Poetic breaks

The silvery notes of dreams
Cascade through my consciousness.
Drifting dreamscapes
and flitting fantasies,
Tumble down,
Splish splash
Into the bottomless pool.

Kath Liu, 2008

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

I thought I'd do something a little different today and read one of my favourite poems for you. It's called Dover Beach and is written by Matthew Arnold in 1867 - I discovered it when I read Ian McEwan's Saturday. I love the way it sounds and although there are several great recordings of it already on Youtube, I wanted to add my own. Besides, it would be lazy to pinch someone else's recording!

I hope you enjoy!




DOVER BEACH

By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
[1867]

Embers

This is a poem in progress. Comments and feedback most appreciated...

Embers

The embers of the year
Glow warmly in my calendar.
September, November, December,
October - it's over.
Approaching ends,
The final act,
The last regrets...
Another year draws to a close.

Kathryn Lee 06/10/08

That's just brilliant.

I've been reading Carol Ann Duffy's "The World's Wife" for one of my papers recently and came across what I believe to be my Poem of the Year. "The World's Wife" is a series of poems written from the perspectives of the female counterparts to a wide variety of famous and infamous male personages. It's a great read, thoroughly enjoyable, however my absolute favourite and one that has to be shared is this one.

Mrs Icarus

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, grade A pillock.


Ah the irreverence!! I adore it.