A poem a day

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Sergeant-Major Money
BY ROBERT GRAVES

It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,
So the story is as true as the telling is frank.
They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,
Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.

'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,
An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;
So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,
And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.

His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty
That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;
But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets
The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits.

The subalterns went easy, as was only natural
With a terror like Money driving the machine,
Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,
Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.

Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;
We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;
Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving
In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

When I'm Killed
by Robert Graves


When I’m killed, don’t think of me
Buried there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as in Zion think of me
With the Intolerable Good.
And there’s one thing that I know well,
I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!

So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me,
Walking the dim corridor;
In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me,
Or you must wait for evermore.
You’ll find me buried, living-dead
In these verses that you’ve read.

So when I’m killed, don’t mourn for me,
Shot, poor lad, so bold and young,
Killed and gone — don’t mourn for me.
On your lips my life is hung:
O friends and lovers, you can save
Your playfellow from the grave.

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Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, a suburb of London. Graves was known as a poet, lecturer and novelist. He was also known as a classicist and a mythographer. Perhaps his first known and revered poems were the poems Groves wrote behind the lines in World War One. He later became known as one of the most superb English language 'Love' poets. He then became recognised as one of the finest love poets writing in the English language.

Members of the poetry, novel writing, historian, and classical scholarly community often feel indebted to the man and his works. Robert Graves was born into an interesting time in history. He actually saw Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession at the age of two or three. His family was quite patriotic, educated, strict and upper middle class.He saw his father as an authoritarian. He was not liked by his peers in school, nor did he care much for them. He attended British public school. He feared most of his Masters at the school. When he did seek out company, it was of the same sex and his relationships were clearly same sex in orientation.

Although he had a scholarship secured in the classics at Oxford, he escaped his childhood and Father through leaving for the Great War. Graves married twice, once to Nancy Nicholson, and they had four children, and his second marriage to Beryl Pritchard brought forth four more children. Graves married Nancy Nicholson before the war.
Graves' own poetry and prose is the best source for a description of his war experiences. It suffices to say that Graves never found what he was looking for leaving for war, but rather, terror and madness in the war. He was wounded, left for dead and pronounced dead by his surgeon in the field and his commanding officer in a telegram to his parents but subsequently recovered to read the report of his own demise in The Times. He amazingly recovered and was given home service for the rest of the war.However, like many of his fellow soldiers who were disabled by war, he could not get over the guilt he had leaving the other soldiers to fight without him. Somehow, he insisted he be posted back to the front lines. The military surgeon threatened him with court marshall if he didn’t get off the front. Graves returned to England trained troops, while maintaining contact with his poet friends behind the lines. In this way he was able to save one friend from court martial after he published an antiwar manifesto.

Though their relationship was initially happy and productive (Nancy and Robert worked on a children's book together), the stress of family life, little money and Robert's continual shell-shocked condition caused them troubles. Laura Ridding arriving on the scene finished off their marriage.Laura Riding and Robert Graves' relationship was immensely influential upon both of their lives and careers. After Riding's arrival in England, she began to exert an influence on more than just Graves' writing. Following a sequence of events so crazy that they seem more suitable to fiction than reality (including, for example, Laura Riding leaping from a third floor window and breaking her pelvic bone in three places), Graves abandoned his family and moved with Riding from England to Spain. The events of this period were so momentous that all three biographers that have covered his story, dedicate a large part of their studies to this couple.It's easy to vilify Laura Riding. Graves was but one victim of her controlling personality and her ambition. But then, Graves had his victims too. What cannot be questioned is the value of some of the work that they did together. Much of it remains important to both literary history as well as to scholarship.

