The Saturday poem -- a great website find
Here at TSP we have a poem for the week as usual but we are also recommending a site for which the link is : www.classicpoetryaloud.com which offers pretty much what the title implies, podcast readings of poetry from the classic English language canon on both sides of the Atlantic .Not as eclectic as is this modest little column but very well presented and a good and growing collection.I have learned of this through the poetry loving and missed from LJ Volgivagant to whom big hugs are due as ever. I have decided just for an introduction to the site to link this week's poem from there together with a companion piece, but first we have a reminder that next week we are delighted to welcome back mylodon as guest columnist and the following week sees a new column from kittycallum our first column from Canada !
Ok, our first poem this week is called The Poplar Field and is by William Cowper the 18th century English poet. It is a little elegiac and melancholy but then Autumn is catching up with us! Together with a poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins on a related subject called Binsey Poplars.For any readers unsure of the geography Binsey is a hamlet near the river just outside Oxford and, in the Cowper, the Ouse is a river in eastern England.
Link to the Cowper on the read aloud website is here: http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/?p=3
and under the cut for Binsey Poplars and the text of the Cowper
Binsey Poplars
felled 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew -
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
-----------------------------------------------
The Poplar Field
The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade:
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew,
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.
The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat;
And the scene where his melody charmed me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Short-lived as we are, our enjoyments, I see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.
----------------------------------------------------
Ok, our first poem this week is called The Poplar Field and is by William Cowper the 18th century English poet. It is a little elegiac and melancholy but then Autumn is catching up with us! Together with a poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins on a related subject called Binsey Poplars.For any readers unsure of the geography Binsey is a hamlet near the river just outside Oxford and, in the Cowper, the Ouse is a river in eastern England.
Link to the Cowper on the read aloud website is here: http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/?p=3
and under the cut for Binsey Poplars and the text of the Cowper
Binsey Poplars
felled 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew -
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
-----------------------------------------------
The Poplar Field
The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade:
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew,
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.
The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat;
And the scene where his melody charmed me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Short-lived as we are, our enjoyments, I see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.
----------------------------------------------------