Faults
Sarah Teasdale

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, --
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.

Enough
Sarah Teasdale

It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.

I do not hope to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea --
It is enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.

 

Video Overnight Thread- Northern Lights from space station

Video Overnight Thread- Northern Lights from space station

Sonnet XL: Severed Selves
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Two separate divided silences,
Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:—
Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.

My Kitchen Window

What a difference a week makes.

Look at the state of my chair, Purdey Puddy Cat.

Have A Nice Day
Spike Milligan

'Help, help, ' said a man. 'I'm drowning.'
'Hang on, ' said a man from the shore.
'Help, help, ' said the man. 'I'm not clowning.'
'Yes, I know, I heard you before.
Be patient dear man who is drowning,
You, see I've got a disease.
I'm waiting for a Doctor J. Browning.
So do be patient please.'
'How long, ' said the man who was drowning.
'Will it take for the Doc to arrive? '
'Not very long, ' said the man with the disease.
'Till then try staying alive.'
'Very well, ' said the man who was drowning.
'I'll try and stay afloat.
By reciting the poems of Browning
And other things he wrote.'
'Help, help, ' said the man with the disease,
'I suddenly feel quite ill.'
'Keep calm.' said the man who was drowning,
' Breathe deeply and lie quite still.'
'Oh dear, ' said the man with the awful disease.
'I think I'm going to die.'
'Farewell, ' said the man who was drowning.
Said the man with the disease, 'goodbye.'
So the man who was drowning, drownded
And the man with the disease past away.
But apart from that,
And a fire in my flat,
It's been a very nice day.

The Cockney Amorist
John Betjeman

Oh when my love, my darling,
You’ve left me here alone,
I’ll walk the streets of London
Which once seemed all our own.

The vast suburban churches
Together we have found:
The ones which smelt of gaslight
The ones in incense drown’d;
I’ll use them now for praying in
And not for looking round.

No more the Hackney Empire
Shall find us in its stalls
When on the limelit crooner
The thankful curtain falls,
And soft electric lamplight
Reveals the gilded walls.

I will not go to Finsbury Park
The putting course to see
Nor cross the crowded High Road
To Williamsons’ to tea,
For these and all the other things
Were part of you and me.

I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can’t make out
Is why since you have left me
I’m somehow still about.

Little Whale Song
Ted Hughes
(for Charles Causley)

What do they think of themselves
With their global brains -
The tide-power voltage illumination
Of those brains? Their x-ray all-dimension
Grasp of this world’s structures, their brains budded
Clone replicas of the electron world
Lit and re-imagining the world
Perfectly tuned receivers and perceivers,
Each one a whole tremulous world
Feeling through the world? What
Do they make of each other?
"We are beautiful. We stir
Our self-colour in the pot of colours
Which is the world. At each
Tail-stroke we deepen
Our being into the world’s lit substance,
And our joy into the world’s
Spinning bliss, and our peace
Into the world’s floating, plumed peace."
Their body-tons, echo-chambered,
Amplify the whisper
Of currents and airs, of sea-peoples
And planetary manoeuvres,
Of seasons, of shores, and of their own
Moon-lifted incantation, as they dance
Through the original Earth-drama
In which they perform, as from the beginning.
The Royal House.
The loftiest, spermiest
Passions, the most exquisite pleasures,
The noblest characters, the most god-like
Oceanic presence and poise --
The most terrible fall.

We Three Kings

When We Were Young

April Rise
Laurie Lee

If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

If ever I heard blessing it is there
Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are
Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound
Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates,
The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones,
While white as water by the lake a girl
Swims her green hand among the gathered swans.

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick,
Dropping small flames to light the candled grass;
Now, as my low blood scales its second chance,
If ever world were blessed, now it is.

To Electra
Robert Herrick

I dare not ask a kiss,
I dare not beg a smile;
Lest having that, or this,
I might grow proud the while.

No, no, the utmost share
Of my desire shall be,
Only to kiss that air
That lately kissed thee,