1/4/06
 Acceptance
by Robert Lee Frost
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.' 

Edited 164 times. Last edit at 01/04/06 03:25AM by lg.

The Lost Bee

(firing weapons in a prolonged fusillade,
attacking militants left fifty-eight dead.)

In the hills, a boy drove a donkey cart;
women carried bundles of sticks on their heads;
a dog's bark echoed off the ivory rock;
a lost bee, blood-sticky little almsman,
bathed in a water trough. If every man has a soul,
these had fled or were fermenting.
Free at least from all pain,
the stunt figures lay like rag dolls.
Broken eyeglasses, a tangled earring,
tawny footprints leading nowhere deep,
deep inside the birth colonnade:
the lowing heifer tugged to the altar two thousand
years ago now wore a sad human face.
Why must God always side with the brave?

I Ain't Marchin' Anymore

Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore

For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all

For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers And so many others
But I ain't marchin' anymore

For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore

For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore

Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No I ain't marchin' any more

--Phil Ochs

What's the meaning of this? It's just a group of poems I've discovered while browsing and researching topics for this website. Rather than leaving the old poems on the thread, I will post a list of them here with links to each.

 DATE         TITLE            AUTHOR               LINK 

9/29/05 The Man He Killed--Thomas Hardy [www.cs.rice.edu]
9/30/05 anyone lived in a pretty how town--ee cummings [www.americanpoems.com]

10/1/05 Wild Strawberries--Robert Graves [www.cs.rice.edu]
10/2/05 If--Rudyard Kipling [www.emule.com]
10/3/05 We Know This Much--Sappho [www.emule.com]
10/4/05 October--Robert Frost [www.emule.com]
10/5/05 Loss and Gain--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [www.emule.com]
10/6/05 Remember--Christina Rossetti [www.emule.com]
10/7/05 Ebb Tide--Sarah Teasdale [www.emule.com]
10/8/05 Ode On a Grecian Urn--John Keats [www.emule.com]
10/9/05 Night Journey--Theodore Roethke [gawow.com]
10/10/05 The Coming of Light--Mark Strand [www.poets.org]
10/11/05 Any Time--W.S. Merwin [www.poemhunter.com]
10/12/05 A Madrigal--Paul Laurence Dunbar [www.emule.com]
10/13/05 Cinema Screen--A.S.J. Tessimond [www.poemhunter.com]
10/14/05 The Light of Other Days--Thomas Moore [www.bartleby.com]
10/15/05 To a Cat--Algernon Charles Swinburne [eir.library.utoronto.ca]
10/16/05 Lost in the Forest--Pablo Neruda [www.poemhunter.com]
10/17/05 Meditatio--Ezra Pound [www.emule.com]
10/18/05 Private Devotion--Phebe Hinsdale Brown [www.bartleby.com]
10/19/05 Chief Seattle's Reply--Chief Sealth [www.cs.rice.edu]
10/20/05 The Perch--Galway Kinnell [www.english.uiuc.edu]
10/21/05 Funeral Blues--W.H. Auden [www.cs.rice.edu]
10/22/05 The New Life--Witter Bynner [www.poemhunter.com]
10/23/05 Camomile Tea--Katherine Mansfield [www.emule.com]
10/24/05 To Hannah--Henry Lawson [eir.library.utoronto.ca]
10/25/05 Time Enough--Ella Wheeler Wilcox [www.farid-hajji.net]
10/26/05 The Windhover--Gerard Manley Hopkings [www.cs.rice.edu]
10/27/05 She Walks in Beauty--George Gordon, Lord Byron [www.emule.com]
10/28/05 Chicago--Carl Sandburg [www.cs.rice.edu]
10/29/05 Rain--Edward Thomas [www.emule.com]
10/30/05 Still I Rise--Maya Angelou [www.poemhunter.com]
10/31/05 Spririts of the Dead--Edgar Allen Poe [www.emule.com]

