Another from Our Emily:

THERE is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take 5
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!



Done in calligraphy, the first 2 lines hang in the main book room.

GKC

And a very good selection indeed, Doom. You show promise. If you can but persist, you might enjoy a range from:

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)
--Eletelephony by Laura Elizabeth Richards

--to--


Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
-- The Snow-Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Parian -- fine marble from the Greek island of Paros, used for sculpture
Maugre -- archaic for "in spite of".

Well, my mind is more childlike than GKC's. So, the same sentiment, from Childcraft, which some of us were nursed on --


A book, I think, is very like
A little golden door
That takes me into places
Where I've never been before.

It leads me into fairyland
Or countries strange and far
And, best of all, the golden door
Always stands ajar.

A Book by Adelaide Love

--or more mature, but equally elegant --

A poem is a spider web
Spun with words of wonder,
Woven lace held in place
By whispers made of thunder.
--Charles Ghigna

How clever, sneaking in a Dave Brubeck reference.

How odd. Must remember to check my cut and paste better.


GKC, Mr. Broadway

If only your CHILDCRAFT was bound in orange.


But, of books:

"Without stirring abroad

One can know the whole world

Without looking out the window

One can see the way of heaven".

Lao Tzu


Done in calligraphy, hanging on the wall between the book room and the living room, beneath some sort of calligraphy about King Arthur.

GKC

Does ee cummings count? How about Ogden Nash?

Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker....

But it is. In fact, two are in blue and one in orange. You realize, of course, what this means.

I WIN

Ha, ha. Ha, ha, haa. Ha, ha, HA, HA. HA, HAA, HAAAAAAAA, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Of course.

Oh, and....

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,, ,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.
--Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas

Two in blue and one in orange? Three? That's all?

GKC

Dear boy, indeed they do.

cummings is much less accessible than others, but --


this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.


While Nash is much more so, in a way--


The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality

Quite enough to trump you, bucko me lad.

As explained, true.

GKC

I cannot stand - Emily Dickinson -

I don't care much for poetry in general, I've tried on numerous occasions to read poetry and have never been able to get into it, so I can't say have much animus towards any particular poet....

Let Our Emily respond ---

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I've stared my level best
To see if evening — any evening — would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn't able.

C.S. Lewis.

GKC