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Thursday 20 August 2015

FIRST QUARTET: A Quartet of Poems by James L.S. Carter

                                                                    1. SCHUBERT





 Life is so poignant for it is so brief

That artists' dedication seems most sad

Even when they convey a joy, not grief.

Think of the richness that they never had.

Their frank obsession is their honest wealth

And all their lives a quest for excellence.

Their manic art controls their mental health

And dominates all their experience.

Oh! That each day should be a high ideal

And something permanent achieved. Forget

The horror and the chaos that is real

And never compromise, never accept

The shabby half-truth or the less than good

Till gold is made out of the raw and crude.



                                                                          2.BRAHMS

                                               


                                         What greater tragedy than inspiration lost?

                                         On artist's aspiration to the highest height

                                         Which leaves behind a small achievement that's so slight?

                                         Of high endeavour's effort who can count the cost?

                                         We have to fight for loneness and distinctiveness,

                                         A life in which each moment is significant,

                                          For moods make memories which lively actions can't

                                          And moods can colour all our existences.

                                          The sudden jolt, disrupting, only reassures

                                          And we create a future digging in the past.

                                          We don't know where we're riding but we're riding fast

                                           For we are ever striving for immortal cures.

                                           So let us always seek the very highest art

                                           That genuinely comes from the feeling heart,




                                                                              3. IMAGES


                                                       


Wind-rippled puddles, streams that scintillate

Or foam'mid rocks that firmly interpolate,

Cast sunlight on a floor or wall that fades

Or strengthens, burns or dims among the shades;

Light that reflects thro' raindrops on a pane,

Or windscreens curving rivulets of rain:-

Such are things a poet notices

And form a part of all he writes and says,

A solitary star's a poet's friend,

A shooting star, a gift that God will send.

Each night we look to see the goddess moon 

Cloud-haunted and frost-haunted in her swoon.

A poet dares what others will not dare

And what they never notice, he sees there,





                                                                     4. RONDEL



                                                             
                                                 Transient bloom, I wish that it would last

                                                 On Blackford Hill I love the gorse and broom

                                                 Under the nimbus clouds that lour and loom

                                                 And shake the heavens over which they've passed.
                         
                                                 Sad grows the eye when it is overcast,

                                                 Glad when a flower-carpet is bestrewn.

                                                 Transient bloom, I wish that it would last:

                                                 On Blackford Hill I love the gorse and broom.

                                                 Hedgerow hacked down can leave me so aghast;

                                                 Angry I view the tree-line that is hewn.

                                                 Never can springtime come again too soon

                                                 And I wish wintertime would hurry fast.

                                                 Till beeches carpet forests with their mast

                                                 And I wish it would last, transient bloom.

                                                 

James L.S, Carter is the author of Selected Sonnets (1971-1992) Atholl Press, and of two other collections The Anniversaries and City Reflections which were also published in 2004.
                     

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