My Papa's Waltz (Favorite Poem Project)

My Papa’s Waltz

by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz": A Reader's Response

As reader-response critics have long noted, opening up discussions of a poem to
accommodate multiple interpretations can reveal striking things about how individual readers' assumptions and cultural positions affect their understanding of what they read. Rarely has this set of expectations surprised me as much, however, as it did in a recent discussion I had with students about Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz."

I was teaching the poem in a creative writing class, on a day when we were talking about uses of metrical patterns in poetry. I went into class prepared to discuss what I thought of as a tidy little poem that does a particularly good job of replicating the cadence of a waltz in the meter of its stanzas. I was shocked to find that most of my students, on the other hand, had an angry and vehement reaction against a poem that they saw as describing systematic child-abuse.

"Child-abuse?" I asked, mystified, and not sure I'd heard correctly. Most of the heads in the class nodded. My immediate thought was that my students must be reading something into the poem that wasn't there, since the poem for me had always conjured up a vivid image of a nighttime ritual that shows the connection between father and son. In my mind's eye, I saw a hard-working man who danced awkwardly but enthusiastically, creating a moment of intimacy with his child. For me the poem's tone was one of fond recollection: that the adult speaker still remembers small details of this waltzing suggested to me that the child thoroughly enjoyed this dance.

But my students were convinced that the father was beating his son. I was so surprised by this unexpected understanding of the poem that without even mentioning my reading, I asked to hear the evidence for theirs. Most of them grimaced when they talked about the poem, as though even discussing it was almost as offensive as the actions they felt it portrayed. Their primary argument that this poem depicts a harsh father-son relationship was that the description of the dancing is violent. The father "beat time" on the child's head and crashed around the room so much that "the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf." The word "beat," they said, is a clear indication of abuse, and the fact that the child is held still by a hand that is itself "battered" strengthened their sense that manual violence is the subject of the poem. My students seemed to be implying that no one would voluntarily use the word "beat" in the context of an adult's relationship to a child unless intending to suggest child abuse. The image of the father's belt buckle scraping the child's ear in the third stanza confirmed for the class that the father uses whatever tools are available to accomplish this beating.

The mother's stance contributes to this reading. She is guilty of not preventing her husband from beating her son; she looks on but doesn't interfere. Yet she doesn't condone it either, since we see that she looks on with a "countenance [that] / Could not unfrown itself." Her stern disapproval of what is going on seemed to my class to be further evidence that the father is acting inappropriately with his child. In fact, the relationship between the mother and the father in this poem reveals exactly the dynamic that we understand as typical of abusive family situations: the ambivalence of one parent in effect permits the other to perpetuate abuse on the children. Although my students did not articulate this concept of ambivalence, their critiques of the mother's simultaneous disapproval and inaction certainly point in this direction.

Furthermore, my students claimed, the child doesn't appear to be enjoying himself in all of this. He describes the "waltz" as requiring him to hang on "like death" ­ hardly a positive description of something a little boy would welcome. For my students, the specter of "death" raised in a poem that contains the volatile word "beat" to describe the action of a father with hisson was nearly conclusive proof for their reading of the poem. "Death" raises the threatening reminder that child-abuse all too often has fatal consequences. And if any doubts remain, the fact that the man is drunk tops it all off, one student pointed out. The opening line of the poem emphasizes his drunkenness by drawing our attention to the "whiskey" on the father's breath as the very first detail we learn about him and his waltz. My class didn't discuss this detail, as though merely pointing it out were enough. Heads nodded affirmation as if the combination of "whiskey" on a father's breath, a frowning mother, and a little boy nearly "dizzy" with all the things whizzing by his head could lead to only one obvious conclusion: this father, like so many others we've heard about on yet another drunken bender, is beating his son.

There was a long pause in the room after my class had finished their explanations. I'd always understood "My Papa's Waltz" as positive if not downright nostalgic, so my students' reading initially struck me as partly compelling but ultimately misguided. I said I'd like to offer an alternate reading and then to evaluate both as a group: I had always read "My Papa's Waltz" as though the narrator was talking about a literal "waltz," and I imagined the scene looked something like this: A hard-working father comes home after a long day just in time for his son's bedtime. He doesn't even take time to clean up (he still has "a palm caked hard by dirt") because he wants to spend their few minutes together doing something really fun. So, he dances his son around the little house. The word "romped" in the second stanza signified for me that this was a positive, playful experience, since it implies the kind of wild abandon of activity that small children love.

