Archive for January, 2013

Four Things – Anonymous

Posted in A-B (by poet name), Poems of Other Poets, tagged anonymous, bard on the hill, Four Things, poems, poetry, virtues needed on January 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Four Things

Four things in any land must dwell,
If it endures and prospers well:
One is manhood true and good;
One is noble womanhood;
One is child life, clean and bright;
And one an altar kept alight.

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photo by Scolpix (Sophie)

http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/2dxesA3/Lily-of-the-Valley

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Correct Placement by Dennis Lange

Posted in My Poems, tagged allergies, bard on the hill, choke, Correct Placement, Dennis Lange, elm, gasp, grass, oak, poems, poetry, pollen, wheeze on January 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

Correct Placement

If I were snuffling in the grass,
Like dogs who follow scents,
A century would have to pass
Ere sniffles would dispense.

If I buzzed among the flowers,
Like ever busy bees,
I’d be spending countless hours
Quite shaken by a sneeze.

If like a bird, I perched on limbs
Of elms and mighty oaks,
I’d fill with pollen to the brim,
And gasp and wheeze and choke.

And so we see that God was wise:
I’m of the human race.
Since allergies are my demise,
In nature, I’ve no place.

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Sonnet LXXVI by William Shakespeare

Posted in S, tagged bard on the hill, my love still telling what is told, poems, poetry, Sonnet 76, Sonnet LXXVI, why is my verse barren of new pride, William Shakespeare on January 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Sonnet LXXVI

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument:
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent;
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

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Two Beaming Haiku by Dennis Lange

Posted in My Haiku, tagged bard on the hill, beam me up Scotty, Dennis Lange, Haikus, poems, poetry, spotlight on January 29, 2013| 5 Comments »

Marooned

He did it!
Scotty beamed them up.
We’ve been left.

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Heavenly Focus

Who is it
In the middle of
God’s spotlight?

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Marooned – photo by SP Veres at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/2dRWwy5/Mystical+Path+1

Focus – photo by Samuel Rosa at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/meT9e1S/Strange+sky+in+Madeira+2

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* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/

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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2013.

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Faithless Nelly Gray by Thomas Hood

Posted in E-H, Poems of Other Poets, tagged bard on the hill, Ben Battle was a soldier bold, Faithless Nelly Gray, humor, humour, poems, poetry, Thomas Hood on January 28, 2013| 2 Comments »

Faithless Nelly Gray

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, “Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot.”

The army-surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, “They’re only pegs;
But there’s as wooden members quite
As represent my legs.”

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid, –
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay her his devours,
When he devoured his pay.

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off.

“O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be more uniform.”

Said she, “I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave.

“Before you had those timber toes
Your love I did allow;
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now.”

“O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty’s call I left my legs
In Badajo’s breaches.”

“Why, then,” said she, “you’ve lost the feet
Of legs in war’s alarms.
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your fears of arms!”

“O false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse:
Though I’ve no feet, some other man
Is standing in my shoes.

“I wish I ne’er had seen your face;
But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death; – alas!
You will not be my Nell!”

Now when he went from Nelly Gray
His heart so heavy got,
And life was such a burden grown,
It made him take a knot.

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did intwine,
And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs;
And, as his legs were off, – of course
He soon was off his legs.

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town;
For, though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down.

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died; –
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads
With a stake in his inside.

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Vestige by Dennis Lange

Posted in My Poems, tagged bard on the hill, Dennis Lange, ebony of night, I left somewhere a trace, poems, poetry, shooting star, Vestige on January 27, 2013| 7 Comments »

Vestige

A silent, speeding, shooting star
Flashed ‘cross the night sky’s dark;
Then gone, except it etched within
My memory a mark.

That’s all that’s left of that brief burst,
The life that was a light,
That dazzled as it dashed across
The ebony of night.

When my swift flight is o’er and there’s
No longer light nor place,
My soothing thought as shooting star:
I left somewhere a trace.

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Just Doing His Job by Dennis Lange

Posted in Humor, Limericks, My Poems, tagged Dennis Lange, humor, humour, just doing his job, poems, poetry, the bard on the hill on January 26, 2013| 7 Comments »

Just Doing His Job

I questioned the plug in my sink,
“Growing up, what is it you think
You’ll turn out to be?”
Not answering, did he;
He stopped me as quick as a wink.

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