The Poetry of Mountain Biking

Time for some Friday culture, bought A Poet’s Guide to Britain the other day. From it, The Way through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling:

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods …
But there is no road through the woods.

So, any other offers for the poetry of riding? Try and keep it clean, more real hill less Benny Hill.

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I’ve got a bike
You can ride it if you like
It’s got a basket
A bell that rings
And things to make it look good.

Bike, Syd Barrett

Also Kipling, looking at history while riding…

SEE you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
0 that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayharn’s mouldering walls?
0 there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul’s.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
0 that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip’s fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
0 that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
0 that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred’s ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
0 there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
0 that was a Legion’s camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
0 they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn-
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born.

She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.

Syd Barrett, a crazy diamond indeed 8)

not poetry, song lyrics, but the ‘Whispers of Summer all in my mind” line always comes back to me in the middle of bleak mid-winter rides like a vision of sun breaking through the clouds.

The winter streets are swimming before me
My winter feet are lagging behind
All I can see is the frost on my window
All I can hear is my mind

Don’t go away
Please don’t make me stay
This warm breeze is clogging my eyes
Don’t go away
Please don’t make me stay
Whispers of Summer all in my mind

There you go in your slumber
The waves of the world fly under your feet
(You are) side by side with the sun and the stars
I wonder if again we might meet

….now

I want to go home though the party’s not over
Don’t want to go back to no ignorant lies
For when I go I intend to believe
That the sun rises and sets in your eyes

Songs as well then…

sorry.

The Song Of Wandering Aonghus

W.B. Yeats

I went down to the Hazelwood
Because a fire was in my head
I cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth like stars were flickering out
I put the berry in a stream
And hooked a little silver trout

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame
But something rustled on the floor
And someone called me by my name
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded in the brightening air

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and hold her hands
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.

You dream of distant places,
Worlds you’ve never seen,
And paint a perfect postcard,
Of grass a finer green.

And you want to try out
Heaven
Just to see what you’ve been told,
Isn’t words in books and smiling
Lies,
And hills veined with fools
Gold

You don’t know where your
Going
And you won’t know where you’ve
Been, when you’ve taken lots of photos,
And missed what you should have
Seen

Still you hold onto fancy and
Sunshine medicine,
Cradling pieces of some sky,
While all this useless wasted
Beauty,
Strikes me till I cry.

You’re so adrift in distant
Places,
And hilly strangers your adore,
That you’re riding blind through
EDEN
Lying right outside you’re door.

My soul is in the mountains
My heart is in the land
I’m lost here in the city
There’s so much I don’t understand

There’s quiet desperation comin’ over me
Comin’ over me

I’ve got to leave I can’t stay another day
There’s an emptiness inside of me
I can’t bear the loneliness out here
There’s another place I’ve got to be

I long for you Dakota
Smell of sweet grass on the plain
I see too much meanness
And I feel too much pain

There’s quiet desperation comin’ over me
Comin’ over me

I’ve got to leave I can’t stay another day
There’s an emptiness inside of me
I can’t bear the loneliness out here
There’s another place I’ve got to be

Great thread!

Emily Jane Brontë
The Night is Darkening round Me

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow ; But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow ;
The storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below But nothing drear can move me :
I will not, cannot go.

Going down Hill on a Bicycle, A Boy’s Song

WITH lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:–
‘O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

‘Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!’

Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
‘Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er,
Shall find wings waiting there.
Henry Charles Beeching

nice 😀

For when you’ve climbed to the top:

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout – Gary Snyder

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

There was an old man called Glen
Who rode up and down the Ben
His knees were complaining
And his shoulders were aching
So he shaped up and did it again

hmmm 🙂

I’ve never let lack of talent stop me 🙂

Stevie matey what a boy.
His flashy bike is just a toy,
In a cupboard it sits all week
till Saturday morn, Steve takes a peek
through frosted windows he sticks his nose,
‘bugger me, the grounds all froze’!

Can’t remember the rest but I wrote it for my mates birthday yonks ago (his bike was a Kona Sex 2) & he can’t find the original copy either!

Down the track and over the bar
Who on earth knew he would fly quite so far?
Into a puddle
And all of a muddle
Oh how he wished he’d taken the car