Poetry Meme...
...gacked from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penknife, among others. Couldn't resist going for two poems here, by men of the same generation, but with a very different approach.
When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal.
So, poem the first, which remains to me one of the most powerful in the English language. Written by Wilfrid Owen in the middle of World War I, a war in which he served and which eventually killed him. Bearing in mind that Latin isn't exactly on everyone's curriculum these days: the title and punchline is a quote from Horace, meaning "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country".
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Meanwhile, there was Constantine Cavafy, a Greek poet born in Alexandria, whom I discovered when visiting Greece some years ago. My hosts were quite shocked I had never heard of him and told me that to the Greeks, he was the most highly regarded poet since Homer. Cavafy, writing at the same time as Owen, often picked historical subjects, infusing them with a longing that is tangible. He didn't pick history's victors, though, or the various Empire-building days. Instead, he went for Byzantium decaying in splendour, or the last years of the Ptolemaians in Egypt. Here he is, using an anecdote about Mac Antony Plutarch reports, that Antony, after Actium, thought he heard his patron god Dionysos leaving the city:
The God Forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
Lastly, gacked fromaltariel1: pictures from the Faramir and Eowyn scenes in the House of Healing which are going to be on the RotK Extended Edition!
penknife, among others. Couldn't resist going for two poems here, by men of the same generation, but with a very different approach. When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal.
So, poem the first, which remains to me one of the most powerful in the English language. Written by Wilfrid Owen in the middle of World War I, a war in which he served and which eventually killed him. Bearing in mind that Latin isn't exactly on everyone's curriculum these days: the title and punchline is a quote from Horace, meaning "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country".
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Meanwhile, there was Constantine Cavafy, a Greek poet born in Alexandria, whom I discovered when visiting Greece some years ago. My hosts were quite shocked I had never heard of him and told me that to the Greeks, he was the most highly regarded poet since Homer. Cavafy, writing at the same time as Owen, often picked historical subjects, infusing them with a longing that is tangible. He didn't pick history's victors, though, or the various Empire-building days. Instead, he went for Byzantium decaying in splendour, or the last years of the Ptolemaians in Egypt. Here he is, using an anecdote about Mac Antony Plutarch reports, that Antony, after Actium, thought he heard his patron god Dionysos leaving the city:
The God Forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
Lastly, gacked from
altariel1: pictures from the Faramir and Eowyn scenes in the House of Healing which are going to be on the RotK Extended Edition!