The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle

You charm'd me not with that fair face
      Though it was all divine:
To be another's is the grace,
      That makes me wish you mine.

   The Gods and Fortune take their part
      Who like young monarchs fight;
And boldly dare invade that heart
      Which is another's right.

   First mad with hope we undertake
      To pull up every bar;
But once possess'd, we faintly make
      A dull defensive war.

   Now every friend is turn'd a foe
      In hope to get our store:
And passion makes us cowards grow,
      Which made us brave before.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
John Dryden, An Evening's love (London: T. N. for Henry Herringman, 1671).

 
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
"To Autumn" by John Keats is in the public domain. It was written in 1819 and first published in 1820.

 
Of that love, of that mile 
walked together in the rain, 
only a weariness remains. 
 
I am that stranger now 
my mirror holds to me; 
the moment's silence 
hardly moves across the glass. 
I pity myself in another's guise.

And no one's back here, no one
I can recognize, and from my side
I see nothing. Years have passed
since I sat with you, watching
the sky grow lonelier with cloudlessness,
waiting for your body to make it lived in.

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 "Of That Love" from the book All About Love by Jayanta Mahapatra, is published by the Ketaki Foundation Trust in 2022 and the copyright belongs to Jayanta Mahapatra.

.  

 
Go and catch a falling star, 
    Get with child a mandrake root, 
Tell me where all past years are, 
    Or who cleft the devil's foot, 
Teach me to hear mermaids singing, 
Or to keep off envy's stinging, 
            And find 
            What wind 
Serves to advance an honest mind. 

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
            And swear,
            No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
            Yet she
            Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
John Donne's poem "Song: Go And Catch A Falling Star" is in the public domain because it was published before January 1, 1930. Therefore, it is not subject to modern copyright. The poem was published in the posthumous collection Poems of John Donne in 1633.

Troy has perished, the great city.
Only the red flame now lives there.

The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke and all is hidden.
We now are gone, one here, one there.
And Troy is gone forever.

Farewell, dear city.
Farewell, my country, where my children lived.
There below, the Greek ships wait.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
The Iliad of Homer, translated and with an introduction by Richmond Lattimore, copyright © 1951 by The University of Chicago.

 
Again the garden has got the glitter of Spring:  
 
The nightingale hears good news, for the rose is come.  
 
Soft wind returning to the young plants of the meadow,   
 
Greet for us the rose, the cypress and the sweet basil.  
  
They are spread for the wedding-feast of the wine-seller's son,   
 
And I'd sweep his floor with my eyelashes to win such grace. 
 
For that amber-scented strand you draw across a moonlight brow 

Has made a shuttlecock of my heart, and set it spinning. 
 
I can't trust those who sneer at us drinking down to the lees:  
 
That is the kind of thing which gets a bad name for religion. 
 
Let them learn to be friends with God's true friends; remember that Noah in his ark, 
 
A speck of dust himself, cared not a drop for the deluge. 

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 London: Heinemann, 1897.

 
In the courtyard a shower of peach petals piles deep; 
Wandering orioles cry out on a magnolia tree near the fence. 
Through tasseled silk curtains the spring cold seeps in; 
From the censer a list of burning incense gently curls. 
A beautiful girl woken from sleep makes up her face anew; 
Fine girdle of fragrant silk, patterned with ducks. 
She rolls up a thick blind, revealing the Kingfisher curtain; 
Unhurried, she plays the phoenix song on her silver zither.
Where has her Lord gone on his gold engraved saddle?
A friendly parrot chatters at the window, a butterfly sports

in the grasses, then flits along the Garden Path.
Dancing among the flowers, gossamers outside the door,
Sounds of flutes and song from a neighbor's house;
The moon shines on a golden cup of fine wine.
At night she is quite alone and unable to sleep;
At dawn she wakes, tears soaking the shagreen silk.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Poems from Korea: A Historical Anthology, edited and translated by Peter H. Lee. Copyright © 1964, 1974 by UNESCO.

 
Have you seen the Bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by, 
Here a patch of glassy water, there a glimpse of mystic sky? 
Have you heard the still small voice calling, yet so warm, and yet so cold: 
“I’m the Mother Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old?” 
 
Did you see the Bush below you sweeping darkly to the range, 
All unchanged and all unchanging, yet so very old and strange! 
Did you hear the Bush a’calling, when your heart was young and bold: 
“I’m the Mother Bush that nursed you!  Come to me when you are old?”

Through the long, vociferous cutting as the night train swiftly sped,
Did you hear the grey Bush calling from the pine-ridge overhead:
“You have seen the seas and cities; all seems done, and all seems told;
I’m the Mother Bush that loves you! Come to me now you are old?”

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 Published in 1922, this is Henry Lawson's last poem. Copyright © Henry Lawson.

 
I caught this morning morning's minion, king- 
    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding 
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding 
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing 
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, 
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding 
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding 
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! 
 
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
     
   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 The copyright for Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "The Windhover" is out of copyright, as Hopkins died in 1889, and the poem was published posthumously in 1918 in the first edition of his collected works.

 I walked into the nightclub in the morning,
 there was Kummel on the handle of the door,
 the ashtrays were unemptied,
 The cleaning unattempted,
 And a squashed tomato sandwich on the floor.

 I pulled aside the thick magenta curtains
 So Regency, so Regency, my dear
 And a host of little spiders
 Ran a race across the ciders
 To a box of baby 'pollies by the beer.

 Oh sun upon the summergoing bypass
 Where ev'rything is speeding to the sea,
 And wonder beyond wonder
 that here where lorries thunder
 The sun should ever percolate to me.

 When Boris used to call in his Sedanca,
 When Teddy took me down to his estate,
 When my nose excited passions,
 And my clothes were in the fashion,
 When my beaux were never cross if I was late,

 There was sun enough for lazing upon beaches
 There was fun enough for far into the night;
 But I'm dying now and done for,
 What on earth was all the fun for?
 I am ill and old and terrified and tight.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
copyright © The Betjeman Literary Estate