Sweet, sweet children

Of Africa, beautiful Africa

Breathed down from above

Living light

Danced down with Love

Dance down the Light…

Listen, hear

As the soulful bones

Of your ancestors

Drum on the living skin

Of the wild antelope

With thunderous frenzy

Dance down the Light…

Repaint the scorched landscape

Of the mighty Sudan

With the brush strokes

Of your ivory smiles

Birth your freedom, dance

Savour the gifts

Of the Great Nile

Dance down the Light…

Sweet, sweet children

Of Africa, beautiful Africa

Your dance is the key

Feel the wonder, the mystery

So DANCE!

Here’s an article published by Henry Arthur Jones (circa 1900) entitled “What’s the Use of Poetry? “ I felt I should post it for your reading pleasure. Enjoy…

What’s the use of poetry?  - Words to live upon, when one can’t get bread and cheese; to clothe and warm oneself with, when one is ragged and cold!

What’s the use of poetry? -  To keep faith and hope and worship alive in the heart of man, to reconcile him to life, to make him at home in his world.

What’s the use of poetry? - To pour vitriol on deceit and vice, to seam and scar the detested face of hypocrisy and lies. To add hate to all things hateful and shame to all things shameful!

What’s the use of poetry? - To give beauty to beauty, more grace to grace, more truth to truth, to deck the flowers of the field, to rain perfume on the rose and music on the nightingale.

What’s the use of poetry? - To be a stumbling block to the worldly wise and the proud, and a camp and pillar of fire to children and the childlike.

What’s the use of poetry? - To embalm the immortal dead, to interpret this aimless Universe, to snatch the secrets of the stars, to unleash the seas and the winds, to fling a double rainbow of hope and glory across the heavens, till all the Universe shouts with one voice, and beats with one heart, and pants with one breath!

What’s the use of poetry? - To make this wide world drunk with its loveliness, to make this garret a palace and me the King of Death and Fate!

Poetry not real, not useful! There is nothing useful but poetry, and nothing real but the poet!