Best Famous Skipping Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Skipping poems. This is a select list of the best famous Skipping poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Skipping poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of skipping poems.

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• All Famous Skipping Poems

Written by Walt Whitman | American Feuillage AMERICA always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath’d Cuba! Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western Seas; The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of square miles; The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches; Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of Democracy! Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows; Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed, Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering; On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up; Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink; In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done—they rest standing—they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes; On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree tops, Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with color’d flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and *******, Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—with the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina’s coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on shore work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees—There are the turpentine works, There are the ******* at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is cover’d with pine straw: —In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse; On rivers, boatmen safely moor’d at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress tree, and the juniper tree; —Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around; California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume—the stanch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horsepath; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves; Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love, one Dilation or Pride; —In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march, The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies; —All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These States—reminiscences, all institutions, All These States, compact—Every square mile of These States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also, Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the road-side; The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; —Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is; The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of The States, each for itself—the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space, the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands; O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that, whatever it is; Southward there, I screaming, with wings slowly flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding; Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement—And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time reliev’d by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Kanadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I, plunging at the hunters, corner’d and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever united lands—my body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great Pastoral Plains; Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me, These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of These States?

Written by Howard Nemerov | Lion and Honeycomb He didn't want to do it with skill, He'd had enough of skill. If he never saw Another villanelle, it would be too soon; And the same went for sonnets. If it had been Hard work learning to rime, it would be much Harder learning not to. The time came He had to ask himself, what did he want? What did he want when he began That idiot fiddling with the sounds of things. He asked himself, poor moron, because he had Nobody else to ask. The others went right on Talking about form, talking about myth And the (so help us) need for a modern idiom; The verseballs among them kept counting syllables. So there he was, this forty-year-old teen-ager Dreaming preposterous mergers and divisions Of vowels like water, consonants like rock (While everybody kept discussing values And the need for values), for words that would Enter the silence and be there as a light. So much coffee and so many cigarettes Gone down the drain, gone up in smoke, Just for the sake of getting something right Once in a while, something that could stand On its own flat feet to keep out windy time And the worm, something that might simply be, Not as the monument in the smoky rain Grimly endures, but that would be Only a moment's inviolable presence, The moment before disaster, before the storm, In its peculiar silence, an integer Fixed in the middle of the fall of things, Perfected and casual as to a child's eye Soap bubbles are, and skipping stones.

Written by John Clare | Remembrances Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and ducking stone Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own Like a ruin of the past all alone When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a 'swing' And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a stone When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke To make our harvest cart like so many working folk And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing Leaving nothing but a little naked spring When jumping time away on old cross berry way And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away The ancient pulpit trees and the play When for school oer 'little field' with its brook and wooden brig Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig And drove my team along made of nothing but a name 'Gee hep' and 'hoit' and 'woi'- O I never call to mind These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind On the only aged willow that in all the field remains And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their chains And in a silent murmuring complains Here was commons for the hills where they seek for freedom still Though every commons gone and though traps are set to kill The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom chill When I think of old 'sneap green' puddocks nook and hilly snow Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view When we threw the pissmire crumbs when we's nothing else to do All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now All settled here for ever on its brow I never thought that joys would run away from boys Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer sun And winter fought her battle strife and won By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running still It runs a naked brook cold and chill O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen And when she turned to go O I'd caught her mantle then And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour As keepsakes and pledges to fade away But love never heeded to treasure up the may So it went the comon road with decay

Written by Robert Lowell | Colloquy in Black Rock Here the jack-hammer jabs into the ocean; My heart, you race and stagger and demand More blood-gangs for your ******-brass percussions, Till I, the stunned machine of your devotion, Clanging upon this cymbal of a hand, Am rattled screw and footloose. All discussions End in the mud-flat detritus of death. My heart, beat faster, faster. In Black Mud Hungarian workmen give their blood For the martyrs Stephen who was stoned to death. Black Myd, a name to conjure with: O mud For watermelons gutted to the crust, Mud for the mole-tide harbor, mud for mouse, Mud for teh armored Diesel fishing tubs that thud A year and a day to wind and tide; the dust Is on this skipping heart that shakes my house, House of our Savior who was hanged till death. My heart, beat faster, faster. In Black Mud Stephen the martyre was broken down to blood: Our ransom is the rubble of his death. Christ walks on the black water. In Black Mud Darts the kingfisher. On Corpus Christi, heart, Over the drum-beat of St. Stephen's choir I hear him, Stupor Mundi, and the mud Flies from his hunching wings and beak--my heart, he blue kingfisher dives on you in fire.

