REMEMBER AND BEWARE don't vote Tory.

NO MATTER HOW BAD NEW LABOUR IS,IF YOU THINK IT'S TOUGH NOW UNDER A TORY GOVERNMENT IT WILL BE A LOT WORSE.
COME ON PEOPLE THINK INTELLIGENTLY,
DON'T VOTE TORY OR THOSE BLOODY NAZIS THE B.N.P .

KNOW THY ENEMY - Christopher Logue (1926- )

Know thy enemy:
he does not care what colour you are
provided you work for him
and yet you do!

he does not care how much you earn
provided you earn more for him
and yet you do!

he does not care who lives in the room at the top
provided he owns the building
and yet you strive!

he will let you write against him
provided you do not act against him
and yet you write!

he sings the praises of humanity
but knows machines cost more than men.
Bargain with him, he laughs, and beats you at it;
challenge him , and he kills.
Sooner than loose the things he owns
he will destroy the world
SMASH CAPITAL NOW!

But as you hasten to be free
And build your commonwealth
Do not forget the enemy
Who lies within yourself.

MAY 2nd GREETINGS TO ALL WITHOUT JOBS.

let us not forget,we are voices too
hopefully living in solidarity,
unity is strength.

HAPPY MAY DAY

today commemorates historic struggle of all working people, and is a day of celebration for labor and radical movements,a day of celebrating dissent, through unity of breath calling an end to all oppression . Salute.
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making
it belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health.

Joe Hill

AH, LIBERALS and all that jazz.

problem is the countries fed up, it want's something different, but if you look really close, there all pretty much the same. I have no solutions, just sleepless nights. I would never trust a tory but ah the liberals all soft and cuddly, am lucky I live in Wales where their's another choice, Plaid Cymru...... and even here I have reservations.
The Labour Party has certainly let the people down, Afghanistan, Iraq, attack on civil liberties, their move to the right. So the liberal's capitalise on this and perhaps people of an anti political nature are attracted to Mr Clegg's lovely complexion on T.V. He sure takes the high ground this public school boy, he complains about the expenses scandal but when he was an M.E.P he sure made a profit. He is definitely not whiter than white, and neither is his party, if we look at their history we will notice a pattern of nastiness emerging from them, smears and lies about opponents, very ugly incidents. They dress up in Left wing clothes and the next minute are dressed in right wings ones, where's there rage, where's there fire.
My biggest fear is if people vote Clegg, because it seems now more about personality than politics, the Tories might just gain enough seats. This would be a disaster for the country.
The only good thing that can come out of all of this is some form of electoral reform. The fact is the current electoral system is unjust and a fraud. The people never vote for those who end up in power.
Watched the performances last night on television, gosh I cried, not one word about destitute asylum seekers, voices of real radical change, people before profit. Did not recall anyone of them making any pronouncements on how to tackle extreme poverty, 3 parties of very similar shades. Their has been a turning point in the last few years, the people are sick and tired, we have been let down again and again, by them all by the way, somethings gotta change, power to the people, i'd go for that.
Take it easy but think carefully before you cross the road, and remember behind evey smile their's a whole load of ********.

DAVID RUPERT EDWARDS - NID YW WALTZ OLAF / NOT THE LAST WALTZ.

