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The Atavist

What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?

Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom Thorne! home to your evening dress!
Home to your place of power and pride, and the feast that waits for you!
Why do you linger all alone in the splendid emptiness,
Scouring the Land of the Little Sticks on the trail of the caribou?

Why did you fall off the Earth, Tom Thorne, out of our social ken?
What did your deep damnation prove? What was your dark despair?
Oh with the width of a world between, and years to the count of ten,
If they cut out your heart to-night, Tom Thorne, her name would be graven there!

And you fled afar for the thing called Peace, and you thought you would find it here,
In the purple tundras vastly spread, and the mountains whitely piled;
It's a weary quest and a dreary quest, but I think that the end is near;
For they say that the Lord has hidden it in the secret heart of the Wild.

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poem by Robert William Service
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Strizhevskaya

Strizhevskaya likes food that fresh,
as do so many of her friends,
eschewing fish and cattle flesh,
which carnivores who don’t offends
until they see that ethics may
be quite compatible with taste,
which she believes to be the way
demanded by the Torah, laced
with wine, and many kinds of cheese,
which both de rigueur are for her
and all her friends who’re glad to seize
the Sabbath as a friendly burr,
the special holy moment when
Jews should be eating only food
that turns young Hebrew boys to men
and makes sure that the girls are Jewed
with eco-friendly partners who
to Torah words are most attentive.
Food-consciously she gives this crew
to be good Jews a great incentive

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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Cornelia

I am a massive fan of the actress, Cornelia Frances;
Any TV or theatre show, her presence really enhances.
Since I was fourteen, of hers, I’ve been a very big fan;
To watch her on TV, home, from school, I quickly ran.

In ‘The Young Doctors’, she played the fiery Sister Scott;
Viewers loved her, but her on-screen nursing staff did not!
She ruled the hospital wards with a cast iron fist;
There wasn’t a single trick that she ever missed!

But, through it all, she struck me as a very warm person;
Someone so very different, from her on-screen version.
When I’ve seen her interviewed, as herself, on TV,
She’s exactly the sort of person, I imagined she’d be.

The next Australian TV series, in which I caught her,
Was as Barbara, in the soap opera ‘Sons and Daughters.’
From this, there were many memorable scenes for me,
Especially those ones involving Barbara’s mother, Dee.

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poem by Angela Wybrow
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My Hour

Day after day behold me plying
My pen within an office drear;
The dullest dog, till homeward hieing,
Then lo! I reign a king of cheer.
A throne have I of padded leather,
A little court of kiddies three,
A wife who smiles whate'er the weather,
A feast of muffins, jam and tea.

The table cleared, a romping battle,
A fairy tale, a "Children, bed,"
A kiss, a hug, a hush of prattle
(God save each little drowsy head!)
A cozy chat with wife a-sewing,
A silver lining clouds that low'r,
Then she too goes, and with her going,
I come again into my Hour.

I poke the fire, I snugly settle,
My pipe I prime with proper care;

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poem by Robert William Service
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The Capture of Havana

'Twas in the year 1762 that France and Spain
Resolved, allied together, to crush Britain;
But the British Army sailed from England in May,
And arrived off Havana without any delay.

And the British Army resolved to operate on land,
And the appearance of the British troops were really grand;
And by the Earl of Albemarle the British troops were commanded,
All eager for to fight as soon as they were landed.

Arduous and trying was the work the British had to do,
Yet with a hearty goodwill they to it flew;
While the tropical sun on them blazed down,
But the poor soldiers wrought hard and didn't frown.

The bombardment was opened on the 30th of June,
And from the British battleships a fierce cannonade did boom;
And continued from six in the morning till two o'clock in the afternoon,
And with grief the French and Spaniards sullenly did gloom.

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poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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Farewell, Chubby

As I make this poem, tears run uncontrollably in my eyes.
For my cousin, who died of leukemia at a very young age of 14.

Farewell, Chubby
As I write this poetry
The nails were hammered right at me
Why would I be
hurt this much?
I never thought that I am really
in this nightmare
this sad story.
And as I write this poetry
I have to be
brave
to face
these sentiments
these emotions
to reveal the pain to all of you
That I am really indenial
and scared

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poem by Mary Jesusa Villegas
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Widows

The world was widowed by the death of Christ:
Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought
And found it not.
For nothing, nothing, nothing has sufficed
To bring back comfort to the stricken house
From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse.

In its long widowhood the world has striven
To find diversion. It has turned away
From the vast awefull silences of Heaven
(Which answer but with silence when we pray)
And sought for something to assuage its grief.
Some surcease and relief
From sorrow, in pursuit of mortal joys.
It drowned God's stillness in a sea of noise;
It lost God's presence in a blur of forms;
Till, bruised and bleeding with life's brutal storms,
Unto immutable and speechless space
The World lifts up its face,
Its haggard, tear-drenched face,

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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The life or death question

You could guess from the crowd
converging on the Memorial Hall
and on a Saturday night, that
the speaker must be world-famed in his field,
making his first visit to the college.

A French scientist of renown –
cognitive theory or some such –
turned Buddhist monk these thirty, forty years,
he carried the blessing and the curse,
the burden of responsibility not only of his vocation
but his fame. The hall was packed.

Serene – ‘together’ has to be the word –
he spoke for an hour; enthusiastic applause;
then question time.

There’s always that tense silence before
the first question…how will
the hall respond tonight? Will it hold the level

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Wreck of the Schooner Samuel Crawford

'Twas in the year of 1886, and on the 29th of November,
Which the surviving crew of the "Samuel Crawford" will long remember,
She was bound to Baltimore with a cargo of pine lumber;
But, alas! the crew suffered greatly from cold and hunger.

'Twas on December 3rd when about ten miles south-west
Of Currituck light, and scudding at her best;
That a heavy gale struck her a merciless blow,
Which filled the hearts of the crew with fear and woe.

Then the merciless snow came down, hiding everything from view,
And as the night closed in the wind tempestuous blew;
Still the brave crew reefed the spanker and all the sails,
While not one amongst them with fear bewails.

Still the gallant little schooner ploughed on the seas,
Through the blinding snow and the stormy breeze;
Until it increased to a fearful hurricane,
Yet the crew wrought manfully and didn't complain.

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poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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The Song Of The Dead

Hear now the Song of the Dead -- in the North by the torn berg-edges --
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South -- in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust
of the sear river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East -- in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof --
in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.
Song of the Dead in the West --
in the Barrens, the waste that betrayed them,
Where the wolverene tumbles their packs
from the camp and the grave-mound they made them;
Hear now the Song of the Dead!


I

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.

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poem by Rudyard Kipling
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