Celebrity Crunch – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

–

Hope Solo
A soccer Star Wars –
Hands Solo.

—–

Johnny Cash.
A little money,
Penny Lane.

—–

Bing Crosby –
White Christmas on rock;
Stills and Nash.

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photo by Vorfay at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mlljX9M/Coin

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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/
——————–

© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Seaward, white gleaming thro’ the busy scud
With arching Wings, the sea-mew o’er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.

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Sonnet 117 – Roanoke Island by Dennis Allen Lange

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We’ll leave the sheltered English shores behind –
Thatched roofs, warm hearths, the might of Good Queen Bess.
We’ll ride three corks upon a pond of brine,
Like pawns that inch forth in a game of chess.

Our living friends we’ll leave behind in tombs;
We’ll brave the tempests on the troubled sea,
Endure close quarters like twins in a womb
To travel to a land we cannot see.

At last, when she appears, we’ll give a shout! –
And on our sea legs wobble to the shore.
We’ll claim, midst all the dangers there about,
This land for Bess and Britain evermore.

We’ll take a cherished flag and raise it there
And call the enterprise Virginia Dare!

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Written On The Eve Of Execution by Chidiock Tichborne

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
…My feat of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
…And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
My life is fled, and yet I saw no sun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told;
…My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green;
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old;
…I saw the world, and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in the womb,
…I lookt for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
…And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

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Too Many Of Carl’s Cats – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

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An island
Isolated by
A fog flood.

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photo by Jan Schulz

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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/
——————–

© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage by Sir Walter Raleigh

Supposed to be written by one at the point of death.

 

Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation:
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll make my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body’s balmer,
No other balm will there be given
Whilst my soul like a white palmer
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
And there I’ll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it, will ne’er thirst more.

And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay,
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I’ll bring them  first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those nectar suckets
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.

And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality;
Then the holy paths we’ll travel
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel,
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearl bowers.

From thence to heaven’s bribeless hall
Where no corrupted voices brawl,
No conscience molten into gold,
Nor forg’d accusers bought and sold,
No cause deferred, nor vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the King’s Attorney:
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And he hath angels, but no fees.

When the grand twelve million jury
Of our sins with sinful fury,
Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder,
Thou movest salvation even for alms,
Nor with a bribéd lawyer’s palms.

And this is my eternal plea,
To him that made heaven, earth and sea,
Seeing my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon,
Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread
Set on my soul and everlasting head.
Then am I ready like a palmer fit,
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.

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Friend And Foe – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

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A surfer
Held in the sea’s hand.
Kept safe?  Crushed?

——————–

photo by Anton Repponen

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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/
——————–

© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Brittle Beauty by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Brittle beauty that nature made so frail,
Whereof the gift is small, and short the season,
Flow’ring today, tomorrow apt to fail,
Fickle treasure, abhorrèd of reason,
Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail,
Costly in keeping, passed not worth two peason,
Slippery in sliding as an eelès tail,
Hard to attain, once gotten not geason,
Jewel of jeopardy that peril doth assail,
False and untrue, enticèd oft to treason,
Enemy to youth (that most may I bewail!),
Ah, bitter sweet! infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is taken:
Today ready ripe, tomorrow all too shaken.

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The Give And Take Of Love by Dennis Allen Lange

–

Love gives what one another takes,
And takes what one another gives.
And in the giving back and forth,
Such his and her love always lives.

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photo by Sanja Gjenero at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhAW3nu/summer+love

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Two Pictures – anonymous

Two pictures hung on the dingy wall
Of a grand old Florentine hall –

One of a child of beauty rare,
With a cherub face and golden hair;
The lovely look of whose radiant eyes
Filled the soul with thoughts of Paradise.

The other was a visage vile
Marked with the lines of lust and guile,
A loathsome being, whose features fell
Brought to the soul weird thoughts of hell.

Side by side in their frames of gold,
Dingy and dusty and cracked and old,
This is the solemn tale they told:

A youthful painter found one day,
In the streets of Rome, a child at play,
And, moved by the beauty it bore,
The heavenly look that its features wore,

On a canvas, radiant and grand,
He painted its face with a master hand.
Year after year on his wall it hung;
‘Twas ever joyful and always young –
Driving away all thoughts of gloom
While the painter toiled in his dingy room.

Like an angel of light it met his gaze,
Bringing him dreams of his boyhood days,
Filling his soul with a sense of praise.

His raven ringlets grew thin and gray,
His young ambition all passed away;
Yet he looked for years in many a place,
To find a contrast to that sweet face.

Through haunts of vice in the night he stayed
To find some ruin that crime had made.
At last in a prison cell he caught
A glimpse of the hideous fiend he sought.

On a canvas weird and wild but grand,
He painted the face with a master hand.

His task was done; ’twas a work sublime –
An angel of joy and a fiend of crime –
A lesson of life from the wrecks of time.

O Crime: with ruin thy road is strewn;
The brightest beauty the world has known
Thy power has wasted, till in the mind
No trace of its presence is left behind.

The loathsome wretch in the dungeon low,
With a face of a fiend and a look of woe,
Ruined by revels of crime and sin,
A pitiful wreck of what might have been,
Hated and shunned, and without a home,
Was the child that played in the streets of Rome.

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