Poem of the Day

I thought the scenes of sadness in Nodar Kumaritashvili’s village in Georgia were heartbreaking. During NBC’s small tribute to the athlete last night, this poem was quoted, and I realized I hadn’t posted it before.

To an Athlete Dying Young
By A.E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

You know that saying, “You’re only as old as you feel”? Today I feel like I’m about 80 years old…

When I was one-and twenty
By A.E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty
   I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
   But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
   But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
   No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
   I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
   Was never given in vain;
‘Tis paid with sighs a plenty
   And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
   And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

I found this one in the North Anthology, too.

With rue my heart is laden
By A.E. Housman

With rue my heart is laden
   For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
   And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
   The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
   In fields where roses fade.

Current Tea: winter dreams (black tea with chocolate flavoring and peppermint leaves)

So I went to see 300 again tonight (hey, I went with a friend who hadn’t seen it yet) and it rocked even more the second time. YEE-HAW!

The Oracles
By A.E. Housman

‘Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
   When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled,
And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,
   And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.

I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,
   The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;
And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
   That she and I should surely die and never live again.

Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;
   But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.
‘Tis true there’s better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
   And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.

The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
   Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning.
   The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.