poems

[Not A Communist Shill]

Sonnet 128 ~ William Shakespeare

How oft when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips,
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage [I stood in Venice] ~ Lord Byron

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O’er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the wingéd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was--her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers:
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Eight Sonnets ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

When you, that at this moment are to me
Dearer than words on paper, shall depart,
And be no more the warder of my heart,
Whereof again myself shall hold the key;
And be no more, what now you seem to be,
The sun, from which all excellencies start
In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart
Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;

I shall remember only of this hour–
And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep–
The pathos of your love, that, like a flower,
Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep,
Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed,
The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

II

What's this of death, from you who never will die?
Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay,
The thumb that set the hollow just that way
In your full throat and lidded the long eye
So roundly from the forehead, will let lie
Broken, forgotten, under foot some day
Your unimpeachable body, and so slay
The work he most had been remembered by?

I tell you this: whatever of dust to dust
Goes down, whatever of ashes may return
To its essential self in its own season,
Loveliness such as yours will not be lost,
But, cast in bronze upon his very urn,
Make known him Master, and for what good reason.

III

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

IV

Here is a wound that never will heal, I know
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.

That April should be shattered by a gust,
That August should be leveled by a rain,
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man should settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

V

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain,
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

VI

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

VII

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?–
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink.
Oh, I shall love you still and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.

I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more;
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

VIII

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year's roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.

My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth,–
Autumn is no less on me that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

[Not A Communist Shill]

I see around me tombstones grey
Stretching their shadows far away.
Beneath the turf my footsteps tread
Lie low and lone the silent dead -
Beneath the turf - beneath the mould -
Forever dark, forever cold -
And my eyes cannot hold the tears
That memory hoards from vanished years
For Time and Death and Mortal pain
Give wounds that will not heal again -
Let me remember half the woe
I've seen and heard and felt below,
And Heaven itself - so pure and blest,
Could never give my spirit rest -
Sweet land of light! thy children fair
Know nought akin to our despair -
Nor have they felt, nor can they tell
What tenants haunt each mortal cell,
What gloomy guests we hold within -
Torments and madness, tears and sin!
Well - may they live in ecstasy
Their long eternity of joy;
At least we would not bring them down
With us to weep, with us to groan,
No - Earth would wish no other sphere
To taste her cup of sufferings drear;
She turns from Heaven with a careless eye
And only mourns that we must die!
Ah mother, what shall comfort thee
In all this boundless misery?
To cheer our eager eyes a while
We see thee smile; how fondly smile!
But who reads not through that tender glow
Thy deep, unutterable woe:
Indeed no dazzling land above
Can cheat thee of thy children's love.
We all, in life's departing shine,
Our last dear longings blend with thine;
And struggle still and strive to trace
With clouded gaze, thy darling face.
We would not leave our native home
For any world beyond the Tomb.
No - rather on thy kindly breast
Let us be laid in lasting rest;
Or waken but to share with thee
A mutual immortality -

~ Emily Brontë

[Not A Communist Shill]

I remember everything simultaneously;
Like the distant beam of a distant lighthouse,
I carry the universe before me
Like an easy burden in an outstretched palm,
And in the depths, mysteriously growing, is the seed
Of what is to come.

Creation ~ Anna Akhmatova

[Not A Communist Shill]

Heraclitus ~ William Johnson Cory

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed;
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Antiquities ~ Veronica Forrest-Thomson

A gesture is adjective,
two hands, granite
when they turn bread to flesh
(Notre Dame, July 14th)
A mirror is a museum-case,
two hands, priestesses'
when she mummifies her face.
Emotion is a parenthesis,
two hands, irony
when I light the candle
and cross myself.
Aesthetic approbation is glass
when it encloses her faience eyes
and gilded skin.
(Musée du Louvre, July 18th)
Glance is the copula
that petrifies our several identities,
syntactic superficies.

II

Michaelmas
My cardboard daisies are in bloom
again.
The city's silhouette stands out
just like real, from a child's
pop-up book, "a castle cut in
paper" (Gawain & the Grene Knight
c.1400). Autumn leaves turn like
pages, black on white. For green
and gold must be as parenthetical
as walks through sharpening air
and clamant colour, smoky light
along the Backs, from typewriter
to Library. "Grammar" derives from
"glamour"; ecology may show the two
still cognate: Museum, Gk. mouseion,
a seat of the Muses, a building
dedicated to the pursuit of learning
or the arts. (OED)
The glamorous grammatical frames
captions for a monograph on non-
existent plates. Glue, paper,
scissors, and the library together
paste a mock-up of an individual
history. The art of English Poesie?
"Such synne is called yronye."

