I don't know if Léautaud can be regarded as the Sorabji of French literature, Mr Grew, but his place in French literature is indeed rather obscure. Ernst Jünger (who translated some of his works into German) called him "the last classical French writer". Everybody who's interested in French literary life around 1900 should read Léautaud's diaries. Thank you for the photograph.

Thanks to Stanley Stewart over on the Composers of the Week board, here is Noel Coward:

                I am no good at love
                My heart should be wise and free
                I kill the unfortunate golden goose
                Whoever it may be
                With over-articulate tenderness
                And too much intensity.

                I am no good at love
                I batter it out of shape
                Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
                And, gibbering like an ape,
                I lie alone in the endless dark
                Knowing there's no escape

                I am no good at love
                When my easy heart I yield
                Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
                Which should have stayed concealed;
                And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
                Into a battlefield.

                I am no good at love
                I betray it with little sins
                For I feel the misery of the end
                In the moment that it begins
                And the bitterness of the last good-bye
                Is the bitterness that wins.
               
If you didn't know it was Noel Coward, I am not sure you would ever guess, but it is typical of the man (The more you love a man, the more it breaks your heart.)  I am sure there is more to love than that, but there's something about it I find touching, if self indulgent.

I am sure that Noel Coward would beam his approval, accompanied by a mock admonition of finger wagging, when told that he'd been elevated to the Poetry Appreciation Thread.

The blurb for 'Not Yet The Dodo' (1967), Heinemann:

            Noel Coward has written verses since boyhood and he has chosen
            the present collection, never before published, from a body of verse at
            least four times as great.

                                          OPERA NOTES

                            I feel inclined to send a teeny-weeny
                            Admonishment to Signor Bellini
                            For having seriously tried to form a
                            Coherent opera from Norma.

                            I think we must face the fact that Carmen by Bizet
                            Is no more Spanish than the Champs-Elysees.

                            Should I desire to be driven mad
                            I'd book a seat for Herodiade
                            Which, although it's by Massenet who wrote Manon
                            Is really not a good thing to plan on
                            And gives me, by and large, more claust-
                            rophobia than Faust.

                            I often say, for which opera lovers attack me,
                            That if I were a soprano I'd let them sack me
                            Before I'd sing Lakme.

                            Nobody could bear to read a
                            Detailed synopsis of Aida
                            And we all know the plot of La Gioconda
                            Is apt to wander.
                            But neither of these so arch and sticky is
                            As Gianni Schicchi is.

                            Though Wolfgang Mozart wrote The Magic Flute he
                            Also, alas, composed Cosi Fan Tutte
                            The roguishness of which is piu piu male
                            Than Don Pasquale
                            But then poor Donizetti
                            Was likewise not
                            Too hot
                            at choosing libretti.

                           Then there are those Rosenkavaliers and Fledermauses
                           Written by all those Strausses
                           Which play to crowded houses
                           And, to me, are louses.
                           There couldn't be a sillier story
                           Than Il Trovatore
                           And yet, and yet, and yet Oh
                           Just think of the libretto
                           Of Rigoletto!
                           Both of these were set to music by Verdi
                           How dared he?
                           On the other hand we must admit that Thais
                           Is more concais
                           And fairly nais

                           We must also admit that every Victorian hurdy-gurdy
                           Owes a deep debt of gratitude to Giuseppe Verdi.

Most of the verses are steeped in the past; compared to the present, and the loneliness of the spirit.

In the early 1940s, Moss Hart was negotiating for Gertrude Lawrence to appear in Weill's 'Lady in the Dark' and invited NC's support.   He had a happy reunion with 'Gertie' when she married Richard Aldrich, the manager of a theatre at Cape Cod.    Coward sent her a telegram after their 4th July wedding:

  'Dear Mrs A.  Hooray, hooray/At last you are deflowered/On this as in every other day/
  I Love you, Noel Coward'.        He sent a further telegram for the first night of 'Lady in the Dark':
  'Hope you get a warm hand on your opening'. 
     
         
             
     

You do realise, don't you, Syd let it pass?

Here's the often transcendentally irascible Christian poet Geoffrey Hill paying a somewhat unexpected homage. I find much of it, in particular the end of section 2 and most of section 4, curiously touching, although the antepenultimate line of section 4 is borderline offensive: is this or what precedes (escapes?) it the truth of Hill's sentiments?