11/1/05 Lament--Edna St. Vincent Millay [www.poemhunter.com]
11/2/05 Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man--Ogden Nash [www.cs.rice.edu]
11/3/05 Our Bird Aegis--Ray A. Young Bear [www.uiowa.edu]
11/4/05 Homework--Allen Ginsberg [www.poemhunter.com]
11/5/05 Politics--William Butler Yeats [www.emule.com]
11/6/05 Love Lies Sleeping--Elizabeth Bishop [www.poemhunter.com]
11/7/05 The Lady's Yes--Elizabeth Barrett Browning [www.emule.com]
11/8/05 Money--William Henry Davies [www.poemhunter.com]
11/9/05 When Dacey Rode the Mule--A.B. Banjo Paterson [www.bushverse.com]
11/10/05 The Owl--Edward Thomas [www.edwardthomas.co.uk]
11/11/05 Dirge for Two Veterans--Walt Whitman [www.vfwpost1503.org]
11/12/05 Poetry--Pablo Neruda [www.poemhunter.com]
11/13/05 Dust--Rupert Brooke [www.cs.rice.edu]
11/14/05 At Midnight--Sara Teasdale [www.emule.com]
11/15/05 I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died--Emily Dickinson [www.emule.com]
11/16/05 A Lost Chord--Adelaide Procter [www.cs.rice.edu]
11/17/05 The Borders--Sharon Olds [www.poemhunter.com]
11/18/05 A Soliloquy Of The Full Moon, She Being In A Mad Passion--S.T. Coleridge [www.emule.com]
11/19/05 She Was a Phantom of Delight--William Wordsworth [www.emule.com]
11/20/05 Thesaurus--Billy Collins [www.poemhunter.com]
11/21/05 Those Winter Sundays--Robert Hayden [www.english.uiuc.edu]
11/22/05 More and More--Margaret Atwood [www.poemhunter.com]
11/23/05 Inscription for My Little Son's Silver Plate--Eugene Field [www.poemhunter.com]
11/24/05 Sonnet 41--Elizabeth Barrett Browning [www.amherst.edu]
11/25/05 Autumn Day--Anne Ridler [www.cs.rice.edu]
11/26/05 November 1968--Adrienne Rich [www.poemhunter.com]
11/27/05 On Quitting--Edgar Guest [eir.library.utoronto.ca]
11/28/05 For You, You--Louis Dudek [www.library.utoronto.ca]
11/29/05 The Invaders--A.D. Hope [www.cs.rice.edu]
11/30/05 The Bait--John Donne [www.cs.rice.edu]

12/1/05 Invictus--William Henley [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/2/05 The Wild Iris--Louise Gluck [www.poemhunter.com]
12/3/05 To a Young Poet--R.S. Thomas [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/4/05 Twenty Tons of TNT--Michael Flanders [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/5/05 Digging--Seamus Heaney [www.poemhunter.com]
12/6/05 At the Cancer Clinic--Ted Kooser [www.npr.org]
12/7/05 Poem for Retrospection--Jane Gibian [australia.poetryinternational.org]
12/8/05 Warning--Jenny Joseph [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/9/05 London--William Blake [www.emule.com]
12/10/05 Pink Dominoes--Rudyard Kipling [www.poemhunter.com]
12/11/05 Sonnet XIX (on his blindness) John Milton [rpo.library.utoronto.ca]
12/12/05 Black Rook in Rainy Weather--Sylvia Plath [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/13/05 Hidden Things--Constantine P. Cavafy [www.armory.com]
12/14/05 The Planet on the Table--Wallace Stevens [www.poemhunter.com]
12/15/05 Haiku--Yosa Buson [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/16/05 Halcyon Days--Edwin M. Robinson [www.bartleby.com]
12/17/05 Being Boring--Wendy Cope [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/18/05 Naming the Stars--Joyce Sutphen [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/19/05 Now Winter Nights Enlarge--Thomas Campion [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/20/05 For the Sleepwalkers--Edward Hirsch [www.cswnet.com]
12/21/05 My Last Duchess--Robert Browning [www.emule.com]
12/22/05 Against Winter--Charles Simic [www.americanpoems.com]
12/23/05 Otherwise--Jane Kenyon [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/24/05 The Cremation of Sam McGee--Robert Service [www.themediadrome.com]
12/25/05 Christmas Bells--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [www.potw.org]
12/26/05 Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening--Robert Frost [www.emule.com]
12/27/05 Hunters in the Snow--William Carlos Williams [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/28/05 Influence--Emma Lazarus [www.sonnets.org]
12/29/05 Geometry--Rita Dove [www.cs.rice.edu]
12/30/05 Write It On Your Heart--Ralph Waldo Emerson [www.allspirit.co.uk]
12/31/05 Auld Lang Syne--Robert Burns [www.emule.com]

