General Chat

Rollo – a person after my own heart. War is/was not ‘glorious’. The conscripts weren’t ‘heroes’. They and voluntarily enlisted men were caught up in the government propaganda of the time and turned into Canon Fodder. Meanwhile the Brass kept well back from the Front Line.

The poem which sticks in my memory, especially the last verse is

Cargoes

QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield

For ++detective++

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSbQ0qwQwuk

Why are they selling poppies Mummy? selling poppies in town today,
The poppies are the flowers of love child for the men who have gone away.

Why have they chosen a poppy Mummy, why not a beautiful rose?
Because my child men fought and died in the fields where the poppies grow.

Why are the poppies so red Mummy, why are the poppies so red?
Red is the colour of blood my child, the blood that our soldiers shed.

The heart of the poppy is black Mummy, why does it have to be black?
Black my child is the colour of grief, for the men who ever came back.

But Mummy, why are you crying so? your tears are giving you pain,
My tears are my fears for you my child, for the world is forgetting again.

Thank you Rollo :-D

The father of a school friend worked for some Authority or other who used to sail with decrepit coastal ships to check their seaworthiness and manoeuvrability - the family was always worried that one voyage would be his last.

For life is eternal,
And love is immortal,
And death is only a horizon,
And a horizon is nothing, save the limit of our sight.

My mother wrote this on the back of a photograph of my father, dated Oct 1942. He was killed two months later, five weeks before I was born.

ELDORADO
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1849)

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


I have many more but this one sprang to mind.