Written by Barry Tebb | Bridge Over The Aire Book 3 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART 1 The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you? I am the mad poet first love You never got over You are my blue-eyed Madonna virgin bride I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’ On the bark of every Wind-bent tree in East End Park 2 The park itself will blossom And grow in chiaroscuro The Victorian postcard’s view Of avenue upon avenue With palms and pagodas Lakes and waterfalls and A fountain from Versailles. 3 You shall be my queen In the Kingdom of Deira Land of many rivers Aire the greatest Isara the strong one Robed in stillness Wide, deep and dark. 4 In Middleton Woods Margaret and I played Truth or dare She bared her breasts To the watching stars. 5 “Milk, milk, Lemonade, round The corner Chocolate spread” Nancy chanted at Ten in the binyard Touching her ****, Her ****, her bum, Margaret joined in Chanting in unison. 6 The skipping rope Turned faster And faster, slapping The hot pavement, Margaret skipped In rhythm, never Missing a beat, Lifting the pleat Of her skirt Whirling and twirling. 7 Giggling and red Margaret said In a whisper “When we were Playing at Nancy’s She pushed a spill Of paper up her You-know-what She said she’d Let you watch If you wanted.” 8 Margaret, this Saturday morning in June There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for The matin?e, down the alley by the blank Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide With you, we are counting our picture Money, I am counting the stars in your Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb. 9 You have no idea of my need for you A lifetime long, every wrong decision I made betrayed my need; forty years on Hear my song and take my hand and move Us to the house of love where we belong. 10 Margaret we sat in the cinema dark Warm with the promise of a secret kiss The wall lights glowed amber on the Crumbling plaster, we looked with longing At the love seats empty in the circle, Vowing we would share one. 11 There is shouting and echoes Of wild splashing from York Road baths; forty years on It stirs my memory and Will not be gone. 12 The ghosts of tramtracks Light up lanes To nowhere In Leeds Ten. Every road Leads nowhere In Leeds Nine. Motorways have cut The city’s heart In two; Margaret, Our home lies buried Under sixteen feet Of stone. 13 Our families moved And we were lost I was not there to hear The whispered secret Of your first period. 14 God is courage’s infinite ground Tillich said; God, give me enough To stand another week without her Every day gets longer, every sleep Less deep. 15 Why can’t I find you, Touch you, Bind your straw-gold hair The colour of lank February grass? 16 Under the stone canopy Of the Grand Arcade I pass Europa Nightclub; In black designer glass I watch the faces pass But none is like your’s, No voice, no eyes, No smile at all Like your’s. 17 From Kirkstall Lock The rhubarb crop To Knostrop’s forcing sheds The roots ploughed up Arranged in beds Of perfect darkness Where the buds burst With a pip, rich pink Stalks and yellow leaves Hand-picked by Candle-light to Keep the colour right So every night the Rhubarb train Could go from Leeds To Covent Garden. 18 The smell of Saturday morning Is the smell of freedom How the bounds may grow Slowly slowly as I go. “Rag-bone rag-bone White donkey stone” Auntie Nellie scoured Her door step, polished The brass knocker Till I saw my face Bunched like a fist Complete with goggles Grinning like a monkey In a mile of mirrors. 19 Every door step had a stop A half-stone iron weight To hold it back and every Step was edged with donkey Stone in yellow or white From the ragman or the potman With his covered cart jingling Jangling as it jerked hundreds Of cups on hooks pint and Half pint mugs and stacks of Willow-patterned plates From Burmantofts. 20 We heard him a mile off Nights in summer when He trundled round the Corner over the cobbles Jamming the wood brake Blocks whoaing the horses With their gleaming brasses And our mams were always Waiting where he stopped. 21 Double summer-time made The nights go on for ever And no-one cared any more How long we played what Or where and we were left Alone and that’s all I wanted Then or now to be left alone Never to be called in from The Hollows never to be Called from Margaret. 22 City of back-to-backs From Armley Heights Laid out in rows Like trees or grass I watch you pass. 23 The Aire is slow and almost Still In the Bridgefield The Joshua Tetley clock Over the Atkinson Grimshaw Print Is stopped at nineteen fifty Four The year I left. 24 Grimshaw’s home was Half a mile away In Knostrop Hall Margaret and I Climbed the ruined Walls her hair was Blowing in the wind Her eyes were stars In the green night Her hands were holding My hands. 25 Half a century later I look out over Leeds Nine What little’s left is broken Or changed Saturday night Is silent and empty The paths over the Hollows Deserted the bell Of St. Hilda’s still. 26 On a single bush The yellow roses blush Pink in the amber light Night settles on the Fewstons and the Copperfields No mothers’ voices calling us. Lilac and velvet clover Grew all over the Hollows It was all the luck We knew and when we left Our luck went too. 27 Solid black Velvet basalt Polished jet Millstone grit Leeds Town Hall Built with it Soaks up the fog Is sealed with smog Battered buttressed Blackened plinths White lions’ paws Were soft their Smiles like your’s. 28 Narrow lanes, steep inclines, Steps, blank walls, tight And secret openings’ The lanes are your hips The inclines the lines Of your thighs, the steps Your breasts, blank walls Your buttocks, tight and Secret openings your Taut vagina’s lips. 29 There is a keening and a honing And a winnowing in the wind I am the surge and flow In Winwaed’s water the last breath Of Elmete’s King. I am Penda crossing the Aire Camping at Killingbeck Conquered by Aethalwald Ruler of Deira. 30 Life is a bird hovering In the Hall of the King Between darkness and darkness flickering The stone of Scone at last lifted And borne on the wind, Dunedin, take it Hold it hard and fast its light Is leaping it is freedom’s Touchstone and firestone. 31 Eir, Ayer or Aire I’ll still be there Your wanderings off course Old Ea, Old Eye, Dead Eye Make no difference to me. Eg-an island - is Aire’s True source, names Not places matter With the risings Of a river Ea land-by-water I’ll make my own way Free, going down river To the far-off sea. 32 Poetry is my business, my affair. My cri-de-coeur, jongleur Of Mercia and Elmete, Margaret, Open your door I am heaping Imbroglios of stars on the floor Meet me by the Office Lock At midnight or by the Town Hall Clock. 33 Nennius nine times have I knocked On the door of your grave, nine times More have I made Pilgrimage to Elmete’s Wood where long I lay by beck and bank Waiting for your tongue to flame With Pentecostal fire. 34 Margaret you rode in the hollow of my hand In the harp of my heart, searching for you I wandered in Kirkgate Market’s midnight Down avenues of shuttered stalls, our secrets Kept through all the years. From the Imperial on Beeston Hill I watch the city spill glass towers Of light over the horizon’s rim. 35 The railyard’s straights Are buckled plates Red bricks for aggregate All lost like me Ledsham and Ledston Both belong to Leeds But Ledston Luck Is where Aire leads. 36 Held of the Crown By seven thanes In Saxon times ‘In regione Loidis’ Baeda scripsit Leeds, Leeds, You answer All my needs. 37 A horse shoe stuck for luck Behind a basement window: Margaret, now we’ll see What truth there is In dreams and poetry! I am at one with everyone There is poetry Falling from the air And you have put it there. 38 The sign for John Eaton Street Is planted in the back garden Of the transport caf? between The strands of a wire mesh fence Straddling the cobbles of a street That is no more, a washing line And an abandoned caravan. 39 ‘This open land to let’ Is what you get on the Hollows Thousands of half-burned tyres The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms, The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards, Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School. 40 There is a mermaid singing On East Street on an IBM poster Her hair is lack-lustre Her breasts are facing the camera Her tail is like a worn-out brush. Chimney stacks Blind black walls Of factories Grimy glass Flickering firelight In black-leaded grates. 41 Hunslet de Ledes Hop-scotch, hide and seek, Bogies-on-wheels Not one tree in Hunslet Except in the cemetery The lake filled in For fifty years, The bluebell has rung Its last perfumed peal. 42 I couldn’t play out on Sunday Mam and dad thought us a cut Above the rest, it was another Test I failed, keeping me and Margaret apart was like the Aztecs Tearing the heart from the living flesh. 43 Father, your office job Didn’t save you From the drugs They never gave you. 44 Isaiah, my son, You made it back From Balliol to Beeston At a run via the Playing fields of Eton. There is a keening and a honing And a winnowing in the wind Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent.

