Tag Archives: Poetry

“The trees are in their autumn beauty “

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I kept thinking of W B Yeats’s magnificent poem, The wild swans at Cool,  as I wandered through the fallen leaves in our local forest with  little  Zoe, yesterday. The colours were so gob-smackingly wonderful.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;

I suddenly had a nightmarish thought: there’s probably a Yeats Theme Park now at Coole Park complete with a Wild Swans rollercoaster!
What a relief! It seems I’m wrong.
http://www.coolepark.ie/

Nothing more than a sedate tearoom by the look of things.

It’s National Poetry Day in the UK today

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You doubtless think of Watson and myself as rough, tough, gruff, thick-skinned, hard-nosed men  of action who would rather eat a slice of quiche than read a poem. In reality we are sensitive, gentle, poetic spirits who take solace in sonnets.

So naturally we are going to take the chance to post a few poems today.

You’re beautiful by Simon Armitage on love and the gap between the sexes: Men are from Yorkshire, women are from Lancashire.

Next, John Cooper Clarke’s Beasley Street: a nightmare vision. Written in the grim days of the 80s. Feels just as true today

And finally, in this “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.,John Keats’s magnificent Ode to Autumn. Over-anthologised to death, but they can’t stifle  one of the most beautiful poems in the English language.