Envisioning a heavy, awkward man romping through the house with his small son, it was easy to see why a mother might frown at the spectacle. It's nearly time for bed, and the father is doing everything to get the son riled up rather than calmed down for sleep. The fact that the romping dance is even disrupting the order of the mother's "kitchen shelf" surely contributes to her frowning countenance. I was struck, as my students had been, by the fact that although she seems to disapprove, she does nothing to stop this waltzing. For me, this suggested that although she didn't appreciate the disruptive qualities of the dance, she didn't want to hinder the father-son bond the moment was creating. As for the belt buckle, I remember my own childhood, dancing with my father: in my socks, I would stand on the tops of his feet, and he would dance me awkwardly around the room while I clung to his hands or held fistfuls of the back of his shirt.

I saw several students nod as if they too remembered such dancing. In such a posture, I suggested, the boy's head would be at his father's waist-level, so that whenever his father "missed" a step or lost his balance, the boy's "right ear scraped a buckle" on the father's belt. The last two lines of the poem confirm that this is the relative position of father and son, as the boy recalls that his father "waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt." In the context of this kind of dancing, the notion that the child is "clinging" to his father suggests both that he depends on his father and that he has a childish reaction to the threat that the dancing will end because of bedtime.

Thinking of this poem as describing real attempts at dancing helps me account not only for the idea of the father's "missed" steps but also for his efforts to "beat time" to music he's apparently humming or imagining as they dance. I am unwilling to separate the word "beat," which so troubled my class, from the noun that follows it.

As I read this poem, the father is not beating his son, according to line 13, he's beating time on the son's head. Assuming the waltzing of the poem is not a metaphor for anything else, to "beat time" simply means that he's trying to keep the rhythm of the dance steady. The poem for me creates a wonderful juxtaposition in the image of a man whose hands are dirty and "battered" by hard physical labor trying to use those same hands to tap out the rhythm of a waltz on his small son's head. Furthermore, that juxtaposition illuminates why the poem opens by drawing attention to the man's "whiskey" breath. From the very beginning of the poem, we learn that "My Papa's Waltz" is a dance that defies what we expect from waltzing. The waltz conjures up images of well-dressed people dancing sedately in grand ballrooms wearing fancy clothes. The formality of the simple rhythm is as old-fashioned as it is controlled. To title the poem with the word waltz is to set the reader up to expect precisely the opposite of an evening romp in a modest house, led by a whiskey-drinking father. That "My Papa" can both waltz and hold his whiskey thus immediately alerts the reader that this poem will revise the idea of waltzing without completely losing it. The lines, after all, do an excellent job of mimicking the 3/4 time of the waltz in their stresses and timing.

Yet the details of this waltz contradict nearly all of our expectations about who does this dance, when, and where. For me, that contradiction does a lot to create interest in the poem.

My reading of this poem, as essentially a fond boyhood memory so contradicted my students' impression of violence that most of them were unwilling to relinquish their understanding of the poem. So we began a class discussion to try to work through what was most and least convincing about each of our interpretations.

First, my students claimed, they didn't think that my reading adequately dealt with the issue of the father's drunkenness-which seemed to them to be such a large factor in proving he was abusing his son. Suddenly, the motivation for their reading of the poem started to become more apparent. My students' vehement responses to the abuse they perceived in this poem derived largely from their cultural position as readers raised in the last decades of the 20th century. Our country has become increasingly intolerant of alcohol abuse as it has become more aware that alcohol can be abused. The links between alcoholism and child-abuse are widely documented now, although the subject was nearly unheard-of when this poem was written in 1948. Written at a time when to have a drink was still macho and when the dynamics that lead to child abuse were far from public knowledge, "My Papa's Waltz" imagines an ideal reader very different from the college students of the late 1990s, who are conditioned to notice even the slightest hints of abuse and alcoholism and to view them as glaring signs of problems.

I tried to draw the class's attention to the historical issues at stake in reading a poem written 50 years ago according to prevailing assumptions and stereotypes. And ultimately, we agreed to disagree on what the more compelling reading of the poem was. However, that solution-of assuming both our readings must be equally valid and allowed to stand as separate entities-left me unsatisfied. I felt that there were portions of my students' arguments that simply didn't make sense with the poem as a whole, such as their heavy emphasis on the word "beat" which didn't acknowledge the fact that the line specifically mentions the father beating "time." Simultaneously, however, their strong sense that the poem contain violence helped explain some things that my reading didn't take into account. Most notably, the third line of the poem, "But I hung on like death," had always troubled me as an oddly negative description in what otherwise seemed to me to be a poem about a positive memory. Considering the abuse reading of this poem raised interesting issues that complicated my understanding of it.

Just as I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of a rough worker waltzing, I was interested in the violence that I thought my students very astutely pointed out throughout the whole poem. Although this moment of waltzing with papa still seems to me a positive memory, there is also something vaguely frightening in it. The whiskey breath and dizzying speed, the powerful father whom the mother cannot criticize, and the noisy, beating romp of this waltz all combine to suggest an activity that is exhilarating perhaps BECAUSE it is somewhat frightening. Children, after all, are often most impressed by things that scare and thrill them at the same time.

