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If 08:26 - Jul 12 with 7788 viewsPlanetHonneywood

I don’t do poetry, it’s pretentious bollox! That said, when I first came across ‘If’ as a teenager, I’ve gone through life frequently reading it. It’s the most beautiful piece of prose I know.

It’s just before 2pm in Rangoon. I’v just woken up and I don’t know if I need a shit or a shower. But I do know I’ve the most monstrous hangover, the wife wrote a lovely message and beside me in bed is our cat, who we saved as a kitten. His name is Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master;
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk Nous sommes L’occitane Rs!
Poll: Who should do the Birmingham Frederick?

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If on 08:31 - Jul 12 with 4422 viewsDorse

My favourite is by Spike Milligan:

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
'Till you're knackered

'What do we want? We don't know! When do we want it? Now!'

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If on 09:16 - Jul 12 with 4379 viewscolinallcars

We used to sing:

Climb every mountain
Ford every Cortina
1

If on 09:54 - Jul 12 with 4349 viewshubble

Saying 'poetry is pretentious bollox' is rather silly JH. It may not be your cup of tea, but poetry is a wonderful thing. IMO of course.
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If on 11:57 - Jul 12 with 4253 viewsBazzaInTheLoft

Roses are Red
Violets are Glorious
Never Sneak Up on
Oscar Pistorius
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If on 13:45 - Jul 12 with 4202 viewsFearless

Who wants my jellyfish?
I'm not sellyfish!

Ogden Nash

(Btw, IF is superb)
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If on 15:03 - Jul 12 with 4162 viewsBoston

Tom, Tom the pipers son,
Stole a pig,
And got nicked.

Poll: Thank God The Seaons Over.

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If on 15:23 - Jul 12 with 4133 viewscolinallcars

I like Ogden Nash:

The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and the unjust fella
But more upon the just, because the unjust has the just's umbrella


Actually it wish it would rain, the sight of brown grass and wilting trees is getting depressing.
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If on 15:38 - Jul 12 with 4118 viewsMick_S

I see what you did there - I think you're digressing.

Did I ever mention that I was in Minder?

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If on 16:13 - Jul 12 with 4086 viewsFDC

Rosa is red
Bernstein is blue,
I have an infantile
disorder for you
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If on 17:42 - Jul 12 with 4034 viewsessextaxiboy

I dont think poetry is pretentious .It can stop you in your tracks.

Mid-Term Break
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying–
He had always taken funerals in his stride–
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
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If on 16:53 - Jul 20 with 3866 viewscolinallcars

In the news today, students in Manchester erased the poem If, and covered it with an anti- racist poem and calling Kipling a racist. This is akin to the Nazis burning books. Whether Kipling was a racist is not really known, but If is a work of art and I am uneasy with people behaving in this manner. When I was a student there was open debate, now people are not allowed a “ platform” to air their views.
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If on 16:56 - Jul 20 with 3855 viewsbosh67

Yeah, heard this and got very wound up. F*cking morons. They should all be failed and chucked out the university. Kipling was born in India and there is no evidence he was racist. Absolute f*cking snowflakes!

And I bet they still eat his cakes!

Never knowingly right.
Poll: How long before new signings become quivering wrecks of the players they were?

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If on 17:01 - Jul 20 with 3838 viewsBazzaInTheLoft

Absolutely do not condone destruction of cultural relics, wether distasteful to me or not.

However ...

Out of context of his time Rudyard Kipling was a massive racist and eugenicist. Here is one of his most famous poems:

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Take up the White Man's burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden –
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden –
The savage wars of peace –
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden –
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper –
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden –
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard –
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: –
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden –
Ye dare not stoop to less – Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden –
Have done with childish days –
The lightly profferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
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If on 17:35 - Jul 20 with 3792 viewscolinallcars

Yes, this is the famous work which of cause makes us all cringe today. I suppose you have to view things in the context of the times. There are people that say the words of Land Of Hope And Glory are disgusting.

[Post edited 20 Jul 2018 17:36]
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If on 18:04 - Jul 20 with 3758 viewsstevec

Thing is Bazza, how do you know Kipling wasn’t writing this from a perspective?

It doesn’t have to be his view, in the same way someone writing a drama from say a rapists perspective doesn’t make the writer a rapist.

These students come across as incredibly shallow, shame they are unable to broaden their minds.
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If on 18:05 - Jul 20 with 3755 viewsHayesender

Something all very "Hitler youth" about all these lefty protesters

Poll: Shamima Beghum

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If on 18:16 - Jul 20 with 3724 viewsstevec

Absolutely, they’re very easily led
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If on 18:20 - Jul 20 with 3709 viewsbosh67

Precisely this. Kipling wrote in a voice of the times and of the cultural/political landscape back then. He was always at pains to say that he wrote about what he saw and not about what he felt. That he was an observer. Shame people don't really do their homework, especially at Manchester.

It's almost like saying Alex Haley was a racist for writing Roots.

Never knowingly right.
Poll: How long before new signings become quivering wrecks of the players they were?

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If on 18:38 - Jul 20 with 3675 viewsdistortR

With so many things that need changing, you'd thought that these kids could focus on something a bit more important? Or is it about getting your 15 seconds of fame?

Anyway, an extract from 'Autumn Journal' , by Louis MacNeice

'August is nearly over, the people
back from holiday are tanned
with blistered thumbs and a wallet of snaps and a little
joie de vivre which is contraband;
whose stamina is enough to face the annual
wait for the annual spree,
whose faded memories are stamped with specks of sunshine
like faded fleurs de lys.
now the till and the typewriter call the fingers,
the Workman gathers his tools
for the eight-hour day but after that the solace
of films or football pools
or of the gossip or cuddle, the moments of self-glory
or self-indulgence, blinkers on the eyes of doubt,
the blue smoke rising and the brown lace sinking
in the empty glass of stout.
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If on 19:03 - Jul 20 with 3645 viewsBazzaInTheLoft

While people are comparing idiot students to 'Hitler Youth' no one talks about the actual Hitler Youth that are are springing up with groups like National Action.
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If on 19:08 - Jul 20 with 3636 viewsdistortR

'Mary, Mary
quite contrary' etc etc
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If on 20:20 - Jul 20 with 3596 viewsMonahoop

I like poetry. I especially like eccentric stuff from beat poets or punk poets, ie John Cooper Clarke. I'm also a fan of the American poet Charles Bukowski where all men appear to be drunks and women prostitutes. In an ideal world Mr Bukowski, in an ideal world!!

There aint half been some clever bastards.

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If on 12:37 - Jul 21 with 3435 viewsFDC

It is quite startling that people are busy trying to equate lefty student stunts and Labour NEC process with nazism and racism whilst there is literally a self-declared Far Right International in operation, getting airtime on LBC, GMB, Newsnight etc etc.
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If on 12:49 - Jul 21 with 3419 viewsHayesender

Dress all in black ✔

Cover faces ✔

Suppress debate ✔

Shout down free speech ✔

Call anyone who they disagree with racist ✔

Urge and carry out violence against anyone they disagree with ✔

I know who the real facists are, and it's not those who the left label as far right.

Real far right groups such as national action are that tiny they're irrelevant

Poll: Shamima Beghum

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If on 12:55 - Jul 21 with 3395 viewsDeepcutHoop

An absolute nothing of a story.

Student Union is decorated without consulting with them.

They didn't approve and redecorated with a different poem.

It is of no shock that SU's are political, this has been the case for decades.

Right-wing snowflakes seem desperate to be offended by so little
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