Featured Poem: Great Things by Thomas Hardy

In the aftermath of Shipping Lines Liverpool Literary Festival (reviews and stories will be coming up during the week), The Reader Organisation office is in quite a state of chaos. It is also in a state of utter exultation: the festival was a great success; everyone (audience, writers, staff, volunteers) thoroughly enjoyed themselves and although we're exhausted, it is brilliant to feel that all the hard, hard work paid off. We're all relishing in a sense of great achievement and, although in the need of a lot of sleep and some clearing-up, we're still standing and still smiling. So, understandably, we're in celebration mode:

Great Things

Sweet cyder is a great thing,

A great thing to me,

Spinning down to Weymouth town

By Ridgway thirstily,

And maid and mistress summoning

Who tend the hostelry:

O cyder is a great thing,

A great thing to me!

The dance it is a great thing,

A great thing to me,

With candles lit and partners fit

For night-long revelry;

And going home when day-dawning

Peeps pale upon the lea:

O dancing is a great thing,

A great thing to me!

Love is, yea, a great thing,

A great thing to me,

When, having drawn across the lawn

In darkness silently,

A figure flits like one a-wing

Out from the nearest tree:

O love is, yes, a great thing,

A great thing to me!

Will these be always great things,

Great things to me? . . .

Let it befall that One will call,

"Soul, I have need of thee":

What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,

Love, and its ecstasy,

Will always have been great things,

Great things to me!

Thomas Hardy