- These are poems that I have come to love over the years.
If you find it strange that such a page should reside on a chelonian site
I can only respond that man does not live by tortoises alone.
Baby Tortoise - by D. H. Lawrence
Tortoise Family Connections - by D. H. Lawrence
Invictus - by William Ernest Henley
The Highwayman - by Alfred Noyes
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - by Dylan Thomas
Dust - by Carl Sandburg
The Road Not Taken - by Robert Frost
Time - Author Unknown
Go on to Poems II
Go on to Poems III
Baby Tortoise by D. H. Lawrence
You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from
the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.
To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would
never open,
Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.
To take your first solitary bite
And move on your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed night,
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.
You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple
And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,
Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,
Except that you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.
The touch of sun excites you,
And the long ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious mouth,
Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly
gaping pincers;
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,
Your face, baby tortoise.
Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head
in its wimple
And look with laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?
You are so hard to wake.
Are you able to wonder?
Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the
first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the inertia
Which had seemed invincible?
The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,
Challenger.
Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable inertia.
Challenger,
Little Ulysses, fore-runner,
No bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.
All animate creation on your shoulder,
Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.
The ponderous, preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.
Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial
ages
Your little round house in the midst of chaos.
Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all things.
Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little on one side
Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.
All life carried on your shoulder,
Invincible fore-runner.
Tortoise Family Connections by D. H. Lawrence
On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?
His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no
more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an
old rusty tin.
A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.
It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:
"This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg."
He does not even trouble to answer: "Woman, what have
I to do with thee?"
He wearily looks the other way,
And she even more wearily looks another way still,
Each with the utmost apathy,
Incognisant,
Unaware,
Nothing.
As for papa,
He snaps when I offer him his offspring,
Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,
Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise
Being touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.
Father and mother,
And three little brothers,
And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles
scattered in the garden,
Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.
Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,
Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.
Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless
Little tortoise.
Row on then, small pebble,
Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,
Young gaiety.
Does he look for a companion?
No, no, don't think it.
He doesn't know he is alone;
Isolation is his birthright,
This atom.
To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes,
To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid
of the night,
To crop a little substance,
To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:
Basta!
To be a tortoise!
Think of it, in a garden of inert clods
A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself --
Adam!
In a garden of pebbles and insects
To roam, and feel the slow heart beat
Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding
From the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.
Moving, and being himself,
Slow, and unquestioned,
And inordinately there, O stoic!
Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,
Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,
And biting the frail grass arrogantly,
Decidedly arrogantly.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
Through the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
Riding--Riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace
at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to
the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol
butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark
innyard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was
locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting
there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the
landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and
peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy
hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's
red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say--
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning
light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the
day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for
me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar
the way."
He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach
her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt
like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his
breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet
black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped
away to the west.
He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was as gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple
moor,
A red-coat troop came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale
instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot
of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their
side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at
one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that
he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering
jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath
her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard
the doomed man say--
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for
me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar
the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held
good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with
sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the
hours
crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the
stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least
was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for
the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle between
her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive
again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and
bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed
to her love's refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs
ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf
that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up,
straight and still.
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing
night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep
breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket
shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with
her death.
He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who
stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her
own blood!
Not till dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to
hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's
black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in
the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shouting a curse to the
sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier
brandished high.
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red
was his velvet-coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like
a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch
of lace at his throat.
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind
is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy
seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple
moor,
A highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked
and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting
there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the
landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night By Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas died at the age of 39.
Dust by Carl Sandburg
Here is dust remembers it was a rose
one time and lay in a woman's hair.
Here is dust remembers it was a woman
one time and in her hair lay a rose.
Oh things one time dust, what else now is it
you dream and remember of old days?
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Some time, some place--perhaps many years from now--
someone who was once the person I am now will look across
a room and see someone who was once the person you are
now.
And in that instant, they will know that once, long ago,
they had been friends.
None of the memories that we now share will have survived
the shift in time. Only the love we shared will remain--and
that will be enough.