Tuesday 26 October 2010

A poem for Dylan Thomas

Dylan and Caitlin with liquid lunch

If there's smoke there must be fire!

He'd probably be known today as Sir Dylan Thomas, perhaps even Lord Dylan of Laugharne*, and he would have been 96 tomorrow. A memorial stone to commemorate the life of Dylan Thomas, who died in New York less than 2 weeks after his 39th birthday, was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in 1982.

The poet spent the happiest days of his life with his family in Laugharne in their "house on stilts". His wife Caitlin died many years later in Italy. She was at that time married to an Italian count. However, as was her last wish, she was brought home and laid to rest next to Dylan in a Laugharne churchyard and there they now sleep "like two kippers in a box".


Song of Caitlin

I walk with you along the shores
And over the hills and through the vales
Of your darling homeland Wales
Where our brains have been dry-sucked
Of words and our minds are dead
As hammered nails. I keep

The best of your words locked-up
In my heart - those mad bad words
That flew like storm-tossed birds
Through the crying air that screams
And hammers these sand-ribbed shores
And dies in Laugharne's black trees.

_______
gw-2010°
*Laugharne is pronounced Larne

Sunday 24 October 2010

A poem for W H Auden


Polishing the glass

W H Auden died in Vienna,
I tell the barman polishing the glass
That some day we could die here too.
It's after two on a gloomy afternoon.
Vienna's where we are I say. He says it'll have to do.
The corner bar we are in is on the other end
Of the street from where he died
In his flat near the Moulin Rouge.

In Finnegans Pub many things are green,-
The doors, the window frames, the phone box,
The shelves for the books, the bar, the stools
At the bar. The beer I drink is black and smooth
As one of Auden's rhymes. Perhaps it's here
That I'll have my wake. Auden's name is in
Joyce's book - page two-seven-nine -
A one word sentence. A footnote. Auden.

_______
gw-2010
note: the real name of the bar is Flannagan's

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

The classic brief encounter story. The chance meeting of a man and a woman. They fall immediately, desperately and hopelessly in love. And then, almost before we and they know it, it's all over. They part forever. But ... maybe this time it is otherwise?


At the Texaco gas station, at the supermarket, or in the little church, you'll find the local folks, solid and conservative citizens all. And these citizens all know that a woman's place is firmly clamped to the side of her husband. And, as you might expect, such solid citizens must make it their business to study the business of any stranger in town...

From a higher and almost spiritual plane, in a sense from the world of the peregrine, that large and swift falcon that hides in the sun's light and roams the world's mountainsides and crags, there arrives on the scene one Robert Kincade, a long-haired hippie with a bundle of battered cameras and a National Geographic assignment to photograph the covered bridges of Madison County. He stops his truck at a farm entrance and asks a woman for directions...

The story succeeds on one level because it very cleverly allows the reader to share the thoughts of both the lovers. We are from the start, privy to all their thoughts. We will always know what's going on. All the cards, as the saying goes, will be on the table. We have complete confidence in the author. We sense that he is not going to spring any nasty tricks or surprises.

Another theme that Robert James Waller is exploring is the transmigration of souls, that we had other existences, perhaps as humans, but also as animals, birds or fish.

We have all met somebody and instantly felt that we have met before, perhaps even in a previous existence. Maybe our lives are bound together in some way unbeknown to us. When the lovers meet they sense within minutes that there is something not of this world going on. Another power is at work. In another place, let's call it Dimension Z, a third being is to be created from the two.

Another reason the story succeeds is that it's very poetic. The language in a great deal of it, except in the correspondence at the end, has a flow and a gentle rhythm. It is therefore an easy read. There is no requirement to go back and reread things, for it all unfolds as naturally as it should.

She noticed his iced tea almost gone and poured him some more from the jug.
"Thanks. How do you like it here in Iowa?"
There was a moment of truth in this. She knew it. The standard reply was, "Just fine. It's quiet. The people are real nice."
She didn't answer immediately.


Robert James Waller dedicates his book to the peregrines; but not only to those peripatetic birds, it's also written for men like Robert Kincade, men who peregrinate through the world, the lonesome wanderers amongst us.

