WINNING WORDS
Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life
chosen and introduced by
William Sieghart
to Molly Dineen with love and thanks
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword by Sebastian Faulks
Introduction by William Sieghart
ANON ‘I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail’
SHEENAGH PUGH What If This Road
JOHN KEATS Lines from Endymion
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE Come to the Edge
JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE High Flight (An Airman’s Ecstasy)
MAYA ANGELOU Still I Rise
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Pied Beauty
SEAMUS HEANEY The Peninsula
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Upon Westminster Bridge
ANNA AKHMATOVA Our Own Land
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON from In Memoriam A. H. H.
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II You’ll Never Walk Alone
THE KING JAMES BIBLE from The Song of Solomon
A. A. MILNE The End
THOM GUNN The Hug
SUSAN COOLIDGE New Every Morning
JOHN DONNE from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
ELEANOR FARJEON ‘Morning has broken’
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from The Tempest
JOHN BURNSIDE History
W. B. YEATS The Song of Wandering Aengus
WILLIAM BLAKE Eternity
CALLIMACHUS Heraclitus
JAMES FENTON Hinterhof
ROBERT BROWNING Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
ANN SANSOM Voice
ROBERT HERRICK His Desire
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Iris
PAT BORAN Waving
RUPERT BROOKE The Soldier
WENDY COPE Being Boring
ROBERT BURNS Auld Lang Syne
MICHAEL DONAGHY Machines
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE from Ovid’s Elegies
HAFEZ My Brilliant Image
T. S. ELIOT The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
WALTER D. WINTLE Thinking
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Up-Hill
WILLIAM BLAKE from Auguries of Innocence
SEAN O’BRIEN Dignified
ROBERT BROWNING Pippa’s Song
DYLAN THOMAS And death shall have no dominion
JOHN BETJEMAN Seaside Golf
ARCHILOCHUS ‘Some Saian sports my splendid shield’
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY Invictus
STEPHEN DUNN Happiness
WILLIAM BLAKE from Milton
ADRIAN MITCHELL Celia Celia
THEODORE ROETHKE The Waking
W. B. YEATS He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
ROBERT BLY Watering the Horse
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING from Sonnets from the Portuguese
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH My Heart Leaps Up
DON PATERSON Being
ROBERT FROST The Road Not Taken
EMILY DICKINSON ‘If I can stop one Heart from breaking’
EDMUND BLUNDEN Report on Experience
STEVIE SMITH Conviction
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A Christmas Carol
J. R. R. TOLKIEN ‘All that is gold does not glitter’
ELIZABETH BISHOP One Art
JOHN MASEFIELD An Epilogue
THOMAS HARDY Afterwards
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from Henry V
CLARE POLLARD Thinking of England
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX Solitude
DOROTHY PARKER Penelope
ALICE OSWALD Wedding
ROBERT GRAVES Warning to Children
GEORGE HERBERT Prayer
SEAMUS HEANEY from Markings
A. E. HOUSMAN from A Shropshire Lad
WENDY COPE Two Cures for Love
JOHN DRYDEN Happy the Man
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Everyone Sang
SHMUEL HANAGID Soar, Don’t Settle
LANGSTON HUGHES I, Too
JOHN KEATS On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
ROBERT HERRICK The End
AMY LOWELL Climbing
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from Richard II
MARIANNE MOORE I May, I Might, I Must
MAURA DOOLEY Freight
RUDYARD KIPLING If –
PASTOR NIEMÖLLER ‘First they came for the Jews’
CHARLES CAUSLEY I Am the Song
KATHLEEN JAMIE The Way We Live
ROBERT FROST Riders
COLETTE BRYCE Early Version
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON The Charge of the Light Brigade
SIMON ARMITAGE ‘Let me put it this way’
W. B. YEATS An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
SHEENAGH PUGH Envying Owen Beattie
WALTER DE LA MARE Fare Well
WALT WHITMAN ‘We two boys together clinging’