[Iris]

Are you sure you are Delta?
Respectfully,
Iris

[Not A Communist Shill]

Are you sure you are Delta?
Respectfully,
Iris

me? No, I'm not sure.

[Not A Communist Shill]

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

~ William Wordsworth

[Not A Communist Shill]

The Beacons ~ Charles Baudelaire

RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence,
Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,
Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,
As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move.

LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass,
Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,
Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,
Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.

REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,
Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,
Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,
And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.

Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place
Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;
Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,
And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.

The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence,
Thou makest of all these a lovely thing;
Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence:
PUGET, the convict's melancholy king.

WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts,
Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance;
Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts,
And pour down folly on the whirling dance.

GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown;
The fœtus witches broil on Sabbath night;
Old women at the mirror; children lone
Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight.

DEACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt,
Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise;
Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt
And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs.

And malediction, blasphemy and groan,
Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine,
Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown;
For mortal hearts an opiate divine;

A shout cried by a thousand sentinels,
An order from a thousand bugles tossed,
A beacon o'er a thousand citadels,
A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost.

It is the mightiest witness that could rise
To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee;
This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies
Upon the verge of Thy Eternity!

[Not A Communist Shill]

I was born in the night of the second and third
Of January, ninety-something-or-other,
An unreliable year, and the centuries
Surround me with fire.

~ Osip Mandelstam

[Not A Communist Shill]

First Anniversary ~ Andrew Marvell

Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise;
So Man, declining always, disappears.
In the weak circles of increasing years;
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his Head does close.

[Not A Communist Shill]

人生不相見， It is almost as hard for friends to meet
動如參與商。 As for the morning and evening stars.
今夕復何夕， Tonight then is a rare event,
共此燈燭光。 Joining, in the candlelight,
少壯能幾時， Two men who were young not long ago
鬢髮各已蒼。 But now are turning grey at the temples.
訪舊半為鬼， To find that half our friends are dead
驚呼熱中腸。 Shocks us, burns our hearts with grief.
焉知二十載， We little guessed it would be twenty years
重上君子堂。 Before I could visit you again.
昔別君未婚， When I went away, you were still unmarried;
兒女忽成行。 But now these boys and girls in a row
怡然敬父執， Are very kind to their father's old friend.
問我來何方。 They ask me where I have been on my journey;
問答乃未已， And then, when we have talked awhile,
兒女羅酒漿。 They bring and show me wines and dishes,
夜雨翦春韭， Spring chives cut in the night-rain
新炊間黃粱。 And brown rice cooked freshly a special way.
主稱會面難， My host proclaims it a festival,
一舉累十觴。 He urges me to drink ten cups—
十觴亦不醉， But what ten cups could make me as drunk
感子故意長。 As I always am with your love in my heart?
明日隔山嶽， Tomorrow the mountains will separate us;
世事兩茫茫。 After tomorrow - who can say?

~ Du Fu

[Not A Communist Shill]

Rise up, thou monstrous ant-hill on the plain
Of a too busy world! Before me flow,
Thou endless stream of men and moving things!
Thy every-day appearance, as it strikes—
With wonder heightened, or sublimed by awe—
On strangers, of all ages; the quick dance
Of colours, lights, and forms; the deafening din;
The comers and the goers face to face,
Face after face; the string of dazzling wares,
Shop after shop, with symbols, blazoned names,
And all the tradesman's honours overhead:
Here, fronts of houses, like a title-page,
With letters huge inscribed from top to toe,
Stationed above the door, like guardian saints;
There, allegoric shapes, female or male,
Or physiognomies of real men,
Land-warriors, kings, or admirals of the sea,
Boyle, Shakespeare, Newton, or the attractive head
Of some quack-doctor, famous in his day.

~ William Wordsworth

[Not A Communist Shill]

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

~ John Donne

[Not A Communist Shill]

I’ve Looked So Much…

I’ve looked on beauty so much
that my vision overflows with it.

