Writing Gooder

This is a Guest Post from Juniper

To A Mouse by Robert Burns is a poem I only recently discovered about two months or so ago, but it is truly awesome. As Burns is Scottish the poem is plainly in the Scottish style, and was supposedly written after he turned up a mouse’s nest on his farm.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promised joy!

Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

YWS is cool for a bazillion different reasons. One of these bazillion reasons is that we actually hold fiction and poetry on an equal level. Many other writing sites, believe it or not, do not do this and either specialize in poetry or fiction.

With that said, I’ve been browsing the poetry forums and, to be honest, I haven’t been very impressed. There are several outstanding poems out there, I admit, but most of them are the same subjects (usually, angst and woe) told in the same way (loneliness, despair, etc.). And it’s kind of boring.

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I first came across The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll in eighth grade. A bunch of us signed up to do a speech contest at Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, MD. There were a lot of categories to choose from, but I chose to recite a poem. Flicking through a book of poems (I think it was actually the Childcraft Encyclopedia), I came across The Jabberwocky in all its vorpal glory. I even once wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure story based on it using html, but that’s been lost for a long time (sadly).

Unfortunately, the poem had to be three minutes long, and despite going as slow as possible, I could only make The Jabberwocky two minutes long. I instead went with some stupid poem about a highwayman back during the Revolutionary War, and needless to say, I did not advance pass the preliminary stages.

So anyhow, hit the jump to read one of my all time favourite poems!

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Last time, I showcased “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen. This time around, it’s “Casey At Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, which is another one of those poems I pull out whenever a young boy says poetry is for girls.

Read the whole poem after the jump.

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So I’m sitting here writing a story whilst watching the Boondock Saints, and I was reminded of one of my favorite poems: “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.

Whenever I’m tutoring, or really doing pretty much anything, and a boy says he hates poetry, I always ask of him the inevitable “Why?” And he invariably answers, “It’s all girly stuff,” or some variation thereof. Whenever this situation occurs, “Dulce et Decorum Est” is the poem I pull out (and I did have it memorized for quite a while, but sadly don’t anymore). Here’s why:

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