Tea Poetry

I really like that poem – thank you for posting the link! It was so evocative – I could see the leaves!

Oh goody – a chance to share a bit of my favourite poet: Robert Service (Canadian/British – early 1900’s) Not my favourite poem of his; but it sure is about tea! … and I agree, ‘it bucks you up’.

A Pot Of Tea

You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier’s rosy gleam;
You watchit cloud, then settle amber clear;
You lift it with your bay’nit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;
The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.
You’re awful cold and dirty, and a-cursin’ of your lot;
You scoff the blushin’ ‘alf of it, so rich and rippin’ ’ot;
It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:
God bless the man that first discovered Tea!

Since I came out to fight in France, which ain’t the other day,
I think I’ve drunk enough to float a barge;
All kinds of fancy foreign dope, from caffy and doo lay,
To rum they serves you out before a charge.
In back rooms of estaminays I’ve gurgled pints of cham;
I’ve swilled down mugs of cider till I’ve felt a bloomin’ dam;
But ‘struth! they all ain’t in it with the vintageof Assam:
God bless the man that first invented Tea!

I think them lazy lumps o’ gods wot kips on asphodel
Swigs nectar that’s a flavour of Oolong;
I only wish them sons o’ guns a-grillin’ down in ‘ell
Could ’ave their daily ration of Suchong.
Hurrah! I’m off to battle, which is ‘ell and ’eaven too;
And if I don’t give some poor bloke a sexton’s job to do,
To-night, by Fritz’s campfire, won’t I ‘ave a gorgeous brew
(For fightin’ mustn’t interfere with Tea).
To-night we’ll all be tellin’ of the Boches that we slew,
As we drink the giddy victory in Tea.

In 1663 the poet and politician Edmund Waller wrote a poem in honor of Queen Catherine (England’s first tea-drinking queen) for her birthday:

http://uniquelytea.blogspot.com/2009/07/pictorial-tea-tour-edmund-waller-c1663.html

The first cup moistens my lips and throat.
The second cup breaks my loneliness.
The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration – all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores.
At the fifth cup I am purified.
The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals.
The seventh cup – ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.
~Lu Tung, “Tea-Drinking”

I met/interviewed (for a volunteer post) today with a Patrick Keenan, Director of The Willard House & Clock Museum. I am these days riddled and harassed since insisting on associating names of folks to something other than their names. I am told it is annoying and looking for meaning. So I don’t have friends and I am lonely and poor. Husband is poorer and ridicule because of me for insisting so.

Poetry is lovely way to pass the day, with a cup of good tea it is paradise on this hellish planet at times due to ill folks and their ill ways.

I gave away a small book of poems that I had acquired from London, England title: Ten Poems about Tea by Sophie Dahl might be something worth having in accompaniment with tea drinking and being social or elusively exclusive.

Happy Teas!

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves -slowly, evenly,
with out rushing toward the future.
Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.”

Quote by: The Buddha

Look up “brown cup of joy” by professor elemental. its a rap about tea, pretty aweesome

I am not writer, since not on grand scale or any…were I able to publish a book on tea, this would be included as such:

What we remember fondly———-
by Ainee Beland

First cup of tea
First sip—
Acknowledging the warmth
and comfort offered.

Embracing security
While affixing to our memory
a comforting zone
that of home
and a parent waiting in attendance

Never swaying
or wavering—
Instead always welcoming
our need—

For the warmth provided
in that first cup…
first sip…
of that warm liquid
known as tea
a remedy to curing all.

Here’s one of my own, posted recently:
http://steepster.com/Geoffrey/posts/124543

And here’s one of my favorites from Robert Bly that I posted many months ago:
http://steepster.com/discuss/2007-a-lovely-little-tea-poem