O frabjous day!

It’s always enjoyable reading Jabberwocky.

Lewis Carroll’s utterly nonsensical poem written in 1872.

In the realm of nonsense poems, this is considered one of the greatest 🙂

Who said everything had to make sense in any case?

So as you go galumphing through the gyre & gimble of life,

Or have those uffish thoughts,

Clutch your vorpal sword & mark those frumious plots.

It will strengthen you.

I hope.

Have a frabjous Sunday.

~  *  ~

Jabberwocky

by

Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
 All mimsy were the borogoves,
 And the mome raths outgrabe.

*

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
 Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
 The frumious Bandersnatch!”

*

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
 Long time the manxome foe he sought —
 So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

*

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
 The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
 Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
 And burbled as it came!

*

One, two! One, two! And through and through
 The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
 He went galumphing back.

*

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
 O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

*

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
 All mimsy were the borogoves,
 And the mome raths outgrabe.

**

Heidi

Heidi by Johanna Spyri was my all time favourite book as a child.

I loved the story.

Over the childhood years I read the book 4 to 5 times.

The above picture is of my original book…rather worn out though it be.

Heidi & her life up in the Alps with her Grandfather have been etched in my memory.

Reading the book made me imagine her life in the mountains.

It was all so vivid.

I am grateful for reading which sharpened our imagination as kids.

Looking back I see the value of not having been brought up on  internet – youtube, google, wikipedia.

Instant information on any topic.

We had to imagine while reading. Period.

A few years ago I got an opportunity to visit Switzerland & see the Alps.

Such an incredibly beautiful country.

Yet it was not very close to my own dramatic imagination of Heidi’s life up in the Swiss mountains.

I am thankful for what we did not have those days.

 

Space

I can’t think of a more eloquent description of the need for space than this beautiful piece from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran –

 

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot must be ‘attempted’ to be read at least once in one’s lifetime. If you can figure it out, that’s just as well too. The part I enjoyed most is the terrific imagery of the feline of the species, the regular cat, in the extract below –

 
     The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,         
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes 
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,        
And seeing that it was a soft October night, 
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

 
And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;         
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate;         
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 
And for a hundred visions and revisions, 
Before the taking of a toast and tea.  

 
In the room the women come and go         
Talking of Michelangelo.  

 
And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair, 
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—         
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) 
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— 
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) 
Do I dare         
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Invictus

While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the  theology or even the ideology of the poem,  it is an interesting poem no doubt of a stubborn ‘unconquerable soul’ 🙂 

Invictus

by

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

 

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

If – Rudyard Kipling

Some poems have the ability to inspire & strengthen. If  by Rudyard Kipling is one of those poems I have never tired of reading…

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Pied Beauty

I love the poem Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins. There is a lyrical quality about it which makes it beautiful – enjoy!

GLORY be to God for dappled things— 
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 
  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;         
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 
 
All things counter, original, spare, strange; 
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:          
                  Praise Him.

Where the mind is without fear

This is one of my favourite poems by Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature almost 100 years ago…

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.