Na.Na. Cymryd Iolo Morgannwg mwy o laudanum na fi er mwyn creu ffantasi sydd bellach yn hunllef. Trodd yn ii fedd-dod nawr mae'n troi yn ei fedd, wrth weld y banciau, Cyngor y Celfyddydau, a'r babell fawr yn debycach i swyddfa D.S.S. na safle o ddiwyliant. Cymrod Iolo Morgannwg mwy o opium na fi, felly ma Rolo ola Iolo i chi. A cdwch y theatr, werin, jyst ymfalchiwch fod ganddoch chi pris am y tocyn, adloniant sydd i'r dosbarth clebran, i'r actorion sydd ddim ar y llwyfran. Sa'in mynd i gael bath yn null Jenny Eirian tra'n chwibannau rhyw gytgan o set Daffyd Iwan. Mae hunanladdiadd yn ormod o ffwdan, a beth bynnag does gen i ddim pres am y trydan. A'r sdori fer wel dyma fe:
Cerdodd y dyn i lawr y stryd tu mewn ei dillad. Mi welodd ei hen gariad a gwallt nid yn felyn fel rhywbeth allan o'r Mabinogi- roedd ei gwallt jyst yn felyn. Nid oedd ei phen-ol yn ei jeans fel dau wy mewn hances boced oherwydd pen-ol oedd tu mewn ei jeans - nid dau wy mewn nances boced.
Nid oedd ei llygaid mor las ar awyr oherwydd llygaid oeddynt, nid awyr. Cymharu pethau gyda petau. Mae pethau ond yn a nid oes angen cymharu. Nawr y cysteiniaid
" Mae eglwys y glwth glwys yn gwibio" meddai'r dyn. "Hydarthedd hyderus yr Hydref" atebodd y fenyw. Nawr y plot. Sdim un. Cyn ffarwellio a hi am y tro olaf tan y tro nesaf, dywedodd y dyn:" Pan mae cariad yn dod mewn trwy'r ffenest, dylai arian fynd syth bin i'r bin". Dim ond diawled cwbl materol sy'rhy ystyfynig i gytuno a hyn. Cymrodd Iolo Morgannwg ei opiwm yn ddwfn felly mae ei Rolo ola' i hi a hwn :
1- Awyr celain, etholyddau, trydaniddio, chwd cwcwll du
2- Beth yw'r posibliadau?
3- A fyddid di yn fy nerbyn? efo breichiau, coesau agored?
4- Drws agored?
5- Afanc ifanc ei ymrannu, cont yn bybylu, a lledaenu coch coch rythm misglwyfol sy'n fwy byw na marw ac fwy marw na byw
6-7-8-9- Anarchiaeth, anarchiaeth, anarchiaeth
10- Beth yn union yw'r pwynt? Mae'r pwynt yn fanwl gywir.
10- A hanner, pwynt nodwydd.
10- A thri chwarter. Beth yw'r gair mwyaf amwys yn yr iaith?
10- A phum wythfed. Wythfed, wythfed.
Fuck cant fuck.
23- Ystyr? Pwynt? Dim?
Mae'n rhoi chwythswydd. Mae hi'n rhoi chwythswydd wrth i'r record chwarae. Ydy'r ystyr yn glir? Pwynt amwys. Ydy'r darlun yn glir? Tra ar y newyddion, torso diangen mewn cylchfa rhyfel. Lemoned orgasmaidd ar y strydoedd a'r dillad gwely. Felly priododd uffern nefoedd eto mewn potel arall o win coch, yn gras ac yn rhad. Rydw i am y brandy. Rydw i angen popeth wedi ei ddistyllu, yn feidrol. Wyt t'in fy ngharu? Wyt. Wel profa fe a sut? Wel nid yw'r cylch o gwestiynau yn dod i ben os nad wyt ti'n cyrraed y pwynt. Grym allgyrchol. Rwy 'di anghofio eistedd gyda ffrindiau yn darllen penawdau distyr papur newydd mewn tafarn. Tu allan roedd merch fach yn rhoi nodwydd yn ei cheg yn credu mae lollipop oedd ganddi. A rwyi 'di anghofio fy ffrind yn cuddio ei nodwyddau tu allan i'r ffenest, yn y gwter pan ddaeth yr heddlu, wedi i'r ty cael ei ymosod gan feddwodd. A rwy'n ceisio cofio'r teimlad mewn glendid gwely mewn ystafell wely gwesty lle roedd y tywelion a'r rhyw yn lan lle treddiais i'r nefoedd am y tro cyntaf fel y dychmygais ar faes chwarae. Ac rwy'n ceisio anghofio'r rhyw budr mewn gwely gwesty arall lle am y tro cyntaf treiddiais i uffern fel y teimlais y tro cyntaf i ti boeri yn fy ngwyneb. Tra'n chwilio am nirvana ar lethrau Everest fy meddyliau, daeth deallusrwydd yn araf. Mi gwrddais i a'r bardd Celtaidd olaf. Naw'r rwy'n trywanau am y tro olaf ac yn ysgrifennu y siec olaf. Dyma,r waltz olaf arall. Hwn yw siawns olaf, y ddawns olaf, y ddawns olaf rwy'm mynd i barhau.

