Between Ghent And Bruges

AH yes, exactly so; but when a man
Has trundled out of England into France
And half through Belgium, always in this prance
Of steam, and still has stuck to his first plan—
Blank verse or sonnets; and as he began
Would end;—why, even the blankest verse may chance
To falter in default of circumstance,
And even the sonnet miss its mystic span.
Trees will be trees, grass grass, pools merely pools,
Unto the end of time and Belgium—points
Of fact which Poets (very abject fools)
Get scent of—once their epithets grown tame
And scarce. Even to these foreign rails—my joints
Begin to find their jolting much the same.

poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Belgium thinks that however great the peril which a country might have to undergo under the system which we seek to establish here, that country ought to do its duty.

quote by Henri La Fontaine
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The Chancellor also in effect asks us to bargain away whatever obligation or interest we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium. We could not entertain that bargain either.

quote by Edward Grey
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Now, I'll tell you something that might interest you. Casino Royale was the first Bond book that Ian Fleming ever wrote. And he couldn't get anybody to touch it, to publish it - he couldn't do anything about it at all. Nobody wanted to know.

quote by Val Guest
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I got a Scholarship to Patrice Lumumba University!

As soon as I received the letter from the Education Authority,
I was informed my poor Mom because that's her innocent dream, And I waited for days, months and years but no reply at all.
In the morning I realized it's another dream of my dreamy fate!
I was so curious of his name and I refered some incidents here
For your kind perusal.

Mysterious events of History
Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis.He was subsequently imprisoned and murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium.Lumumba's youngest son, Guy-Patrice, born six months after his father's death, was an independent presidential candidate in the 2006 elections, but received less than 1% of the vote.

For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.

poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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A very considerable body of the German people live in America and propose to fight that Government. Bourke in his great speech last week welcoming the Belgian mission to Boston worked out the President's meaning with care.

quote by Shane Leslie
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The success of the Allies in the west was in a measure offset by Teutonic victories in the east. When the invasion of Belgium began, Russia made immediate efforts to counteract by invasion of East Prussia.

quote by Kelly Miller
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And it is practically the same in the case of the four or five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries. Everywhere small and medium sized industry prevails.

quote by Herman Gorter
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In the Belgian air force a general supposedly saw a UFO, tracked it with his plane, photographed it with his wing cameras. And I believe it because I said to myself why would this person, not getting paid for this, do it unless it actually happened or he thought it happened.

quote by Robert Stack
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Social Democratic and trade union organs have approved of the illegal invasion of Belgium, of the massacre of suspected guerrillas, as well as their wives and children, as well as the destruction of their homes in various towns and districts.

quote by Clara Zetkin
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How could you justify giving Holland twice the amount of money that you gave Belgium? Well, finally, I put it up to them. They said that they couldn't do it; it would destroy them. I said they had to do it. And I finally got support from Hoffman on it.

quote by W. Averell Harriman
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Have we so soon forgotten those four years of terrible carnage, the greatest war of all time; forgotten the millions of men who gave their lives, who made the supreme sacrifice and who today, beneath the soil of France and Belgium, sleep the eternal sleep?

quote by Frank B. Kellogg
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America

Once in English they said America. Was it English to them.
Once they said Belgian.
We like a fog.
Do you for weather.
Are we brave.
Are we true.
Have we the national colour.
Can we stand ditches.
Can we mean well.
Do we talk together.
Have we red cross.
A great many people speak of feet.
And socks.

poem by Gertrude Stein
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Adage 4

'Don't make use of another man's mouth unless it has been loaned to you.'
Belgian Proverb

if i let you borrow
my mouth
will you follow what it will say?
or will you tell it
what to say?
i am a poet
without a motive
my words speak for themselves
the only function of my
mouth and my tongue
is to eat
and shut up.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Candy Shop

It's Aunt Nora's birthday
She's partial to Belgian chocolates
I go with mama
To the candy shop
'We're here to get a present
for Aunt Nora, ' she admonishes.
'Don't even ask for candy! '
And I promise.

But once inside,
the aroma of the place
The gleaming display cases
Candies winking at me
Like jewels

I know she'll say no
But I just have to ask!

poem by Diana Holinski
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The Conqueror

Not the Prussian, the forsworn,
By whose fury overborne,
Martyred Belgium, you lie
Bruised with all injury.
Through your peace red paths he clove,
Burning, slaying, making spoil
Of your shining treasure-trove,
Ancient wisdom, beauty, toil;
Drenching hearth and shrine and sod
With the blood that cries to God.
Futile all that savage force.
Time in his aeonian course
Still shall clarion your fame.
Yours the triumph;his the shame.
On your honor he made war,
But his guns have battered down
Only forts. Inheritor
Of unparalleled renown,
Belgium, your name shall be
Brighter than Thermopylæ.

[...] Read more

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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To Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poet, whose words are like the tight-packed seed
Sealed in the capsule of a silver flower,
Still at your art we wonder as we read,
The art dynamic charging each word with power.

Seeds of the silver flower of Emerson:
One, on the winds to Scotland brought, did sink
In Carlyle's heart; and one was lately blown
To Belgium, and flowered in-Maeterlinck.

poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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Themes

themes should be universal they say.

to talk of the cruellest month.
excellent.

cities, monuments, flowers.
irreproachable.

a painting of a boy falling out of
the sky, hung in a belgian gallery
or epic sung by a blind bard.
ideal.

bad poets being fortunate, no muse to be invoked.

poems sprout, wild weeds in walled garden.

broken heart tears betrayal
pain shame fear despair bewilderment.

[...] Read more

poem by Soo Lee
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Fleming Helphenstine

At first I thought there was a superfine
Persuasion in his face; but the free flow
That filled it when he stopped and cried, "Hollo!"
Shone joyously, and so I let it shine.
He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine,
But be that as it may;—I only know
He talked of this and that and So-and-So,
And laughed and chaffed like any friend of mine.

But soon, with a queer, quick frown, he looked at me,
And I looked hard at him; and there we gazed
In a strained way that made us cringe and wince:
Then, with a wordless clogged apology
That sounded half confused and half amazed,
He dodged,—and I have never seen him since.

poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Bonaparte

He that trod upon subservient Europe
with the imperial guards' fighting prowess,
did himself and his heartthrob the empress,
entrench thrones jointly owned by their hookup.
He that caused guns to rage on Europe's plains
and cannons to thunder on Egypt's sands,
sent hussars and mamluks to distant flight.
He usurped crowns for his dear siblings' gains,
and enthroned loyalists to head vanquished lands.
But was banished for good from France's sight
after a stunning loss on Belgium's plains.

poem by Joseph C Ogbonna (5 May 2021)
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