(Untitled)

[tiphanism]

I missed the post-now-for-National-Poetry-Day things, but I love that today my flist is full of poetry. I'm not spending time searching for something perfect to give you (a lifetime's task) but I love the chance to give this an airing. It is glorious spoken out loud and it calms me down when I'm angry:

War Song of the Saracens, by James Elroy

Comments

[ghotieep]

Didn't know about post-a-poem day but here is one I've just found again which I hadn't read for years. It's by Francis Thompson.
o world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible we touch thee,
O world unknowable we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air -
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!-
The drift of pinions, would we harken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places:-
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry:- and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry, - clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

[tiphanism]

*flail* how lovely. And how true. Thankyou.