The body’s lines. Red lips. Sensual limbs.
Hair as though stolen from Greek statues,
always lovely, even uncombed,
and falling slightly over pale foreheads.
Figures of love, as my poetry desired them
. . . . in the nights when I was young,
encountered secretly in my nights.





I’ve Brought to Art

I sit in a mood of reverie.
I brought to Art desires and sensations:
things half-glimpsed,
faces or lines, certain indistinct memories
of unfulfilled love affairs. Let me submit to Art:
Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty,
almost imperceptibly completing life,
blending impressions, blending day with day.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy

[Not A Communist Shill]

Ode to a Nightingale ~ John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

[Not A Communist Shill]

Great Hymn to the Aten

Praise of Re-Harakhti, Rejoicing on the Horizon, in His Name as Shu who is in the Aten-disc, living forever and ever; the living great Aten who is in jubilee, lord of all that the Aten encircles, Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Lord of the House of Aten in Akhetaten; (and praise of) the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, who lives on truth, the Lord of the Two Lands: Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re; the Son of Re, who lives on truth, the Lord of Diadems: Akhenaten, long in his lifetime; (and praise of) the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands: Nefer-neferu-Aten Nefertiti, living, healthy, and youthful forever and ever; (by) the Fan-Bearer on the Right Hand of the King ... Eye.

He says:

You appear beautifully on the horizon of heaven,
You living Aten, the beginning of life!
When you have risen on the eastern horizon,
You have filled every land with your beauty.
you are gracious, great, glistening, and high over every land;
Your rays encompass the lands to the limit of all that you have made:
As you are Re, you reach to the end of them;
(you) subdue them (for) your beloved son.
though you are far away, your rays are on earth;
though you are in their faces, no one knows your going.

When you set in the western horizon,
The land is in darkness, in the manner of death.
They sleep in a room, with heads wrapped up,
Nor sees one eye the other.
All their goods which are under their heads might be stolen,
(But) they would not perceive (it).
Every lion has come forth from his den;
All creeping things, they sting.
Darkness is a shroud, and the earth is in stillness,
For he who made them rests in his horizon.

At daybreak, when you arise on the horizon,
When you shine as the Aten by day,
you drive away the darkness and give your rays.
The Two Lands are in festivity every day,
Awake and standing upon (their) feet,
For you have raised them up.
Washing their bodies, taking (their) clothing,
Their arms are (raised) in praise at your appearance.
All the world, they do their work.

All beasts are content with their pasturage;
Trees and plants are flourishing.
The birds which fly from their nests,
Their wings are (stretched out) in praise to your ka.
All beasts spring upon (their) feet.
Whatever flies and alights,
They live when you have risen (for) them.
The ships are sailing north and south as well,
For every way is open at your appearance.
The fish in the river dart before your face;
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.

Creator of seed in women,
you who make fluid into man,
Who maintain the son in the womb of his mother,
Who sooth him with that which stills his weeping,
you nurse (even) in the womb,
Who give breath to sustain all that he has made!
When he descends from the womb to breathe
On the day when he is born,
you open his mouth completely,
you supply his necessities.
When the chicken in the egg speaks within the shell,
you give him breath within it to maintain him.
When you have made him his fulfillment within the egg, to break it,
He comes forth from the egg to speak at his completed (time);
He walks upon his legs when he comes forth from it.

How manifold it is, what you have made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!
you did create the world according to your desire,
Whilst you were alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
Whatever is on earth, going upon (its) feet,
And what is on high, flying with its wings.

The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,
you set every man in his place,
you supply their necessities:
Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;
Their skins are distinguished,
As you distinguish the foreign peoples.
you make a Nile in the underworld,
you bring forth as you desire
To maintain the people (of Egypt)
According as you made them for yourself,
The lord of all of them, wearying (himself) with them,
The lord of every land, rising for them,
The Aten of the day, great of majesty.

All distant foreign countries, you make their life (also),
For you have set a Nile in heaven,
That it may descend for them and make waves upon the mountains,
Like the great green sea,
To water their fields in their towns.
How effective they are, your plans, O lord of eternity!
The Nile in heaven, it is for the foreign peoples
And for the beasts of every desert that go upon (their) feet;
(While the true) Nile comes from the underworld for Egypt.

