Tennyson's poem about the sea

When I wasn't taking pictures of dogs at Lorne - missing Penny and thinking how much she would have liked to be there - I was photographing the cliffs and the rocky outcrops.



The coast along The Great Ocean Road is a photographer's paradise!

The rocky part of the shore made me think of the sad poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson that a long-ago teacher made me memorise. (I'm glad to have had such a tough-loving teacher!) It's called Break, Break, Break.

beautiful poem about a dog

I've just been reading a copy of the 30th anniversary edition of the literary magazine Going Down Swinging and I was moved by a poem by Chloe Wilson about the chained dog who died in the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii.

When an exhibition about the lost city of Pompeii came to Melbourne in July 2009, I was saddened by that cast of the dog's body.


[Photo by Wknight94]

I think it would be okay to reproduce here some of the lines from the poem. If you can get a copy of the anniversary edition of Going Down Swinging you will be able to read the whole beautiful poem. In part it says:

it's the brass
collared dog
who's most articulate-

through its contortion
we can see the cloud advance,
the sulphur exhaust expanding

and another couple of stanzas...

does the dog not seem to suggest

that while we may be
overwhelmed, it's still worth flipping
ourselves inside out,

or sticking up our defenceless paws-
anything, anything that proves we tried
to hold the fire back.

The line about the 'defenceless paws' really gets to me. Our pets are so vulnerable to how we treat them. And there have been so many terrible events around Australia and around the world, and I always wonder how many animals are caught up in these disasters.

classic poems about dogs

Tonight a good friend gave me a small book of old poems and pictures about dogs. It's called 'A Classic Illustrated Treasury; Dogs'. The illustrations and poems date from the 1890s to the 1950s.

I think my favorite would have to be the one by Rudyard Kipling

When the Man waked up he said,
"What is the Wild Dog doing here?"
And the Woman said,
"His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always."

I thought that was a pretty good summary of a hundred thousand years of history - or fifteen thousand, depending on which archaeological study you believe.

And...I just noticed it is Rudyard Kipling's birthday today!