Poet-in-Residence verdict: Buy one for someone you love.

Saturday 23 October 2010

Passing near Rhyd Du

- for Taid

He grew up in the top house on the hill,
Was still young when they left for the war
And when he came back it felt as if a lifetime

Had passed. Yet thinking back to those days
Of childhood, he whittled this whistle from a twig,
They drift about like ghosts in a mist. The jackdaws

And the sheep are somewhere about. Today
More hill walkers come with the train, they
Peer at the maps and the lie of the ground.
_______
gw-2010

Wednesday 20 October 2010

The Illusionist

for Stephen HawkingAt the first Magicians' Convention the rules of behaviour were not clear 
The Illusionist
The long fingers reached into the old iron box
and pulled out the cylinder hat.
They closed the lid with a Big Bang!

And as they all crowded
around the table in that small room he
reached blindfolded over the rim and
into the depths of the black hat
ready to perform the first trick - the white dove
illusion - but someone elbowing through
to the front stumbled over
the table and knocked the hat
and out of it everything spilled -
Miss Smith's fish-sauce shop!
Forgive us for we know not what we do.

The white rabbit, the coloured ribbons,

the goat, the sheep, the fluffy dice,
the mantel clock, the sphinx, the crocodile,

the turnip snedder, the potato chipper,
the circle line, the Punch and Judy man, the yeti,
the serpent, the dragon, the string of sausages,

not to mention all the black holes, and the crows,
and the ravens, the supernova, E=MC², and all the gods,
the giant tortoise, the turtle, the rainbow fish,
the grizzly bear, the griffin, the greyhound,

the iguana, the incandescent lamp, the hot tin roof,
the bearded iris, the jack-in-the-pulpit, the nocturnal jerboa,
the minotaur, the labyrinth, the woolly-haired llama,
the manx cat, the marmoset, the lute, the lotus-eater,
the marabou stork, the mastodon, the neanderthal man,

the chambered nautilus, the okapi, the prairie oyster,
the nonagon, the plantain, the praying mantis, the prairie dog,
the lion rampant, the rebus, the rocking horse, the tomahawk,
the elementary particles, the tongue-and-groove and
the toggle joints, the marijuana joints, the arrows of time,
the quivers of quarrels, the great brain of extraordinary power,

the antiparticles, the anthropic principle, the leaning towers,
the Chandrasekhar limit, the Hiroshima delta, Stonehenge,
Robinson Crusoe, Vendredi, the cosmological constant,
the solitary reaper, the fascination of what's difficult,
the light-year and the light-second, crop circles, the neutrino,
the neutron, the nucleus, the proton, the quark, the snark,
the uncertainty principle, the No Tresspassing sign, the grime,

the heavenly city, the metronomic moon, the road not taken,
the masonic triangle, Finnegans Wake, the minaret,
Pastor Niemöller, Abou Ben Adhem, Robert Burns, William Blake,
the mid-Atlantic trench, eugenics, the final will and testament,
the burning of the books, the company of the birds,
the windhover, the tempest, the clod and the pebble,
the promised garden, the lake isle of innisfree,
the terrestrial globe, the battle hymn of the republic,

the jungle book, the canterbury tales, the song of solomon,
the destruction of sennacherib, the connoisseuse of slugs,
the vanity of earthly greatness, ferric oxide, the tyger,
jodrell bank, the song of a man who has come through,
and all of it,
yes all of it,
and infinitely more of it, pouring and flying and tumbling
and rushing out
There's no calling it back!

for ever and ever
tumbling from the table

without end
Amen.
______
gw2010

Monday 18 October 2010

Black Spring by Henry Miller

What is not in the open street is false derived, that is to say, literature.

Yet another banned book! Black Spring was first published in Paris in 1936 and was not first published in Britain until 1965.

When it comes to circumnavigating the grey-wigged and false derived British literature censorship apparatus writers have had to give thanks time and again for the vital presence of French publishing houses. Perhaps today we live in more enlightened times.

If Easter falls
in Lady Day's lap
beware old England
of the clap ...



