Aussie poet A D Hope.eg Meditation on a Bone A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about AD 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow. Words scored upon a bone, Scratched in despair or rage – Nine hundred years have gone; Now, in another age, They burn with passion on A scholar’s tranquil page. The scholar takes his pen And turns the bone about, And writes those words again. Once more they seethe and shout, And through a human brain Undying hate rings out. ‘I loved her when a maid; I loathe and love the wife That warms another’s bed: Let him beware his life!’ The scholar’s hand is stayed; His pen becomes a knife To grave in living bone The fierce archaic cry. He sits and reads his own Dull sum of misery. A thousand years have flown Before that ink is dry. And, in a foreign tongue, A man, who is not he, Reads and his heart is wrung This ancient grief to see, And thinks: When I am dung, What bone shall speak for me?

Canadian Poet.... Archibald Lampman: THE CITY OF THE END OF THINGS Lampman, Archibald (1861-1899) Beside the pounding cataracts Of midnight streams unknown to us 'Tis builded in the leafless tracts And valleys huge of Tartarus. Lurid and lofty and vast it seems; It hath no rounded name that rings, But I have heard it called in dreams The City of the End of Things. Its roofs and iron towers have grown None knoweth how high within the night, But in its murky streets far down A flaming terrible and bright Shakes all the stalking shadows there, Across the walls, across the floors, And shifts upon the upper air From out a thousand furnace doors; And all the while an awful sound Keeps roaring on continually, And crashes in the ceaseless round Of a gigantic harmony. Through its grim depths re-echoing And all its weary height of walls, With measured roar and iron ring, The inhuman music lifts and falls. Where no thing rest and no man is, And only fire and night hold sway; The beat, the thunder and the hiss Cease not, and change not, night nor day. And moving at unheard commands, The abysses and vast fires between, Flit figures that with clanking hands Obey a hideous routine; They are not flesh, they are not bone, They see not with the human eye, And from their iron lips is blown A dreadful and monotonous cry; And whoso of our mortal race Should find that city unaware, Lean Death would smite him face to face, And blanch him with its venomed air: Or caught by the terrific spell, Each thread or memory snapt and cut, His soul would shrivel and its shell Go rattling like an empty nut. It was not always so, but once, In days that no man thinks upon, Fair voices echoed from its stones, The light above it leaped and shone: Once there were multitudes of men, That built that city in their pride, Until its might was made, and then They withered age by age and died. By now of that prodigious race, Three only in an iron tower, Set like carved idols face to face, Remain the masters of its power; And at the city gate a fourth, Gigantic and with dreadful eyes, Sits looking toward the lightless north, Beyond the reach of memories; Fast rooted to the lurid floor, A bulk that never moves a jot, In his pale body dwells no more, Or mind or soul,--an idiot! But sometime in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master's touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires that moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather close and settle down. All its grim grandeur, tower and hall, Shall be abandoned utterly, And into rust and dust shall fall From century to century; Nor ever living thing shall grow, Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass; No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow, Nor sound of any foot shall pass: Alone of its accursèd state, One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there. Poem is in the public domain..

I have several... but recently I've been reading (too) much George Mackay Brown: Here's one by him: The Poet - George Mackay Brown Therefore he no more troubled the pool of silence. But put on mask and cloak, Strung a guitar And moved among the folk. Dancing they cried, 'Ah, how our sober islands Are gay again, since the blind lyrical tramp Invaded the Fair!' Under the last dead lamp When all the dancers and masks had gone inside His cold stare Returned to its true task, interrogation of silence. ******************* I have lots of other favourites. Find some of them here: http://frombooksofpoems.blogspot.com/2006/10/contents.html It's an ongoing anthology I started a few months back...

Emily Dickinson I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you—Nobody—Too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know! How dreary—to be—Somebody! How public—like a Frog— To tell one's name—the livelong June— To an admiring Bog!

I'm a Poe fan.

Through the travail of ages, amidst the pomp and toils of war, on every battlefield, have I fought, and strove, and perished, countless times upon a star. As if through a glass, and darkly, the age-old strife I see. For I have fought under many guises, many names, but always me. - George S. Patton jr.

Pablo Narudo...too many

is it egotistical to pick my inner psyche? Ironically, that's my favourite line from one of my poems..

I quite like some of John Donne's works and Isabel Rosetti. Hope I spelt her name correctly. Her poem about `remember me when I am gone away' or something along the lines, is one of my fav pieces.