Welcome to Little Pine Ridge

Below are complete listings for:

• Rudyard Kipling
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Robert Frost
• G.K. Chesterton
• Ogden Nash
• Sappho
• Robert Nathan
• Poems from Rohan of Tolkien's Middle Earth
• Bashô — no index to these haiku
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Chinese poets
• Thomas Wolfe
• Robert Burns
• Russian and Ukrainian Poems
• Various Poets, including Benét, Housman, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas
• Translations of Poems based on The Tale of Igor's Host the medieval Russian epic

Rudyard Kipling: still one of my favorite poets and authors (and if you only know The Jungle Book from Disney, you don't know it! Read it, or at least get the Alexander Korda movie with Sabu!)

• from In the Pride of His Youth
  A warning about superficial, relative judgement. Pithy, too, and short enough to quote easily.
• The Way Through the Woods
  A simple, but haunting, story, with a vivid image of woods at night.
• The Undertaker's Horse
  Do people feel like this when they see a hearse, I wonder.
• Dinah in Heaven
  A tale of love beyond the grave, though not what you may think.
• The American Rebellion
  My first literary introduction to the old saw "There's two sides to everything" .
• from The Muse Among the Motors
  Part of a really funny collection of parodies of other poets, on the theme of automobiles.

Edna St. Vincent Millay: a beautiful, powerful writer. Her "First Fig" was one of the first poems I ever memorized.

• First Fig
  Brief but bright, and here dedicated to Tom C.
• Recuerdo
  Up all night with the one I love
• Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
  A powerful description of love
• The Princess Recalls Her One Adventure
  Oh so poignant; this one makes me cry.
• Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
  A woman slighted, a revenge planned, but not exactly Thelma or Louise
• Conscientious Objector
  I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death

Robert Frost: His spare yet lovely language, and his enduring images, are among my favorites. Much of his better work is too long to include here: seek him out.

• I Have Been Acquainted With the Night
  Portrait of a night walker
• Canis Major
  Every dog has his ... night? Dance, all!
• Dust of Snow
  Unexpected things will suddenly twist the world like a kaleidoscope
• Nothing Gold Can Stay
  This poem stayed with me long before I knew it was his...
• The Bearer of Evil Tidings
  A story about a messenger who decided not to get shot

G.K. Chesterton: usually playful and light, but occasionally solemn and fey

• Friendship's Garland
  Remember those two boys in school, the inseparable jerks? They grew up
• We Are Not Amused
  The hazards of telling jokes to the humorless (or listening to the same)
• The Donkey
  This was one of the first poems I ever memorized, and its opening and closing stanzas' images are weird and powerful
• Variations of an Air
  A selection from "other poets' versions" of Old King Cole -- a hoot!

Ogden Nash: everyone knows his funny stuff, but he can also write with poignancy and vividness

• A Lady Thinks She is Thirty
  The last several verses (especially the very last) speak eloquently of love
• Kipling's Vermont
  In four short lines, an entire mood and scene (Kipling lived in Vermont for a number of years)
• Old Men
  This one's a heartbreaker
• My Dream
  Short, linguistically amusing, and gently, tenderly erotic
• On a Good Dog
  Another sad one ... how time does fly
• The Beggar
  After William Blake ... and just as meaningful today as in the Great Depression

Sappho: the Tenth Muse; even her fragments reveal the depths of love... all sorts of love

• It's no use You may blame Aphrodite
  All she can do is dream of him
• You are the herdsman of the evening Hesperus
  Everything goes home in the twilight
• Sleep, darling all Croesus' kingdom with love thrown in
  A mother's musing over her sleeping daughter
• In the spring twilight their feet move rhythmically
  Young women dancing in the moonlight
• Don't ask me what to wear my mother always said that in her day
  Advice to her daughter on how to adorn herself
• We put the urn aboard the ship this is the dust of little Timas
  a beloved friend's loss and memory
• Bridesmaids' Carol I come play with your bridegroom
  A wedding song, celebrating the first night
• You wear her livery you, too, Hecate, Queen of Night
  the night and love have always been together
• You know the place, then Queen! Cyprian! Come!
  An ode to Aphrodite
• Yes, Atthis, you may be sure even in Sardis Anactoria will think often of us
  Love, though parted by distance, remembers
• Be kind to me wear the cream white dress when you come
  An invitation for soon-to-requited love

Robert Nathan some sonnets and shorter poems by a little-read poet

• You also under the moon, Oh dark of hair,
  dream of me...
• October
  Autumn outside and in
• Tread softly, sorrow
  though Spring is not forgotten
• Here in this spot with you my wings are furled.
  You are home, and home is you.
• A Reflection
  A short thought about things that pass

Poems from Tolkien's Rohan: (mostly) alliterative verse that I've always loved

• A Song Recalling Éorl the Young:
  Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
• The Mustering of Rohan:
  Darkness took them,
  horse and horseman; hoofbeats afar
  sank into silence: so the song tells us.
• Théoden's Warcry outside Minas Tirith:
  Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
  Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
• Éomer at the Death of Théoden:
  Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen,
  meet was his ending.
• Éomer's Warcry on the Field of Pelennor:
  Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
• The Mounds of Mundburg:
  We heard of the horns in hills ringing,
  the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
• Éomer's Elegy for Théoden:
  Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day's rising he rode singing in the sun...

