The Gloomy Academic by Louis MacNeice

Sappho and Alcaeus by Alma-Tadema, 1881

The Gloomy Academic
by Louis MacNeice

The Glory that was Greece: put it in a syllabus, grade it
Page by page
To train the mind or even to point a moral
For the present age:
Models of logic and lucidity, dignity, sanity,
The golden mean between opposing ills...
But I can do nothing so useful or so simple;
These dead are dead
And when I should remember the paragons of Hellas
I think instead
Of the crooks, the adventurers, the opportunists,
The careless athletes and the fancy boys,
The hair-splitters, the pedants, the hard-boiled sceptics
And the Agora and the noise
Of the demagogues and the quacks; and the women pouring
Libations over graves
And the trimmers at Delphi and the dummies at Sparta and lastly
I think of the slaves.
And how one can imagine oneself among them
I do not know;
It was all so unimaginably different
And all so long ago.

Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats

Sailing to Byzantium
by William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Falling Down is Part of Growing Up

"With each tottering attempt to walk, our bodies learn from the falls what not to do next time. In time we walk without thinking and think without falling, but it is not so much that we have learned how to walk as we have learned not to fall."

To Engineer Is Human by Henry Petroski page 13

The Skippery Boo by Earl L. Newton

The Skippery Boo
By Earl L. Newton

I went to bring,
From the rippling spring,
One morning dry and damp,
A brimming pail
Of Adam's ale
For use about the camp;
My happy frame
Did well proclaim
A cheerful bent of mind,
And I hummed a song,
As I loped along,
Of the most enchanting kind.
But my heart stood still,
As I turned the hill,
And the spring came to my view,
For drinking there
Of the potion rare,
Was the terrible Skippery Boo.

He drank his fill
From the flowing rill,
And shook his mighty mane,
Then with his jaws
And his hairy paws,
He ripped a tree in twain.
With fear and dread
To camp I sped,
For my trusty .30 bore,
Then turned about
With daring shout,
And sought the spring once more;
But though my feet
With speed were fleet,
As o'er the glade I flew,
No sign was there
On earth, in air,
Of the slippery Skippery Boo.

To left and right
I strained my sight,
To find where he had gone,
Among the pines
I sought for signs,
But found not a single one.
To East and West
I turned my quest,
But all to no avail,
No trace I found
On gorse or ground,
Of his departing trail.
And then aloft
My gaze I doffed,
And there in the hazy blue,
On the topmost spine
Of the tallest pine,
Hung the fabulous Skippery Boo.

Oh, the Skippery Boo
Is a fanciful zoo:
A mermaid and a bat,
A grizzly hare
And a webfoot bear,
A goof and a bumble-cat.
He can fell an oak
With a single stroke,
Or shatter a mountain side,
Then lightly rise
To the azure skies,
And light as a zephyr ride.
My heart he fills
With terror's chills,
Oh, don't know what I'd do,
If some dark night,
In broad daylight,
I should meet a Skippery Boo.

A poison flows
From his warty toes,
And the grass where he shall tread,
Shall wilt and fade
At evening's shade,
And tomorrow shall be dead.
And who shall walk
Where he shall stalk,
O'er valley, hill or plain,
Shall die, 'tis said,
Of illness dread,
And a terrible dark-green pain.
So as you wade
This vale of shade,
And jog life's journey through,
At day, at night,
Be it dark or light,
Watch out for the Skippery Boo.

The Happy Family by John Ciardi

The Happy Family
by John Ciardi

Before the children say goodnight,
Mother, Father, stop and think:
Have you screwed their heads on tight?
Have you washed their ears with ink?

Have you said and done and thought
All the earnest parents should?
Have you beaten them as you ought:
Have you begged them to be good?

And above all - when you start
Out the door and douse the light -
Think, be certain, search your heart:
Have you screwed their heads on tight?

If they sneeze when they're asleep,
Will their little heads come off?
If they just breathe very deep?
If - especially - they cough?

Should - alas! - the little dears
Lose a little head or two,
Have you inked their little ears:
Girls' ears pink and boys' ears blue?

Children's heads are very loose.
Mother, Father, screw them tight.
If you feel uncertain use
A monkey wrench, but do it right.

If a head should come unscrewed
You will know that you have failed.
Doubtful cases should be glued.
Stubborn cases should be nailed.

Then when all your darlings go
Sweetly screaming off to bed,
Mother, Father, you may know
Angels guard each little head.

Come the morning you will find
One by one each little head
Fill of gentle thoughts and kind,
Sweetly screaming to be fed.

The Song of Mr. Toad by Kenneth Grahame

The Song of Mr. Toad
by Kenneth Grahame

The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad

The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them knew one half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad!

The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
Their tears in torrents flowed.
Who was it said, "There's land ahead?"
Encouraging Mr. Toad!

The Army all saluted
As they marched along the road.
Was it the King? Or Kitchener?
No. It was Mr. Toad!

The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed.
She cried, "Look! who's that handsome man?"
They answered, "Mr. Toad."

On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong
By Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning !
Trees go Ping !
Nong Ning Nang !
The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!