Winning Words

by William Sieghart

  Where the same brown paper parcel –

  Children, leave the string alone!

  For who dares undo the parcel

  Finds himself at once inside it,

  On the island, in the fruit,

  Blocks of slate about his head,

  Finds himself enclosed by dappled

  Green and red, enclosed by yellow

  Tawny nets, enclosed by black

  And white acres of dominoes,

  With the same brown paper parcel

  Still unopened on his knee.

  And, if he then should dare to think

  Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,

  Greatness of this endless only

  Precious world in which he says

  He lives – he then unties the string.

  GEORGE HERBERT

  Prayer

  Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,

  Gods breath in man returning to his birth,

  The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

  The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

  Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre,

  Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

  The six-daies – world transposing in an houre,

  A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;

  Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

  Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

  Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,

  The milkie may, the bird of Paradise,

  Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,

  The land of spices; something understood.

  SEAMUS HEANEY

  from Markings

  I

  We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,

  That was all. The corners and the squares

  Were there like longitude and latitude

  Under the bumpy ground, to be

  Agreed about or disagreed about

  When the time came. And then we picked the teams

  And crossed the line our called names drew between us.

  Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field

  As the light died and they kept on playing

  Because by then they were playing in their heads

  And the actual kicked ball came to them

  Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard

  Breathing in the dark and skids on grass

  Sounded like effort in another world …

  It was quick and constant, a game that never need

  Be played out. Some limit had been passed,

  There was fleetness, furtherance, untiredness

  In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.

  A. E. HOUSMAN

  from A Shropshire Lad

  II

  Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

  Is hung with bloom along the bough,

  And stands about the woodland ride

  Wearing white for Eastertide.

  Now, of my threescore years and ten,

  Twenty will not come again,

  And take from seventy springs a score,

  It only leaves me fifty more.

  And since to look at things in bloom

  Fifty springs are little room,

  About the woodlands I will go

  To see the cherry hung with snow.

  WENDY COPE

  Two Cures for Love

  1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.

  2. The easy way: get to know him better.

  JOHN DRYDEN

  Happy the Man

  Horace, Odes, Book III, xxix

  Happy the man, and happy he alone,

  He who can call today his own:

  He who, secure within, can say,

  Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

  Be fair or foul or rain or shine

  The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

  Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

  But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  Everyone Sang

  Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

  And I was filled with such delight

  As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

  Winging wildly across the white

  Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

  Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

  And beauty came like the setting sun:

  My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

  Drifted away … O, but Everyone

  Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

  SHMUEL HANAGID

  Soar, Don’t Settle

  Soar, don’t settle for earth

  and sky – soar to Orion;

  and be strong, but not like an ox or mule

  that’s driven – strong like a lion.

  translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

  LANGSTON HUGHES

  I, Too

  I, too, sing America.

  I am the darker brother.

  They send me to eat in the kitchen

  When company comes,

  But I laugh,

  And eat well,

  And grow strong.

  Tomorrow,

  I’ll be at the table

  When company comes.

  Nobody’ll dare

  Say to me,

  ‘Eat in the kitchen,’

  Then.

  Besides,

  They’ll see how beautiful I am

  And be ashamed –

  I, too, am America.

  JOHN KEATS

  On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

  Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

  Round many western islands have I been

  Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

  Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

  That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

  Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

  Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

  Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken;

  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  ROBERT HERRICK

  The End

  Conquer we shall, but we must first contend;

  ’Tis not the Fight that crowns us, but the end.

  AMY LOWELL

  Climbing

  High up in the apple tree climbing I go,

  With the sky above me, the earth below.

  Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair

  Which leads to the town I see shining up there.

  Climbing, climbing, higher and higher,

  The branches blow and I see a spire,

  The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome,

  All sparkling and bright, like white sea foam.

  On and on, from bough to bough,

  The leaves are thick, but I push my way through;

  Before, I have always had to stop,

  But today I am sure I shall reach the top.

  Today to the end of the marvelous stair,

  Where those glittering pinnacles flash in the air!