Henry Miller says about poetry: Write about what's inside you ... the great vertiginous verterbration ... the zoospores and leukocytes ... the wamroths ... and the holenlindens ... every one's a poem. The jellyfish is a poem too ...

In his novel Black Spring written in France during 1934-35 Miller sees that the next war is coming and so the obvious message is to take what life can offer before the black day dawns. The coming War will spread all over the world from New York to Nagasaki, he confidently predicts. And, of course, he's right.


The story centres around the thoughts and experiences of one man, a man whose name we don't even learn until chapter 3 or 4. It begins with his childhood in the confines of the 14th Ward in New York: The boys you worshipped when you first came down the street remain with you all your life. They are the real heroes. Napoleon, Lenin, Capone - all fiction.

The names of those real-life heroic boys of the 14th Ward ring out like gold coins - Lester Reardon, Eddie Carney, Stanley Borowski ...

But soon we move to Europe and to Paris where the poet begins to ask himself some serious questions: What is better than reading Virgil? and answers: Why, eating outdoors under an awning at Issy-les-Moulineaux...

The meal at Issy is followed by an essay on the art of urinating in the public pissoirs of Paris whilst being observed from above by shameless women leaning from their high windows...and it is, this great human joy of relieving the full bladder, it is really better than reading Virgil.

When not passing water, or strolling along the Seine, our hero reflects on the art of aquarelle for he his, like almost everyone else in Paris, also a water colourist. In 1927 or '8 I was on my way to being a painter. An amazing essay on how to paint a masterpiece, it's a picture of a horse, concludes with the words: I hold the picture upside down, letting the colours coagulate. Then gingerly, very gingerly, I flatten it out on my desk. It's a masterpiece, I tell you! You may say it's just an accident, this masterpiece, and so it is! But then,so is the 23rd Psalm.

And so is Black Spring. It's a masterpiece of the absurd. It's a masterpiece of the world going mad. It's a masterpiece of the meaning of love. It's a masterpiece of lists. It's a masterpiece of this and that and, as Miller says in one of his radio interviews, this or something like it, I wrote it at the same time as I was writing 4 or 5 other books and I threw every kind of thing to it.

Over 200 pages the daft dangerous world of the 1930's with its foibles, its coming war and its many madnesses, both internal and external, receives Miller's microscopic Pythonesque-Joycean-Orwellian inspection. The result is a timeless and prophetic novel that is, yes it is, a genuine masterpiece.

Poet-in-Residence verdict: Read it and meditate on what you are.

Arms and the boy


Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads,
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges whose fine zinc teeth
Are sharp with sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

-
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Sunday 17 October 2010

Nice people

These are the decrees and laws
you must be careful
to follow

Destroy completely all the places
on the high mountains
and on the hills

And under every spreading tree
where the nations you are dispossessing
worship their gods

Break down their altars
smash their sacred stones
and burn their Asherah poles in the fire

Cut down the idols of their gods
and wipe out their names
from those places
___
Deuteronomy 12 v1-3

Autumn leaves

in the lane
as in the steel grey drizzle
as in the fallen leaves
assembled in the gutters
which sacrifice their colours
and with silent sacrifical sighs
all round
as brown as earth
as red as rust
as gold as glory
as darkly stained with oils
as oil
and caked with mud
and slime
and acid rain
and pain
as in each turns
to mulch and mash
and stink of dogs and block the drains
and flood the streets
again
as in the pain of death
______
gw2010

Saturday 16 October 2010

World Food Day 2010

Nearly one billion people have less food than they need. That is, to put it another way, every seventh person on the planet is going hungry. Or to put it yet another way, thirty thousand people are starving to death every day. Those are the brutal in your face statistics. So what can we do about it? We have already seen that the usual suspects are not stepping up to the plate. We must all do something. Nobody else will.

Poet-in-Residence has signed the petition calling on the UN to do more. He has placed the words of Martin Luther King on his website. And he is going to write a poem. It's not much but at least it's something. And if everybody does something, it needn't be much, maybe we'll save a few lives. We can only try.

World Food Day

Get off these lands and politely split
For the Devil must plant more GM-shit,

And wave goodbye to your small canoe
Let's see what his factory ships can do,

The Devil don't need what we don't wrap
He controls the markets and we bag his crap.

The Poet is not so polite as the King
For a billion hungry is a hell of a thing.

-
gw2010

Friday 15 October 2010

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Reading this was just about as enthralling as a visit to the shrink. Half the time I didn't know what the dwarf was banging on about and the other half of the time I spent yawning and, I admit it, a little skimming, and these are things I don't normally do for if a book doesn't win me over in the first 100 pages I generally ditch it. And I should have done so in this case.

So why did I persevere? Was it some won't be beaten foolishness in me or was I merely a victim of all the hype, symbolised by that golden badge of Nobel laureateship stamped prominently like a war medal on the cover? The story jumped around like a flea in a circus. It seemed to go nowhere. The hook was Danzig, Poland, and Hitler's War, but even the green eels squirming in the horse's head, a defining moment in the book, failed to win me over.

There were hints of the so-called Crystal Night or Night of Broken Glass. Our heroic dwarf, whose name by the way is Oskar, could smash windows on the other side of town merely by pitching a scream, or targeting his high-pitched voice, or whatever the technique was. He finished up, after a few miscellaneous fringe of war adventures and some semi-erotic episodes, in a mental hospital being cared for by a guy named Bruno. Or did he? The last 50 pages of the 500 or so escaped my attention.

Great novels have been written on the themes of mental illness, conflict, cruelty and injustice; novels such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Catch 22 for example. Günter Grass's book The Tin Drum, whatever the Nobel Prize badge may say, is not one of them.

Poet-in-Residence's Verdict: Save your time and money for something better.

A poem for Robert Bly

Menai Bridge

My bardic brother, do you remember that night
When half-asleep we clambered from an Austin Cambridge
Run out of fuel on the Menai Bridge and standing waited.

We felt so vulnerable in that magical star-bright place
Below Snowdon's bulk and the skeleton chains, on the base
Which held us in space above the waters of the Menai Straits

Within sight of the flickering lights of the nearby town
Now so far away, and where I nearly drowned one time
When we were playing on the rocks and in we fell,

Into the hungry sea that rushes to the whirpool
Where the waters meet and clash - should have been in school
That day - she feeds on ships which have strayed off course.

Old wreckage sometimes sticks in jagged rocks and quicksands;
A thousand sailors perished in some foreign land
Short leagues away from Telford's chains and towers.

Today up there in Snowdon's air the fighters fly and roar,
Defenders of our green and pleasant dragon haunted shore,
Guardians of the crystal cave where Merlin soundly snores.

-
gw2010
- composed after reading Bly's 'Driving West in 1970'
- image: courtesy Wales Tourist Board

Thursday 14 October 2010

Plan B



Plan B

They did not rest
On the seventh day
But worked to create
More possibilities
And to give hope

Their drills
Snaked through the rocks
In eight directions
Searching for signs
Of life

And then suddenly
On the seventeenth day
They heard them
Those faint taps
In the depths

And so carefully
They drilled inch by inch
Deeper and deeper
Until as they had hoped
They found their image

Their first human face
Was on their monitor
Their first minero
Was alive
And waiting

-
gw2010
Like many millions around the world I watched with awe as events unfolded on TV and the 33 miners at the San Jose´ Copper Mine in the Chilean Desert were winched up from the depths. I was particularly interested in the rescue attempt as I come from a mining family. Both my grandfathers were miners. One mined in the Welsh Mountains for slate and the other under the North Sea for coal. The TV transmissions from Chile are said to have had as many or perhaps even more viewers than the first manned moon landing. We are all in search of real heroes. Today we saw them!
The title of the poem comes from the fact that of the 3 rescue tunnels drilled simultaneously the first one to reach the underground chamber was called Plan B.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Joan Cairns - 89 and still going strong

Joan Cairns alias Mrs Roll-Mops and some of her friends!

Ten years ago, when she was a sprightly 79-year old, the Yorkshire Dales poet Joan Cairns published her chapbook: Fell Dancing ... remembering Alec, a 40-page collection of her poems. A signed copy recently arrived at the Poet-in-Residence residence.

