In the first instance I thought I got a Common Stonechat, closer examination and it turned out to be White-tailed Stonechat (Saxicola leucurus). These are found along the marshy patches of Central and Eastern part of India till lower Assam and Manipur, though quite common is difficult to spot. Caught up with this one at the reedy marshy part of Okhla Bird sanctuary, towards the watchtower.
A E Housman: Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun are the quietest places under the sun!!
A E Housman: Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun are the quietest places under the sun!!
A E Housman (1859-1936) was a 19th century English poet. He worked for a while as a clerk in a patent office, pursing his classical studies in his spare time. It was on the strength of the articles that he managed to get published, he was appointed Professor at Cambridge University, where he remained until his death. His most popular collection is A Shropshire Lad. It is a cycle, or series, of 63 poems –incidentally available at gutenberg.com. The haunting but leisurely quality is what attracted me to write about him. Several publishers turned the collection down, resulting in him having to publish the poems at his own expense in 1896. It's been in print ever since. His long-awaited second volume of verse, Last Poems (also available at gutenberg.com), was published after his death.
The
immortal part
When I
meet the morning beam,
Or lay me
down at night to dream,
I hear my
bones within me say,
“Another
night, another day."
"When shall this slough of sense be cast,
This dust of thoughts be laid at last,
The man of flesh and soul be
slain
And the man of bone remain?"
"This tongue that talks, these lungs that
shout,
These thews that hustle us about,
This brain that fills the skull with schemes,
And its humming hive of dreams,-"
"These to-day are proud in power
And lord it in their little hour:
The immortal bones obey control
Of dying flesh and dying soul."
" 'Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
Slow the endless night comes on,
And late to fulness grows the birth
That shall last as long as earth."
"Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,
Know you why you cannot rest?
'Tis that every mother's son
Travails with a skeleton."
"Lie down in the bed of dust;
Bear the fruit that bear you must;
Bring the eternal seed to light,
And morn is all the same as
night."
"Rest
you so from trouble sore,
Fear the
heat o' the sun no more,
Nor the
snowing winter wild,
Now you
labour not with child."
"Empty
vessel, garment cast,
We that
wore you long shall last.
-Another
night, another day."
So my
bones within me say.
Therefore
they shall do my will
To-day
while I am master still,
And flesh
and soul, now both are strong,
Shall
hale the sullen slaves along,
Before
this fire of sense decay,
This
smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave
with ancient night alone
The
steadfast and enduring bone.
Many of
his poems didn’t have any titles…
I
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?
-To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long 'tis like to be.
II
Into my
heart an air that kills
From yon
far country blows:
What are
those blue remembered hills,
What
spires, what farms are those?
That is
the land of lost content,
I see it
shining plain,
The happy
highways where I went
And
cannot come again.
III
Now
hollow fires burn out to black,
And
lights are guttering low:
Square
your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave
your friends and go.
Oh never
fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not
left nor right:
In all
the endless road you tread
There's
nothing but the night.
From my scribble pad…
Morning of the Blue tigers
Blue tigers cross my path
Not one, but two, but three, but
four
wait there’s more.
Azure sky is bright blue tiger
bloom
flicking like myriad thoughts
staining the heart here and there
some flying high, some quite low
some an afterthought, some right
away.
Ahoy here we marshal into the
mountains.
Common cold
Time
has become too audible these days
like
a freight train in the night
knifing
the darkness
in
a persistent linear clockwork.
The
corpse that creeps under the skin
don’t
feel or behave different.
It’s
the chill that acts funny
Must
be the cold
Indian Robin, does mind the
intrusion
Where
the dead stump ends
Stillness
begins
Alert
in all its senses
Alive
to my careless stride
Off
he goes into the wilderness
