Taking a short break!

Hello friends!

I will have to leave this blog alone for about one week. The reason is that I am swamped with work at the moment. I am hoping all will be back to normal next Monday, April 5th.

:-)
Sandra.

She, To Him IV

THIS love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee--
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by;
But this I know, my being is but thine own--
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.

And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
Canst thou then hate me as an envier
Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
The more it shapes its moans in selfish-wise.

Thomas Hardy

She, To Him III

I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.

Thomas Hardy

She, To Him

I

WHEN you shall see me lined by tool of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same--
One who would die to spare you touch of ill!--
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?

Thomas Hardy

Heretics All

Heretics all, whoever you may be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.

But Catholic men that live upon wine
Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine;
Wherever I travel I find it so,
Benedicamus Domino.

On childing women that are forelorn,
And men that sweat in nothing but scorn:
That is on all that ever were born,
Miserere Domine.

To my poor self on my deathbed,
And all my dear companions dead,
Because of the love that I bore them,
Dona Eis Requiem.

Hilaire Belloc

Fragment

Yes I will take a cheerful tone
And feign to share their heartless glee,
But I would rather weep alone
Than laugh amid their revelry.

Anne Bronte

The Complaint

Away! away!
Tempt me no more, insidious Love:
Thy soothing sway
Long did my youthful bosom prove:
At length thy treason is discern'd,
At length some dear-bought caution earn'd:
Away! nor hope my riper age to move.

I know, I see
Her merit. Needs it now be shown,
Alas! to me?
How often, to myself unknown,
The graceful, gentle, virtuous maid
Have I admired! How often said—
What joy to call a heart like hers one's own!

But, flattering god,
O squanderer of content and ease
In thy abode
Will care's rude lesson learn to please?
O say, deceiver, hast thou won
Proud Fortune to attend thy throne,
Or placed thy friends above her stern decrees?

Mark Akenside

Untitled

...Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew--
...I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

...Love lies in sleep,
'Tis happiness of healthy dreams,
...Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

...'Tis seen in flowers,
And in the even's pearly dew,
...On earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.

...'Tis heard in Spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
...On angel's wing
Bring love and music to the mind.

...And where's the voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
...As Nature's choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

...Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
...I love the fond,
The faithful, young, and true.

John Clare

Brave New World

One spoke: Come, let us gaily go
With laughter, love and lust,
Since in a century or so
We'll all be boneyard dust.
When unborn shadows hold the screen,
(Our betters, I'll allow)
'Twill be as if we'd never been,
A hundred years from now.

When we have played life's lively game
Right royally we'll rot,
And not a soul will care a damn
The why or how we fought;
To grub for gold or grab for fame
Or raise a holy row,
It will be all the bloody same
A hundred years from now.

Said I: Look! I have built a tower
Upon you lonely hill,
Designed to be a daughter's dower,
Yet when my heart is still,
The stone I set with horny hand
And salty sweat of brow,
A record of my strength will sand
A hundred years from now.

There's nothing lost and nothing vain
In all this world so wide;
The ocean hoards each drop of rain
To swell its sweeping tide;
The desert seeks each grain of sand
It's empire to endow,
And we a bright brave world have planned
A hundred years from now.

And all we are and all we do
Will bring that world to be;
Our strain and pain let us not rue,
Though other eyes shall see;
For other hearts will bravely beat
And lips will sing of how
We strove to make life sane and sweet
A hundred years from now.

Robert Service

Mere colour

"Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways."

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Folly

The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Witty

A witty saying proves nothing.

Voltaire

Distrust

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead

Moodling

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Brenda Ueland

Sunbeams

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

Robert Southey

Power

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

Elie Wiesel

Good and evil

If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Two sides

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justiceby condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves
conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."

Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_

Once the blossoms are gone

Once the blossoms are gone, the fruit becomes visible;
when one fades away, the other starts to grow.
How could bread give strength without being broken?
How could the grape give wine without being trodden?

Rumi
Mathnawi I, 2930-31

Amoret

If rightly tuneful bards decide,
If it be fix'd in Love's decrees,
That Beauty ought not to be tried
But by its native power to please,
Then tell me, youths and lovers, tell—
What fair can Amoret excel?

Behold that bright unsullied smile,
And wisdom speaking in her mien:
Yet—she so artless all the while,
So little studious to be seen—
We naught but instant gladness know,
Nor think to whom the gift we owe.

But neither music, nor the powers
Of youth and mirth and frolic cheer,
Add half the sunshine to the hours,
Or make life's prospect half so clear,
As memory brings it to the eye
From scenes where Amoret was by.

This, sure, is Beauty's happiest part;
This gives the most unbounded sway;
This shall enchant the subject heart
When rose and lily fade away;
And she be still, in spite of Time,
Sweet Amoret in all her prime.