In 1943 Robert Graves received the news that his son, David, was missing in action. While he and Nancy held out hope that he would be found alive or that he might have been taken prisoner, later reports suggested otherwise. David, Robert and Nancy learned, had been shot while attempting to single-handedly take out a well-defended enemy position. The chances that he had survived were not good.By 1946 as England and Europe began to survey its post-War state, Graves managed to secure transport for his family back to Majorca. Once safely back there, then other than annual trips to England, occasional visits to the continent and even rarer trips to America, the Graves' made Deya their home for good. After 1948 and the publication of The White Goddess, as Graves' fame and celebrity grew, Graves began a period of discovering muses who provided him with a flesh-and-blood manifestation of his poetic and mythic muse. Some of these relationships were short, others seemed largely innocent and more flirtatious than serious or deeply poetic; however, four were, without doubt, significant to Graves' life and, subsequently, to his work.

Graves' first muse after Nancy Nicholson, Laura Riding and Beryl Graves, the first after he his White Goddess theories, was Judith Bledsoe. Judith was a naïve young girl who found in the older Graves something of a father figure Graves found in her the embodiment of the White Goddess.Graves had many celebrity friends including film stars like Ava Gardner and Ingrid Bergman, fellow writers like T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. Robert Graves ceased writing after his 80th birthday and his celebrity status slowly began to fade. However, where his own career stopped, the critical and academic industry was just beginning. He died in 1985 in Deja, a Majorcan village that he had moved to and lived in since 1929.

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Graves lived 1895 until 1985. Myself, Ive never read a poem he wrote that was not great or at least very fine!
His influence on poetry was massive IMHO.-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Good Knight In Prison
---------------------------------by William Morris

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.

Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Courage
------------------------------ by Robert William Service

Today I opened wide my eyes,
And stared with wonder and surprise,
To see beneath November skies
An apple blossom peer;
Upon a branch as bleak as night
It gleamed exultant on my sight,
A fairy beacon burning bright
Of hope and cheer.

"Alas!" said I, "poor foolish thing,
Have you mistaken this for Spring?
Behold, the thrush has taken wing,
And Winter's near."
Serene it seemed to lift its head:
"The Winter's wrath I do not dread,
Because I am," it proudly said,
"A Pioneer.

"Some apple blossom must be first,
With beauty's urgency to burst
Into a world for joy athirst,
And so I dare;
And I shall see what none shall see -
December skies gloom over me,
And mock them with my April glee,
And fearless fare.

"And I shall hear what none shall hear -
The hardy robin piping clear,
The Storm King gallop dark and drear
Across the sky;
And I shall know what none shall know -
The silent kisses of the snow,
The Christmas candles' silver glow,
Before I die.

"Then from your frost-gemmed window pane
One morning you will look in vain,
My smile of delicate disdain
No more to see;
But though I pass before my time,
And perish in the grale and grime,
Maybe you'll have a little rhyme
To spare for me."

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So much wisdom in this poem.... -Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Young Soldier
-------------------------------by Wilfred Owen

It is not death
Without hereafter
To one in dearth
Of life and its laughter,

Nor the sweet murder
Dealt slow and even
Unto the martyr
Smiling at heaven:

It is the smile
Faint as a (waning) myth,
Faint, and exceeding small
On a boy's murdered mouth.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Selected Poems and Prose

by- Ernest Dowson



Amantium Irae

WHEN this, our rose, is faded,
And these, our days, are done,
In lands profoundly shaded
From tempest and from sun:
Ah, once more come together,
Shall we forgive the past,
And safe from worldly weather
Possess our souls at last?

Or in our place of shadows
Shall still we stretch an hand
To green, remembered meadows,
Of that old pleasant land?
And vainly there foregathered,
Shall we regret the sun?
The rose of love ungathered?
The bay, we have not won?

Ah, child! the world’s dark marges
May lead to Nevermore,
The stately funeral barges
Sail for an unknown shore,
And love we vow tomorrow,
And pride we serve today:
What if they both should borrow
Sad hues of yesterday?

