Freddy

Many Thanks to Dylan who posted Funeral Blues
for someone else
and who set my memory to curious to start this topic.



Walkabout.
Poem read with the end credits
from
A Shropshire Lad: XL.

Into my heart on air that kills

A.E. Housman 1896

Into my heart on 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.

--------------------

Out of Africa


This is the poem read by Karen Blixen(Meryl Streep)
over the grave of Finch Hatton(Robert Redford)

A Shropshire Lad:

XIX - TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before the echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Both of these poems and of course the whole of Shropshire
Lad (is that you DB7) can be found on

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh...ms/housman.html

It is a wonderful poem

--------------------


Truly Madly Deeply

THE DEAD WOMAN
Pablo Neruda trans. Donald D. Walsh

The full version of this poem appears at the site below.
The lines I have reproduced are to the best of my knowledge
the ones translated by Juliet Stevenson from Alan Rickmans spanish

http://www.brindin.com/psnermu1.htm

forgive me.
If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall on my breast,
it will rain upon my soul all night and all day,
my feet will want to march toward where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living,

-------------------
Carve Her Name With Pride

Many Thanks to Steve Crook, whose site

http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Trips/Lo...10626/Poem.html

is where I copied this from.

This was written by Leo Marks for Violette Szabo.
more info can be seen at above site.


The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours
and yours

--------------------

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden

-----------------

I am sure there are more, the only one missing for me at the moment
is the poem read by Michael Redgrave in the Way To The Stars - -
better by far for Johnny the bright star...
Any others or help with Johnny much appreciated.
I hope you agree all above poems stand well on their own and not just in
a film context.

Regards
Freddy

"What larks eh Pip, what larks"

"What I owe you Colonel Lawrence, is beyond evaluation."

Steve Crook

For Johnny

Do not despair for Johnny head-in-air
He sleeps as sound as Johnny underground.
Fetch out no shroud for Johnny-in-the-cloud
And keep your tears for him in after years.
Better by far for Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head and see his children fed.

[John Pudney (RAF 1941-1945)]

In 1940 Pudney was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer and as a member of the Air Ministry's Creative Writer's Unit. During World War II Pudney published articles for this organization and wrote considerable poetry, including his famous ode to British airmen, "For Johnny." This poem achieved national significance and was broadcast and performed by several famous actors including Sir Laurence Olivier.

Used in the appropriately named 1945 film "The Way To The Stars"

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Steve Crook

There are other films with poetry in that I can think of though ...

What about the opening of A Matter of Life and Death (1946) where Peter D. Carter (David Niven) is in his burning bomber on the radio to June (Kim Hunter) and he quotes various poems.
(From the book of the film)

"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

"Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that. I'd rather have written that than flown through Hitler's legs."

The American voice grew more anxious.

"Cannot understand you! Hullo Lancaster! We are sending signals. Can you see our signals? Come in, Lancaster..."

All the poems that he had ever read were crowding in upon him. He selected at random, but with unerring aptness.

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Andy Marvell. What a marvel! What's your name?"

And so it goes on. It's a helluva opening to an amazing film.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

DB7

Not poetry.

"Truly the light is sweet, and (what) a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun"
(Ecclesiastes 11:7)

Edward Judd at the end of The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

DB7

It should be South Shropshire Lad Steve, we're very different north of Shrewsbury. wink

I feel distinctly middle class in Telford.

Steve Crook

Ah yes, it's all a bit old-industrial up near Ironbridge & Coalbrookdale - great stuff.

It was just south of there that Powell & Pressburger made Gone to Earth (1950) with Jennifer Jones. All around Much Wenlock and the mines of Snailbeach then up on the Long Mynd.

I've walked a lot of the locations and it's VERY steep and a bit wild. A lovely bit of country.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Freddy

Cheers to you both.
As DB7 has brought up a Bible quote, one more is Isaiah 40: 29 -31.
This was used in Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddle spoke to the congregation in Paris just before the Olympics. Colin Welland who wrote the script said that there was no record of what Liddle's sermon was so he just picked out something.
He giveth power to the faint:
and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount with wings as eagles: they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk , and not faint.
Freddy

"What I owe you Colonel Lawrence, is beyond evaluation."

jh

On the ship : The Ghost.
Wolf Larson says : Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. J.Milton I think.
Who was Wolf Larson? Come on hurry up!


And from The Rhubbyiat
And later on my soul returned to me and said
that it were both Heaven and Hell.
Could it be the Hatfield guy?

Jim

Going off thread for a bit - Vaughan Williams film music on CHANDOS - order code CHAN10244 from www.mdt.co.uk thumbs_u

Good morning boys.

Freddy

Out Of Africa, The final scene and Karen Blixen's toast at the Muthaiga Club.

A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.

(LIV) With rue my heart is laden


WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

My thanks to Out of Africa Movie Poems


Freddy

A Pemberton

once again from A Shropshire Lad

Diana Dors reads in Yield To the Night



Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.