Tag: Poetry
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The salting sun
Anybody searching Teignmouth for the ghost of John Keats is following a well-trodden path. Charles Causley wrote a poem inspired by his visit in the 1950s: Keats at Teignmouth Spring, 1818 By the wild sea-wall I wandered Blinded by the salting sun, While the sulky Channel thundered Like an old Trafalgar gun. And I watched…
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894). Portrait by Girolamo Nerli, 1892. * * * * * I’ve recently finished reading Claire Harman’s thoughtful and affectionate biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. He seems to have been an unusually likeable person as writers go, though perhaps best appreciated at a distance. As a child I found Treasure…
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Tis the yeares midnight…
‘Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes, Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmasks, The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes; The worlds whole sap is shrunk…’ From A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day: being the shortest day, by John Donne – – – – …
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Sun god
On Sunday morning I couldn’t sleep – I got up to watch the sunrise and decided to go for a walk after breakfast. I left the house before 9 o’clock and went very quietly down to the park. Tom told me on Friday that a buzzard roosts in the tree on the island – I’ve…
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Theodore Roethke
BIG WIND by Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963) Where were the greenhouses going, Lunging into the lashing Wind driving water So far down the river All the faucets stopped?— So we drained the manure-machine For the steam plant, Pumping the stale mixture Into the rusty boilers, Watching the pressure gauge Waver over to red, As…
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Little Trotty Wagtail
LITTLE TROTTY WAGTAIL by John Clare (1793-1864) Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain, And tittering, tottering sideways he neer got straight again, He stooped to get a worm, and looked up to get a fly, And then he flew away ere his feathers they were dry. Little trotty wagtail, he waddled in the…