his channel is largely dedicated to my own poetry read by myself, although I do sometimes incorporate my readings of other poets that I like. Poetry on the page is very much like a music-score which does not come alive until it is performed. The You Tube format is ideal in that it enables one to add video (if required) to one's performances although mostly a well-written poem, if it is well-read, requires no image to add meaning. But by using images one can add different layers of meaning above those actually incorporated in the poem. Music can additionally help to create atmosphere or dramatic emphasis. All these things are a matter of taste and choice.
Poetry is to some extent a neglected art, and much of it deserves to be neglected. The poetry establishment - or mafia! - is largely to blame for this state of affairs with its enclosed enclaves; if indeed there can be said to be any kind of establishment. I suppose that the Poetry Society (largely subsidised by the taxpayer) is the main culprit in the United Kingdom: a very sorry collection of individuals almost totally obscure with hardly any real poets in their own self-electing membership. But really they are by now such a discredited and spent force that I should hardly be surprised if they were not altogether shortly extinguished, to the regret of hardly anyone! It was from these ranks that our tired collection of Poets Laureate were mostly gathered - and the present incumbent seems hardly likely to add to the lustre of the art :)
But do not despair! If you like poetry you will find on You Tube a wide and interesting collection of poets well worth listening to and it seems to me that in this place lies the true future of the art.
My other You Tube channel is cavafyinenglish ru-vid.com where I am gathering together my adaptations of the collected poems of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. I have also recently started to read through my first volume of poetry 'Poems Opus One' in that place to add some variety.
Í was looking for Henry Vaughn but this is now added to my RU-vid poems list. Gives a cadence of Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by Wordsworth. Quite lovely.
One of Yeats' poems most arresting poems has to be 'Aedh -He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' - beautifully touching on the realm of unfulfilled desire and the impact that love can have on our fragile hearts. Simon Paxton has recorded it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vGioFVgtvGU.html
Wow!!! What reading!!! Sublime ...thank you for this... shared this with my students ... Please read books 2 and 3 of Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, if possible ... Love and respect 💕
Sunday Morning Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. II Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul. III Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind He moved among us, as a muttering king, Magnificent, would move among his hinds, Until our blood, commingling, virginal, With heaven, brought such requital to desire The very hinds discerned it, in a star. Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be The blood of paradise? And shall the earth Seem all of paradise that we shall know? The sky will be much friendlier then than now, A part of labor and a part of pain, And next in glory to enduring love, Not this dividing and indifferent blue. IV She says, "I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?" There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured As April's green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow's wings. V She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears On disregarded plate. The maidens taste And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. VI Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang? Why set the pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? Alas, that they should wear our colors there, The silken weavings of our afternoons, And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. VII Supple and turbulent, a ring of men Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn Their boisterous devotion to the sun, Not as a god, but as a god might be, Naked among them, like a savage source. Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, Out of their blood, returning to the sky; And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, The windy lake wherein their lord delights, The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, That choir among themselves long afterward. They shall know well the heavenly fellowship Of men that perish and of summer morn. And whence they came and whither they shall go The dew upon their feet shall manifest. VIII She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings. From Harmonium (Knopf, 1923).
What an exquisite love story Charles...and your words created beautiful visuals in my mind. Hopefully you'll visit ancient Egypt... there Antinous became a miracle-worker,healing the sick and transforming people's lives for the better. No wonder the Egyptians glorified and worshipped the Godly power Antinious exuded.
Infinity and Eternity In realms beyond our mortal sight, Infinity and Eternity unite. Where time dissolves, no bounds in sight, A dance of endless cosmic light. Infinity stretches, vast and wide, Unfathomable, it takes its stride. A boundless expanse, no end in view, Unveiling wonders, forever anew. Eternity breathes, a timeless flow, No beginning, no end, it does bestow. An eternal flame that forever burns, Infinite cycles, lessons learned. Together they intertwine and weave, One timeless tapestry they conceive. Infinite moments in an eternal embrace, Mysteries unfolding, leaving no trace. Oh, marvel at their boundless might, Infinity and Eternity, harmonize in flight. Infinite dreams, eternally gleam, A testament to a cosmic scheme.
Thank you so much and greetings to you. I hear the music of your poetry and only regret I cannot understand its meaning since I speak only English. Charles
" The unpurged images of day recede ". For me : the greatest single line in English language poetry. Yeats greatness is almost impossible to grasp . He transcends all boundaries of race , gender and class.
William Butler Yates, I know him well, I have visited his grave, I have visited his home, I have now visited his newly unveiled sculpture, titled ‘Enwrought Light’ in old Chiswick town. yes I know a about William Butler Yates