Your rays suckle every meadow.
When you rise, they live, they grow for you.
you make the seasons in order to rear all that you have made,
The winter to cool them,
And the heat that they may taste you.
you have made the distant sky in order to rise therein,
In order to see all that you make.
While you were alone,
Rising in your form as the living Aten,
Appearing, shining, withdrawing or approaching,
you made millions of forms of yourself alone.
Cities, towns, fields, road, and river --
Every eye beholds you over against them,
For you are the Aten of the day over the earth....

You are in my heart,
And there is no other that knows youy
Save your son Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re,
For you have made him well-versed in your plans and in your strength.

The world came into being by your hand,
According as you have made them.
When you have risen they live,
When you set they die.
you are lifetime your own self,
For one lives (only) through you.
Eyes are (fixed) on beauty until you set.
All work is laid aside when you set in the west.
(But) when (you) rise (again),
[Everything is] made to flourish for the king,...
Since you found the earth
And raise them up for your son,
Who came forth from your body: the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, ... Akhenaten, ... and the Chief Wife of the King ... Nefertiti, living and youthful forever and ever.

[Not A Communist Shill]

The Smokes of Melancholy ~ Philip Sidney

I.

Who hath e'er felt the change of love,
And known those pangs that losers prove,
May paint my face without seeing me,
And write the state how my fancies be,
The loathsome buds grown on Sorrow's tree.

But who by hearsay speaks, and hath not fully felt
What kind of fires they be in which those spirits melt,
Shall guess, and fail, what doth displease,
Feeling my pulse, miss my disease.

II.

O no! O no! trial only shows
The bitter juice of forsaken woes;
Where former bliss, present evils do stain;
Nay, former bliss adds to present pain,
While remembrance doth both states contain.
Come, learners, then to me, the model of mishap,
Ingulphed in despair, slid down from Fortune's lap;
And, as you like my double lot,
Tread in my steps, or follow not.

III.

For me, alas! I am full resolved
Those bands, alas! shall not be dissolved;
Nor break my word, though reward come late;
Nor fail my faith in my failing fate;
Nor change in change, though change change my state:

But always own myself, with eagle-eyed Truth, to fly
Up to the sun, although the sun my wings do fry;
For if those flames burn my desire,
Yet shall I die in Phoenix' fire.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Spirit ~ Mike Scott (of The Waterboys)

man gets tired
spirit don't
man surrenders
spirit won't
man crawls
spirit flies
spirit lives when man dies

man seems
spirit is
man dreams
spirit lives
man is tethered
spirit is free
what spirit is man can be!

now we tread the fresh fields,
the higher grounds and the summer slopes
that man may someday climb on
now we tread the fresh fields
the higher ground and the summer slopes
that man may someday climb on
we're on the heels of Rimbaud
we are in the swing
chandelier-like dancing
and we feel everything
high on the wine of life
high on the wine of life
untethered and free
untethered and free
what spirit is man can be

[Not A Communist Shill]

December ~ Christina Rossetti

Nay, no closed doors for me,
But open doors and open hearts and glee
To welcome young and old.

Dimmest and brightest month am I;
My short days end, my lengthening days begin;
What matters more or less sun in the sky,
When all is sun within?

[He begins making a wreath as he sings.

Ivy and privet dark as night,
I weave with hips and haws a cheerful show,
And holly for a beauty and delight,
And milky mistletoe.

While high above them all I set
Yew twigs and Christmas roses pure and pale;
Then Spring her snowdrop and her violet
May keep, so sweet and frail;

May keep each merry singing bird,
Of all her happy birds that singing build:
For I've a carol which some shepherds heard
Once in a wintry field.

[While December concludes his song all the other Months
troop in from the garden, or advance out of the background.
The Twelve join hands in a circle, and begin
dancing round to a stately measure as the Curtain falls.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Within the silent centre of the earth
My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;

Infinite depths of unknown elements
Massed into one impenetrable mask;
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven

I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air. ~ Percy Shelley

[Not A Communist Shill]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~ Dylan Thomas

[Chae]

EIIs being sublime in here

[Skepsis]

[Not A Communist Shill]

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

~ T.S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934

[Not A Communist Shill]

PRIEST.

The stranger makes minstrelsy himself, as many chieftains may.

ORESTES.