  Climbing, climbing, higher I go,

  With the sky close above me, the earth far below.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  from Richard II

  Act II, Scene i

  This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

  This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

  This other Eden, demi-paradise,

  This fortress built by nature for herself

  Against infection and the hand of war,

  This happy breed of men, this lit
tle world,

  This precious stone set in the silver sea,

  Which serves it in the office of a wall,

  Or as a moat defensive to a house

  Against the envy of less happier lands;

  This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England …

  MARIANNE MOORE

  I May, I Might, I Must

  If you will tell me why the fen

  appears impassable, I then

  will tell you why I think that I

  can get across it if I try.

  MAURA DOOLEY

  Freight

  I am the ship in which you sail,

  little dancing bones,

  your passage between the dream

  and the waking dream,

  your sieve, your pea-green boat.

  I’ll pay whatever toll your ferry needs.

  And you, whose history’s already charted

  in a rope of cells, be tender to

  those other unnamed vessels

  who will surprise you one day,

  tug-tugging, irresistible,

  and float you out beyond your depth,

  where you’ll look down, puzzled, amazed.

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  If –

  ‘Brother Square-Toes’ – Rewards and Fairies

  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!

  PASTOR NIEMÖLLER

  First they came for the Jews

  and I did not speak out –

  because I was not a Jew.

  Then they came for the communists

  and I did not speak out –

  because I was not a communist.

  Then they came for the trade unionists

  and I did not speak out –

  because I was not a trade unionist.

  Then they came for me –

  and there was no one left

  to speak out for me.

  CHARLES CAUSLEY

  I Am the Song

  I am the song that sings the bird.

  I am the leaf that grows the land.

  I am the tide that moves the moon.

  I am the stream that halts the sand.

  I am the cloud that drives the storm.

  I am the earth that lights the sun.

  I am the fire that strikes the stone.

  I am the clay that shapes the hand.

  I am the word that speaks the man.

  KATHLEEN JAMIE

  The Way We Live

  Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises

  to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute

  non-friction, flight, and the scarey side:

  death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.

  Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,

  commitment, driving fast and unswerving

  friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,

  barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold

  bangles. Or airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,

  to strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon –

  the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

  and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you’re

  creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland

  walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,

  his bodyguard of snow.

  Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,

  to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,

  Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip

  of government. To misery and elation; mixed,

  the sod and caprice of landlords.

  To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems

  to be: let me bash out praises – pass the tambourine.

  ROBERT FROST

  Riders

  The surest thing there is is we are riders,

  And though none too successful at it, guiders,

  Through everything presented, land and tide

  And now the very air, of what we ride.

  What is this talked-of mystery of birth

  But being mounted bareback on the earth?

  We can just see the infant up astride,

  His small fist buried in the bushy hide.

  There is our wildest mount – a headless horse.

  But though it runs unbridled off its course,

  And all our blandishments would seem defied,

  We have ideas yet that we haven’t tried.

  COLETTE BRYCE

  Early Version

  Our boat was slow to reach Bethsaida; winds oppressed us,

  fast and cold, our hands were blistered from the oars.

  We’d done to death our songs and jokes, with miles

  to go, when Jesus spoke:

  he said he’d crouched upon the shore, alone, engaged

  in silent prayer, when, looking down, he started –

  saw his own image crouching there. And when he leant

  and dipped his hand

  he swore he felt the fingers touch, and as he rose

  the image stood and, slowly, each put out a foot

  and took a step, and where they met, the weight of one

  annulled the other;

  then how he’d moved across the lake, walked on the soles

  of his liquid self, and he described how cool it felt

  on his aching, dusty feet; the way he’d strode a steady

  course to board the boat

  where we now sat – mesmerized. He gestured out

  towards the shore, along the lake, then to himself,

  and asked us all to visualize, to open what he always

  called our ‘fettered minds’.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  I

  Half a league, half a league,

  Half a league onward,

  All in the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

  Charge for the guns!’ he said:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  II

  ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’


  Was there a man dismayed?

  Not though the soldier knew

  Some one had blundered:

  Their’s not to make reply,

  Their’s not to reason why,

  Their’s but to do and die:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  III

  Cannon to right of them,

  Cannon to left of them,

  Cannon in front of them

  Volleyed and thundered;

  Stormed at with shot and shell,

  Boldly they rode and well,

  Into the jaws of Death,

  Into the mouth of Hell

  Rode the six hundred.

  IV

  Flashed all their sabres bare,

  Flashed as they turned in air

  Sabring the gunners there,

  Charging an army, while

  All the world wondered: