Granny, Granny, please comb My Hair - With a friend - To cook and Eat - To India – My Native Land - A tiger in the Zoo - No men are foreign – Laugh and be Merry – The Apology - The Flying Wonder
Granny Granny Please comb my hair.
Granny Granny
Please comb my hair.
You always take your time,
You always take such care.
You put me to sit on a cushion
Between your knees;
You rub a little coconut oil,
Parting gentle as a breeze.
... Granny
You have all the time in the world,
And when you’re finished
You always turn my head and say,
“Now, who’s a nice girl?"
- Grace Nichols
With a Friend
I can talk with a friend,
And walk with a friend
And share my umbrella
In the rain
I can play with a friend
And stay with a friend
And learn with a friend
And explain
I can eat with a friend
And compete with a friend
And even sometimes
Disagree
I can ride with a friend
And take pride with a friend
A friend can mean
So much to me!
-Vivian Gould
To Cook and Eat
To cook and eat
Is an art.
Yet a part
Of everyday life.
We take it for granted
not knowing,
not caring,
that others
may not have this thing
which we so foolishly
waste.
- Emma Richards
To India – My Native Land
My country! In your days of glory past
A beauteous halo circled round your brow.
And worshipped as a deity you were...
Where is that glory, where that reverence now?
Your eagle pinion is chained down at last
And grovelling in the lowly dust are you;
Your minstrel has no wreath to weave for you
Save the sad story of your misery
Well - let me dive into the depths of time,
And bring from out of the ages that have rolled
A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime,
Which human eyes may never more behold:
And let the guerdon of my labour be
My fallen country! One kind wish from you!
- Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
A Tiger in the Zoo
He stalks in his vivid stripes
The few steps of his cage,
On pads of velvet quiet,
In his quiet rage
He should be lurking in shadow,
Sliding through long grass
Near the water hole
Where plump deer pass.
He should be snarling around houses
At the jungle's edge.
Baring his white fangs, his claws.
Terrorizing the village!
But he's locked in a concrete cell.
His strength behind bars,
Stalking the length of his cage,
Ignoring visitors.
He hears the last voice at night.
The patrolling cars.
And stares with his brilliant eyes
At the brilliant stars.
- Leslie Norris
No Men are Foreign
Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign
Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes
Like ours: the land our brothers walk upon
Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie.
They, too, aware of sun and air and water,
Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d.
Their hands are ours, and in their lines we read
A labour not different from our own.
Remember they have eyes like ours that wake
Or sleep, and strength that can be won
By love. In every land is common life
That all can recognise and understand.
Let us remember, whenever we are told
To hate our brothers, it is ourselves
That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn.
Remember, we who take arms against each other
It is the human earth that we defile.
Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence
Of air that is everywhere our own,
Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange.
- James Kirkup
Laugh and be Merry
Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.
Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time.
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth
The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.
So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.
Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.
- John Masefield
The Apology
Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
There was never mystery,
But 'tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.
One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The flying wonder
Said Orville Wright to Wilbur Wright,
"These birds are very trying.
I'm sick of hearing them cheep-cheep
About the fun of flying.
A bird has feathers, it is true.
That much I freely grant.
But must that stop us. W?'
Said Wilbur Wright 'It shan’t
And so they built a glider, firs~
And then they built another.
- There never were two brothers more
Devoted to each other.
They ran a dusty little shop
For bicycle-repairing,
And bought each other &Ode-pop
And praised each other’s daring.
They glided here, they glided there,
They sometimes skinned their noses.
-For learning how to rule the air
Was not a bed of rose -
But each would murmur, afterward,
While patching up his bro.
“ Are we discouraged, W?”
“Of course we are not, O!”
And finally, at Kitty Hawk
In Nineteen-Three (let's Cheer it!),
The first real aeroplane really flow
With Orville there to steer It!
-And kingdoms may forget their kings
And dogs forget their bites,
But not till Man forgets his wings
Will men forget the Wrights.
- Stephen Vincent Benet
All the best......
All the best......
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