Ay, give me a goblet, and I will sing. I am but a rude singer, but my
songs may perchance be new.

PYRRHUS.

Take him the wine. [_They bring wine and a lyre._

ORESTES.

There are two songs running in my ears this hour past; and I know not
fully even yet which of the two is better.

PYRRHUS.

Let it be something joyful, meet for a feast-day.

ORESTES.

I fancied before that one of my songs was very joyful; but now methinks
there is no joy at all in either.

PYRRHUS.

[_After looking at him questioningly for a moment._] Then give us a good
straight battle-piece, with no cowards in it, and no slaying by stealth.

ORESTES.

[_Excitedly._] That it shall be! No cowards, no slaying by stealth, and
a clean, hard fight! Ay, and it is the easier too!

PRIEST.

You will call first upon the god, stranger.

ORESTES.

Assuredly; and the god can choose the end of the lay. [_Chanting._

"Lord of Man's hope, whom no man worshippeth,
Heart of his fears, and burthen of his breath,
Queller of hate and love, hear, O Most Strong,
Most Wrathful and Unrighteous, hear, O Death!"

MEN-AT-ARMS.

Good words! Good words!

PRIEST.

God avert the omen!

[_He goes and does purifications at the fire._

ALCIMEDON.

On his own head! By Thetis! this stranger has run over with evil words
ever since he came.

PYRRHUS.

Choose another song, Sir Stranger! Men like not the name of Death.

ORESTES.

Not death! Shall I sing of women, then? They come nearest. [_Chants._

"O Light and Shadow of all things that be,
O Beauty, wild with wreckage like the sea,
Say who shall win thee, thou without a name?
O Helen, Helen, who shall die for thee?"

ALCIMEDON.

[_Starting up._] Now, by Thetis, stranger, in shape God has made you
kinglike, but within a very fool!

HERMIONE.

[_Piteously._] My mother Helen never _wished_ the men to die!

[Not A Communist Shill]

Napoleon (1821) by Alexander Pushkin

A wondrous fate is now fulfilled,
Extinguished a majestic man.
In somber prison night was stilled
Napoleon's grim, tumultuous span.
The outlawed potentate has vanished,
Bright Nike's mighty, pampered son;
For him, from all Creation banished,
Posterity has now begun.

O hero, with whose bloodied story
Long, long the earth will still resound,
Sleep in the shadow of your glory,
The desert ocean all around. . .
A tomb of rock, in splendor riding !
The urn that holds your mortal clay,
As tribal hatreds are subsiding
Now sends aloft a deathless ray.

How recently your eagles glowered
Atop a disenfranchised world,
And fallen sovereignties cowered
Beneath the thunderbolts you hurled !
Your banners at a world would shower
Destruction from their folds and dearth,
Yoke after yoke of ruthless power
You fitted on the tribes of earth

When first from ancient serfdom's languor
The world awoke to hope new-grown,
And Gaul hauled down with hands of anger
The idol from its brittle throne;
When on the milling square in gory
Collapse the royal carcase lay
And brought the fated of glory,
All-conquering freedom's shining day -

Then in the storm and strife of nations
An awesome lot you soon divined,
And nobleminded aspirations
You came to scorn in humankind.
The baneful augury of fortune
Would beckon to your lawless bent,
To self-rule unrestrained importune
The lure of disillusionment.

The risen people's youthful vigor
You knew to dissipate at length,
And liberty new-born, by rigor
Abruptly muzzled, lost its strength;
You poured, to slake the lust of chattel,
The drug of conquest in their veins,!

You sped their musters into battle
And laurels wound about their chains.

France came to fasten her besotted
Young countenance-a slave to fame,
And grandeur's finer hopes forgotten-
Upon her scintillating shame.
You gorged her swords in the undoing
Of all who rose against their doom;
On Europe, brought to crashing ruin,
Now fell the silence of the tomb.

Lo, the colossus strode to crush her
Beneath his heel with baleful zest;
Then Tilsit! ..(but no more has Russia
At that vile name to beat her breast.)
True, Tilsit yielded him new treasure
Of majesty, a final toll;
But tedious peace, but torpid leisure
Galled that insatiable soul.

Vainglorious man! Where were you faring,
Who blinded that astounding mind?
How came it in designs of daring
The Russian's heart was not divined?
At fiery sacrifice not guessing,
You idly fancied, tempting fate,
We would seek peace and count it blessing;
You came to fathom us too late. ..