LEONARDO DA VINCI ‘He turns not back who is bound to a star’
JALALUDDIN RUMI ‘Come, come, for you will not find another friend like Me’
ROGER MCGOUGH The Way Things Are
MARY E. FRYE ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’
MAYA ANGELOU I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
MATTHEW ARNOLD Dover Beach
U. A. FANTHORPE Atlas
ANON Life’s Variety
WILLIAM BLAKE ‘The Angel that presided o’er my birth’
W. H. AUDEN ‘As I walked out one evening’
JOHN CLARE ‘I Am’
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH The Daffodils
ANNE BRADSTREET To my Dear and Loving Husband
PABLO NERUDA Dead Woman
JACKIE KAY Holy Island
ANDREW MARVELL from Thoughts in a Garden
PHILIP LARKIN The Trees
DEREK MAHON Everything is Going to Be All Right
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY from Prometheus Unbound
EDWARD THOMAS Adlestrop
SIR HENRY WOTTON The Character of a Happy Life
E. E. CUMMINGS ‘i thank You God for most this amazing’
GEOFFREY CHAUCER Roundel
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES Leisure
CAROL ANN DUFFY Talent
GEORGE ELIOT Count That Day Lost
LOUIS MACNEICE Apple Blossom
CRAIG RAINE Heaven on Earth
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
DENISE LEVERTOV Variation on a Theme by Rilke
TED HUGHES Full Moon and Little Frieda
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Spring
SEAMUS HEANEY The Railway Children
CHARLES SIMIC The Old World
JAMES WRIGHT Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
SYLVIA PLATH You’re
ALISON FELL Pushing Forty
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH ‘Say not the struggle nought availeth’
LOUIS UNTERMEYER Portrait of a Child
JOHN DONNE The Good Morrow
WENDELL BERRY The Peace of Wild Things
DYLAN THOMAS Do not go gentle into that good night
DOUGLAS DUNN Modern Love
JOHN MILTON On His Blindness
OGDEN NASH Reflections on Ice-Breaking
PHILIP LARKIN Church Going
SIMONIDES For the Spartan Dead at Thermopylai
EMILY BRONTË The Old Stoic
DEREK WALCOTT Earth
ROBERT HERRICK To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
GAVIN EWART June 1966
W. H. AUDEN ‘Some say that love’s a little boy’
SIMON ARMITAGE The Catch
RAYMOND CARVER Happiness
PATRICK KAVANAGH Inniskeen Road: July Evening
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON She Walks in Beauty
LANGSTON HUGHES Dreams
D. H. LAWRENCE Green
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A Birthday
MICHAEL DONAGHY The Present
ANON ‘What I spent I had’
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Frost at Midnight
RAYMOND CARVER Late Fragment
T. S. ELIOT from Little Gidding
Acknowledgements
Index of Poets
Index of Titles and First Lines
About the Author
Copyright
FOREWORD
Literature began with poetry and will doubtless one day end with it. For all the efforts of Tolstoy, Dickens and Proust, it is the short lines of the poets that speak most directly to their readers; it is they who touch what is both primitive and noble in us.
You know when it has happened: when the significance of a line or stanza outweighs the sum of the words involved; when you see that no syllable could be moved or changed; when you have the sense that the poet has revealed to us something which – in some mysterious way – already existed.
It is a joy to partake in such transcendence; we are inspired by it. And the poems in this anthology celebrate a sense of inspiration. The book grew from a search for some lines to be reproduced on the walls of the Olympic village in the London Games in 2012. The lines finally chosen – from the conclusion of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ – speak of the nobility of striving to explore, to do one’s best, even in the shadow of death. This idea lies behind many of the most uplifting poems here as well as the more humorous, such as Sean O’Brien’s ‘Dignified’. What can we poor humans do when we know that all is ultimately futile? Run faster, jump higher, laugh louder … Make better verses. And the sporting poems here are not all about record-breakers; John Betjeman’s ‘Seaside Golf’ records the moment at which a high handicapper can look Jack Nicklaus in the face with his ‘quite unprecedented three’.
