Jerusalem the golden (J.M. Neale and Hymns Ancient and Modern)

Jerusalem the golden,

  With milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation

  Sink heart and voice opprest.
I know not, O I know not,

  What social joys are there,
What radiancy of glory,

  What light beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Sion,

  Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel,

  And all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,

   The daylight is serene,
The pastures of the blessed

  Are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David,

  And there, from care released,
The song of them that triumph,

  The shout of them that feast;
And they who, with their Leader,

  Have conquered in the fight,
For ever and for ever

  Are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessèd country,

  Shall I ever see thy face?
O sweet and blessèd country,

  Shall I ever win thy grace?
Exult, O dust and ashes!

  The Lord shall be thy part:
His only, his for ever,

  Thou shalt be, and thou art!

from De contemptu mundi (Bernard of Cluny)

Urbs Sion aurea, patria lactea, cive decora,

omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora.
Nescio, nescio quae iubilatio, lux tibi qualis,
quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.
Laude studens ea tollere mens mea, victa fatiscit.
O bona gloria, vincor in omnia laus tua vicit.
Sunt Sion atria coniubilantia, martyre plena,
cive micantia, principe stantia, luce serena.
Sunt ibi pascua mitibus afflua praestita sanctis.
regis ibi thronus agminis et sonus est epulantis,
gens duce splendida, concio candida vestibus albis;
sunt sine fletibus in Sion aedibus, aedibus almis.

from Harrow the Ninth, Act One, chapter 10 (Tamsyn Muir)

Before Harrowhark could take this prompt to make a hasty exit, the necromancer of the Fifth said without transition: 'Are you interested in Lyctoral materials?'

This was an introduction, or a probe, or something different altogether.  Scrutiny into the Ninth's affairs might be deflected.  She was more intrigued by the idea of an introduction.

'If you are asking whether or not we have any within my House,' said Harrow slowly, 'I will not answer that question.'

'What a shame!  I understand,' said Pent, who did not appear to be discomfited by refusals, or by the sacramental paint.  'It was more to gauge your interest though.  This library is stuffed.  The books, now, the books are interesting - but the Lyctoral traces - phwoar.'

Abigail Pent had not seemed the type of woman to articulate phwoar.  She said it very boyishly.

Heaven (George Herbert)

O Who will show me those delights on high?
            Echo: I.
Thou Echo, thou art mortall, all men know.
            Echo: No.
Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves?
            Echo: Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide?
            Echo: Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly.
            Echo: Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse?
            Echo: Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight?
            Echo: Light.
Light to the minde: what shall the will enjoy?
            Echo: Joy.
But are there cares and businesse with the pleasure?
            Echo: Leisure.
Light, joy, and leisure; but shall they persever?
            Echo: Ever.

Vergissmeinnicht (Keith Douglas)

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move,
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

A Sonnet (J.K. Stephen)

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times - good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the ABC

Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland (William Wordsworth)

Two Voices are there; one is of the Sea,
One of the Mountains; each a mighty Voice;
In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen Music, Liberty!
There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee
Thou fought'st against Him; but hast vainly striven;
Thou from thy Alpine Holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft:
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left!
For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be
That mountain Floods should thunder as before,
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!

The Motor Bus (A.D. Godley)

What is this that roareth thus?

Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo -
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live: -
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!

Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!

The Uncertainty of the Poet (Wendy Cope)

I am a poet.

I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.

I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.

I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am' - 

Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?

Am I?' - a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!

Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am.

I am fond of a 'very'.

I am of very fond bananas.

Am I a poet?

A Birl for Burns (Seamus Heaney)

From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,
That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them
And stick to still in County Antrim
Was in my ear.
From east of Bann it westered in
On the Derry air.

My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,
They happed themselves until it thowed,
By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed
And snedded thrissles,
And when the rigs were braked and hoed
They’d wet their whistles.

Old men and women getting crabbèd
Would hark like dogs who’d seen a rabbit,
Then straighten, stare and have a stab at
Standard habbie:
Custom never staled their habit
O’ quotin’ Rabbie.

Leg-lifting, heartsome, lightsome Burns!
He overflowed the well-wrought urns
Like buttermilk from slurping churns,
Rich and unruly,
Or dancers flying, doing turns
At some wild hooley.

For Rabbie’s free and Rabbie’s big,
His stanza may be tight and trig
But once he sets the sail and rig
Away he goes
Like Tam-O-Shanter o’er the brig
Where no one follows.

And though his first tongue’s going, gone,
And word lists now get added on
And even words like stroan and thrawn
Have to be glossed,
In Burns’s rhymes they travel on
And won’t be lost.