Regular readers of these pages and the poetry2010 project will be acquainted with a small selection of Joan's work and will know the quality to expect.

In her covering letter Joan Cairns writes: Leyburn Writers Group was started last year and we are just a small rural concern, but through them I have found some kindred spirits and the desire to go on writing ...

Today, at the ripe young age of 89, Joan Cairns is assembling her volume of work which is straggling about and waiting to be licked into some sort of shape. Yes, it's incredible, but Joan is bringing together a collection of her finest poems to mark her 90th year.

Old Cat

Years ago you came with banners flying
hanselling the house,
pricked up to curiosity
and mischief.

You are our household Familiar
imprinting us
with your elegance
and your distinctive cry.

Now old age needs my lap
for stiff joints
and fading light
yet sometimes

a half remembered instinct
draws you
flowing from me like water
out into the night

-
Joan Cairns 2000,2010

Luciano Pavarotti

Had he survived the tragedy of pancreatic cancer the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti would have been 75 years old today.

I make no apology for resurrecting the tribute poem which was published in Poetry Monthly and posted on the Poet-in-Residence blog at the time of his passing. To say that this larger than life character, this great personality, this majestic singer, this man of love and peace was an inspiration to us all and that he is now something of an icon for those who seek the spirit of goodness and kindness in humankind is probably no exaggeration.

If the light in a man's eyes is a reflection of the purity of his soul Luciano Pavarotti is today with the legendary beings of purest light the Angels. Appropriately the name Luciano means Light. The following poem is about Light.

image- courtesy Die Presse

Italian Sunset

Luciano my friend
with your smiling eyes
and unshorn beard
with Italia in your voice -
the language of opera
and amorous dalliances -
sing now of football and gondoliers
and of the love of well-born ladies
and of Tuscan wine and conversazioni -
sing to us now in the glowering light
of our fading torches and flambeaux -
perhaps of Naples or Venice
and send us your best long notes
down the sunset of your going

-
gw2008,2010

A selection of Pavarotti video can be found on the YouTube bar at the foot of the blog. The performance with Zucchero is particularly recommended.

Monday 11 October 2010

Rat in funk hole

Between the acting of a fearful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma... Shakespeare

This fat and sated rat now crouched behind my hat
Of tin will soon be dead from gas - for gas shall come to pass
This misty eve of rain drenched mud
Too wet for war and vermin, for he has no mask
To don when he smells the power of the poison gas.

This rat shall turn up his ratty toes at once
And his corpse shall lie perhaps for almost ever
In the muddy rain, or lie at least until this dirty business
Has disappeared below the decorated fields
Of poppies all nodding sagely in the sunny morning breeze.

And so farewell dear rat now crouched behind my hat
Of tin, for the time has come to don my mask
This misty eve of rain drenched mud
Too wet for war and vermin; for you have no mask
To don when you smell the power of the poison gas.

-
gw2010

Old bricks

After much dawdling and dithering I called-in Baggers Gmbh. As per my brutal instructions they ruthlessly demolished the blog known as Accrington Brick. No trace of it remains. Not even brick dust.

As the whole edifice was falling, almost as an afterthought, I ran in and grabbed as many of the once precious bricks as could be carried. I've piled them here. Re-named them.

Old bricks

fresh snowfall
on the top of the hill
the cloven footprint

this hard frost
on the war memorial
6 plastic red roses

the old farmer
up and down the furrows
over the brow

for two days
flock of strange birds
- nobody knows them

7 women
shivery in the snow
6 red candles

open the curtain
look out of the window
- the monument is no longer there

-
gw2010

Friday 8 October 2010

John Lennon 70th Birthday Poetry Competition

Readers of this Poet-in-Residence blog may recall that Beatles Story invited entries for a poetry contest to celebrate the life of John Lennon. He would have been 70 years old tomorrow had he lived. I'm pleased to see that google is already in party mood. Today's email from the organisers, appropriately sent on the day of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Award, informs contestants that their entries, slightly delayed due to the large number and the overall high standard, are now with Britain's poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy for final judging. I know that some of my regular correspondents have entered and I wish them luck. It will be a wonderful thing for all of us who are involved in some way with Poet-in-Residence and Poetry2010 if a reader of these pages, they are in the main unknown and unrewarded poets but some are not without considerable talent, should receive a prize or make it into the Beatles Story anthology. Good luck to you all!

