 Poetry: December 20, 2011 Issue [#4776] |
  Poetry
This week: Thomas Hardy Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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Lines On The Loss Of The "Titanic"
by Thomas Hardy
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Dorset, England. His father was a stonemason and his mother was well educated. Hardy went to school in until he was sixteen, the families social status stopped him from attending the university. Instead Hardy started an apprenticeship to an architect, who specialized in church restorations. He worked there until he moved to London at the age of twenty-two.
Once in London, Hardy went back to working as an assistant for an architectural firm. Hardy started his writing his poetry as soon as he got to London and quickly through himself into the art culture London was known for. He visited art galleries and started taking French lesson. After a couple of years living in London Hardy moved back to Dorset. It was during this time he met and married Emma Layinia. Emma pushed him to pursue his love for writing. Hardy was unsuccessful at first finding an audience for his poems. George Meredith and novelist, advised Hardy to turn his focus to a novel instead.
Hardy's first novel Far From the Madding Crowd was published in 1874. The book gained Hardy the notice he needed to convince him to earn his living as an author. He produced a series of novels, starting with The Return of Native, published in 1878, followed by The Mayor of Casterbridge published in 1886 and Tess of The D'Urbervilles in 1891, to name a few. His books were starting to cause controversy and by the time he published Jude the Obscure, in 1895 the debate over his writing became too much for him and he told everyone he would never write another novel again.
After giving up on his writing Hardy once again turned back to his poetry. He published Wessex a collection of poems he had been writing over the twenty years. Hardy's marriage to Emma was an unhappy one and when Emma died in 1912, Hardy's affection towards Emily Dugdale, a woman almost forty years younger. Hardy spent his last seven years writing his autobiography and finishing his last two books. Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, was published in 1925. [i}Winter Words in Various Moods and Meters, was published until 1928 after Hardy's death.
Thomas Hardy died in Dorchester, Dorset, on January 11, 1928. He was eighty-eight years old. Hardy was cremated in Dorchester and his ashes were buried in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
At The Railway Station, Upways
by Thomas Hardy
'There is not much that I can do,
For I've no money that's quite my own!'
Spoke up the pitying child--
A little boy with a violin
At the station before the train came in,--
'But I can play my fiddle to you,
And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!'
The man in the handcuffs smiled;
The constable looked, and he smiled too,
As the fiddle began to twang;
And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang
With grimful glee:
'This life so free
Is the thing for me!'
And the constable smiled, and said no word,
As if unconscious of what he heard;
And so they went on till the train came in--
The convict, and boy with the violin.
The Sun On The Bookcase '
by Thomas Hardy
Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
And dusk grow strong
And they have fled.
Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day....
But wasted--wasted, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imagined one
Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
My great deeds done,
Will be mine alway?
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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I have reached the end of my travels
now to make my way home
My weary bones can no longer take
the bumps in the road
I shield my eyes
against the headlights of shame
My heart laden with sorrow
for a life with unrealized gains
I lost my way
miles and miles ago
wandering in the thickness of the woods
fighting the harshness of the cold
But I fight no more
I now admit defeat
I make my way home
to lick my wounds in peace
I no longer see the world
as a place of possibility
but as the graveyard of fallen stars
and lost opportunities
Honorable mention:
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#1827894 by Not Available. |
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