Improvisations for Jimi Hendrix

Somewhere a Queen is weeping
Somewhere a King has no wife

1

I am the chorus and I urge you
act messenger's idiom from Greek tragedy.
Get to know words like the gods'
inconstant anger.

Stand in for Pasiphaean bull,
exquisite player of neumes!
Enlarge the lionized
apparatus of f***ing.
Wacko falsetto of stuck pig.

You can vibe self-defector and know
how to project
Olympian light waves.

The show guitar melts like sealing wax.
It mutes and scalds. Your fingers
burning secrets.

Your legerdemain.

Extraordinary progressions chart
no standard progress.

Call guru noises inc gk.
There is no good ending admits fade-out.

By rights you shall have
top prize longevity
wiped as a gift.

2

Prime time, whole time, the planet's
run by toupée'd pinkoes: but not ruled.
Not even music rules.

What kind contortions fix hex-mind pyrewise?

Something unexplained - I exempt his music.

No huckster, then, dazed gambler with real grace,
saved possibly; and the hotel rooms
destroyed themselves.

3

Short-changed and on short time let us
walk óh-so óh-so with all new gods.
Showmen kill shaman, dunk parts in late

wag-chat's petty shrine. I had a line all
set to go; a lien now. Even the shadow-
death cues further shadows. Take his hand,
Medea, if he can find it. Lysergic

also is made up Greek.

4

Sometimes the king of a forbidden country
has his entitlement, his lineage,
adorned by error.

Somehow a king delivers his true bride
in the perilous
marsh of childbirth and all three go safe.

Yes there is weeping and yes some find
the lost miracle and do not know it;

swagger royally, play the pretender
to sinking Atlantis,
drown in their star-dust. Some are reborn.

...

Somewhere the slave is master of his desires
and lords it in great music
and the children dance.

To mark the return of hh, here is a bit by a poet he may possibly appreciate, and we haven't had so far.
 
The Wreck of the Deutschland

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).
 
 
To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875
 
 
PART THE FIRST

1

                THOU mastering me   
            God! giver of breath and bread;   
        World’s strand, sway of the sea;   
            Lord of living and dead;   
    Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,           5
    And after it almost unmade, what with dread,   
        Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?   
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.   
 
2

                I did say yes   
            O at lightning and lashed rod;           10
        Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess   
            Thy terror, O Christ, O God;   
    Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:   
    The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod   
        Hard down with a horror of height:           15
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.   
 
3

                The frown of his face   
            Before me, the hurtle of hell   
        Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?   
            I whirled out wings that spell           20
    And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.   
    My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,   
        Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,   
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.   
 
4

                I am soft sift           25
            In an hourglass—at the wall   
        Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,   
            And it crowds and it combs to the fall;   
    I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,   
    But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall           30
        Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein   
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.   
 
5

                I kiss my hand   
            To the stars, lovely-asunder   
        Starlight, wafting him out of it; and           35
            Glow, glory in thunder;   
    Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:   
    Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,   
        His mystery must be instressed, stressed;   
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.           40
 
6

                Not out of his bliss   
            Springs the stress felt   
        Nor first from heaven (and few know this)   
            Swings the stroke dealt—   
    Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,           45
    That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt—   
        But it rides time like riding a river   
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).   
 
7

                It dates from day   
            Of his going in Galilee;           50
        Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;   
            Manger, maiden’s knee;   
    The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;   
    Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,   
        Though felt before, though in high flood yet—           55
What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,   
 
8

                Is out with it! Oh,   
            We lash with the best or worst   
        Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe   
            Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,           60
    Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,   
    Brim, in a flash, full!—Hither then, last or first,   
        To hero of Calvary, Christ, ’s feet—   
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it—men go.   
 
9

                Be adored among men,           65
            God, three-numberèd form;   
        Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,   
            Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm.   
    Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,   
    Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;           70
        Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:   
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.   
 
10

                With an anvil-ding   
            And with fire in him forge thy will   
        Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring           75
            Through him, melt him but master him still:   
    Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,   
    Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,   
        Make mercy in all of us, out of us all   
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.           80

Thanks Don B, I do appreciate him! In fact I believe that I've posted both Heaven-Haven and Pied Beauty before...
I haven't read the Wreck since I was 18, so thanks for that!