Considering my students' sense that violence is being done to the son in this poem thus modifies my own reading in a way that I think makes it more compelling. This childhood memory, of a kind of dancing that "was not easy" but was thrilling, creates an image of a child at once delighted and frightened by the power of his father. Physically, the father's tight hold on the child's wrist is mirrored by the child's "clinging to [the father's] shirt," giving us an image of fatherly power that can't be resisted, but that the child also doesn't want to resist.

Thus while I see no evidence in the poem that the child is actually being beaten, I see many details that suggest a kind of danger in this dancing and hint at underlying violence. A reader must wonder what caused the father's hand to be "battered on one knuckle," for example. Was he injured in his work, or did he hurt himself in a fight or punching a wall in anger? As I re-read this poem, it seems that the threat of powerful masculinity is kept in check by the controlled rhythm of the waltz and by the father's desire to maintain an intimacy with his son. For if in 1948 the whiskey on his breath might have been less stigmatized as a sign of maltreatment, the fact that he waltzes his son off to tuck him in bed might have been even more noticeable as an extraordinary moment of connection.

I wish I could say that in my classroom we talked about how to fit these two readings together by modifying portions of each to reflect the other. In fact, we chose to decide that there were two equally-valid responses rather than working to produce a new, unified interpretation. It nevertheless strikes me as especially satisfying to have my own reading of a poem so radically challenged by my students and to have their reading push me to account for issues I'd never considered within this poem before. At its very best, this is the benefit of reader-response criticism as I see it. Rather than providing a forum for free-for-all interpretation, it allows individual, emotional responses to be channeled into considered readings of a text that take into account the historical positions of both the reader and the writer and enable a valuable complexity of understanding.

Misreading 'My Papa's Waltz'

Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” has been misread even by well-educated professionals. Jeff Greenberg, Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona, offers a typical example of the misreading Roethke’s innocent drama of father and son roughhousing. In the professor’s lecture, titled “The impact of violence on our children: Some insights from Becker and the cinema,” he states the following which introduces Roethke’s poem: “Perhaps most uniquely disturbing is when our security base turns on us, conveying inconsistent values and unpredictable behaviors, and inflicting emotional and physical pain; how then does a child sustain equanimity? Even if brutal and deeply disturbed, the parent is typically still the only basis of security the child knows. Theodore Roethke expresses this problem eloquently.”

The professor could not be further from the truth, but fortunately, he says no more about the poem, allowing his mischaracterization to say it all. Contrary to the Professor Greenberg’s misreading, Theodore Roethke’s poem expresses love between a father and son in a roughhousing session that the adult speaker in the poem looking back chooses to metaphorically dramatize as a “waltz.” If the event portrayed in the poem resulted in “emotional and physical pain,” it is unlikely that the adult speaker would have allowed his readers to interpret the event as a special time when the father and son “romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf,” and then the father “waltzed me [the son] off to bed / Still clinging to your [the father’s] shirt.”

“Romped” is too playful a word for an emotionally and physically traumatized adult to use in looking back at a childhood event. And if the father were actually beating and abusing the child in an alcoholic rage, the child would not be clinging the father’s shirt, he would be trying to run away from him.

The time designations of the poem make it clear that the father and son did this kind of “waltzing” often. It was not just one session that the speaker is recounting. Notice he says, “Such waltzing was not easy.” The gerund “waltzing” signals that every time they engaged in this “dance,” the son was challenged to keep up with the father’s movements. The child enjoys this waltz not being easy, or else it would have become boring. The father challenged the boy to keep up with him as they “romped” around the kitchen making those pans slide off the shelf.

Also, if the session were one of abuse and beating by a drunken brute, the mother would have taken a more active role than just frowning. The mother does not even speak, signaling that she is only mildly annoyed by this masculine ritual. There are no indications that the father is abusive to either the child or the mother or any other members of the family. The poem reveals only a speaker who is an adult looking back at a playful time he spent with his father. The alcohol breath, the dirty hands, the clumsy romping, and beating time on the boy’s head are all just innocent challenging features that comprise the metaphor of the waltz, that so impressed the boy that as an adult he dramatizes the event so we can enjoy his challenging dance along with him and his family.

God's Grandeur

God's Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Three Poems by Billy Collins (2007)

Def Poetry - Oscar Brown Jr - Children Of Children

Favorite Poem Project: "Facing It"

I used "Facing It" in the classroom, too, and it always made an impact. At my high school we team taught in a humanities core, and I ended the Viet Nam unit with this video.

This week I'm going to Washington, DC, for the first time and taking a copy of the poem with me.

