POETRY EXCERPTS FOR TODAY

POETRY EXCERPTS FOR TODAY

This is my selection of excerpts from the world of writing. The first was a favorite of my father in law, Hollis Barnett. Having watched pelicans feed it makes sense.

Limericks

A wonderful bird is the pelican. His mouth can hold more then his belican;

He takes in his beak enough food for a week and I’m damned if I know how the helican

PELCIAN

Jabberwocky

One of the stanza's from Carroll's poem has always come to mind when I am about to engage in a conversation about a needed communication.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

The time has come, the Walrus said to talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax Of cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.

Lewis Carroll

Poetry

The following is often misquoted. Usually people talk about "gilding the lily" which is not what Shakespeare wrote, but what he did write applies to so much of communication. Too often there are too many words. To many boring words. So here's good advice:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice or add another hue unto the rainbow or with taper light to seek the beauteous eyes of heaven to garnish is wasteful and ridiculous excess

Wm Shakespeare King John

This stanza from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner describes so well the feeling of fear we can have especially when we were children. Whistling past the grave yard we move quickly along. It also describes a guilty conscience.

Like one on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turn’d round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have always been moved by this short poem by Wheelock. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep because of something that keeps going around in my mind I think of this poem:

The Black Panther

There is a panther caged within my breast, But what his name, there is no breast shall know Save mine,

Nor what it is that drives him so backward and forward, in relentless quest That silent rage, baffled, but unsuppressed,

The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go Over my body’s prison to and fro Trying the walls forever, without rest

All day I feed him with my living heart, But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars The inexorable frenzy re-awakes; His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars; The eternal passion stretches me apart, And I lie silent but my body shakes

John Hall Weelock

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