Our pride! Ah, should we miss it,
Or will it serve at last?
Our anger, if we kiss it,
Is like a sorrow past.
While roses deck the garden,
While yet the sun is high,
Doff sorry pride for pardon,
Or ever love go by.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Dream Within A Dream
------- by Edgar Allan Poe


Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Every day I bear a burden

----------------------------------------by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi




Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose:
I bear the discomfort of cold and December's snow in hope of spring.
Before the fattener-up of all who are lean, I drag this so emaciated body;
Though they expel me from two hundred cities, I bear it for the sake of the love of a prince;
Though my shop and house be laid waste, I bear it in fidelity to a tulip bed.
God's love is a very strong fortress; I carry my soul's baggage inside a fortress.
I bear the arrogance of every stonehearted stranger for the sake of a friend, of one long-suffering;
For the sake of his ruby I dig out mountains and mine; for the sake of that rose-laden one I endure a thorn.
For the sake of those two intoxicating eyes of his, like the intoxicated I endure crop sickness;
For the sake of a quarry not to be contained in a snare, I spread out the snare and decoy of the hunter.
He said, "Will you bear this sorrow till the Resurrection?" Yes, Friend, I bear it, I bear it.
My breast is the Cave and Shams-e Tabrizi is the Companion of the Cave

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

I lived from 1207-1273. I was from Afghanistan, and am in the Asian category.

My influences include Shams al-Din Tabrizi

Jalal al-Din Rumi was born on September 30, 1207 in Balkh (Afghanistan). His father Baha' Walad was descended from the first caliph Abu Bakr and was influenced by the ideas of Ahmad Ghazali, brother of the famous philosopher. Baha' Walad's sermons were published and still exist as Divine Sciences (Ma'arif). He fled the Mongols with his son in 1219, and it was reported that at Nishapur young Rumi met 'Attar, who gave him a copy of his Book of Mysteries (Asrar-nama). After a pilgrimage to Mecca and other travels, the family went to Rum (Anatolia). Baha' Walad was given an important teaching position in the capital at Konya (Iconium) in 1228 by Seljuk king 'Ala' al-Din Kayqubad (r. 1219-1236) and his vizier Mu'in al-Din. Rumi married and had a son, who later wrote his biography. In 1231 Rumi succeeded his late father as a religious teacher. His father's friend Burhan al-Din arrived and for nine years taught Rumi Sufism. Rumi probably met the philosopher ibn al-Arabi at Damascus.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Pain of Earth
----------------------- by George William Russell

DOES the earth grow grey with grief
For her hero darling fled?
Though her vales let fall no leaf,
In our hearts her tears are shed.


Still the stars laugh on above:
Not to them her grief is said;
Mourning for her hero love
In our hearts the tears are shed.


We her children mourn for him,
Mourn the elder hero dead;
In the twilight grey and dim
In our hearts the tears are shed.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

To Outer Nature
--------------------------- by Thomas Hardy


SHOW thee as I thought thee
When I early sought thee,
Omen-scouting,
All undoubting
Love alone had wrought thee--

Wrought thee for my pleasure,
Planned thee as a measure
For expounding
And resounding
Glad things that men treasure.

O for but a moment
Of that old endowment--
Light to gaily
See thy daily
Irisиd embowment!

But such readorning
Time forbids with scorning--
Makes me see things
Cease to be things
They were in my morning.

Fad'st thou, glow-forsaken,
Darkness-overtaken!
Thy first sweetness,
Radiance, meetness,
None shall reawaken.

Why not sempiternal
Thou and I? Our vernal
Brightness keeping,
Time outleaping;
Passed the hodiernal!

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

TO THE DIVINE SPIRIT

by: John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895)




SPIRIT that shaped the formless chaos,
Breath that stirred the sluggish deep,
When the primal crude creation
Started from its dateless sleep;
Spirit that heaved the granite mountains
From the central fiery wells,
Breath that drew the rolling rivers
From the welkin's dewy cells,
Spirit of motion,
Earth and ocean
Moulding into various life,
Within, without us,
And round about us
Weaving all in friendly strife:
Come, O come, thou heavenly guest,
Shape a new world within my breast!