Written by George Herbert | The Thanksgiving Oh King of grief! (a title strange, yet true, To thee of all kings only due) Oh King of wounds! how shall I grieve for thee, Who in all grief preventest me? Shall I weep blood? why thou has wept such store That all thy body was one door. Shall I be scourged, flouted, boxed, sold? 'Tis but to tell the tale is told. 'My God, my God, why dost thou part from me? ' Was such a grief as cannot be. Shall I then sing, skipping, thy doleful story, And side with thy triumphant glory? Shall thy strokes be my stroking? thorns, my flower? Thy rod, my posy? cross, my bower? But how then shall I imitate thee, and Copy thy fair, though bloody hand? Surely I will revenge me on thy love, And try who shall victorious prove. If thou dost give me wealth, I will restore All back unto thee by the poor. If thou dost give me honour, men shall see, The honour doth belong to thee. I will not marry; or, if she be mine, She and her children shall be thine. My bosom friend, if he blaspheme thy name, I will tear thence his love and fame. One half of me being gone, the rest I give Unto some Chapel, die or live. As for thy passion - But of that anon, When with the other I have done. For thy predestination I'll contrive, That three years hence, if I survive, I'll build a spittle, or mend common ways, But mend mine own without delays. Then I will use the works of thy creation, As if I us'd them but for fashion. The world and I will quarrel; and the year Shall not perceive, that I am here. My music shall find thee, and ev'ry string Shall have his attribute to sing; That all together may accord in thee, And prove one God, one harmony. If thou shalt give me wit, it shall appear; If thou hast giv'n it me, 'tis here. Nay, I will read thy book, and never move Till I have found therein thy love; Thy art of love, which I'll turn back on thee, O my dear Saviour, Victory! Then for thy passion - I will do for that - Alas, my God, I know not what.