Facing It

by Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Totally like whatever, you know? "Speak With Conviction" Taylor Mali

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Taylor Mali - "What Teachers Make"

What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

Ben Kingsley - Ozymandias (1996)

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Psalm of Life - H. W. Longfellow (by Paul Scofield)

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Cloths of Heaven - W. B. Yeats (by Harvey Keitel)

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

William Butler Yeats

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

The Ballad of East & West - Rudyard Kipling (Paul Scofield)

The Ballad of the East and West

Rudyard Kipling

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
"Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?"
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar:
"If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
At dusk he harries the Abazai -- at dawn he is into Bonair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai.
But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen."
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell
and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat --
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.
He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide.
"Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said. "Show now if ye can ride."
It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dustdevils go,
The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.
The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above,
But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove.
There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen.
They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn,
The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn.
The dun he fell at a water-course -- in a woful heap fell he,
And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.
He has knocked the pistol out of his hand -- small room was there to strive,
"'Twas only by favour of mine," quoth he, "ye rode so long alive:
There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree,
But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee.
If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low,
The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row:
If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high,
The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly."
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "Do good to bird and beast,
But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast.
If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away,
Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay.
They will feed their horse on the standing crop,
their men on the garnered grain,
The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain.
But if thou thinkest the price be fair, -- thy brethren wait to sup,
The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn, -- howl, dog, and call them up!
And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!"
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
"No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet.
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?"
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan:
Take up the mare for my father's gift -- by God, she has carried a man!"
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast;
"We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth the younger best.
So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain."
The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end,
"Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he;
"will ye take the mate from a friend?"
"A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk of a limb.
Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!"
With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest --
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest.
"Now here is thy master," Kamal said, "who leads a troop of the Guides,
And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
Thy life is his -- thy fate it is to guard him with thy head.
So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine,
And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line,
And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power --
Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur."

They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God.
The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun,
And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one.
And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear --
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer.
"Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son.
"Put up the steel at your sides!
Last night ye had struck at a Border thief --
to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!"

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

It's all in a State of Mind (spoken by Harvey Keitel)

A State of Mind

Anonymous

If you think you are beaten, your are
If you think you dare not, you won't,
If you like to win, but don't think you can
It's almost a cinch you won't

If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out in the world you find,
Success begins with a fellow's will
It's all in a state of mind

For many a game is lost
Ere even a play is run,
And many a coward fails
Ere even his work is begun

Think big and your deeds will grow
Think small and you'll fall behind
Think that you can and you will
It's all a state of mind

If you think you are out-classed, your are
You've got to think high to rise
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize

Life battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can

Winds of Fate - Ella Wheeler-Wilcox (by Maggie Smith)

Winds of Fate

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life:
'Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Bag of Tools - R. L. Sharpe (by Maggie Smith)

A Bag Of Tools

R. L. Sharpe

Isn't it strange That princes and kings,
And clowns that caper In sawdust rings,
And common people Like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass, A book of rules;
And each must make - Ere life is flown -
A stumbling block Or a steppingstone.

The Spirit of Buffalo County (by Harvey Keitel)

The Spirit of Buffalo County.

Somebody; said that it could'nt be done,
But he, with a chuckle, replied,
That "maybe it could'nt; but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the Trace of a grin
On his face; if he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed, "Oh, you'll never (do) that;
At least nobody ever has done it." But he took off his coat, and he took off his hat,
And the first thing he knew he'd begun it. With the lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
If any doubt rose he forbade it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure, There are thousands to point out to you one by one
The dangers that wait to assail you, But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,

Then take off your coat and go to it; Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That cannot be done, and you'll do it.

Say not the Struggle - Arthur Hugh Clough (by Paul Scofield)

Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth

SAY not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

Arthur Hugh Clough

Morality - Mathew Arnold (by Maggie Smith)

Morality

We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will'd
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.

With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.

Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye,
Ask, how she view'd thy self-control,
Thy struggling, task'd morality--
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air,
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.

And she, whose censure thou dost dread,
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek,
See, on her face a glow is spread,
A strong emotion on her cheek!
'Ah, child!' she cries, 'that strife divine,
Whence was it, for it is not mine?

'There is no effort on my brow--
I do not strive, I do not weep;
I rush with the swift spheres and glow
In joy, and when I will, I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air,
I saw, I felt it once--but where?

'I knew not yet the gauge of time,
Nor wore the manacles of space;
I felt it in some other clime,
I saw it in some other place.
'Twas when the heavenly house I trod,
And lay upon the breast of God.'

Matthew Arnold

The Road not Taken - Robert Frost (by Alan Bates)

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frostt

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Invictus - William Ernest Henley

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

John Gielgud - Ulysses (1996)

Ulysses

Alfred,Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.