Category Archive: Poetry
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Portrait of Wordsworth by Benjamin Haydon
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem…
Continue Reading →Henry Lawson
(17 June 1867 to 2 September 1922) “The minstrel of the people.” So said Prime Minister Billy Hughes at Lawson’s internment (he was the first Australian writer to get a State funeral) His output was large but uneven – he could be both romantic and realist, and his wonderful verse ranged from the lyrical to invective. He was a bit of a rogue, and spent much time in prison and the alcoholic wards of hospitals. His neat, clean, confident prose and terrific rhyming ballads and rolling, sonorous songs extolled the Australian landscape, town (which he preferred) and country. Take, for example, The Rush…
Continue Reading →The Night of the Murdered Poets
August 12th: Like those who brook no argument, Sinning, call others to repent And lash the ones who speak their mind, Put-out eyes of the hopeless blind, So they shout-down common verse And let the imp of the perverse, Shred the words still warm on lips: Let books slip from fingertips. Hating all who think wrong things Their toxic torment a gift which brings More torture still, more calumny For the straw-stuffed enemy. So they charged the poets with Treason and rhyme; they chose to live Through words that carried truth revealed And strove and sought, refused to yield. They hanged them high…
Continue Reading →The Fireside Book (of David Hope)
We're missing a deer. The Fireside Book of David Hope 1975.
The first Fireside Book of David Hope (“A picture and a poem for every mood, chosen by David Hope”) was printed and published by D C Thomson & Co Ltd (Dundee and London). The copy which L owns and treasures has “Christmas 1967” hand-written inside the front cover, although the book itself is not dated. This copy (below) came into the TVC household decades after its birth, when P found it in a second-hand bookshop. Our very first Fireside Book was given to L for Christmas 1972. The dust jacket of this 1973 edition tells how well-loved it has been. It has been…
Continue Reading →The Poet Obama
"Who are you, really?"
Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961) President Obama was a real smoothie, His act seemed straight out of a movie, He’d gaze at crowds to gauge their awe, Say “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” You moved, so he slapped a tax on thee, Regulated to a halt, then a subsidy Was wielded at the end of the nation’s rope, Thus proving the audacity of hope. “There has never been anything false about hope” A self-serving virtue, a dog-tired trope. From the Levant we do a moonlight flit, “Change will not come if we wait for it.” He swaggered,…
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