FCB # 166 Poet's Corner

 

Our German Dichter extraordinaire, Wolfgang Schriefer, an ex Rock and Rollator, who Steve Perry had initially invited along to the folk club and who comes down every month from Cologne had unfortunately stubbed his foot and broken his toe and so was incapacitated in March. 

    Gute Besserung Wolfgang and hopefully see you and hear you again in April.

 

If          

  By Rudyard Kipling        1865-1936     Born im Mumbai formally Bombay. One of the most famous late Victorian poets and authors who wrote „Jungle Book“ This is one of Briatain's most famous poems and was written in 1895 and published in 1905. It is a tribute to stoicism and inspires resilience, character and integrity and is possibly the best advice that any man could give to his son.

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! 

I sing an accapella version of this poem which was arranged by the late Teeside trobadour, Vin Garbutt, who saddly died in 2017 at almost the ripe old age of three score years and ten. Vin's version of Kipling's poem  appeared on his 1983 album entitled "Little Innocents" and you can listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpYAONe6gVU&list=RDEpYAONe6gVU&start_radio=1

It's only just over two minutes long, but it is certainly worth that much of anyone's time to listen to it.

Old Bonn Folk Clubber John Hurd who runs 3SongsBonn was out enjoying daffodils at the end of February and early March and invoked with this photo of his on FaceBook a reference to the famous poem by William Wordsworth about daffodils in the Lake District in north west England.

John Hurd 

"When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden Daffodils"

- Spring is beginning to spring up in Bonn

John Hurd kindly agreed to recite this poem at the March folk club:

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host, of golden daffodils;

 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the milky way, 

They stretched in never-ending line 

Along the margin of a bay: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

 The waves beside them danced; 

but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

 A poet could not but be gay,

 In such a jocund company: 

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought: 

 For oft, when on my couch

 I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye

 Which is the bliss of solitude; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

 And dances with the daffodils.

                                                        by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

For those of you who may perhaps think there may be too much poetry and not enough music here, a little known fact is that the English poet William Wordsworth and Bonn's most famous musician, Ludwig van Beethoven, were both born in the same year,  1770. Now, if that ever helps you to win a pub quoz and you feel obliged in some way, mine's a Weizenbier!