The Poetry Thread

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
There's been some discussion of Leviathan in another thread, so I thought I would post the relevant material from the Bible, here in the New International Version. Leviathan shows up three times by name, I think, and two of the passages have connections to SF titles. Frank Herbert's The Dragon in the Sea is a reference to Isaiah and Roger Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" is a reference to some lines about Leviathan in Job (from the King James Version).

Psalm 74:13-14
It was you who split open the sea by your power;
you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.


Isaiah 27:1
In that day,
the Lord will punish with his sword—
his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea.


Job 41
Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?
Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words?
Will it make an agreement with you
for you to take it as your slave for life?
Can you make a pet of it like a bird
or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
Will traders barter for it?
Will they divide it up among the merchants?
Can you fill its hide with harpoons
or its head with fishing spears?
If you lay a hand on it,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
Any hope of subduing it is false;
the mere sight of it is overpowering.
No one is fierce enough to rouse it.
Who then is able to stand against me?
Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.

I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs,
its strength and its graceful form.
Who can strip off its outer coat?
Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?
Who dares open the doors of its mouth,
ringed about with fearsome teeth?
Its back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.
They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
Its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
Flames stream from its mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
Smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
Its breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from its mouth.
Strength resides in its neck;
dismay goes before it.
The folds of its flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.
Its chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.
When it rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before its thrashing.

The sword that reaches it has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
Iron it treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.
Arrows do not make it flee;
slingstones are like chaff to it.
A club seems to it but a piece of straw;
it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

Its undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
It leaves a glistening wake behind it;
one would think the deep had white hair.
Nothing on earth is its equal—
a creature without fear.
It looks down on all that are haughty;
it is king over all that are proud.
 
One of Zelazny's best!

The Job passage is terrific of course, I just watched the Coen Brother's A Serious Man, which is a typically sophisticated modernization of the story of Job. Well worth seeking out.

Much of the verse in the Old Testament is excellent, my favourite by far is The Song of Songs as translated from the Hebrew by Robert Alter. Too long to post here but you can listen to him read it here.

I remember reading the Bible as a teen as a lapsed Catholic, full of teen cynicism and determined to read it cover to cover so I could more effectively attack it as a newly-born dogmatic Atheist and coming across this magnificent, erotic, subversive poem.

Psalms, Genesis, The Book of Job, the Gospels and Revelations are all tremendously moving and effective literature even though I don't consider myself a believer anymore.
 
Last edited:
One of Zelazny's best!

The Job passage is terrific of course, I just watched the Coen Brother's A Serious Man, which is a typically sophisticated modernization of the story of Job. Well worth seeking out.

Much of the verse in the Old Testament is excellent, my favourite by far is The Song of Songs as translated from the Hebrew by Robert Alter. Too long to post here but you can listen to him read it here.

I’ve not seen that Coen brothers film; I’ll have to look for it.
 
One of Zelazny's best!

The Job passage is terrific of course, I just watched the Coen Brother's A Serious Man, which is a typically sophisticated modernization of the story of Job. Well worth seeking out.

Much of the verse in the Old Testament is excellent, my favourite by far is The Song of Songs as translated from the Hebrew by Robert Alter. Too long to post here but you can listen to him read it here.

I remember reading the Bible as a teen as a lapsed Catholic, full of teen cynicism and determined to read it cover to cover so I could more effectively attack it as a newly-born dogmatic Atheist and coming across this magnificent, erotic, subversive poem.

Psalms, Genesis, The Book of Job, the Gospels and Revelations are all tremendously moving and effective literature even though I don't consider myself a believer anymore.
Scripture does feature some absolute top-notch wriing, poetic and otherwise, worth knowing independent of actual belief.

I am an absolute sucker for Ecclesiastes. The world-weary wisdom of an aging philosopher-king has always sat well with me, and of course midlife crisis has intensified this affinity.
 
I will commit “Kubla Khan” to memory.

Almost there.
Succesfully committed, along with a few shorter poems in English and Portuguese. (Spanish still eludes me.)

Next up I hope to memorize Tennyson's "Ulysses", which I absolutely love even if Ulysses comes across as a miserable git sometimes.

In the meantime, have some Borges. My favorite short story writer; maybe my favorite prose writer of all, really; and not half bad a poet.



English translation here (poem only, not the introduction, but the context is given).
 
When I learned last night that Gordon Lightfoot had died, I thought of this song of his. It's more effective when sung, of course, but it seemed like a fitting requiem:

Gordon Lightfoot, "All the Lovely Ladies"

All the lovely ladies in their finery tonight
I wish that I could know them one by one
All the handsome gentlemen with loving on their minds
Strolling in to take the ladies home
Bless you all and keep you on the road to tenderness
Heaven can be yours just for now.

All the gentle strangers who by nature do not smile
To everyone who cannot hold a pen
All you heavy rounders with a headache for your pains
Who dread the thought of going around the bend
Bless you all and keep you on the road to better things
Heaven can be yours just for now.

