The Ghost

I went back to the clanging city,

I went back where my old loves stayed,

But my heart was full of my new love's glory,

My eyes were laughing and unafraid.

I met one who had loved me madly

And told his love for all to hear--

But we talked of a thousand things together,

The past was buried too deep to fear.

I met the other, whose love was given

With never a kiss and scarcely a word--

Oh, it was then the terror took me

Of words unuttered that breathed and stirred.

Oh, love that lives its life with laughter

Or love that lives its life with tears

Can die--but love that is never spoken

Goes like a ghost through the winding years. . . .

I went back to the clanging city,

I went back where my old loves stayed,

My heart was full of my new love's glory,--

But my eyes were suddenly afraid.

Sara Teasdale

Four Winds

"Four winds blowing through the sky,

You have seen poor maidens die,

Tell me then what I shall do

That my lover may be true."

Said the wind from out the south,

"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,"

And the wind from out the west,

"Wound the heart within his breast,"

And the wind from out the east,

"Send him empty from the feast,"

And the wind from out the north,

"In the tempest thrust him forth;

When thou art more cruel than he,

Then will Love be kind to thee."

Sara Teasdale

To a Star

Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene
Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,
Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,
Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
Than the expiring morn-star's paly fires:--
Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
And all is hushed,--all, save the voice of Love,
Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals
Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look
In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
Became enamoured--


Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Helen

I saw thee once--once only--years ago:
I must not say _how_ many--but _not_ many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.


Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd--alas, in sorrow!


Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight--
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me--(O Heaven!--O God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)--
Save only thee and me. I paused--I looked--
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All--all expired save thee--save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes--
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them--they were the world to me.
I saw but them--saw only them for hours--
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep--
How fathomless a capacity for love!


But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._
They _would not_ go--they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
_They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me--they lead me through the years.


They are my ministers--yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle--
My duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven--the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still--two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!


Edgar Allan Poe

To the Queen of My Heart

1.

Shall we roam, my love,

To the twilight grove,

When the moon is rising bright;

Oh, I'll whisper there,

In the cool night-air,

What I dare not in broad daylight!

2.

I'll tell thee a part

Of the thoughts that start

To being when thou art nigh;

And thy beauty, more bright

Than the stars' soft light,

Shall seem as a weft from the sky.

3.

When the pale moonbeam

On tower and stream

Sheds a flood of silver sheen,

How I love to gaze

As the cold ray strays

O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!

4.

Wilt thou roam with me

To the restless sea,

And linger upon the steep,

And list to the flow

Of the waves below

How they toss and roar and leap?

5.

Those boiling waves,

And the storm that raves

At night o'er their foaming crest,

Resemble the strife

That, from earliest life,

The passions have waged in my breast.

6.

Oh, come then, and rove

To the sea or the grove,

When the moon is rising bright;

And I'll whisper there,

In the cool night-air,

What I dare not in broad daylight.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

That The Night Come

SHE lived in storm and strife,

Her soul had such desire

For what proud death may bring

That it could not endure

The common good of life,

But lived as 'twere a king

That packed his marriage day

With banneret and pennon,

Trumpet and kettledrum,

And the outrageous cannon,

To bundle time away

That the night come.

William Butler Yeats

Parting

He. Dear, I must be gone

While night Shuts the eyes

Of the household spies;

That song announces dawn.

She. No, night's bird and love's

Bids all true lovers rest,

While his loud song reproves

The murderous stealth of day.

He. Daylight already flies

From mountain crest to crest

She. That light is from the moon.

He. That bird...

She. Let him sing on,

I offer to love's play

My dark declivities.

William Butler Yeats

Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.


I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.


I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,


and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


Pablo Neruda

Spring

Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing fold,

And in the hollowed haystack at its side

The shepherd lies o' night now, wakeful-eyed

At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.

The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old:

And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,

By her Spring cry the moorhen's nest is found,

Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.

Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,

And chill the current where the young reeds stand

As green and close as the young wheat on land

Yet here the cuckoo and cuckoo-flower

Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour

Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like a curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.


Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.


Sara Teasdale

I Shall Go Back

I shall go back again to the bleak shore

And build a little shanty on the sand

In such a way that the extremest band

Of brittle seaweed shall escape my door

But by a yard or two; and nevermore

Shall I return to take you by the hand.

I shall be gone to what I understand,

And happier than I ever was before.

The love that stood a moment in your eyes,

The words that lay a moment on your tongue,

Are one with all that in a moment dies,

A little under-said and over-sung.

But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies

Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart

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.


Edna St. Vincent Millay

Indeed this very love which is my boast

Indeed this very love which is my boast,

And which, when rising up from breast to brow,

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow

To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,—

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as a good thing of my own:

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne,—

And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The gentian weaves her fringes

The gentian weaves her fringes,

The maple's loom is red.
My departing blossoms
Obviate parade.


A brief, but patient illness,
An hour to prepare;
And one, below this morning,
Is where the angels are.


It was a short procession, --
The bobolink was there,
An aged bee addressed us,
And then we knelt in prayer.


We trust that she was willing, --
We ask that we may be.
Summer, sister, seraph,
Let us go with thee!


In the name of the bee
And of the butterfly
And of the breeze, amen!


Emily Dickinson

Morality and religion

"Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you're told. Religion is doing what you're told, not matter what is right."


Jerry Sturdivant

Pairs

Life's possibilities come in pairs: goodness and evil, short and tall, strong and weak, hot and cold--and also pain and pleasure. The existence of one assures the possibility of the other. Every possible blessing is also a possible pain.


Take love out of the human heart and you will also be taking away most of our capacity to be hurt, but that is too high a price to pay.


Charles Livingston Allen (1913-2005)

Separate life

One should count each day a separate life.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The story of a love

The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity-love. And the story of a love is not important-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.


Helen Hayes

Read

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.”

Christopher Morley

Adventure

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself."

Amelia Earhart

Quiet minds

“Quiet minds can't be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Balloon Of The Mind

HANDS, do what you're bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.

William Butler Yeats

Running To Paradise

As I came over Windy Gap
They threw a halfpenny into my cap.
For I am running to paradise;
And all that I need do is to wish
And somebody puts his hand in the dish
To throw me a bit of salted fish:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

My brother Mourteen is worn out
With skelping his big brawling lout,
And I am running to paradise;
A poor life, do what he can,
And though he keep a dog and a gun,
A serving-maid and a serving-man:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to paradise;
And many a darling wit's grown dull
That tossed a bare heel when at school,
Now it has filled a old sock full:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurty upon my way.
For I am running to paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

William Butler Yeats

On Woman

MAY God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.
Though pedantry denies,
It's plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
Yet never could, although
They say he counted grass,
Count all the praises due
When Sheba was his lass,
When she the iron wrought, or
When from the smithy fire
It shuddered in the water:
Harshness of their desire
That made them stretch and yawn,
pleasure that comes with sleep,
Shudder that made them one.
What else He give or keep
God grant me -- no, not here,
For I am not so bold
To hope a thing so dear
Now I am growing old,
But when, if the tale's true,
The Pestle of the moon
That pounds up all anew
Brings me to birth again --
To find what once I had
And know what once I have known,
Until I am driven mad,
Sleep driven from my bed.
By tenderness and care.
pity, an aching head,
Gnashing of teeth, despair;
And all because of some one
perverse creature of chance,
And live like Solomon
That Sheba led a dance.

William Butler Yeats

The Bells

I.

Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In their icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.


II.

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten golden-notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!


III.

Hear the loud alarum bells--
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now--now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells--
Of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!


IV.

Hear the tolling of the bells--
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people--ah, the people--
They that dwell up in the steeple.
All alone,
And who toiling, toiling, toiling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone--
They are neither man nor woman--
They are neither brute nor human--
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells--
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells--
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells--
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe

To E.

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you--
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

Sara Teasdale

The Sea Limits

Consider the sea's listless chime;
Time's self it is, made audible -
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's -it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands
Grey and not known, along its path.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Spring

Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there,
Birds' songand birds' love
And you with gold for hair!
Birds' songand birds' love
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever.

Men's love and birds' love,
And women's love and men's!
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens!
You the queen of the wrens --
We'll be birds of a feather,
I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens,
And all in a nest together.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

To—

Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs
Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell,
Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well
Would passion arm me for the enterprise:
But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;
No cuirass glistens on my bosom's swell;
I am no happy shepherd of the dell
Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes.
Yet must I dote upon thee,—call thee sweet,
Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses
When steeped in dew rich to intoxication.
Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 'tis meet,
And when the moon her pallid face discloses,
I'll gather some by spells, and incantation.

John Keats

And therefore if to love can be desert

And therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart,—
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now 'gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music,—why advert
To these things? O Beloved, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on still in love, and yet in vain,—
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Valentine

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure
Divine- a talisman- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
The words- the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets- as the name is a poet's, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto- Mendez Ferdinando-
Still form a synonym for Truth- Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

Edgar Allan Poe

All things else

I doubt if in any other scriptures of the world there is a more radical statement of ethics. If we fail in love, we fail in all things else.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924-2006)

Nothing

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:2

Senza imaginazione

Lasciamo le belle donne agli uomini senza immaginazione.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) in Donne

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Walt Whitman

Three treasures

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them: The first is deep love, The second is frugality, And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world. Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous. Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.

Lao Tzu

Round in a ring

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

Robert Frost (1875-1963) American Poet

Eyeglasses

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.

Joubert, Joseph

Do and undo

It is the passions that do and undo everything.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

Worship

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Worthwhile

Love does not make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

Franklin P. Jones

Truths

There are no whole truths; all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Alfred North Whitehead

Flash

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Henri Poincare

Wives

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

Socrates

Those who dream

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allan Poe

Pandora´s Box

Possibilities
dance in her head.
What pleasures
might there be?
Riches unbounded,
beauty unsurpassed,
joy beyond imagination.

But, what —
what if instead, dread
lurks there,
the terrors of centuries
waiting
in tenebrous depths?

Momentarily
a fleeting thought leaves
only a chill
Nothingness —
could it be empty?

Mind in chaos,
unbearable curiosity
outweighs all caution;
she can no longer
restrain her hand.

Trembling with
anticipated delight
(or is it fear?)
fingers fumble
with the latch.

© 1997 Judy Anne
Source: http://www.womenfolk.com/anne/box.htm

Symbols

A STORM BEATEN old watch-tower,
A blind hermit rings the hour.
All-destroying sword-blade still
Carried by the wandering fool.
Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
Beauty and fool together laid.

William Butler Yeats

O Do Not Love Too Long

SWEETHEART, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed --
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.

William Butler Yeats

Mad As The Mist And Snow

Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands,
Plato stands below,
And here is Tully's open page.
How many years ago
Were you and I unlettered lads
Mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
What makes me shudder so?
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow.

William Butler Yeats