckyeahrumi)
August 24, 2012
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying of the sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.-Francis William Bourdillon
(Source: blue-voids)
August 16, 2012
"What draws friends together
does not conform to the laws of nature."
does not conform to the laws of nature."
—
Rumi
(via fuckyeahrumi)
(Source: fuckyeahrumi)
July 18, 2012
"If capture and defeat must be my joy
It is no wonder that alone and naked,
I remain prisoner of a knight-at-arms
(resto prigion d’un cavalier armato)."
It is no wonder that alone and naked,
I remain prisoner of a knight-at-arms
(resto prigion d’un cavalier armato)."
— Michaelangelo, to his love Tommaso de’ Cavalieri (c. 1533)
(Source: homosexualityandcivilization)
July 18, 2012
"Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop"
Me drop
by drop"
— Fragment 37, Sappho. Original spacing intact. (via homosexualityandcivilization)
July 18, 2012
"The Moon is down,
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I lie, alone."
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I lie, alone."
— Fragment 34, Sappho. (via homosexualityandcivilization)
July 8, 2012
O Tell Me The Truth About Love
By W.H. Auden
Some say love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn’t over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air.
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
May 21, 2012
We were green: we ripened and grew golden.
The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown.
Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings.
We started sober: are love’s startled drunkards.
You hide me in your cloak of nothingness
Reflect my ghost in your glass of being
I am nothing, yet appear: transparent dream
Where your eternity briefly trembles.
- Rumi
April 25, 2012
This is my 2,000th post! To celebrate, I’ve posted a picture of me doing my best imitation of one of the Romantic poets…
… Okay, not really. But I did say that every 1,000 posts I would post a picture of me, and this is picture #2 of yours truly. This was taken just off the Pacific Coast Highway alongside the California coast a couple of years ago. In spite of my earlier joke, it does actually remind me of one of my favorite poems, Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. - RH
DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight,
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 Agean, 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.
1867
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