No. No. Iolo Morgannwg took more laudanum than me to create a fantasy thats now a nightmare. He turned in his drunkeness now he's turning in his grave whilst seeing the banks, the Arts Council, and the big tent more similar to a D.S.S office than a situation of culture. Iolo Morgannwg took more opium than me, so Iolo's last Rolo is for you. So keep the theatre, people, just pride yourself that you've got the price for the ticket, entertainment for the chattering classses, for the actors that aren't on the stage. And I'm not going to have a bath in the manner of Jenny Eirian whilst whistling a chorus from Dafydd Iwan's set. Suicide is too much fuss and anyway I don't have enough money for the electricity.
And the short story, well here it is :
The man walked down the street inside his clothes. He saw his old lover and her hair not yellow like something out of the Mabinogi - her hair was just yellow. Her backside in her jeans wern't like two eggs in a hankerchief because it was a backside inside her jeans not two eggs in a handkerchief. Her eyes weren't as blue as the sky because they were eyes not the sky. Comparing things with things. Things are what they are and there's no need to compare. Now the consonants. "The church of the comely glutton is flitting " said the man, " The confident volatility of the autumn" answered the woman. Now the plot. Their isn't one. Before saying goodbye to her for the last time until the next time, the man said " When love comes through the window, money should go straight to the bin." Only totally materialistic devils are too stubborn to agree with this. Iolo Morgannwg took his opium deeply so his last Rolo is for her and this one:
1- Carcass sky, electioneering, electrify, vomit of a black mask.
2- What are the possibilities?
3- Will you accept me? With open arms? Open legs?
4- An open door.
5- A young beaver, cunt bubbling and spreading red, red menstrual rhythym that's more alive than dead and more dead than alive.
6-7-8-9- Anarchy. Anarchy. Anarchy.
10- What precisely is the point? The point is exactly correct.
10- And a half: the point of a needle.
10- And three quarters. What is the most ambiguous word in the lanuage?
10- And five eights. An eighth. Fuck a hundred fuck.
23- Meaning? Point? Nothing.
She gives a blow job. She gives a blow job as the record plays. Is the meaning clear? An ambiguous point. Is the picture clear? Whilst on the news a needless torso in a war zone. Orgasmic lemonade on the streets and the bedclothes. So hell married heaven once again in another bottlle of red wine, harsh and cheap. I want brandy. I want everything distilled, finite. Do you love me? Yes. Well prove it and how? Well the circle of questions don't come to an end if you don't reach the point. Centrifugal force. I've forgotten sitting with friends reading the contemptible headlines of a newspaper in a tavern. Outside a little girl was putting a needle in her mouth believing that she had a lollypop. And I've forgotten my friend hiding his needles outside the window, in the gutter, when the police came, after the house was attacked by drunks. And I'm trying to remember the feeling in the cleanness of the bed in a hotel bedroom where the towels and the sex were clean where I penetrated heaven for the first time like I imagined on a playing field. And I'm trying to remember the dirty sex in another hotel bed where for the first time I penetrated hell like I felt the first time that you spat in my face. Whilst searching for nirvana on the Everest slopes of my thoughts, intelligence came slowly. I met the last Celtic poet. Now I'm piercin for the last time, and writing the last cheque. This is the last waltz. This is the other last waltz. This is the last chance, the last dance, the last dance and I'm going to continue.


FROM - LIBERTINO, ANKST RECORDS 1993
written with scotsman Kenny Reid .
repprinted with permission
from a reluctant genius

WILDERNESS

In the garden
listening to oceans of sound
watching new buildings
being formed.
Garden sheds
full of seekers
listening to nectarine tunes.
An anchor has detached
itself
from a cargoe ship
the dandelions roar,
no holding back.
In the corner
poppy seeds are scattered,
we've forgotten where
we laid our cross,
wild weeds gather
thinking of
sabotage.
Quietly we mooch
reaping what has been sown,
the leaves are full of singing birds.
Flower power,
in the shadow of heathen thickets,
translucent deceptions
without beauty
cannot live.
In mossy breaths
we whisper softly,
centred in the April grass.

JOHN KEATS - DOOMED ROMANTIC.

John Keats was born in Moorgate towards what was then the eastern edge of London, on the 31st October 1795 to a barman and spent all his life ‘on the margins’. Following the early death of his parents (he was raised by his grandmother) he attended a school in Enfield that was to all intents and purposes a dissenting academy – that  provided a broad liberal education and encouraged liberal thinking.Death loomed large around him, but within his short life of 25 years he developed such thought , art and vision! From his first musings to his last, his vision of experience was continuous and boy did he share this.

