On Poetry

I really envy people who can write good poetry or good poetic prose. They must have a really wonderful quality inside and a special outlook to be able to paint with words like they do. I've never been able to manage it myself. I suppose some are born with the talent and some just never develop it. However I'm really good at admiring, and there are certainly a lot of people out there worth admiring. It's grand to come across something and think, well, you know, I thought that too, but, of course, I couldn't have put it exactly so well. Sometimes I copy out lines or passages that really appeal to me, and somehow they make for a different reading than the printed version, more my own.

I've loved poetry since my mother began reading it to me when I was a child, and later at school I was lucky enough to have teachers who were pretty enthusiastic about it and inclined to set some of it to music too. Wordsworth was a great favorite at school, and three of his poems were staple fare – 'The Solitary Reaper', 'The Daffodils', and 'My Heart Leaps Up'. There was a bit of confusion regarding 'The Daffodils' because none of us had ever seen that flower – the illustration in the book wasn't very good and there were no photographs available either – it wasn't the Internet Age either over here, our school didn't even have a computer – anyway, so our Teacher asked us to find out what we could and what we did was collect all the yellow-flowered weeds we could find and chased clouds of yellow butterflies out of the grass in doing so – we had a grand poetic time! 'The Solitary Reaper, which by the way was a great favorite of my grandfather's, and 'My Heart Leaps Up' got properly appreciated much later when I went on a long trip into the Himalayas. I was sitting alone on the hillside in the afternoon sun and there were tall, snow-capped mountains, with pine and cloud cover, towering before me. Everything was very silent and still, and then I heard this faint singing from somewhere far off. And a couple of days later, further up in the mountains, I saw not one but a DOUBLE rainbow!

Everytime I read Wordsworth now I remember those moments and that really lights up something lovely inside.

It made me very happy too when a young friend of mine, seeing how much I enjoyed poetry, took the trouble of copying out some of her favorites for me – 'I do not love my dog because...', 'Please be careful where you tread, the fairies are about...', 'Spring is coming, Spring is coming...', and best of all 'The Flowers and the shadows creep, the stars come over the hill...'

Then I came across a marvellous American Literature Guide for Young Readers, and they had a really enjoyable selection –

'Where the pools are bright and deep, where the grey trout lies asleep...' ('A Boy's Song')

'Old Dog lay in the summer sun, much too lazy to rise and run....' ('Sunning')

'The Sun is not abed when I at night upon my pillow lie....' ('The Sun'sTravels')

'It was time to fly – summer sun was on their wings, winter in their cry....' ('Something Told The Wild Geese')

'A Road might lead to anywhere – to harbor towns and quays....' ('Roads')

'In the morning, very early, that's the time I love to go barefoot where the fern grows curly and the grass is cool between each toe....' ('Barefoot Days')

'I meant to do my work today – but a brown bird sang in the apple tree...' ('I meant to do my work today' – this one was written especially for me!)

'In Timbuctoo, in Timbuctoo, there are the nicest things to do....' ('Timbuctoo')

'When I turn the pages of my favorite picture book, I make believe I sail away into each picture nook....' ('Picture Book Travels')

'Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us....' (The Seal Lullaby)

And, well, many, many others.

I LOVE R. L. Stevenson's 'A Child's Garden of Verses.' I also like a lot of his other work – 'The Vagabond', 'Romance' , ' Song', 'Over the Sea to Skye.'

And Alfred Tennyson's 'Ring Out Wild Bells' – this one's so joyous, I always think of a troika racing through the snow with some wonderfully uplifting Mozart music in the background.

Also, a whole lot of very old Scottish poems that my Grandfather and I came across and he copied down for me.

When I was going through a rough patch and needed a bit of hope anywhere I could find it, I found it in William Ernest Henley's 'Invictus' – what a spirit the man must have had to write something like this when he was beset with an agonizing tubercular infection of the bones that crippled him for life. It is surely a case of 'Grace under Pressure' – something I so totally admire, even if I personally 'in the fell clutch of circumstance' most certainly DO wince and cry out aloud.

I was also very impressed by Rudyard Kipling's 'If-' and Tennyson's 'Ulysses' -

'I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.'

And -

'We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, -
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

I studied 'The Paradise Lost' for my Master's Degree and really liked Satan the best – 'What though the field be lost?
All is not lost : the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield....'

But I'm not entirely Satanic and am very fond of 'The Lord is my Shepherd'. I think that's the most beautifully inspiring poem in the Bible.

Then I came across 'To the Exiles' by Neil Munro. Again about Scotland – I love most things Celtic, especially the music, and this one's wonderfully evocative.

Who else do I like?
Shakespeare ('When In Disgrace With Fortune And Men's Eyes', 'Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day?')
William Blake ('Auguries Of Innocence')
Robert Frost ('Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening')
Longfellow ('The Day Is Done')
e.e.cummings ('Somewhere I Have Never Travelled')
Robinson Jeffers ('The Answer', 'Evening Ebb')
Walt Whitman ('On Beach At Night', 'Song Of The Open Road')
Rabindranath Tagore ('The Crescent Moon', 'Hard Times', 'Gitanjali', 'My Song')
Lord Byron ('We'll Go No More A-Roving', 'She Walks In Beauty')
Shelley ('When The Lamp Is Shattered')
Keats ('A Thing Of Beauty', Ode To Autumn')
Yeats ('A Prayer For My Daughter', 'The Lake Isle Of Innisfree')
Rumi ('Beyond Faith', 'The Dance')
Omar Khayyam ('The Rubaiyat')
Pablo Neruda ('Odes', 'The Light Wraps You', 'Walking Around', 'If Your Eyes Were Not The Color Of The Moon' )
Khalil Gibran ('The Prophet')
Tolkien ('The Adventure Awaits', 'All Woods Must End Atlast', 'The Man In The Moon Stayed Up Too Late')
John Masefield ('Sea Fever')
T.S. Eliot ('Rum Tum Tugger', 'Rhapsody On A Windy Night', ')
C.J. Ingerson ('If Your Dreams Be Shattered', 'Do You Hear The Song?')
Langston Hughes ('Life Is Fine', 'The Dream Deferred')
Rainer Maria Rilke ('Falling Stars', 'Loneliness', 'Sense Of Something Coming')
Lewis Caroll ('My Fancy', 'I'll Tell Thee Everything I Can')
R.S. Thomas ('Lore', 'Abersoch')
Dylan Thomas ('Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night')
Edward Thomas ('The Long, Small Room')
Anne Sexton ('Starry Night', 'Courage')
Vachel Lindsay ('The Chinese Nightingale', 'The Traveller Heart')
Charles Kingsley ('The Summer Sea')
G. K. Chesterton ('A Ballad Of Suicide')
W.H. Auden (Twelve Songs')
Amy Lowell ('Patterns')
Valentin Iremonger ('Clear View In Summer') and many, many others.

And I can't wait to come across all the others I haven't yet read.