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A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. One of my favourites, please read and consider if you do not know it! Cheers Lestie Container Gardening

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters .......... Hi there, Sorry, was eager to put mine there but see I missed answering (had to look it up!) but here it is .......... Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

Ok, that is strange!

That was the very first notification I received through my gmail. I did scroll and Sandra's was the last one, so I clicked view and answered.

Very odd! I even pulled it back up through my deleted mail. Sorry kids to confuse you.

Allyson, I guess you were on page one of the game. It's 5 pages long now. Can be confusing for a game that goes on in a linear fashion. Anyway, I'm still glad you're playing.

Hi, Lestie, thank you for joining out little group. We are growing and it is a fun and easy little game.

You're correct; W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" did supply those lines. Now do you have some line to contribute, so someone else may answer it? That's the way it works: someone offers a line or two from a poem, and then the next poster gives the poet and title of the poem from which the lines were taken and then offers some lines for the next poster and so forth. & it's perfectly fine to look them up, if you don't know them. That's the way we learn about new poems.

I see that it can become confusing when readers don't see the end of the line of posts, but maybe it will work itself out.

I'll go ahead and offer a line for now:


Next: "I lift my heavy heart up solemnly"

Lestie, sorry I missed this earlier. Here is the answer to your offering:

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
ANSWER: D.H. Lawrence's "Snake"

NEXT:
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.

Ah you clever lady! It is also Snake by D H Lawrence - quoted here in full for ease for all to read, maybe others will like it as much as I do? .......... A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there..... In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me...... He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently..... Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second comer, waiting..... He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking. The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous..... And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth?..... Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured..... And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth..... He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face..... And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned..... I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste. Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination..... And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross And I wished he would come back, my snake..... For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness. .......... Thanks from Lestie And now how about : ... Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, Laura bow’d her head to hear, Lizzie veil’d her blushes ...

Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, Laura bow’d her head to hear, Lizzie veil’d her blushes
ANSWER: Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

NEXT:
Stay, I said
to the cut flowers

Stay, I said
to the cut flowers

Answer: "The Promise" by Jane Hirshfield

Next:

"This time they carry no sorrow,
no remorse, their presence is so light."

"This time they carry no sorrow,
no remorse, their presence is so light."
ANSWER: Marilyn Kallet's "Fireflies"


NEXT:
He heated the flat shovel
in the woodstove till the blade
steamed