Spirit that taught the holy fathers
Wandering through the desert drear,
To know and feel, through myriad marchings,
One eternal presence near.
Breath that touched the Hebrew prophets'
Lips with words of wingèd fire,
Through the dubious gloom of ages,
Kindling hope and high desire;
Spirit revealing
To pure feeling,
In the inward parts of man,
Fitful-shining
Dim-divining
Vast foreshadowings of Thy plan;
Come, O come, thou prophet guest,
Watch and wait within my breast!

Spirit that o'er Thine own Messiah
Hovered like a brooding dove,
When Earth's haughty lords he conquered,
By the peaceful march of love.
Breath that hushed loud-vaunting Caesars,
And in triumph yoked to Thee
Iron Rome, and savage Scythia,
Bonded brethren and the free.
Spirit of union,
And communion
Of devoted heart with heart,
Pure and holy,
Sure and slowly
Working out thy boastless part:
Come, thou calmly-conquering guest,
Rule and reign within my breast!

Spirit that, when free-thoughted Europe
With the triple-crowned despot strove,
In the gusty Saxon's spirit
Thy soul-stirring music wove;
Then when pride's piled architecture
At a poor monk's truthful word
Crashing fell, and thrones were shaken
At the whisper of the Lord.
Spirit deep-lurking,
Secret-working
Weaver of strange circumstance,
All whose doing
Is rise or ruin
Named by shallow mortals chance;
Come, let fruitful deeds attest
Thy plastic virtue, in my breast!

Spirit, that sway'st the will of mortals,
Every wish, and every hope,
Shaping to Thy forethought purpose
All their striving, all their scope.
Central tide that heavest onward
Wave and wavelet, surge and spray,
Making wrath of man to praise Thee,
And his pride to pave Thy way:
Spirit that workest,
Where thou lurkest,
Death from life, and day from night,
Peace from warring,
And from jarring,
Songs of triumph and delight;
Come, O come, Thou heavenly guest,
Work all Thy will within my breast!



"To the Divine Spirit" is reprinted from The Selected Poems of John Stuart Blackie.
Ed. Archibald Stodart Walker. London: John Macqueen, 1896

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A deep one and a dark one that impressed me greatly.--Tyr
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De Profundis

--------------------------------- by Georg Trakl


There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Prayer at Sunrise


James Weldon Johnson, 1871 - 1928
.



Now thou art risen, and thy day begun.
How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face,
As up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race!
How darkness chases darkness to the west,
As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest!
For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might,
In hours of darkest gloom there is no night.
Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight,
And through each break thou sendest down thy light.

O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length.
Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

To the Reader of These Sonnets
---------------------------------------- by Michael Drayton


Into these Loves who but for Passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by
And seek elsewhere, in turning other books,
Which better may his labor satisfy.
No far-fetch'd sigh shall ever wound my breast,
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring,
Nor in Ah me's my whining sonnets drest;
A libertine, fantasticly I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change,
And as thus to variety inclin'd,
So in all humours sportively I range.
My Muse is rightly of the English strain,
That cannot long one fashion entertain.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Lost Angel
-------------------------------------------- by Ellis Parker Butler


When first we met she seemed so white
I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
To please her,
And insolence I feared she’d deem
To squeeze her;
Nor did I dare for that same why
To kiss her,
Lest, shocked, she’d cause my eager eye
To miss her.
I sickened thinking of some way
To win her,
When lo! she asked me, one fine day,
To dinner!

Twas thus that made of common flesh
I found her,
And in a mortal lover’s mesh
I wound her.
Embraces, kisses, loving looks
I gave her,
And buying bon-bons, flowers and books,
I save her;
For her few honest, human taints
I love her,
Nor would I change for all the saints
Above her
Those eyes, that little face, that so
Endear her,
And all the human joy I know
When near her;
And I am glad, when to my breast
I press her,
She’s just a woman, like the rest,
God bless her!
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"And I am glad, when to my breast
I press her,
She’s just a woman, like the rest,
God bless her!"

When you so dearly love your wife the--"like all the rest"-- never applies.
To find that treasure, that person is a wonderful blessing. I now know...---Tyr