1/1/06 Dream-Pedlary--Thomas Lovell Beddoes [www.cs.rice.edu]
1/2/06 No Road--Philip Larkin [www.cs.rice.edu]
1/3/06 Song of the Builders--Mary Oliver [www.poemhunter.com]
1/4/06 Acceptance--Robert Frost [www.emule.com]



Edited 117 times. Last edit at 01/04/06 02:23AM by lg.

Please feel free to comment on any of the daily poems.

I was personally very happy to find Mark Strand's poem, "The Coming of Light". The more I read of his work, the more I like it. I guess I'll have to buy one of his books.


Les

The poem by Ogden Nash, is a bit of a contrast to the type of strictly rhythmic poem we usually associate with him.

Les

Surely, Les, strictly rhythmic is the exception with Ogden Nash, and this one (which is good fun) is typical of the style for which he became famous.

Ian, we must have read different poems to come to our conclusions. The odd length of lines here is not typical of the works I've read by Nash. Compare the entries at this website: [www.cs.rice.edu]


Les

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

-- Ogden Nash



Edited 2 times. Last edit at 11/02/05 06:50AM by lg.

Thanks to Joseph Torelli for his suggestion of Walt Whitman's poem on 11/11 Veteran's Day here in he U.S. and remembrance day in many parts of the world.


Les

Les:

Thank you for posting Whitman's fine tribute.

To veterans from every country who fought against tyranny, please accept my heartfelt "Thank You."

JoeT

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

..They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
Or out of earth, or in the height,
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
Or two that pass, in light, to light..

And they will know - poor fools, they'll know!
One moment, what it is to love.


Passionate poem, Les. This is one that I would love to hear James Earl Jones read aloud.

Marty

Les:

Good choice. "Those Winter Sundays" has always struck a chord with me.

JoeT

Thanks, Joe, I'm partial to the Billy Collins' poem before this one.


Les

Les,

Just curious about the process. How does it take 97 edits to post 'Those Winter Sundays'? There must be a better way!

Ian

Ian, the better way would probably be to hide the times edited. But that's Aaron and Kevin's problem to unravel.

Les

You'll notice that the list of poems has only 65 edits, the difference lies in trying to align the title with the poem and indent poems which have been formatted with indentations.


Les

I think the times edited function serves a worthwhile purpose in the discussion threads, Les. It's not a problem. What puzzles me here is that 'Those Winter Sundays' appears a straightforward poem to post. No fancy formatting. Just a simple cut and paste, with maybe a typo or two in the source to correct. No laborious editing required. So are you saying that the times edited function malfunctions in this particular thread?

>So are you saying that the times edited function malfunctions in this particular thread?


Ian, have you not read any of the other "poems of the day"? Each day I delete, or "edit" one, and post another. In all some 55 poems have been posted in the same slot. That's averaging about 2 edits per poem. I don't believe that's excessive.



Les

Certainly not excessive, Les. I was just puzzled why this particular poem took 97 edits. I get it now. It wasn't this particular poem. It's the cumulative total.

Ian

So enjoyed reading "Christmas Bells" by Longfellow. Had never read it before. A classic worth keeping and one I would like to memorize. Thanks for posting it.

Marty