Fight on, embattled Russia mine,
Recall the rights of ancient days!
The sun of Austerlitz, decline!
And Moscow, mighty city, blaze!
Brief be the time of our dishonor,
The auspices are turning now;
Hail Moscow-Russia's blessings on her!
War to extinction, thus our vow!

The diadem of iron shaking
In stiffened fingers' feeble clasp,
He stares into a chasm, quaking,
And is undone, undone at last.
Behold all Europe's legions sprawling
The wintry fields' encrimsoned glow
Bore testimony to their falling
Till blood-prints melted with the snow.

Then Europe's shackles broke asunder,
Her fury burst like tempest racks;
The curse of nationhoods like thunder
Rolled on the fleeing tyrant's tracks.
He sees the Nemesis of nations,
Her all-avenging hand up-flung;
For maiming wounds and depredations
Now payment to the full is wrung.

Redeemed are now the blights and horrors
He spread with fabled victories
By the forsaken exile's sorrows
Amidst the gloom of alien seas.
At that dry isle of desolation
Some day a northern sail will dock,
And words of reconciliation
A hand will carve upon that rock

Where, as he watched the breakers' glitter,
The glint of swords would catch his glance,
Or northern blizzards, blinding, bitter,
Or clouds across the skies of France;
Where in the wilderness, forgetting
War and posterity and throne,
On his dear son he brooded, fretting,
In grievous thought, alone, alone.

Let us hold up to reprobation
Such petty-minded men as chose
With unappeasable damnation
To stir his laurel-dark repose!

Hail him ! He launched the Russian Nation
Upon its lofty destinies
And augured ultimate salvation
For men's long-exiled liberties.

[Not A Communist Shill]

The Ghost Ship ~ Mikhail Lermontov

When darkness descends on the ocean
And stars in the firmament shine,
A battleship glides unattended,
Full sail through the billowy brine.

Its vanes do not turn in the tempest,
Its masts in the storm do not bend,
Its hatchways are open forever
For motionless guns to defend.

The ship is disowned by the captain,
Its course by the pilot unlaid,
But boldly it crosses the current,
Of breakers and shoals unafraid.

An island there is in that ocean,
As bleak as the land of the dead;
A grave has been dug in its quicksands,
And this is the Emperor's bed.

He sleeps by his enemies buried,
Unhonored by banner or mound,
A stone is on top of his coffin
To keep him for aye in the ground.

But once every May, just at midnight,
A battleship starts like a ghost,
It starts on the Emperor's death day
And lands at the ominous coast.

The Emperor quietly awakens
And rises alone from the dead;
His gray-colored tunic is on him,
His three corned hat on his head

He crosses his arms with an effort,
And, walking as if in a dream,
He noiselessly reaches the vessel
And pushes it into the stream.

To France, his beloved, he hurries,
Again to his glory and throne,
Again to his son and his comrades,
Back home to the land of his own.

And when through the vaporous darkness
It suddenly springs into sight,
His spirit revives in his bosom,
His glance is triumphant and bright.

He is quick and courageous, he marches,
He firmly approaches the shore,
He calls his attendants and marshals,
He calls his compeers as of yore.

But over his former companions
The Elbe imperturbably flows,
The desert unleashes its sandstorms,
And Russia, her pitiless snows.

And deaf to his call are the marshals:
Some perished in battles, deplored,
While others are serving new masters
And selling their saber and sword.

Bewildered and hurt by the treason,
He walks on the desolate shore,
He watches and waits for an answer
And angrily calls as before.

He waits for a last consolation
And loudly addresses his son;
He'll give him the world for the asking,
Yet, France he can promise to none.

But robbed of his kingdom and glory
Expired at the zenith his heir;
The Emperor paces and listens,
But no one will come to him there.

He stands, and he sighs, and he watches,
Till morning returns to the land;
Then tears from his eyes drop unnoticed
And heavily fall to the sand.

In silence he turns to the ocean,
And, walking as if in a dream,
He noiselessly reaches his vessel
And pushes it into the stream.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Napoleon (1848) ~ Fyodor Tyutchev

1
Revolution's Son, with a fearsome mother
fearlessly you entered battle,
drained of your strength in the struggle.
Your despotic genius could not overcome her!
Impossible conflict, pointless labour!
You carried it all in yourself.