At just 14 he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Moorfields, and at 19 was registered as a medical student at Guy's hospital London ,( now known as King's College ) absorbing the radical influences that were then sweeping through the medical establishment. New kinds of intervention and new standards of patient care were aligned with his larger social sympathies.

Almost exactly as Keats qualified, he gave up medicine. Once again, it was a change of course which allowed him to stay true to himself. Actually, in order to live for and by his poetry.He was influenced by Spencer, Milton, Dryden and William  and owed particular debt to Byron and Wordsworth. He took with him into poetry the fundamental principles that his education as a whole had rooted in him. He became friends with Leigh Hunt, editor of The Examiner, the great free-thinking journal of the day. He consorted with Hunt's circle, which included Shelley. He began writing poems which gave a voice to the convictions that justify his description of himself as a ‘rebel angel’.

In some of Keats’s early work, these political allegiances are clear: the opening sections of the four books of his long poem Endymion, for instance, or squibs like ‘Lines Written on 29 May, The Anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II’. But by the time Keats reached his maturity – the ascent is astonishingly rapid and steep – he had absorbed the lessons of Shakepeare and found a way of writing that was simultaneously of its own particular time, and universal in its reach and application. It resists explicit mention of local circumstances (the government’s suspension of habeas corpus, for instance, or the Peterloo Massacre which occurred only days before he wrote the ode ‘Too Autumn '  only because it seeks to reveal the general truth in a particular situation. This means that when we read his best poems – which with a few exceptions are those in the 1820 volume – we are watching a writer grapple with the largest eternal questions: what is the role of the imagination? What is the value of art? What is the purpose of suffering? How can we create our own selves, and integrate with the lives of others?

He encountered much snobbery during his lifetime, the tory press of the time chose to vilify and patronize him as merely a cockney poet. He refused to be ashamed of his origins despite the vicious attacks of his reviewers who were as offended by his low birth and  today he is praised as one of the greatest poets to live.

In his short life he followed passion and held dearly to the concepts of friendship and kindness . He knew love too, in 1818 he first met a lady called Frances ( Fanny) Brawne and an intimacy and a love developed between them. She herself only 18, Keats lent her books and they would walk and read together. It was to her that he gave the love sonnet - Bright Star, also around this time he met another woman who he also held conflicting emotions, a beautiful lady called Isabella Jones, unfortunately for the young poet he was prone to melancholy and severe depression and his relationships with both were broken due to his illnesses.

Sadly consumption was also in his family, and it gained on him, and what with his knowledge of medicine, it heralded a new feeling for him of doom.He became haunted by the apprehension of death before he had " garnered this teeming brain ".

Primitive medicine of the time actually " bled " him and so hastened his death.
Who knows where his writing would have developed had he lived longer, his words were already pretty well formed , and perhaps perfection of vision was yet to emerge.

Before his death  on the 23rd of February 1821 he travelled to Rome, Italy with his friend Joseph Severn, he knew he was dying and was in much pain, apparently he demanded Laudenum to numb it but for some reason the people around him refused to give him any, prolonging his agony and suffering. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetary, Rome, his last request was to be buried under a tombstone, without his name, his epitaph read:

This Grave
contains all that was Mortal,
of a
Young English Poet,
Who,
on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart,
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies,
Desired
these words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone:
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.

Unlike his contemporaries he did not follow any causes, only the cause of perfection of sensation, tone and form, and had I feel a peculiar genius of making perfect pictures. Yet if we were to put him on any side , it was on the side his contemporaries stood, on the the side of sedition, rebellion and freedom.

His first volume of poetry, published in 1817, established him firmly in the radical camp. It was dedicated to his friend Leigh Hunt who had been imprisoned for breaking the draconian censorship laws. His hostility to the British ruling class was confirmed when, after Waterloo, Keats wrote defiantly:

'O Europe, Let not sceptred tyrants see that thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law--leave not uncurbed the great
So with the horrors past thou'lt win thy happier fate!'

Keats hated the British army, which occupied many areas of Britain. He wrote that, in the countryside, poppies:

'show their scarlet coats
So pert and useless, that they bring to mind
the scarlet coats that pester human kind.'

The language Keats used, constantly referring to 'us' and 'we' and 'them' and 'they' and 'man' and 'universal knowledge', would have instantly identified him with radicals like Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. He also explicitly challenged leading figures in the establishment. He reversed Edmund Burke's infamous description of the 'swinish multitude' when he wrote:

'In noisome alley and in pathless wood Oft may be found a singleness of aim
That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money-mongering, pitiable brood.'

