Quotations and Literature Forum

In the stillness of the morning.
In the dark before the dawn,
On silent wings the hunter's stalking,
Prepared to sing his victory song.
The rabbit nestles in his fears,
I shudder from the cold,
Both pondering of life and death,
Traveling the trail below.

It winds through cane-choked bottom,
Musty earth and dampened sound,
And crosses creek and blowdown,
Where the vixen go to ground.
It angles up and overidge,
And crosses oaken flat,
And twist its edge through field edge thick,
Where it is that we first met.

Past the old abandoned home place,
Where history unfolds,
Past fallen stands and wayward plans,
And dreams of bucks untold,
Through cedars with embattled trunks,
And thick with tattered bough,
The trail runs east to meet the sun,
Passing where I sit now.

Within the fading darkness,
I send my thanks in prayer,
For letting me be part of this,
Somehow it's only fair.
I ask for opportunity,
To make his spirit mine,
But if not here and if not now,
Another place and time.

Authored and posted by Mike Belt (11-15-00)

(Read in public by Phantom Delta, November 2000)

Her beauty glistens like polished silver
That shines like the vernal moon--full in a treasured sky.
When she smiles, her happiness makes the brightest stars seem dim.
She ushers my soul to the isolated shores of tranquility
Where nothing surpasses my own pleasure.
Her splendor leads me to this place, in the haven of ecstasy.

(paragraph 1 of 7)
--Excerpt from Transcendence, Phantom Delta--2001

The Arrowsmith

One hundred linear branches
Selected from the cedars--
A dozen wood shafts
Tested, straight and true.
From left & right wing feathers,
Seven quills are chosen.
Quills not for writing
But sheared into fletching.
Honed to precison,
The leathal blades are fitted;
To form the flying lances--
Finished to perfection.
Crested by the Archer
And sheathed within his quiver.
A dozen deadly arrows,
Crafted by a Master.

Phantom Delta, 1989
(A tribute to Saxton Pope)

Somedays my dreams will drift so free
They fly like horses in the sky
But then I hear those guitar strings
And they sound just like a diamond dream...
-----------------------------

http://www.outdoorsite.com/gallery/inde ... &mode=view

Antlers in the Pines

Perhaps the greatest pleasure that I shall ever find
Are those golden days of autumn that live within my mind.

My strength belongs to morning when my day begins at dawn.
The timbers are my brethren and the robins are my songs.

The wind is like a sonnet that whispers with the breeze.
My prayer is that of silence, as sacred as the trees.

The clouds are like a fleet that sails up in the sky.
But the sky is like divinity, more colossal than the earth.

The spring is like a fountain and the summer is a woman.
The autumn is a treasury and the winter is a mountain.

The forest is my sanctuary and my faith is like a bow.
My quest is pledged to destiny and the arrow is my soul.

Perhaps the greatest treasure that I shall ever find
Lay hidden in the forest like the antlers in the pines.

Phantom Delta

All so deep and serious! Without my Theodore Roethke handy here, I can only remember these two from Ogden Nash:

Candy's dandy
But liquor's quicker

and even shorter:

Fleas

Adam had 'em

_________________
There are more horses' asses in the world than there are horses.

Farewell to Arms

To Queen Elizabeth

His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turned to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are age's alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
`Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.'
Goddess, allow this aged man his right,
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight.

George Peele

_________________
Regards,
Lou
I feel like a fugitive from th' law of averages.
— Bill Mauldin

_________________
Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate. (HW Longfellow)

One of my favourites:


Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
gone far away into the silent land;
when you can no more hold me by the hand
nor I half turning to go yet turning, stay

Remember when no more day by day
you tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
it will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while
and afterwards remember, do not grieve:
for if the darkness and corruption leave
a vestige of the thoughts that I once had,
Better by far that you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad

Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

(One of my favorites)

anyone lived in a pretty how town
by e. e. cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


My freshman English class in high school read this poem without knowing the title, and we decided it was about a man committing suicide. I also really love Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and The Road Not Taken.

I went back and read the post and it is credited to me. Are you asking if I originated the first line of the poem? I had not read the first line anywhere else (except in a sceince book). It may not be the first time that four such words were in print (in a poem). I don't wish to take credit for the work of someone other than myself.

Please Advise

My advice is carry on. You've got poetry in your soul, Phantom.

Henry