To all the lovely ladies in their finery tonight
I wish that I could kiss you while you knit
To all the ones who learn to live with being second-guessed
Whose job it is to give more than they get
Bless you all and keep you with the strength to understand
Heaven can be yours just for now.

All the little dreamers with a dream that cannot last
To all the sleeping giants who must wake
To every man who answers to the letter of the law
And all the rest in prison by mistake
Bless you all and keep you with the faith to let it pass
Heaven can be yours just for now.

All the lonely sailors who have trouble being seen
To each of you with heartache that remains
Maybe sometime later you might swim back into shore
If someone could relieve you of your chains
Bless you all and keep you all on the land or on the sea
Heaven can be yours just for now.
 
This is something of a poetic curiosity--an e.e. cummings' poem in sonnet style with deliberately archaic language. It was first published in Eight Harvard Poets in 1917. I'm posting it because it is about Froissart (and because I like the phrase 'sword-great story').

Thou in whose sword-great story shine the deeds
Of history her heroes, sounds the tread
Of those vast armies of the marching dead,
With standards and the neighing of great steeds
Moving to war across the smiling meads;
Thou by whose page we break the precious bread
Of dear communion with the past, and wed
To valor, battle with heroic breeds;

Thou, Froissart, for that thou didst love the pen
While others wrote in steel, accept all praise
Of after ages, and of hungering days
For whom the old glories move, the old trumpets cry;
Who gav'st as one of those immortal men
His life that his fair city might not die.
 
A poem from 1:30 in the morning
Based on "Brave New World" by Jeff Wayne

Man is born in freedom
But he soon becomes a slave
In cages of convention
From the cradle to the grave

Trapped by expectations
Will we ever be saved?
From this grave old world?

Just think of all the poverty
The hatred and the lies
And imagine the destruction
Of all that you despise
From the smoldering ashes
A dream will arise
A brave new world
 
I am making an absolute ass of myself by posting poetry readings (well, one reading so far) over at the Pub Discord. Good thing no one's there to listen and comment on my hammy delivery and outrageous accent.

#chit-chat if anyone's curious.
 
I am making an absolute ass of myself by posting poetry readings (well, one reading so far) over at the Pub Discord. Good thing no one's there to listen and comment on my hammy delivery and outrageous accent.

#chit-chat if anyone's curious.

 
Dancin' in the Ruins
Inspired by Tulpa Girl Tulpa Girl 's post in the Art Thread,

Shakespeare, Sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
 
Here is Judi Dench giving a beautiful rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 (starts at 1:20).



That Shakespeare guy was pretty, pretty good.

 
Here's some low-hanging fruit that hasn't shown up in this thread yet. It's been referenced a lot in genre writings.

Shelley, "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
 
Here's some low-hanging fruit that hasn't shown up in this thread yet. It's been referenced a lot in genre writings.

Shelley, "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Here's the companion poem by Shelley's friend:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

— Horace Smith, "Ozymandias"
 
Since we've just passed Epiphany a few days back, this seemed appropriate.

T.S. Eliot, "The Journey of the Magi."

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
 
I'm so tired from work that while doing my calculus classwork I misread denominator as denominatrix and now I can't help but think that only masochists would like calculus.

This reminded me of a sonnet, oddly enough. Since it features geese and math, it is doubly appropriate.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare."

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
 
A poem from the Mary, Seat of Wisdom 5th grade poetry book of haikus for library class, written by yours truly. Kudos to Mrs. Horst for including it.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat
It is a Russian attack
Everybody run
 
A poem from the Mary, Seat of Wisdom 5th grade poetry book of haikus for library class, written by yours truly. Kudos to Mrs. Horst for including it.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat
It is a Russian attack
Everybody run
Back in the paleolithic, we had to memorize poems and recite them in English class; this is one I did in 7th grade, I think. Apologies in advance to Voros Voros, who IIRC is no fan of Kipling's verse:

Rudyard Kipling, 'Danny Deever,' (1890):

'What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade.
'To turn you out, to turn you out,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-on-Parade.
'I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The Regiment's in 'ollow square—they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.


'What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?' said Files-on-Parade.
'It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes that front-rank man fall down?' said Files-on-Parade.
'A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground;
An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound—
O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin!'


''Is cot was right-'and cot to mine,' said Files-on-Parade.
''E's sleepin' out an' far to-night,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'I've drunk 'is beer a score o' times,' said Files-on-Parade.
''E's drinkin' bitter beer alone,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im to 'is place,
For 'e shot a comrade sleepin'—you must look 'im in the face;
Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the Regiment's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.


'What's that so black agin the sun?' said Files-on-Parade.
'It's Danny fightin' 'ard for life,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What's that that whimpers over'ead?' said Files-on-Parade.
'It's Danny's soul that's passin' now,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're done with Danny Deever, you can 'ear the quickstep play,
The Regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer to-day,
After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top