2
Two demons served him.
Two forces merged wondrously within him:
in his head, eagles soared,
in his breast, serpents writhed:
a daring eagle-flight
of wide-spanned inspirations:
and in the very riot of audacity
there was a calculating serpent.
Yet no sanctifying power,
a force of which the mind cannot conceive,
illuminated his soul nor stepped towards him.
He was of earth, not God's flame.
He proudly sailed, despised the sea,
but on the hidden reef of faith
his fragile boat was smashed.

3
And there you stood, and Russia stood before you!
Prescient sorcerer sensing battle,
you yourself uttered the fateful words:
Let her destiny come about!
Your oath was not in vain:
Fate echoed your voice!
But from exile you tossed another riddle
at the fateful echo.
Years have passed. Now back from cramped exile
the corpse has returned to its native land.
On the banks of the river you loved,
turbulent spirit, you've rested now,
but you sleep lightly. Tormented during the night,
sometimes you will rise. You'll gaze at the East.
Suddenly, alarmed, you'll flee, as if you'd sensed
the breeze which ushers in the dawn.

Napoleon's Tomb ~ Fyodor Tyutchev

Spring's soul brings nature back to life
and everything shines, celebrating peace:
the skies' azure, the blue sea,
that wondrous tomb, the cliff!
All around are trees in thick, new colour,
their shadows, in the general silence,
barely rippled by the breathing of the waves
on the marble, warmed by spring.
..........
A thunder of his victories long ago fell silent,
but their echo still resounds.
..........
A great shade has filled man's mind,
and his solitary shadow upon a wild shore,
alien to everything, consoled by sea-birds' shrieks,
listens to the ocean's roar.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte ~ Lord Byron

’TIS done—but yesterday a King!
And arm’d with Kings to strive—
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject—yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 5
Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind 10
Who bow’d so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught’st the rest to see.
With might unquestion’d,—power to save,—
Thine only gift hath been the grave, 15
To those that worshipp’d thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition’s less than littleness!

Thanks for that lesson—it will teach
To after-warriors more 20
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach’d before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore 25
Those Pagod things of sabre sway
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.

The triumph and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife—
The earthquake voice of Victory, 30
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem’d made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife—
All quell’d—Dark spirit! what must be 35
The madness of thy memory!

The Desolator desolate!
The Victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others’ fate
A Suppliant for his own! 40
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?
To die a prince—or live a slave—
Thy choice is most ignobly brave! 45

He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream’d not of the rebound:
Chain’d by the trunk he vainly broke—
Alone—how look’d he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength, 50
An equal deed hast done at length,
And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowlers’ prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman, 1 when his burning heart 55
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger—dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home—
He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne, 60
Yet left him such a doom!
His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon’d power.

The Spaniard, 2 when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell, 65
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well: 70
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot’s shrine, nor despot’s throne.

But thou—from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung—
Too late thou leav’st the high command 75
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God’s fair world hath been 80
The footstool of a thing so mean;

And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!
And Monarchs bow’d the trembling limb,
And thank’d him for a throne! 85
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh, ne’er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind! 90

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain—
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:
If thou hadst died as honour dies, 95
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again—
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?

Weigh’d in the balance, hero dust 100
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away;
But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate, 105
To dazzle and dismay:
Nor deem’d Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.

And she, proud Austria’s mournful flower,
Thy still imperial bride; 110
How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,
Thou throneless Homicide? 115
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem,—
’Tis worth thy vanish’d diadem!

Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile— 120
It ne’er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand,
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth’s pedagogue hath now 125
Transferr’d his by-word to thy brow.

Thou Timour! in his captive’s cage 3
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prison’d rage?
But one—‘The world was mine!’ 130
Unless, like he of Babylon,
All sense is with thy sceptre gone, 4
Life will not long confine
That spirit pour’d so widely forth—
So long obey’d—so little worth! 135

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!
Foredoom’d by God—by man accurst, 140
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very Fiend’s arch mock;
He in his fall preserved his pride
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!

