Would You Return
Edmund Blunden

Poppies never brighter shone, and never sweeter smelled the hay,
The town with its steeples looked made of silver all the way,
Down in the streamy valley like a treasure that town lay.

Who was not with me there? who in that crystal air
Hastened not beside me on the springy grass did not stare
Miles ahead where those bright tops of mansioned hope were gems aflare?

Come then, know again this same knoll we paused upon,
These poplars with their flashing wind, this singing rill, this silent stone-
The sun pale peering at the shag-haired storm that swooped on Avalon.

GIFSoup

The Turkish Trench Dog
Geoffrey Dearmer

Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near
The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars
Silvered the curving parapet, and clear
Cloud-latticed beams o'erflecked the land with bars;
I, crouching, lay between
Tense-listening armies peering through the night,
Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen.
Here in dim-shadowed light
I saw him, as a sudden movement turned
His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned
A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found
My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise
He chained me with those unrelenting eyes,
That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound
In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws
And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws.
Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept--
That moment had my swift revolver leapt--
But terror seized me, terror born of shame
Brought flooding revelation. For he came
As one who offers comradeship deserved,
An open ally of the human race,
And sniffling at my prostrate form unnerved
He licked my face!

Envoi
P B H Lyon

Earth puts her colours by,
And veils her in one whispering cloak of shadow;
Green goes from the meadow;
Red leaves and flowers and shining pools are shrouded;
A few stars sail upon a windy sky,
And the moon is clouded.

The delicate music, traced
In and out of the soft lights and the laughter,
Is hushed, round ledge and rafter
The last faint echoes into silence creeping:
The harp is mute, the violins encased,
And the singers sleeping.

So, now my songs are done,
Leave me to night awhile and the starlight gleaming,
To silence and sweet dreaming,
Here where no music calls, no beauty shakes me;
Till in my heart the birds sing to the sun
And the new dawn wakes me.

One of my green-eyed monsters!

aka, 'Pretty Purdey Puddy Cat'
T'other one has been exploring up the chimney!
No need to send children up there, use a cat!

It's the 'glorious twelfth' and my birthday.
The present that I would most like now is...
a clear night sky, so that I can for once see
the Perseid meteor shower,
at it's best from tonight till the 22nd.

Hiding this here...
Premonition 21-06-2013
One to twenty may be plenty
but not enough for me
Keep it going,
Keep on showing,
car insanity.

Faint Music
Walter de la Mare

The meteor's arc of quiet; a voiceless rain;
The mist's mute communing with a stagnant moat;
The sigh of a flower that has neglected lain;
That bell's unuttered note:

A hidden self rebels, its slumber broken;
Love secret as crystal forms within the womb;
The heart may as faithfully beat, the vow unspoken;
All sounds to silence come.

My new girls...

Errata...
My girls have developed testicles. They are now officially Ladyboys!

To His Mistress in Absence
Torquato Tasso (1544-95)

Far from thy dearest self, the scope
Of all my aims,
I waste in secret flames;
And only live because I hope.

O when will Fate restore
The joys, in whose bright fire
My expectation shall expire,
That I may live because I hope no more.

I was there.

Dawn
Ivor Gurney - WW1 poet

Dawn came not surprising, but later widened
To great space and a sea of many colours
With slate and pink and blue above the frightened
Mud fields soiled and heavy with War's colours-
And the guns thumped and threatened,
While the bacon frizzled, and the warm incense heightened,
Drifting in bays and dugouts slowly lightened.
First light bringing the thought what familiar star
There was, of town, farm, cottage, over there, over yonder,
And by day before duty settled awhile to
A companionship of good talk, forgetting night's woe.