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Sun 6 Jun, 2004 02:35 am
These are first lines of poems I want the name of the poem and the poet (one poetess)please. I'll publish the answers in few days if needed but I'm sure your collective brains will deem that unnecessary.
1. Half a league, half a league,
2. Elephants are contagious!
3. It was my thirtieth year to heaven
4. A snake came to my water trough
5. Midwinter spring is it's own season
6. A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon
7. By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea
8. There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu
9. There's a breathless hush in the close tonight
10. Slowly England's sun was setting o'er the hill-tops far away
Do you want us to pm you, as for a competition, or just generally chat about it?
I've read all but six and seven, which I'm puzzling over...
It seems as if we're writing them here, doesn't it? But, we shouldn't write until we know for sure.
I love Kipling! (Sounds like the Kant you talk thread - Do you love Kiplling? Don't know, I've never kipled)
Clary wrote:Do you want us to pm you, as for a competition, or just generally chat about it?
I think pick the answers off one at a time in any order and comment if you like.
No. 1 The charge of the light brigade. Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Since this is so apparently easy I'm missing something aren't I?
Yes, I mean apart from a cerebellum.
3 sounds like a translation of François Villon's poem Le Testament
En l'an de mon trentiesme age..
Embarassed to admit I'm drawing a blank on most.
Is #6 "The Cremation of Dan McGrew"?
I say No. 7 is Kipling, too. Is it "On the Road to Mandalay"? I used to have a recording of that one sung by an Australian basso whose name escapes me.
3., I think, is Elegy by Dylan Thomas... I remember something similar like that being read out by the man himself; his voice is quite a surprise!
7 close enough - Mandalay. The only Kipling one.
3 right man wrong poem
OK, I remember it as through glass, darkly, as I studied it in 1966. I knew Mandalay but didn't Say.
As regards three: Poem in October?
10. Slowly England's sun was setting o'er the hill-tops far away...
CURFEW MUST NOT RING TONIGHT
by Rose Hartwick Thorpe
Right?
4. is Snake by DH Lawrence, isn't it?
! It does! I've not read much Kipling... but did you read that 'If-' was chosen as the Nation's favourite poem? But, then again, another poll had it as 'The Whitsun Weddings,' by Larkin.
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