There was a day—there was an hour, 145
While earth was Gaul’s—Gaul thine—
When that immeasurable power
Unsated to resign,
Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo’s name, 150
And gilded thy decline
Through the long twilight of all time,
Despite some passing clouds of crime.

But thou forsooth must be a king,
And don the purple vest, 155
As if that foolish robe could wring
Rememberance from thy breast.
Where is that faded garment? where
The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear,
The star—the string—the crest? 160
Vain froward child of empire! say,
Are all thy playthings snatched away?

Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows, 165
Nor despicable state?
Yes—one—the first—the last—the best—
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath’d the name of Washington, 170
To make man blush there was but one!

Note 1. The Roman: Sylla.
Note 2. The Spaniard: “Charles V. resigned the kingdom to his son Philip, circ. October, 1555, and the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, August 27, 1556, and entered the Jeronymite Monastery of St. Justus at Placencia in Estremadura. Before his death, September 21, 1558, he dressed himself in his shroud, was laid in his coffin, ‘joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral.’” (Robertson’s Charles V.)
Note 3. Captive’s cage: the cage of Bajazet, said to be a fable. “After the battle of Angora, July 20, 1402, Bajazet, whose escape from prison had been planned by one of his sons, was chained during the night, and placed in a kafes (kàfess), a Turkish word, which signifies either a cage or a grated room or bed. Hence the legend.” (Hist. de l’Empire Othoman, par J. Von Hammer-Purgstall, quoted by E. H. Coleridge.)
Note 4. All sense with thy sceptre gone: in a letter to Murray, dated June 14, 1814, Byron writes: “Have you heard that Bertrand has returned to Paris with the account of Napoleon’s having lost his senses? It is a report: but, if true, I must like Mr. Fitzgerald and Jeremiah (of lamentable memory), lay claim to prophecy.”
http://www.bartleby.com/333/543.html

[Computer Loser]

-Drake, 2011

[Not A Communist Shill]

Sea Fever ~ John Masefield

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Little Gidding (the last of Four Quartets) ~ T. S. Eliot

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?
If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city--
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: "What! are you here?"
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other--
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: "The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember."
And he: "I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold fricton of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and sould begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives - unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as an attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of not immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet,
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us - a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Helvellyn
To ——, on Her First Ascent to the Summit of Helvellyn
by William Wordsworth

Inmate of a mountain dwelling,
Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed
From the watch-towers of Helvellyn;
Awed, delighted, and amazed!

Potent was the spell that bound thee,
Not unwilling to obey;
For blue Ether’s arms, flung round thee,
Stilled the pantings of dismay.

Lo the dwindled woods and meadows!
What a vast abyss is there!
Lo the clouds, the solemn shadows,
And the glistenings,—heavenly fair!

And a record of commotion
Which a thousand ridges yield;
Ridge and gulf and distant ocean
Gleaming like a silver shield!

Now take flight; possess, inherit
Alps or Andes,—they are thine!
With the morning’s roseate spirit,
Sweep their length of snowy line;

Or survey their bright dominions
In the gorgeous colors drest
Flung from off the purple pinions
Evening spreads throughout the west!

Thine are all the coral fountains
Warbling in each sparry vault
Of the untrodden lunar mountains;
Listen to their songs!—or halt,

To Niphates’ top invited,
Whither spiteful Satan steered;
Or descend where the ark alighted,
When the green earth reappeared;—

For the power of hills is on thee,
As was witnessed through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!

[Delilah]

"a leaf returns to the branch,
butterfly"

author unknown

[niffer]

life is very pain
a poem by man

LIFE IS FULL OF PAIN
as i sit
trap in box

MANY MANS FEEL THE PAIN
of not be as manly as me

i sympathize, for i
once was trap in box
worry about not be as
MANLY AS MYSELF

this is pain of life
womyn have LUCK
for they dont feel this pain

unless they transgender
man trap in woman body
THE HORROR

life is very pain

man has more http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/arts-and-entertainment/36594-pome-life-pain.html

[niffer]

Seagull, you fly across the horizon
Into the misty morning sun.
Nobody asks you where you are going,
Nobody knows where you're from.

Here is a man asking the question
Is this really the end of the world?
Seagull, you must have known for a long time
The shape of things to come.
Now you fly, through the sky, never asking why,
And you fly all around 'til somebody, Shoots you
down.
- Bad Company