Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver
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Poetry

On Portland stone or on paper, in poetry or prose, letters and words can signify many things: solemnity, simplicity, subtlety, story-telling. As a child I heard poetry, listened to poetry, recited poetry, and occasionally wrote poetry, at school and at home. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Walrus and the Carpenter, and How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, were memorable (in two meanings of the word) favourites. My grandfather read aloud to me Horatius on his knee.
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I have come to widen my reading of verse, and to understand it better, and even compose some over the past few years, helped, in particular by Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, and Clive James's torrent of poetry, often accompanied by critical essays, terminating with The Fire of Joy. My father loved comic verse, particularly limericks. I prefer clerihews, a poetic form defined as 'civilised and dotty'. Robin and Marion seem to have acquired or inherited a fondness for poetry, and you can read some of what we have all written in Woven Words. You can also read more below, mostly written travelling or on holiday.
Ashmolean
 
Walking through the museum halls
Of ancient Rome, against the walls
Stand emperor’s heads. Beside them stones
That once lay over buried bones
Record in hand-hewn cuts the dates
They lived and died, their wives and fates,
How cruel they held base Gauls in thrall,
Fought wars and won and lost their thrones.
Proud empires rise, decline and fall


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​Two poems written in Oxford 2018
The No 2 Bus
 
In the gunmetal light of early eve
I’m waiting for the Banbury bus to leave.
On slippery pavements restless crowds
Impatient, hopeful, clutching bags
Of food and drink, crisps and mags,
Jostle in queues beneath the clouds
That threaten rain. Darkness falling,
Sofa, home and fireside calling,
Chirping like hens packed into a pen,
Eager, ready for the moment when
Twixt bikes and cars comes into view
The oblong edifice of the Number 2;
Push, lurch, crunch, rush and crush ensue.

Poems from the Breakfast Table
 
I’m really quite a fan of jam
I like it on my toast,
Damson, cherry, plum, straw-berry
Cranberry conserve on a roast.
But the one I really like the most
Is redcurrant jelly on lamb.
 
 
I have an inordinate fondness for butter
I can’t bear flora or marg or spread,
It’s not that I’m a prig or a fusspot,
But without butter I’d rather be dead.
On croissant, on toast, on a crumpet or bread
I insist. This is the last word I utter
 
 
On this subject. But wait before you stop reading –
There’s marmalade, honey, chutney and curd,
Made of oranges, nectar, onions and lemons
Fruit of all sorts, even rhubarb I’ve heard,
And mango for curry, if lime’s not preferred:
The contented feeling of condiment feeding.
 
 
Scrambled eggs at breakfast time
On buttered toast is just the thing,
Add smok-ed salmon, it’s quite sublime,
A dish to set before a king.
With a cappuccino too, then its divine
Like manna, to the gods you’d bring.
 
 
God made the tomato for soup,
But it also has other good uses -
For sandwiches, salads and sauces,
For purees, pastas and juices,
At a push for yoghurt or mousses.
Vegetable or fruit? – trés beaucoup.
 
 
Oxford 2017


On Seeing the Parthenon
 
If you like to travel and see classical sites

With columns and capitols of spectacular heights
Then Greece is the place – an absolute must,
A cure for your restless wanderlust.
If you’ve been to Rome, seen Pantheon and tombs
Of St Peter, Pope Pius, Caesar and Trajan,
Toured Nero’s Palace and the Villa of Hadrian,
Touched bones of dead Christians in dark catacombs.
Behold: shattered torsos of dead mortals and gods,
Of emperors with names, and nameless stone bods,
Funereal urns and fragments of pottery,
Surviving exhibits of history’s cruel lottery.
But nothing can prepare you for Athens’ Acropolis,
The crowning glory of this ancient metropolis.
 
But bear in mind….
 
If you choose to conquer a foreign land
And build a monument on shifting sand
Whether pyramid, temple or necro-pavilion
For Goth or Gaul or invading Assyrian
Beware the same fate as Osymand-
yas, whose terse epitaph ‘King of Kings’
In letters of stone, now hollowly rings.
Remember well these several things -
That life’s to be lived, and death is oblivion.