Gerard Manley Hopkins: his 'sprung' verse is odd, beautiful, and indelible

• Winter with the Gulf Stream
  this description of the winter moon riding high in the daylit sky is wonderful
• Pied Beauty
  beauty is as often as not, or more so, in the unusual
• The Windhover
  A falcon on the wing is a sure sign of God's grace to the world
• Inversnaid
  yet another picture of unexpected grace
• Spring and Fall
  the grief of fall - and of spring - that is Goldengrove unleaving
• [No worst, there is none]
  this rather desperate poem is one I encountered in high school and have never forgotten

Chinese Poetry: lingering images of rare beauty

• A Spring Dream Tsin Tsan
  Dreams more vivid than real life
• By the Willows from the Book of Songs
  Steadfastly waiting all night for one who didn't come
• On the Banks of Jo-Yeh Li Po
  Seeing someone suddenly ...
• The First Full-moon Night Ou-yan Hsiu
  The pain of the first holiday alone
• The Curtain of Pearls Wang Chang-Ling
  A sudden invasion of memory
• Two Swallows Li Po
  Lost love

Thomas Wolfe: deeply rhythmical, strongly cadenced... definitely poetry

• Magic the apple tree, the singing, and the gold

• O Lost we shall not come again

• Like the River strange time, forever lost, forever flowing...

• Night it lay like silence on the earth...

• Fountain in summer, a tall spire...

• Light of Fading Day the great river burned there in his vision...

• Spring Spring came that year like magic...

• Plum-Tree but in the Spring, lithe and heavy...

Robert Burns: he celebrates our people in their triumphs and tragedies, both great and small

• Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn
  "Scots what hae wi' Wallace bled" -- yes, Braveheart's Wallace...
• The Highland Widow's Lament
  One of the multitude driven out of the Highlands to starve in the south
• Farewell to the Highlands
  At that, he's lucky: he got to live, even if not in the Highlands
• Out Over the Forth
  A Scotswoman looking where her man has gone
• There'll Never Be Peace Till Jamie Comes Hame
  Jamie, also known as James II of England and VII of Scots, grandfather of Charles Edward, the Bonnie Prince

Poems and Excerpts by Several Poets a potpourri of words that stick with me

• Traveller from "Lee" by Stephen Vincent Benét
  They bred such horses in Virginia then, horses that were remembered after death...
• Mithridates from "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff" by A.E. Housman
  I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.
• Epithaph on an Army of Mercenaries by A.E. Housman
  What God abandoned, these defended
• Admire Cranmer! by Stevie Smith
  But still I cry: Admire the Archbishop, the old man, the scholar, admire him.
• Was It Not Curious? by Stevie Smith
  Was it not curious of Aúgustin to say such a curious thing?
• Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
  In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be golden in the mercy of his means

Russian and Ukrainian: in translations or transliterated originals, including

Poems Based The Tale of Igor's Host: the Russian national epic, in translations or transliterated originals

the moment in the Tale that most evokes resonances in modern Russians is the image of the princess Yaroslavna, walking on the walls of the city of Putivl', mourning her lost husband Igor', captive of the Polovtsian invaders, or perhaps dead. For a people whose history is a saga of invasion, defeat, and eventual, expensive triumph, the figure of Yaroslavna watching for her husband is powerful and undying.

• For the Bard of "The Tale" V.Ya. Bryusov, 1912
  a quiet murmur of strings for Yaroslavna of old... original here
• Untitled M.A. Dudin, 1983
  in the evening hour the awakening shadows discuss the long ago with me... original here
• Boyan's Gusli V.A. Sosnora, 1962
  Boyan has a gusli of a hundred sounds... original here
• Yaroslavna L.K. Tat'yanicheva, 1943
  again a furious wind howls: there will be a bloody, evil rain original here
• Yaroslavna N.L. Braun
  sunset has burned out. A wild cry sounds at midnight original here
• Yaroslavna A.A. Prokofyev, 1939
  no doubt: argue with the wind and you lose original here

Other Russian and Ukrainian Poems: in translations or transliterated originals
• Wait For Me Konstantin Simonov, 1941
  A soldier to his wife: original here
• The Ukrainian Battalion Dmytro Pavlychko, 1994
  Ukrainian soldiers in Bosnia: original here
• The Vow Dmytro Pavlychko, 1994
  "To die, if our homeland requires it": original here
• Don't Fear, O Mothers Dmytro Pavlychko, 1994
  Renascent Ukrainian nationalism: original here
• In Memory of the First Viktor Lupeyko, 1996
  Dedicated to the first victim of Chernobyl': original here