'Sailing' photo (c) 2013, Miroslav Vajdic - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Let loose the sails of love and let them take
The tender breezes till the day be spent;
Only the fool chokes out lifeâ€™s sentiment.
She is a prize too lovely to forsake . . .

Come Live With Me and Be My Love by Christopher Marlowe

COME live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

She Walks in Beauty Like the Night by Lord Byron

'Starry night, My copy' photo (c) 2013, Saad Faruque - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that â€˜s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe.

But we loved with a love that was more than loveâ€“
I and my Annabel Leeâ€“
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

Young Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott

'Knight' photo (c) 2011, Sam Howzit - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye eâ€™er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

As I Walked Out One Evening by WH Auden

â€˜Iâ€™ll love you, dear, Iâ€™ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

If Thou Must Love Me by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare.

Oh, My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns.

'Red rose' photo (c) 2011, Marina Shemesh - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Till aâ€™ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wiâ€™ the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands oâ€™ life shall run.

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti.

My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

The Bait by John Donne

Come live with me and be my love
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”
~Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Linda at TeacherDance has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup.

The 22nd Gift of Christmas in Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1820

Dec22

From Daniel Webster’s Plymouth Oration, delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 1820:

Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return. They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their country, during the lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of New England’s advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas.

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote every thing which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed.

We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth!

Note that Mr. Webster assumed that future generations would value certain ideals: science, learning, good government, religious liberty, domestic life, rationality, truth, hope, and most of all Christianity. If he were to travel through time and see us here, what would he think of our stewardship of the pleasant land of the fathers and of the blessings of liberty and of the immortal hope of Christianity?

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon:
A story: about Daniel Webster, just for fun: The Devil and Daniie Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet.

A song: On this day in 1808 Ludwig van Beethoven conducted and performed in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).

A birthday: Edward Arlington Robinson, b.1869.

A booklist: Deliberate Reader with 31 Days of Great Nonfiction.

A verse:
A Happy Man by Edward Arlington Robinson

When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.

My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow never brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.

Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,–
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.

Poetry Friday: The 20th Gift of Christmas in France, 1917

Dec20

Christmas Eve in France by Jessie Fauset
“Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 — April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist and novelist.
Fauset was the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. She also was the editor and co-author for the African American children’s magazine Brownies’ Book. She studied the teachings and beliefs of W.E.B Dubois and considered him to be her mentor. Fauset was known as one of the most intelligent women novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, earning her the name ‘the midwife’. In her lifetime she wrote four novels as well as poetry and short fiction.” ~Wikipedia, Jessie Redmon FaucetOH little Christ, why do you sigh
As you look down to-night
On breathless France, on bleeding France,
And all her dreadful plight?
What bows your childish head so low?
What turns your cheek so white?

Oh little Christ, why do you moan,
What is it that you see
In mourning France, in martyred France,
And her great agony?
Does she recall your own dark day,
Your own Gethsemane?

Oh little Christ, why do you weep,
Why flow your tears so sore
For pleading France, for praying France,
A suppliant at God’s door?
“God sweetened not my cup,” you say,
“Shall He for France do more?”

Oh little Christ, what can this mean,
Why must this horror be
For fainting France, for faithful France,
And her sweet chivalry?
“I bled to free all men,” you say
“France bleeds to keep men free.”

Oh little, lovely Christ, you smile!
What guerdon is in store
For gallant France, for glorious France,
And all her valiant corps?
“Behold I live, and France, like me;
Shall live for evermore.”

Poetry Friday: Charlotte Zolotow and the Poets

Nov22

The recently deceased children’s author Charlotte Zolotow was also an editor and a poet herself. She edited many of the most gifted authors of poetry for children of the twentieth century during her tenure at Harper and Row.

Lee Bennet Hopkins wrote of his editor Charlotte Zolotow: “Charlotte was editor-supreme. Her respect for an author, her insight, foresight, her vision of what could be — become — has been a highlight of my career. Lucky is one to be caught in the true Charlotte’s web.”

Paul Fleischman, winner of the 1989 Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices was also edited by Ms. Zolotow. In a tribute to her editorial skills, he says: “In matters of larger scope, her vision was truly exceptional. She was an astounding discoverer of talent. Once she’d found you, she didn’t rewrite you any more than she did your sentences. Ideas for books weren’t thrust upon you. The latest trends in publishing were never bandied about. Charlotte operated on the theory that the best book you had inside you was the one you most wished to write, no matter what happened to be selling at the moment.”