Keats did not write revolutionary poetry, but he wrote poetry which represented revolution. In Endymion, for example, he describes a mass demonstration, like those taking place in Britain. He also describes how the ruling class, like foxes with their tails burning, 'sear up and singe/Our gold and ripe eared hopes'.

This passage was so subversive that one reviewer accused the youngest member of the 'Cockney School' of having learnt to 'lisp sedition'. A later reworking of the same theme in Hyperion describes a revolution in a mythical world, in a way which suggests that great change bringing violence and upheaval is inevitable.

For some people they look at his poems and his life and they see him as over sensitive, sensuous and simplistic, with far too much rawness, but what we must remember is that his urge to deliver was due to his knowledge of his impending death ,which saw him effectively producing a lifetimes work in only two years. He was then a poet of immediacy, he did not have time for revisions and rewrites, he simply had to get it all down. This is why I think some of his works seem simple, he followed his muse and saw poetry like he saw medicine as a way of healing.

For me he was a poet of stillness, an absorbed dreamer and weaver of spells. Unlike some poets, I read him today with calm and aquviessence and with many pauses to savour. He sought out the primal things of nature, that was his urge. For some reason contemporaries at the time did not really understand him. Luckily we do now, his words frozen, immortal. His strong and inquiring mind still engaging us today. What follows are a selection of his shorter verses that appeal greatly to me.

BRIGHT STAR

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillo'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Prosperine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For dhade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anquish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Empirison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die;
And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tonque
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

ON FAME
"you cannot eat your cake and have it too." PROVERB

How fever'd is that Man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temerate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his Life's book
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom;
As if a clear Lake meddling with itself
Should cloud its pureness with a muddy gloom.
But the rose leaves herself upon the Briar
For winds to kiss and grateful Bees to feed
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire-
The undisturbed Lake has crystal space-
Why then should Man teasing the world for grace
Spoil his salvation by a fierce miscreed?

SONNET TO SLEEP

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfuness divine:
O soothest sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the Key deftly in the oiled wards
And seal the hushed Casket of my soul-

PENSIVE THEY SIT, AND ROLL THEIR LANQUID EYES'

Pensive they sit, and roll teir lanquid eyes
Nibble their tosts, and cool their tea with sighs,
Or else forget the purpose of the night
Forget their tea-forget their appetite.
See with cross'd arms they sit-ah hapless crew
The fire is going out, and no one rings
For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.
A fly is the milk pot - must die
Circled by humane society ?
No no there Mr. Werter takes his spoon
Inverts it-dips the handle and lo, soon
The little struggler sav'd from perils dark
Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark
Romeo! Arise! take Snuffers by the handle
There's a large Cauliflower in each candle.
A winding-sheet- Ah me ! I must away
To No. 7 just beyond the Circus gay.
Where may your Taylor live?-I say again
I cannot tell. Let me no more be teas'd-
He lives in Wapping might live where he pleas'd.'

THE HUMAN SEASONS

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancies clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearesr unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forget his mortal nature.

WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high Brooks in charactery
Hold like rich garners the full ripe'd grain-
When I behold upon the night's starr'd face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of Chance:
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting Love: then on the Shore
Of the wide world I stand alone and think
Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.-

ON THE SEA

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores,-and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns,-till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be lightly moved, from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Ye, that have your eye-balls vex'd and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea;-
Or are your hearts disturb'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,-
Sit ye near some old caver's mouth and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired.

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION

The Church bell toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More heark'ning to the Sermon's horrid sound-
Surely the mind of Man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown'd-
Stll, still they toll , and l should feel a damp,-
Achill as froma tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; that fresh flowes will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp-

KEATS DEATH MASK

Some simple words of advice from Lord Acton

An independent scholar and part of the liberal Catholic movement , Acton was an advocate of the scientific methods of enquiry in history and was most interested in the study of liberty. He helped found the Cambridge Modern History series, and the English Historical Review.

ERUPTION.

In our confusion and fury
the days run quick
yesterdays blood
nearly gone,
tomorrow
a new dawn.
Struggle is infinite
we must look beyond
further out.
No aeroplanes in the sky
a clarity
of horizons,
traffic grinding to a halt.
Their will be stillness
but some things
still worth fighting for.
A land divided
is not home,
humanity pronounces
judgement,
and in the end
we all fall,
but
mother nature
prevails.