The scope of this book has been widened from the simply athletic. Philip Larkin’s ‘The Trees’ finds its inspiration in the most repetitive of natural processes – though the words in which it does so are far from predictable: ‘The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said’. The Persian poet Hafez shows in his little poem ‘My Brilliant Image’ how one man’s vision can be used to inspire another.
The old favourites here repay another reading; the less familiar are worth getting to know. Each in its way reflects the glorious futility of living, though each manages to find a way to stress the glory over the futility – none more than Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.
SEBASTIAN FAULKS
Spring 2012
INTRODUCTION
This anthology was inspired by the arrival of the Olympic Games in London in the summer of 2012. Searching for a genuine cultural legacy for this finite sporting event, I set about creating a partnership with the Games’ organisers, Arts Council England and the BBC, to ensure the place of poetry in the physical infrastructure of the Olympic venues and to encourage people across Britain to put poetry into the landscape around them as a celebration of the events of 2012.
Poetry and the English language are our great cultural legacies. The writings of Shakespeare and Chaucer and countless others are treasured the world over. Poetry has also a unique place in the hearts of the British people. Whether it is found in the slim volumes of verse in the back of a bookshop or library, the lyrics of songs or hymns, the chants on the football terraces, the words in greetings cards or jingles on the radio, poetry plays a daily role in our lives.
This book comes from a number of sources: poems selected by the public and nominated to feature on the Olympic sites, and poems selected by myself and my hardworking adviser, the poet Wynn Wheldon, who spent months looking for poetry from every conceivable source that might resonate with Olympic values.
In the end however this is an unashamedly personal selection that uses the word ‘inspiring’ as its criteria for selection in its broadest sense. I hope, like all good anthologies, Winning Words will work for both the dedicated and occasional reader; a book to sit by the bedside for inspiration and reflection. Many people turn to poetry in times of need, to find complicity with how they feel but don’t necessarily have the language to express themselves. I hope the reader will find poetry here for all moods, poetry that will give hope, understanding and inspiration to help get them through the trials and tribulations of everyday life.
As well as thanking my co-contributor I would like to thank some key co-conspirators in this project. Nothing in this world happens without financial support so thanks go first and foremost to Felix Dennis for his generosity and belief, to Nick McDowell and Arts Council England, to Jemma Read at Bloomberg, and to the Ronald Duncan Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation who have backed the project. Pulling off such a complicated project with many partners wouldn’t have been possible without the backing of Mark Thompson and Jessica Cecil at the BBC, Sarah Weir and Adriana Marques at ODA, Naomi Russell and her team at Wonderbird who coordinated and drove the entire project, Rebecca Blackwood and her team at Brunswick Arts who worked on the publicity, Rachel Alexander, Hannah Griffiths, Matthew Hollis and Anne Owen at Faber and Faber, and of course Sebastian Faulks who generously offered a Foreword.
Most of all I would like to thank poetry itself for giving me a lifetime of pleasure, companionship and support.
WILLIAM SIEGHART
Spring 2012
WINNING WORDS
ANON
I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing Comet drop down hail
I saw a Cloud with Ivy circled round
I saw a sturdy Oak creep on the ground
I saw a Pismire swallow up a Whale
I saw a raging Sea brim full of Ale
I saw a Venice Glass sixteen foot deep
I saw a Well full of men’s tears that weep
I saw their Eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a House as big as the Moon and higher
I saw the Sun even in the midst of night
I saw the Man that saw this wondrous sight.
17th century
SHEENAGH PUGH
What If This Road
What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way; around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what’s on the other side; who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story’s end, or where a road will go?
JOHN KEATS
Lines from Endymion
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE
Come to the Edge
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And he pushed,
; And they flew.
JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE
High Flight (An Airman’s Ecstasy)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air;
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark nor even eagle flew;
And while, with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
MAYA ANGELOU
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
Winning Words Page 1
