http://www.poemofquotes.com/alfredtennyson/ulysses.php

Ulysses
BY ALFRED TENNYSON

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Written in 1833 and published in 1842.

Read more about Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson Analysis & Poem by www.poemofquotes.com

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/21/poetry.writing.wendycope

To end our life is said to be grave sin
We do not own our own mortality
We neither can control when we begin
To end our life was once thought  a grave sin
But shall we live regardless  when love’s gone?
Can life end without brutality?
To end our life  is  said to be grave sin
We do not own our own mortality.

When millions die unmourned in Orient
When collateral damage is ” a trifle sad”
Can I not consider whether my life’s spent?
When millions die unmourned in Orient
In the News, I’ll  never make a  dent
Is my  thought of death so bad,
When millions die unmourned in Orient;
When collateral damage is” a trifle sad”?

One day we have a garment usable
Though it may have a moth hole or a tear
The next, it’s crossed the barrier  and is waste
It’s become what no one wants to wear

In this same manner, I  am near the edge.
I can  move, but all my body aches
When might  I reach the point where I am lost;
When  too strong are my wishes to escape?

I know it will very hard to judge
Some remark,some move,some  painful thought.
Some tiny thing may push me  past the edge
And so the waves on Dover Beach I’ll haunt.

Those White Cliffs where once I  walked with ease
Now with thoughts of loss , they do me tease.

Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/racism.html

I was reading a fascinating book by Stephen Frosh who points out that racism affects the racists  badly as well as the victims because the racists see their society as endangered by these “other” people.I had not thought of that before.
The book is called “Feelings:a short introduction.” by Stephen Frosh

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/08/which-everyday-english-words-came-from-arabic/

Alcohol and coffee are two.

http://www.gregoryharrington.com/video.php

What to eat for dinner what to wear
When to start to write,and what to bare
When to clear the  rubbish,take a break
When to throw stuff out or make a cake.

When to  think of my vocation in this life
When to be myself and when a wife.
When to clean and polish my own words
When to wash the pots and feed the birds.

Hierarchical my needs and wishes are
Yet randomly I act with unthought care.
When to write a list of what to do.
When to rest and, melancholy, think of you.

Do I feel the world’s a better place because I write?
Do I pass the time in fear of what awaits?
Do I need to take a long retreat?
If I am a  poet,I’m a beat.

Widows  have no obligations  like a  wife
In this way it is a simpler life.
Yet the word defines us by our man
Even though he’s lost and gone again.

From the NYT

One of the most prolific writers of our age who  teaches as well.If you are short of novels you will find plenty here.

Sometimes writing makes me breathe differently.
I can see the silence settle around me,
Like a prayer shawl.
i accept it gratefully.
There’s a thin feeling to the day
As if the sun might have tried harder
to come through
But it had a blue feeling
And the clouds were greedy,
Wanting too much to melt
And shed their moisture.
Some perfume please,I think it was £27.99
Yes,I like that one even more than jasmine oil.
Pour it down over London
Like a blessing.
A black woman laughed and patted my arm,
You’re so funny,she cried.
And I smiled coyly
As if someone hidden was taking my photograph.
Sometimes life’s too sweet
And needs a little pepper.
The chair creaks as I lean forward
Trying to see everything at once
As if it all happened now,not yesterday.
Where is yesterday today?

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/commonly-confused-words

The new short poems are triolets,or similar to triolets.You can look it up in the first  poem of today.They are  like villanelles but shorter and easier though I find all poems in form are difficult.But it is a good idea  to learnt the forms.I have been rather slow in learning them.In these forms and in the rondeau which derive from song there is more repitition that in other kinds of poetry

The face that was familiar is no more
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again
If ,by a chance, his life could be restored
It would affect me like the hidden chord
That  if were played, my  own  life would  be o’er
That one must live and one must die is plain
The face that was familiar is no more.
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again

It might be interesting to write a poem out of these phrases

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-be-sure-journalists-can-avoid-cliches/2013/03/22/71578f54-9318-11e2-8ea1-956c94b6b5b9_print.html?utm_term=.e519dbde167f

 

At first glance

As a society (or “as a nation”)

Observers

Pundits say (or “critics say”)

The American people (unless in a quote)

The narrative (unless referring to a style of writing)

Probe (as substitute for “investigation”)

A rare window (unless we’re talking about a real window that is in fact rare)

Begs the question (unless used properly — and so rarely used properly that not worth it)

Be that as it may

It is important to note that

Needless to say

[Anything] 2.0 (or 3.0, or 4.0 . . .)

At a crossroads

Inside the Beltway

Outside the box/Out of the box

Underscored

Midwife (as a verb that does not involve childbirth)

Palpable sense of relief

Rorschach test (unless it is a real one)

The Other

Effort (as a verb)

Gestalt/Zeitgeist

Little-noticed (that just means the writer hadn’t noticed it)

The [anything] community

Hastily convened

Ignominious end

Tightly knit community

In the final analysis

At the end of the day

Literally (unless quoting Vice President Biden)

Ultimately (especially as first word of last graf)

Redux

Rise of the 24-hour news cycle (it rose a long time ago)

Remains to be seen

Feeding frenzy/feeding the frenzy

Double down

[Anything]-gate

Dons the mantle of

Political theater

Hot-button issue

Face-saving compromise

The argument goes (or its cousin, “the thinking goes”)

Shutter (as a verb)

Part and parcel

Demurred

It is what it is

The new normal

Paradigm shift (in journalism, all paradigms are shifting)

Unlikely revolutionary (in journalism, all revolutionaries are unlikely)

Unlikely reformer (in journalism, all reformers are unlikely)

Grizzled veteran (in journalism, all veterans are grizzled — unless they are “seasoned”)

Manicured lawns (in journalism, all nice lawns are manicured)

Rose from obscurity (in journalism, all rises are from obscurity)

Dizzying array (in journalism, all arrays make one dizzy)

Withering criticism (in journalism, all criticism is withering)

Predawn raid (in journalism, all raids are predawn)

Sparked debate (or “raised questions”)

Ironic Capitalizations Implying Unimportance of Things Others Consider Important

Provides fresh details

But reality/truth is more complicated (oversimplify, then criticize the oversimplification)

Scarred by war

Main Street vs. Wall Street

Shines a spotlight on (unless there is a real spotlight that really shines)

No silver bullet

Shifting dynamics

Situation is fluid (code for “I have no idea what is going on”)

Partisans on both sides

Charm offensive

Pushback

Going forward

Stinging rebuke

The proverbial TK (“proverbial” doesn’t excuse the cliche, just admits you used it knowingly)

Fevered speculation

Oft-cited

Iconic

Growing body of evidence (in journalism, no bodies of evidence ever shrink)

Increasingly (unless we prove in the story that something is in fact increasing)

Tapped (as substitute for “selected” or “appointed”)

Any “not un-” formulation (as in “not unsurprising”)

There, I said it (more self-important than “voicey”)

To be sure

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© The Washington Post

“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
― John Berger

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/articles/detail/89288

If we had a law like the French about conspicuous religious clothing would it affect Indian women wearing saris and Jewish people in Stamford Hill wearing special clothing?
I expect some  do but should we compel them ?

I feel it is really Muslim clothes they hate

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2692/the-art-of-poetry-no-38-w-s-merwin