Poet Karla Kuskin, also a friend and protege of Ms. Zolotow, wrote a poem for a 1990 celebration of Charlotte Zolotow’s work:

There is that smile
that warms us like the sun.
There is the ouevre
(fine work done,
fine work yet to come).
There is all this, and more
combined
with that well honed and stainless
steel trap mind…

Mind and imagination combined made Charlotte Zolotow a formidable and talented author and editor and poet. Here are a couple of poems by Ms. Charotte herself:

Ladybug by Charlotte Zolotow

Little ladybug
With your
Glazed red wings
and small black polka dots
you look like a porcelain statue
until suddenly
you
fly
away.

People by Charlotte Zolotow

Some people talk and talk
and never say a thing.
Some people look at you
and birds begin to sing.

Some people laugh and laugh
and yet you want to cry.
Some people touch your hand
and music fills the sky.

Poetry Friday: Nobody’s Secret by Michaela MacColl

Sep13

In 1846 fifteen year old Emily of Amherst, Massachusetts, meets a mysterious young man whom she nicknames “Mr. Nobody.” Since he refuses to tell Emily his real name, she is regrettably unable to identify him when he turns up dead in her family’s pond. However, Miss Emily Dickinson feels a responsibility not only to find out the name of the deceased but also to determine just how he died.

I was reminded of Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries as I read this murder mystery featuring a fictionalized Emily Dickinson as amateur detective. Emily, as portrayed in Nobody’s Secret, is a sharp, intelligent, and very private young lady who is already scribbling down poems in a secret notebook that she keeps hidden in a very secret place. Like Flavia, Emily is not afraid of dead bodies or possible confrontations with murderers, and she is just as determined and ingenious as that other fictional girl detective.

However, in this novel we have the added flavor and pleasure of poetry, and not just any poetry but the verse of Miss Dickinson herself. The author of this YA mystery writes in a note at the end of the book, “Emily’s poems inspired this story, especially ‘I’m Nobody! Who Are You?,’ which is about how enticing anonymity might be in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you â€“ Nobody â€“ too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise â€“ you know!

How dreary â€“ to be â€“ Somebody!
How public â€“ like a Frog â€“
To tell one’s name â€“ the livelong June â€“
To an admiring Bog! –

Emily Dickinson’s use of “creative punctuation”–particularly all the dashes– annoyed editors and publishers in the nineteenth century and provoked them to change her punctuation marks to more acceptable ones. That kind of editing, in turn, provoked Emily Dickinson, and as a result she did not allow very many of her poems to be published, or “corrected,” during her lifetime. Her poems also often had several versions. I memorized the one above a long time ago with the words “banish us” instead of “advertise”, and that’s the way I quote it, frequently, to my children.

A good solid mystery woven around immortal poetry: what more could one desire? Nobody’s Secret would be an excellent Cybils nominee in the category of Young Adult Fiction.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts.

Poetry Friday: To Autumn by John Keats

Sep6

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

What lovely descriptive lines:
“season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”
“thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”
“barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day”
“the small gnats mourn among the river sallows”

Could you even begin to describe a season, or a day, or a mood so vividly and beautifully? I couldn’t, which is why John Keats is the poet and I am me, a humble admirer of Keats’ craft.

Listen to Robert Pinsky read To Autumn.

For more poetry on this Friday or any day, see Poetry Friday at Author Amok.

Poetry Friday: Plagiarizing Donne

Aug16

The following poem was kinda, sorta plagiarized by me from John Donne’s poem, A Lecture Upon the Shadow. I was trying to write some song lyrics for my musician son to put to music, and I liked the images and thoughts in Mr. Donne’s poem. So I captured them in my own poem/song, and I also used a quote from Downton Abbey that I liked and believe to be true. Quoth Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: “One way or another, everyone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden.”

So, anyway, here’s my take on shadows and secrets and the clarity of love:

Stand still and I will read to you,
A shadow lecture in the sun
Three hours weâ€™ve spent, two shadows went,
A-walking hand in hand.
A-walking hand in hand.

And everyone goes down the aisle
With half the story hidden.

The sun is just above our heads,
The shadows underfoot.
In clearness brave, all things reduced,
Disguises flow away,
Disguises flow away.

But everyone goes down the aisle
With half the story hidden.

And after noon new shadows shall
We make the other way.
At first weâ€™re blind, these come behind,
And westwardly decline.
And westwardly decline.

Oh loveâ€™s day is short, if love decay,
Love needs a growing or constant light;
His first minute, after noon, is night.

And everyone goes into night
With half the story hidden.

Poetry Friday: Tap Dancing on the Roof by Linda Sue Park

Aug2

Picture Book Around the World: Reading Through Korea I’m working hard on my Picture Book Around the World sequel to Picture Book Preschool, my preschool read aloud curriculum for homeschooling your preschooler or kindergartner. This week at Semicolon, we’re going to continue to visit Korea through the medium of a treasure trove of picture books featuring that country and its children.

POCKETS

What’s in your pockets right now? I hope they’re not empty:
Empty pockets, unread books, lunches left on the bus–all a waste.
In mine: One horse chestnut. One gum wrapper. One dime. One hamster.

Linda Sue Park’s poem, POCKETS, is an example of a Korean sijo (see-szo or she-szo, with the j pronounced as the French pronounce Jacques), a three or six line poem with a fixed number of stressed syllables and an unexpected twist or joke at the end. Tap Dancing on the Roof is a book of sijo. These deceptively simple poems are a delight, but after reading over the end page, “Some Tips for Writing your own Sijo”, I am even more impressed with the difficulty inherent in writing a “simple” poem. Making it look easy isn’t easy.

Sijo were originally meant to be sung, and the songs “often praised the beauty of the seasons.” Yes, they’re similar to haiku, but whereas haiku are usually nature poems, sijo are about all kinds of subjects. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many sijo were written by women who were court singers. These sijo were often about love and romance. The poems in Tap Dancing on the Roof are about kid stuff nature, games, daily tasks, and family relationships.

I thought I might try writing my own sijo for this review, but after I read the poems in Tap Dancing on the Roof and thought about it some more, I decided that I’m not that talented as a poet. So here’s a poem I liked from the Sejong Cultural Society website:

The spring breeze melted snow on the hills, then quickly disappeared.
I wish I could borrow it briefly to blow over my hair
and melt away the aging frost forming now about my ears.
ì¶˜ì‚°(æ˜¥å±±)ì— ëˆˆ ë…¹ì¸ ë°”ëžŒ ê±´ë“¯ ë¶ˆê³ ê°„ë“¸ì—…ë„¤
ì €ê·¼ë“¯ ë¹„ëŸ¬ë‹¤ê°€ ë¿Œë¦¬ê³¼ì € ë¨¸ë¦¬ìš°í¬
ê·€ë°‹í—¤ í•´ë¬µì€ ì„œë¦¬ë¥¼ ë¶ˆë…€ë³¼ê¹Œ í•˜ë…¸ë¼
U-Taek (1262-1342)

Reading T.S. Eliot

Apr2

For twenty years Iâ€™ve stared my level best
To see if eveningâ€”any eveningâ€”would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasnâ€™t able . . .
~C.S. Lewis

I learned from a friend in college many years ago that you don’t read Eliot and other twentieth century poets the same way you read Tennyson or even The Odyssey. When I I first read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or The Wasteland, I wanted the poems to tell a straightforward story, a narrative. Prufrock does sort of tell the story of a man who is trapped by his own ineffectualness and lack of confidence. But that poem and especially the other famous poems by Eliot, The Wasteland, Ash Wednesday, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets all have to be read the same way I have to listen to contemporary song lyrics: pick out the lines and images that speak to you and don’t try too hard to make sense of the whole.

So, my favorite lines from T.S. Eliot:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
~The Hollow Men

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
~Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agÃ¨d eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessÃ¨d face
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice.
~Ash Wednesday

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~Four Quartets

Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God.
~Murder in the Cathedral

Poem #53: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1861

Apr18

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. “~Gaston Bachelard

I love Longfellow! Accessible, rhythmic, and pure fun!

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Read the entire poem.

And, by the way, on April 18, 1775, 237 years ago today, American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that “the British are coming.”

Here are links to a few resources for teaching and enjoying the poetry of Mr. Longfellow:

In episode #197 of Adventures in Odyssey, entitled The Midnight Ride, Whit tells the real story of Paul Revere’s ride, pointing out a few inaccuracies in Longfellow’s poem. I would use this radio program in class if I were teaching this event in American history or if I were teaching the poem.

I’ve done several posts on Longfellow and his poetry here at Semicolon:
Poetry Friday: Poem #43, The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1841

Poetry Friday: The Childrens Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow, Hurricanes and The Wreck of the Hesperus.

A Celebration of Longfellow

Longfellow’s Birthday

This is the forest primeval . . .

If you’re interested in the inception of the American Revolution and Paul Revere, I would suggest two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, by Esther Forbes. Ms. Forbes received a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for her historical work, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, and in 1944 her young adult historical fiction book, Johnny Tremain, was awarded the Newbery Medal for distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Paul Revere is a character in the novel Johnny Tremain, and the entire story is a wonderful introduction to the American Revolution and to the ethos and culture of the mid to late 1700’s in Boston.

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