Cycling Photo Challenge - Entries and Chat

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Right found it...

Leaving for the Front

Before I die, I must just find this rhyme.
Be quiet, my friends, and do not waste any time.

We’re marching off in company with death.
I only wish my girl would hold her breath.

There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m glad to leave,
Now mother’s crying too, there’s no reprieve.

And now look how the sun’s begun to set.
A nice mass-grave is all that I shall get.

Once more the good old sunset‘s glowing red.
In thirteen days I’ll probably be dead.

Written June 1914
Lichtenstein died 7 weeks later on August 14th

 

[Katherine]

I was meant to be going for a ride with someone today, but they invented a "lame" excuse to cry off, so I want on my own instead. I started at the Bristol Cenotaph and finished there too:

View attachment 61506

And it also include my route as an entry to the comp, no pic of a bike in it (yes I was able to work that out myself @potsy ), but I couldn't have done it without the bike

View attachment 61507

Clever

 

[Katherine]

I would have liked to have seen the poppies at the Tower of London but the pictures I've seen inspired me to try this:

I bought up some left over poppies from school which have stickers on the back rather than a stalk.

 

[coffeejo]

I don't know why this is my favourite as I don't do patriotism and "Englishness" but something about the poignancy of it got me the first time I read it and has never left me.

The Soldier - Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

 

[djb1971]

We're getting all serious, people will be scarpering in a rather swift manner soon

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

We're getting all serious, people will be scarpering in a rather swift manner soon

Don't worry the good stuff has now arrived (oral morphine) I won't be capable of anything very soon

 

[djb1971]

Don't worry the good stuff has now arrived (oral morphine) I won't be capable of anything very soon

That stuff is ace, if there's any left over.........I'll have it

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Final one....

Alan Seeger. 1888–1916

"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

 

[djb1971]

And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

And he was true to his word, as were millions.

You do realise, this poetry will be the first for some on here. Well apart from the rude bits on the back of a bog door

 

[Spinney]

I would have liked to have seen the poppies at the Tower of London but the pictures I've seen inspired me to try this:

I bought up some left over poppies from school which have stickers on the back rather than a stalk.

If we could vote, that would get mine...

 

[djb1971]

@Spokesmann has it ended?

 

[potsy]

.....and the winner is?????????

Not you

I'm saving myself for the next challenge, I have insider info on what it is

 

[Spokesmann]

I have not decided yet.

 

[djb1971]

I have not decided yet.

It's not difficult 90% are shoot! that leaves 10% to flip a coin over

 

[Spokesmann]

Ive got screen grabs of all the entries, so I look through them all at ease. Will be back!