Written by
Barry Tebb |
Rivers, tow paths, caravan parks
From Kirkstall to Keighley
The track’s ribbon flaps
Like Margaret’s whirling and twirling
At ten with her pink-tied hair
And blue-check patterned frock
O my lost beloved
Mills fall like doomed fortresses
Their domes topple, stopped clocks
Chime midnight forever and ever
Amen to the lost hegemony of mill girls
Flocking through dawn fog, their clogs clacking,
Their beauty, only Vermeer could capture
O my lost beloved
In a field one foal tries to mount another,
The mare nibbling April grass;
The train dawdles on this country track
As an old man settles to his paperback.
The chatter of market stalls soothes me
More than the armoury of medication
I keep with me. Woodyards, scrapyards,
The stone glories of Yorkshire spring-
How many more winters must I endure
O my lost beloved?
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Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Love and Death once ceased their strife
At the Tavern of Man's Life.
Called for wine, and threw -- alas! --
Each his quiver on the grass.
When the bout was o'er they found
Mingled arrows strewed the ground.
Hastily they gathered then
Each the loves and lives of men.
Ah, the fateful dawn deceived!
Mingled arrows each one sheaved;
Death's dread armoury was stored
With the shafts he most abhorred;
Love's light quiver groaned beneath
Venom-headed darts of Death.
Thus it was they wrought our woe
At the Tavern long ago.
Tell me, do our masters know,
Loosing blindly as they fly,
Old men love while young men die?
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Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET CIII. Amor m' ha posto come segno a strale. LOVE'S ARMOURY. Love makes me as the target for his dart,As snow in sunshine, or as wax in flame,Or gale-driven cloud; and, Laura, on thy nameI call, but thou no pity wilt impart.Thy radiant eyes first caused my bosom's smart;No time, no place can shield me from their beam;From thee (but, ah, thou treat'st it as a dream!)Proceed the torments of my suff'ring heart.Each thought's an arrow, and thy face a sun,My passion's flame: and these doth Love employTo wound my breast, to dazzle, and destroy.Thy heavenly song, thy speech with which I'm won,All thy sweet breathings of such strong controul,Form the dear gale that bears away my soul. Nott. Me Love has placed as mark before the dart,As to the sun the snow, as wax to fire,As clouds to wind: Lady, e'en now I tire,Craving the mercy which never warms thy heart.[Pg 132]From those bright eyes was aim'd the mortal blow,'Gainst which nor time nor place avail'd me aught;From thee alone—nor let it strange be thought—The sun, the fire, the wind whence I am so.The darts are thoughts of thee, thy face the sun,The fire my passion; such the weapons beWith which at will Love dazzles yet destroys.Thy fragrant breath and angel voice—which wonMy heart that from its thrall shall ne'er be free—The wind which vapour-like my frail life flies. Macgregor.
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