The Computer

In this age of mice and men
and flat screens,

the flip-up keyboard,
the A3 rubberised mousepad,

it went on strike
just when I needed it most

and refusing to speak to anyone
it gave the universe the cold shoulder

like a god skulking inside
a fridge full of beer bottles

it was clearly drunk on its own power
and its brushed aluminium window was firmly closed

to the world of electronic com un catio
I g t me a blind gnu viros nd gon on slike was the lost thang ip zet

-
gw2010

Thursday 7 October 2010

A poem for Raymond Carver


The following is dedicated to the Oregon poet Raymond Carver (1938-1988) whose volume of Collected Poems All of Us I am reading at the moment.

Breakfast with a poet

Use what's around, says Ray,
Lighting a fresh cigarette.
I'm standing in Ray's kitchen
This the first sunny day in three days.
My poached egg is cooling
On its slice of toast.
In the corner the small radio
Is playing its prelude to the ether.
Upstairs a crazy woman is yelling
Into her telephone. I reach
For the coffee jar and softly
Spin the lid. Faintly heard
The two-tones of a fire engine.
Another sonnet day, says Ray.

-
gw-2010

Monday 4 October 2010

Death list

When I open the door
an autumn leaf falls from my sleeve
and I look down to see
the familiar envelope on the floor
names of the newly dead
it is suddenly with me
like an early October morning
ex-colleagues who had not died
until now
they had simply
faded from mind,-
Declan and Alan
John and Henry
he was always known as Harry
and Sue and Arnold, he made it to 92,
and then Joan and Don
and Dorothy - just 57 (how very sad)
then Ray, Ken, Bob, and Brian,
Brenda, Gladys, Ruth, and Frank,
and then the two Rolands, and so it went on
line upon line
and thankfully my name wasn't there
this time

-
gw2010
ps- a change of tense can be a strong technique

Light verse

- the non-local mind spreads out beyond the brain - Dr Rupert Sheldrake

Scraping the last of my early bowl
of warmed-up grey matter
to the accompaniment of strong coffee
too early this dull day
slowly dawning with a grey light
the colour of the cooked quinoa
I find myself reflecting
on the lives of thin men,
men the colour of sunbrowned toast
now striding naked along the streets
of Indian cities or climbing the lonely paths
and passes of mountains with an energy
beyond conventional wisdom
and of men like Prahlad Jani
a light-footed dancer in flowing robes
a sprightly guru
who doesn't eat or drink
and hasn't done so for 60 years
and the battery
of tests and observations
that left the experts scratching
their knowledgeable heads in deep perplexity
and me my empty bowl
_
gw2010

Sunday 3 October 2010

Padrig's poem

a natural cross with its three hearts

Padrig, or St Patrick as he is commonly known these days, was born circa 387AD in Cumbria which in those days was in the land of Cymru (nowadays Cymru is much smaller and is better known as Wales). Padrig died circa 461AD in Ireland.

There is a place in Cumbria which is named after him. It is called Patterdale. This dale is at the foot of Derwentwater in the Lake District National Park.

Local tradition has it that St Patrick preached in Patterdale. This may well be so for it is believed that he crossed the Irish Sea and landed at Heysham Head, a headland close to Morecambe a seaside town popularly known as the Gateway to The Lakes.

Here is the poem. It is said that these words are from the man himself.

Padrig's poem

Our God, God of all,
God of Heaven and Earth, Seas and Rivers,
God of Sun and Moon, of all the Stars,
God of High Mountain and Lowly Valley,
God over Heaven and in Heaven and under Heaven;
He has a Dwelling in Heaven and Earth and Sea
And all things that are in them,
He inspires all things,
He quickens all things,
He is over all Things,
He supports all.

-

Saturday 2 October 2010

A Keats' sonnet

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; -then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats (1795-1821)