Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

[Wolfgang]

That's lovely, Anita, though aren't we all (at least those of us in Britain) sleeping on an island tonight?

Actually that makes me wonder when is an island an island and when is it a continent? There are islands which are not part of a continental shelf, doesn't make that ones to continents? And all continents are surrounded by water, doesn't make that them to islands, too? Even islands may consist of different geological parts (e.g. Scotland on the British mainland)...

[Courtenay]

I've always wondered that myself! These days, if you Google "largest island in the world", you're told it's Greenland. But when I was growing up in Australia, I remember it being said that Australia was "the smallest continent and the largest island in the world", or simply "the island continent". We've always counted it as both and I took it for granted that everyone else did too. A continent is simply a very, very large island, after all! In fact, I've always thought of Australia as more an island than a continent, since all the other continents have multiple countries on them (except Antarctica, but that has territories owned by several different countries), whereas Australia IS a country in itself. So as far as I'm concerned, it's a REALLY big island.

[Domino]

I suppose, if you apply that logic, Eurafroasia is a ginormous island.

[Courtenay]

Yep.

[Wolfgang]

Well, in some years (provided human kind or other aliens won't blow up the planet) there will be a very large island/continent on Earth again...

[Courtenay]

Good point, but they say it'll take another 200-250 million years.

[pete9012S]

These two poems popped into my head today:

The Empty House

WALTER DE LA MARE

See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies—
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent of heaven’s ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.’

‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,
‘Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.’
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.

Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls. How black it is
Beneath these thick boughed trees!

The Listeners

WALTER DE LA MARE

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

[Katharine]

Very atmospheric Pete.

I particularly liked the first one.

[John Pickup]

I enjoyed reading both those, Pete. Thanks for posting them.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I know and like both those poems, Pete. Good idea to add illustrations from The Rockingdown Mystery!

[Debbie]

Love those poems.

One for today would be "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

[Courtenay]

True — or this one... Snow — Roy McKie and P.D. Eastman

This was a picture book we had when we were little — it was a particular favourite of my older sister, who could recite most of it from memory. I always thought it was cute, but I was envious of the kids in the book, because we never had snow in Australia!! (As I know I've mentioned before, I'd never seen snow at all before I moved to the UK 9 years ago.)

Anyway, Dad this morning found and sent me the above video, which sets the book (written in rhyme) to a catchy, if repetitive, little tune. Happy memories! (Bit odd how fast the snow all melts at the end of the story, mind you — as I pointed out to my family, with that much snow it would take a few days' worth of warmer weather to melt it all. As Dad (who's a librarian) remarked: "Just as well it's in Junior Fiction and not Junior Non-Fiction." )

[pete9012S]

One for today would be "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

I couldn't recall that poem, so looked it up - it's lovely!
Thanks Debbie.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I hadn't read that poem for ages but it's lovely. Great to see the video clip of the picture book too!

As a child I used to like this poem from The Young Puffin Book of Verse:


HOUSES by Rachel Field

I like old houses best, don't you?
They don't go cluttering up a view
With roofs too red and paint too new,
With doors too green and blinds too blue!
The old ones look as if they grew,
Their bricks may be dingy, their cupboards askew
From sitting so many seasons through,
But they've learned in a hundred years or two
Not to go cluttering up a view!

[Boodi 2]

What a lovely poem, which I never heard before. It goes straight to my heart, because having lived at the edge of the village with a view of allotments, fields and the forest, planning permission has been granted for no less than SEVEN apartment blocks, so when spring comes our previously lovely view will be very cluttered...Grrrrrr