Railway Rhymes BY CL GRAVES When books are pow’rless to beguile And papers only stir my bile, For solace and relief I flee To Bradshaw or the ABC And find the best of recreations In studying the names of stations.
POEM – April 24
EXCERPTED FROM Washing Day BY ANNA LÆTITIA BARBAULD The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase, Language of gods. Come, then, domestic Muse, In slip-shod measure loosely prattling on, Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream, Or droning flies, or shoes lost in the mire By little…
POEM – April 23
The Lorelei BY HEINRICH HEINE I know not whence it rises, This thought so full of woe; But a tale of times departed Haunts me, and will not go. The air is cool, and it darkens, And calmly flows the Rhine, The mountain-peaks are sparkling In the sunny evening-shine. And yonder sits a maiden, The…
POEM – April 22
The Hand That Signed the Paper BY DYLAN THOMAS The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death. The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, The finger joints are cramped with…
POEM – April 21
Ozymandias BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions…