place
from A Defence of Poetry,
Percy Bysshe Shelley
[…] We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry, in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes. There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political economy, or at least what is wiser and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let “I dare not wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the adage.” We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest. […]
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. […]
Poems from the scratch book
Kaleidoscope
Poem by Irish researcher Ruth Kelly while studying in York, Yorkshire
Words like
magic eye
flicker
as she climbs
up mountains
all ragged
with harvest of pines.
Conversations with the Morning
Poem by Ugandan poet Susan Nalugwa Kiguli, while studying in Leeds, Yorkshire
This morning the wind strides
across my face, ice plunges
into my hands, my palms
yellow like bananas.
I fancy I blend with the gold-
mustard and brown Autumn
has sprayed on the fields.
This chaste morning a squirrel
scuttles past me, its silver grey
carpet tail spreading and then curling.
it stops, sides jiggling its legs
like hands, and picks something-
a nut perhaps, a seed maybe-
spins it and nibbles.
Only the chill poking at my knees
reminds me that I must move;
I leave the squirrel in the pale
of the Yorkshire morning.
walk through the teasing rain
of autumn, selecting which leaves most appeal:
The toasted crunchy ones with stalks
the colour of British Royal Guards’
red and the white gloves or the copper
ones splendid like the sky roads
of a Ugandan dawn.
Despite the chill my heart is hugging pictures,
conversing with a frosty Leeds morning.
I have caught myself again
in worship of this place;
a place far from my own, my
eyes reaching the beyond.
High Waving Heather
Poem by Emily Brontë, from Howarth, Yorkshire, published in 1836
High waving heather ’neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending;
Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
All down the mountain-sides wild forest lending
The mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee bending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering, and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon. […]
The Beyond
Poem by Rabindranath Tagore
Translationed from Bangla by Sukumar Ray
I am restless,
I am athirst for the great Beyond.
Sitting at my window,
I listen for its tread upon the air, as the day wears on.
My life goes out in longing
For the thrill of its touch.
I am athirst for the great Beyond.
O Beyond! Vast Beyond!
How passionate comes thy clarion call.
I forget, alas! that my hapless self,
Is self confined, with no wings to fly.
I am eager, wistful,
O Beyond, I am a stranger here.
Like hopeless hope never attained
Comes the whisper of thy unceasing call.
In thy message my listening heart
Has found its own, its innermost tongue.
O Beyond, I am a stranger here.
O Beyond, Vast Beyond!
How passionate comes thy clarion call.
I forget, alas! that my hapless self
Has no winged horse on a path unknown
I am distraught,
O Beyond, I am forlorn.
In the languid sunlit hours
In the murmur of leaves, in the dancing shadows,
What vision unfolds before my eyes
Of thee—in the wide blue sky?
O Beyond! Vast Beyond!
How passionate comes thy clarion call. I
forget, alas! that my hapless self
Lives in a house whose gates are closed.
from Songs of Lalon
Fakir Lalon Shah
Translationed from Bangla by Samir Dasgupta
9.
The key of my door is in someone else’s hand,
How shall I open the lock
To see what treasure lies inside?
My room is full of gold
Yet other people are busy trading it,
Blind as I am since birth,
How can I discover the invisible?
The gate-keeper might open the door
If he takes kindly to me,
But I am a sinner,
So how can I find him on my way?
O Mind
Inside this man
Dwells he whom they call the Jewel-Man.
The wealth was in my possession,
Says Lalon,
If only I knew it!