Athens 2016 

Syracuse
 
If I had an excuse
To be in Syracuse
It would be more than a ruse
To escape the long queues,
Or avoid blowing a fuse;
But to seek as my muse
The magnificent views
Of the watery Mediterranean

​Italy 2019

Poetic Fallacies, by Tobias Weaver

​My father, Toby,  enjoyed calligraphy and limericks, and in his retirement often combined the two.
Here are a few of the limericks he composed, at least six of which won prizes from Hamlet cigars. 
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There once was a poet named Milton
His carpets much wine had he spilt on
Deprived of his sight
In the absence of light
He couldn’t tell Cheddar from Stilton
 
A poet much loved in the lakes
Subsisted on honey and cakes
Such Worth had his Words
When he sang to the birds
That he lifted his voice for their sakes
 
Said Lizzie ‘Pray give up your clowning’
As beer after beer he kept drowning
‘Just give it a rest
For I’m nary impressed
Desist or my name isn’t Browning’
 
There was a young poet named Keats
Who thought all his rivals were cheats
With bees in their bonnets
They claimed that his sonnets
Could never compare with his feats
 
A hot-blooded poet named Shelley
Wrote verses with fire in his belly
His addiction to odes
Proved the best of his modes
But sometimes he lapsed into jelly
 
Still there’s a very good author
Whose work you know well: Hiawatha
Though Long was this Fellow
His verses were mellow
And never did poet come-forther

A poet who feasted on venison
Took all his rivals at tennis on
But ‘Blow Bugle, Blow’
I should like you to know
He’s a man I would not put my pennies on 

Euripedes, one of the Greeks
Could hold your attention for weeks
But old Aristophanes’
Bawdy cacophonies
Brought quite a blush to your cheeks
 
Though some people think he's a fake
A wonderful poet was Blake
He might be pedantic
A trifle romantic
But he boggles the mind, no mistake
 
Though schoolboys don’t find him great shakes
We wallop the man from the Lakes
When questioned ‘who best?’
And I’m put to the test
My answer ‘He’s got what it takes!
 
Great Shakespeare, I’ve got a strong hunch
He turns out the best of the bunch
I shan’t put my stake on
Kit Marlowe or Bacon
For William wins out at the crunch
 
A poet who sharpened his wit well
Wore trousers too baggy to fit well
‘But what does it matter?’
He said, ‘When I am fatter
They surely will help me to Sit well’

A fellow who never lost hope

That his tiresome young wife would elope
It was part of his plan
For the study of man –
A far from pontifical Pope

An elegant chap, Thomas Nashe
Would never do anything brash
Unlike Geoffrey Chaucer
Who drank from his saucer
Whose manners he tended to bash  
Why the Dickens this man d’you include
Whose verses were wooden and rude
They say ‘I have heard
That they gave him the bird
For chasing his wife in the nude
 
A poet of blossoms and bowers
Of April, May, June and their flowers
This chap, Robert Herrick
Made use of a derrick
To give a good lift to his powers
 
The USA poet, Walt Whitman
Though thought by his friends quite a fit man
In ‘When lilacs last bloomed’
Pronounced we were doomed
And warned us that death was a hitman
 
A pious young Scot, Robbie Burns
Kept his relative’s ashes in urns
When asked for the reason
He hoped in due season
They’d enjoy ‘Many Happy Returns’
 
To the reader I owe this apology
These verses are weak in chronology
You need not rejoice
At my personal choice
They’re not meant to form an anthology
 
Since the Internet doesn’t connect us
I hasten to send this conspectus
Which purports to show
That we seldom can know
How strangely the poets affect us
You can find hundreds of poems on the Poetry Foundation website


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T  H  E    M  O  V  I  N  G    F  I  N  G  E  R    W  R  I  T  E  S   A  N  D   H  A  V  I  N  G    W  R  I  T    M  O  V  E  S    O  N    .  .  .  
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