Toward More Colorful Speech; Please Contribute!

by compound complex 23 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  compound complex

  Greetings, BackRoomBilly, and a belated welcome to the forum.

  This poem is awesome and powerful. I wish I had seen it sooner.

  Thanks much,

  CoCo
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  myelaine

  That Emperour inclined his head full low;
  Hasty in speech he never was, but slow:
  His custom was, at his leisure he spoke.
  When he looks up, his face is very bold,
  He says to them: "Good tidings have you told.
  King Marsilies hath ever been my foe.
  These very words you have before me told,
  In what measure of faith am I to hold?"
  That Sarrazin says, "Hostages he'll show;
  Ten shall you take, or fifteen or a score.
  Though he be slain, a son of mine shall go,
  Any there be you'll have more nobly born.
  To your palace seigneurial when you go,
  At Michael's Feast, called in periculo;
  My Lord hath said, thither will he follow
  Ev'n to your baths, that God for you hath wrought;
  There is he fain the Christian faith to know."
  Answers him Charles: "Still may he heal his soul."
  AOI.
  
  
  
  Clear shone the sun in a fair even-tide;
  Those ten men's mules in stall he bade them tie.
  Also a tent in the orchard raise on high,
  Those messengers had lodging for the night;
  Dozen serjeants served after them aright.
  Darkling they lie till comes the clear daylight.
  That Emperour does with the morning rise;
  Matins and Mass are said then in his sight.
  Forth goes that King, and stays beneath a pine;
  Barons he calls, good counsel to define,
  For with his Franks he's ever of a mind.
  AOI.

  ~Song of Roland~ X & XI
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  compound complex

  Thank you, Myelaine!

  CoCo
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  iknowall558

  NOT YET MY MOTHER

  Yesterday I found a photo

  of you at seventeen,

  holding a horse and smiling,

  not yet my mother.

  The tight riding hat hid your hair,

  and your legs were still the long shins of a boy's.

  You held the horse by the halter,

  your hand a fist under its huge jaw.

  The blown trees were still in the background

  and the sky was grained by the old film stock,

  but what caught me was your face,

  which was mine.

  And I thought, just for a second, that you were me.

  But then I saw the woman's jacket,

  nipped at the waist, the ballooned jodhpurs,

  and of course the date, scratched in the corner.

  All of which told me again,

  that this was you at seventeen, holding a horse

  and smiling, not yet my mother,

  although I was clearly already your child.

  Owen Sheers.