[Roger Slater]

Those are good ones. Lance, I love S1 of Houseman but I'm not sure what "three" means in S2. Maybe it's just me.

Here's another:


Joyce Kilmer

I think that I should like to be.
Or not. Which is it? Let me see.

To die might be like one long sleep.
But woe betide if it's not deep!

To die might end the law's delay.
But none alive can truly say.

If death is just as bad as life,
There's no point falling on my knife.

Life is lived by fools like me.
But God knows if it's good to be.

[Ann Drysdale]

George, I've just sung your Wintertime aloud and I ended up laughing like a lunatic. If Lucy takes the time to do the same, you're in with a shout (!). I just see the scene with the crippled figure turning slowly to face the audience and giving forth with this campy-torchy number. It's hilarious!

[Roger Slater]

Same soliloquy, new poet:


To Be The Verse
Philip Larkin

They fuck your mum, they kill your dad,
If what the ghost declared is true.
To be or not to be? Both bad,
So what's a boy like me to do?

To think about my uncle's deed
Sure makes my Danish blue blood boil!
If it were up to me, he'd bleed,
He'd shuffle off his mortal coil.

Yet maybe I should just give in
And stick my crown up on the shelf?
The deck is stacked. I cannot win.
I wonder, should I kill myself?

[George Simmers]

'Laughing like a lunatic'? Anne, you're my ideal reader.
You've imagined the stage picture perfectly - and of course he needs to be wearing Olivier's costume and wig.

[John Whitworth]

Roger, that kills me. The first line should win something if there's any justice. How GOOD we all are!

[Jerome Betts]

I say, Levens and Slater, you rotters, it's Housman not Houseman. Bit of rannygazoo at the crossroads with the names of the great and dead is not on. (How did you guess I was thinking of doing The Seven Ages in Wooster-speak?)

[Roger Slater]

Jerome, please! It's spelled reinikaboo. Wodehous(e) didn't know any better.

[FOsen]

Larkin

To be, or reach the only end of being.
That’s not a question, it’s a way of seeing
clearly, what's really always been there: how
unresting death’s a whole act nearer now.
Procrastination does no good; it means
slouching about in tights for twelve more scenes.
Ends merely whinged at, though (don’t be mistaken),
beat any death that’s, you know, undertaken.
I think I’ll end this dark soliloquy;
it tangles like a cancerous peduncle.
It’s not enough my parents f—d up me;
we all got f—d up by my f—g uncle!


Hopkins

Blow, winds, and crack
your zephyr-flatulent, cumolo-corpulous cheeks! Wrack
all-in-a-raging, fissure-riven, river runnel downflying flow,
go!
Blue-blown cataracts and hurricanoes, - cor, I’m a little teapot – spout!
Out Out (O to be) Out!
Spit and stanch the stiff-standing, unquenched spires,
drown the cocks!
You sylphs of sulphurous thought-ex-
ecuting, flame-flickered fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving lightning,
Singe my, what with the hoary hair hided heap of it, white head! And thou, frightening,
all-shaking-shook foil fall of thunder’s van
hurl!
Fell me! Fall and smite mite-flat the ring-round-rotundity o' (Oh, the all of it) world!
Wreck, and rock nature's moulds, and gerbils hurl at once, that make ingrateful man!


Frank

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Frank - talk about LOL humour! These are both f...ing brilliant!

The talent routinely displayed on these D&A threads is extraordinary!

Thank you all for the amazing entertainment, and the scraps of wisdom that get in through the cracks!!

Cally

[John Whitworth]

Frank, love Larkin but I don't see how line 3 scans.