Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers

Kindness Is The Word

noreply@blogger.com (V. Mahfood) — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:50:00 +0000

--Description: 21st C, Unknown, Hope, Kindness--

"What is the real good?"

I asked in musing mood.

Order, said the law court;

Knowledge, said the school;

Truth, said the wise man;

Pleasure, said the fool;

Love, said the maiden;

Beauty, said the page;

Freedom, said the dreamer;

Home, said the sage;

Fame, said the soldier;

Equity, said the seer;

Spake my heart full sadly:

"The answer is not here."

Then within my bosom

Softly this I heard:

"Each heart holds the secret:

Kindness is the word."

Unknown

Word of the Day: gambit \GAM-bit\, noun:
1. A remark made to open or redirect a conversation.
2. Chess. An opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
3. Any maneuver by which one seeks to gain an advantage.
Example:
The leader was eyeing him up and down, shrewdly calculating. "Thirsty as all that, are you, my friend?" he asked. Gratefully Bomilcar seized upon the gambit. “Thirsty enough to buy everyone here a drink,” he said.
-- Colleen McCullough, The First Man in Rome

Quote of the Day: Endure and persist; this pain will turn to good by and by.
- Ovid

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Posted by V. Mahfood

A Ballad of Dreamland

noreply@blogger.com (V. Mahfood) — Mon, 21 May 2012 00:58:00 +0000

--Description: 20th C, Swinburne A.C., Dreams, Love--

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.

The green land's name that a charm encloses,
It never was writ in the traveller's chart,
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,
It never was sold in the merchant's mart.
The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;
No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart,
Only the song of a secret bird.

ENVOI

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

--Did You Know: (1837–1909) Swinburne was an English poet, controversial in his own day. He invented the roundel form, wrote some novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. From 1903 to 1909 he was constantly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Swinburne was born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837. He was the eldest of six children born to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham. He grew up at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight and attended Eton College 1849-53, where he first started writing poetry, and then Balliol College, Oxford 1856-60 with a brief hiatus when he was rusticated from the university in 1859, returning in May 1860, though he never received a degree. He spent summer holidays at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland, the house of his grandfather, Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet (1762-1860) (see Swinburne Baronets) who had a famous library and was President of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne. Swinburne considered Northumberland to be his native county, an emotion memorably reflected in poems like the intensely patriotic 'Northumberland', 'Grace Darling' and others. He enjoyed riding his pony across the moors. Read more at: A. C. Swinburne

--Word of the Day: palladian \puh-LEY-dee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Pertaining to wisdom, knowledge, or study.
2. Of or pertaining to the goddess Athena.
3. Pertaining to, introduced by, or in the architectural style of Andrea Palladio.
Example:
Within the sanctuary the gold and ivory image of Athena, fashioned by Phidias, had given way to the pale face of Our Lady, Mother of the Holy Child, and the grandiloquent Latin of the mass rolled its volume through the hall that once had echoed to the sonorous Greek of the Palladian hymns.
-Justin Huntly McCarthy, The dryad: a novel

--Quote of the Day: It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presence may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas

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My Mother Kept A Garden

noreply@blogger.com (V. Mahfood) — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:05:00 +0000

--Description: 20th C, Author Unknown, Childhood, Family, Memories--

My Mother kept a garden,
a garden of the heart,
She planted all the good things
that gave my life it's start.
She turned me to the sunshine
and encouraged me to dream,
Fostering and nurturing
the seeds of self-esteem...
And when the winds and rain came,
she protected me enough-
But not too much because she knew
I'd need to stand up strong and tough.
Her constant good example
always taught me right from wrong-
Markers for my pathway
that will last a lifetime long.
I am my Mother's garden.
I am her legacy-
And I hope today she feels the love
reflected back from me.

Author Unknown

--Word of the Day: antipode \AN-ti-pohd\, noun:
A direct or exact opposite.
Example:
It seemed that this enthusiast was just as cautious, just as much alive to judgments in other minds as if he had been that antipode of all enthusiasm called "a man of the world."
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

--Quote of the Day: When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie

** Please also visit fellow poets on our Today's Guest Post Page .

Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers is updated often. Subscribe by selecting E-mail or RSS Reader. Also, come follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Poets and Advertisers-please contact us to post your press releases, new book info, graphics and more at: coffeetablepoet@gmail.com

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Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers

Kindness Is The Word

A Ballad of Dreamland

My Mother Kept A Garden

My Lute Awake

We Wear The Mask

The Tiger

Along The Fields As We Came By

Life's Tragedy

Farewell to the Farm

Evening Star

Two in the Campagna

Affection

Echo

Sonnet 116

A Summer Afternoon

The Solitary Reaper

The Weakest Thing

Butterfly Laughter

A Woman's Last Word

Kind Are Her Answers

The Sun Has Long Been Set

Two Streams

A Duet

A Lover's Complaint

The Swallow