England by Marianne Moore

The following poem is by Marianne Moore and is a very nice description of england.

England

with its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral;
with voices - one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept - the
criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy
with its equal shores - contriving an epicureanism
from which the grossness  has been extracted,

and Greece with its goat and its gourds,
the nest of modified illusions: and France,
the "chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly,"
in whose products, mystery of construction
diverts one from what was originally one's object -
substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its emotional

shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its imperturbability,
all of museum quality: and America where there
is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south,
where cigars are smoked on the street in the north;
where there are no proofreaders, no silk-worms, no digressions;
the wild man's land; grass-less, linksless, languageless country in which letters are written
not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand,
but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!
The letter a in psalm and calm when
pronounced with the sound of a in candle, is very noticeable, but

why should continents of misapprehension
have to be accounted for by the fact?
Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous?
Of mettlesomeness which may be mistaken for appetite,
of heat which may appear to be haste,
no conclusionns may be drawn.

To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that one has not loooked far enough.
The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment,
the cataclysmic torrent of emotion
compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language,
the books of the man who is able to say,
"I envy nobody but him, and him only,
who catches more fish than
I do" - the flower and fruit of all that noted superiority
if not stumbled upon in America,
must one imagine that it is not there?
It has never been confined to one locality.

For more poems about England visit the website of the coolest englishman on the planet.

Myths and legends and stories have been told through the millennia. Many were magically re-worked into what we call religion ! . Religion based on Faith to prevent negative behaviour patterns or experiences through believing in a Higher over seer as written in the past by ? ! . We all feel that there is something on a higher level than this. We should all find our own paths but only when we have had time to live a bit, and choose our own 'story' ! ..Kids maybe absorb morals from TV more than the post dramatics of the church, There is an increasing negative trend in young people because they are not inspired by anything other than what is on offer and appealing.Church is boaring to most of them. Story telling is good Tho .But no religious discipline should be imposed before a persons full maturity deems it useful to do so , even if aware of the source stories. Stories NOT Conditioning, Churches are good for Weddings Funerals social gatherings , charity work and basically humanitarian reasons, We would be worse off without it. People now wish to express these times a different way ..Thety may need funding from elsewhere for the roofs !! Re-structure required.

Tea

The chance went. After 90 minutes of consistent pressure during the morning, England eased up as Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis, having battled through, took control. By tea, with South Africa 151 for two, the pair had added an unbroken 141 for the third wicket, each well entrenched on a pitch that had calmed down with the softening ball and starting to play with ominous fluidity.

Kallis, continuing the prime form that brought him his 32nd Test hundred at Centurion, had batted with massive solidity from the outset, rarely troubled, and was on 74 while Smith, despite being hampered by the blow on the left knuckle sustained from James Anderson before lunch (something that may well require an x-ray), was on 65. Both had hit seven boundaries, Smith, in four hours, having faced 169 balls and Kallis 128. If each looks set for a century, then the prospect of a full day's play was diminishing with the anticipated approach of a tropical storm, with a prognosis of significant similar interruptions during the course of the match.

Having succeeded in keeping the lid on things for the best part of the morning, England became insipid during the afternoon. The plans, presumably concocted during the lunch interval (although occasionally Andrew Strauss is prone to bouts of intuition at the expense of the obvious) seemed unnecessary given the manner in which the seamers had caused trouble by their straightforward approach.

Most bemusing was the way in which Graham Onions, the best of the England seamers despite his lack of a wicket, and certainly the one who caused the most problems for Smith because of the tight line he bowls from close to the stumps, was ignored until the afternoon was 24 overs old. Neither batsman would have been unaware of the easier passage afforded them when, for example, Jonathan Trott was introduced to attack first. By the time Onions returned, the ball was beyond its halfway stage.

Lunch

Whatever the outcome of the toss and the decision made thereafter, the first session of a Kingsmead Test is always, on the one hand, about survival with the bat in anticipation of better things to come and, on the other, capitalising with the new ball before it becomes spongy and unresponsive and the pitch eases.

This morning was searingly hot with a humidity to cut with a butter knife as the moisture from the Christmas Day downpour was sucked from the ground. Graeme Smith, looking at blue skies, broke with South African convention on winning the toss and decided to bat first, taking it firmly on the chin - or rather in his case the knuckle of his left hand, broken earlier in the year, as James Anderson made one leap wickedly.

By lunch, he had seen the loss of Ashwell Prince and Hashim Amla for a brace apiece, but had survived himself, playing and missing with great facility, to make 29 of South Africa's 67 for two. At the other end, though, Jacques Kallis was looking massively solid, taking successive boundaries from Stuart Broad, the first of the day after 80 minutes, and going in for the interval unbeaten on 28. England's chance to seize the initiative may have gone.

Had England bowled at Centurion with the discipline shown here (and had Graham Onions opened the bowling there) they would surely have got greater reward. For the first 90 minutes today, runs came only at a trickle as Anderson, his default delivery apparently now slanted across the left hander, put Smith under pressure and found one that bounced more than anticipated to Prince, who edged to third slip. Amla looked tentative, unsure of how to get forward, and Andrew Strauss failed initially to crowd him with the addition of a short leg, especially to Onions who bowls such a tight line.

Strauss's first bowling change brought instant reward, however, for after Amla had survived a leg-before appeal, which England thought about referring but, correctly as it transpired, opted not to (the ball, from Onions, was sliding down the legside) Broad's fourth delivery, full and straight, hit Amla indisputably in front of middle. No referral was needed for this one and none sought.

After 20 overs, Strauss turned to Graeme Swann, who immediately leaked runs, with both batsmen determined not to allow him to dominate as he had at Centurion. The offspinner did turn one sharply away from Smith (spinners often gain purchase early in a game before the surface has dried out fully) but Matt Prior's stumping appeal showed that the South Africa captain had kept his back foot firmly rooted behind the line.

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