Written by Edgar Lee Masters | Jim Brown While I was handling Dom Pedro I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are For singing "Turkey in the straw" or "There is a fountain filled with blood" -- (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord); For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land; For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; For men, or for money; For the people or against them. This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, Headed by Ben Pantier's wife, Went to the Village trustees, And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, To a barn outside of the corporation, On the ground that it corrupted public morals. Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day -- They thought it a slam on colts.

Written by Amy Lowell | Spring Day Bath The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air. Breakfast Table In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl -- and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: "Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!" Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air. Walk Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer away without touching. On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass marbles, with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red striped agates. The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into the gutters under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus in the air, but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the street, and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The dust and the wind flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, tap, the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the flowers on her hat. A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of the way. It is green and gay with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water over the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells of tulips and narcissus. The thickening branches make a pink `grisaille' against the blue sky. Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each other and sheer away just in time. Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front of the white dust, leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead of the wind, jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green. A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, sharp-beaked, irresistible, shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and sunshine tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky is quiet and high, and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air. Midday and Afternoon Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of traffic. The stock-still brick facade of an old church, against which the waves of people lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies of light in the windows of chemists' shops, with their blue, gold, purple jars, darting colours far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors, murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts, blurring of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of brakes on an electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against the metal blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust, thrust along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement under me, reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, dragging, plodding doggedly, or springing up and advancing on firm elastic insteps. A boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press. They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus. The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of gold blind the shop-windows, putting out their contents in a flood of flame. Night and Sleep The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, snap, that means a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong sliver of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another street. A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall building, but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours? I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has come but recently from the high sky. There are no flowers in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus. My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the window I can see the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads with no stems. I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants and shops I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city, glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing for the Spring. The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air. Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters ***** tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky when it is fresh-washed and fair . . . I smell the stars . . . they are like tulips and narcissus . . . I smell them in the air.

Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Stretcher Case He woke; the clank and racket of the train Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain. Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again. At last he lifted his bewildered eyes And blinked, and rolled them sidelong; hills and skies, Heavily wooded, hot with August haze, And, slipping backward, golden for his gaze, Acres of harvest. Feebly now he drags Exhausted ego back from glooms and quags And blasting tumult, terror, hurtling glare, To calm and brightness, havens of sweet air. He sighed, confused; then drew a cautious breath; This level journeying was no ride through death. ‘If I were dead,’ he mused, ‘there’d be no thinking— Only some plunging underworld of sinking, And hueless, shifting welter where I’d drown.’ Then he remembered that his name was Brown. But was he back in Blighty? Slow he turned, Till in his heart thanksgiving leapt and burned. There shone the blue serene, the prosperous land, Trees, cows and hedges; skipping these, he scanned Large, friendly names, that change not with the year, Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills and Beer.

Written by Barry Tebb | Bridge Over The Aire Book 6 THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS 1 Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge By Saint Hilda’s where we started down Knostrop to chump but I trailed behind With Margaret when it was late September The song of summer ceased and fires in Blackleaded grates began and we were Hidden from the others by the bridge’s span. 2 When you bent I saw the buds of your breasts As you meant and I laughed at your craft when You blushed and denied and finally cried But there was a smile in your eyes. 3 It was the season of yo-yo’s in yellow or Pink or pillar-box red and you spooled out The thread as only you could and it dipped And rose like a dancer. 4 The paddock by the tusky sheds was cropped And polished by the horses’ hooves, their Nostrils flared and they bared their teeth As we passed and tossed their manes as we Shied from the rusty fence where peg-legged We jumped the cracks and pulled away each Dandelion head, “Pee-the-bed! Pee-the bed!” Rubbing the yellow dust into each other’s Cheeks and chins as we kissed. 5 The bluebells had died and on the other side The nettle beds were filled with broken branches White as bone, clouds were tags of wool, the Night sky magenta sands with bands of gold And bright stars beckoned and burned like Ragged robins in a ditch and rich magnolias In East End Park. 6 I am alone in the dark Remembering Bonfire Night Of nineteen-fifty four When it was early dusk Your hair was gold As angels’ wings. 7 From the binyard in the backstreet we brought The dry stored branches, broken staves under The taunting stars and we have never left That night or that place on the Hollows The fire we built has never gone out and The light in your eyes is bright: We took the road by the river with a star Map and dream sacks on our backs. 8 The Hollows stretched into darkness The fire burned in the frost, sparks Crackled and jumped and floated Stars into the invisible night and The log glowed red and the fire we Fed has never died. 9 The catherine-wheel pinned to the palings Hissed and spun as we ran passed the railings Rattling our sticks until the stars had beat retreat. 10 From the night comes a figure Into the firelight: Margaret Gardiner My first, my only love, the violet pools Of your eyes, your voice still calling, “I am here, I am waiting.” 11 Where the road turns Past St Hilda’s Down Knostrop By the Black Road By the Red Road Interminable blue And I remember you, Margaret, in your Mauve blazer standing By the river, your Worn-out flower patterned Frock and black Laceless runners 12 Into the brewer’s yard Stumbled the drayhorses Armoured in leather And clashing brass Strident as Belshazzar’s Feast, rich as yeast On Auntie Nellie’s Baking board, barrels Banked on barrels From the cooper’s yard. 13 Margaret, are you listening? Are your eyes still distant And dreaming? Can you hear My voice in Eden? My poems are all for you The one who never knew Silent and most generous Muse, eternal primavera Under the streetlamps Of Leeds Nine. 14 Margaret, hold my hand As we set out into the Land of summers lost A day-time ghost surrenders At the top of the steps To the Aire where we Looked over the Hollows Misted with memory and Images of summer. We are standing on the corner of Falmouth Place We are standing by the steps to the Aire We are standing outside the Maypole Falling into Eden. 15 Falling into Eden is just a beginning Hoardings on the gable ends for household Soap, washing is out on the lines Falmouth Street full of children playing, Patrick Keown, Keith Ibbotson, the Flaherty Twins spilling over the pavements, holding A skipping rope, whirling and twirling; Margaret you never missed a turn While I could never make one, out before I began.