Mark Akenside

A Letter from Italy

Salve magna parens frugum Saturnia tellus,
Magna virûm! tibi res antiquæ laudis et artis
Aggredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.
Virg. Geor. 2.

While you, my Lord, the rural shades admire,
And from Britannia's public posts retire,
Nor longer, her ungrateful sons to please,
For their advantage sacrifice your ease;

Me into foreign realms my fate conveys,
Through nations fruitful of immortal lays,
Where the soft season and inviting clime
Conspire to trouble your repose with rhyme.

For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground;
For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung
That not a mountain rears its head unsung,
Renown'd in verse each shady thicket grows,
And ev'ry stream in heavenly numbers flows

How am I pleas'd to search the hills and woods
For rising springs and celebrated floods!
To view the Nar, tumultuous in his course,
And trace the smooth Clitumnus to his source,
To see the Mincio draw his wat'ry store
Through the long windings of a fruitful shore,
And hoary Albula's infected tide
O'er the warm bed of smoking sulphur glide.

Fir'd with a thousand raptures I survey
Eridanus through flowery meadows stray,
The king of floods! that rolling o'er the plains
The towering Alps of half their moisture drains,
And proudly swoln with a whole winter's snows,
Distributes wealth and plenty where he flows.

Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng,
I look for streams immortaliz'd in song,
That lost in silence and oblivion lie,
(Dumb are their fountains and their channels dry)
Yet run forever by the Muse's skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still.

Sometimes to gentle Tiber I retire,
And the fam'd river's empty shores admire,
That destitute of strength derives its course
From thrifty urns and an unfruitful source;
Yet sung so often in poetic lays,
With scorn the Danube and the Nile surveys;
So high the deathless Muse exalts her theme!
Such was the Boin, a poor inglorious stream,
That in Hibernian vales obscurely stray'd,
And unobserv'd in wild meanders play'd;
'Till by your lines and Nassau's sword renown'd,
Its rising billows through the world resound,
Where-e'er the hero's godlike acts can pierce,
Or where the fame of an immortal verse.
Oh could the Muse my ravish'd breast inspire
With warmth like yours, and raise an equal fire,
Unnumber'd beauties in my verse should shine,
And Virgil's Italy should yield to mine!
See how the golden groves around me smile,
That shun the coast of Britain's stormy isle,
Or when transplanted and preserv'd with care,
Curse the cold clime, and starve in northern air.
Here kindly warmth their mounting juice ferments
To nobler tastes, and more exalted scents:
Ev'n the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom,
And trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
Bear me, some god, to Baia's gentle seats,
Or cover me in Umbria's green retreats;
Where western gales eternally reside,
And all the seasons lavish all their pride:
Blossoms, and fruits, and flowers together rise,
And the whole year in gay confusion lies.
Immortal glories in my mind revive,
And in my soul a thousand passions strive,
When Rome's exalted beauties I descry
Magnificent in piles of ruin lie.
An amphitheatre's amazing height
Here fills my eye with terror and delight,
That on its public shows unpeopled Rome,
And held uncrowded nations in its womb:
Here pillars rough with sculpture pierce the skies:
And here the proud triumphal arches rise,
Where the old Romans deathless acts display'd,
Their base degenerate progeny upbraid:
Whole rivers here forsake the fields below,
And wond'ring at their height through airy channels flow.
Still to new scenes my wand'ring Muse retires,
And the dumb show of breathing rocks admires;
Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown,
And soften'd into flesh the rugged stone.
In solemn silence, a majestic band,
Heroes, and gods, the Roman consuls stand,
Stern tyrants, whom their cruelties renown,
And emperors in Parian marble frown;
While the bright dames, to whom they humbly su'd,
Still show the charms that their proud hearts subdu'd.

Fain would I Raphael's godlike art rehearse,
And show th' immortal labours in my verse,
Where from the mingled strength of shade and light
A new creation rises to my sight,
Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow,
So warm with life his blended colours glow.
From theme to theme with secret pleasure tost,
Amidst the soft variety I'm lost:
Here pleasing airs my ravish'd soul confound
With circling notes and labyrinths of sound;
Here domes and temples rise in distant views,
And opening palaces invite my Muse.

How has kind Heav'n adorn'd the happy land,
And scatter'd blessings with a wasteful hand!
But what avail her unexhausted stores,
Her blooming mountains, and her sunny shores,
With all the gifts that heav'n and earth impart,
The smiles of nature, and the charms of art,
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns,
And tyranny usurps her happy plains?
The poor inhabitant beholds in vain
The red'ning orange and the swelling grain:
Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines,
And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines:
Starves, in the midst of nature's bounty curst,
And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst.

Oh Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eas'd of her load subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of Nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.

Thee, goddess, thee, Britannia's Isle adores;
How has she oft exhausted all her stores,
How oft in fields of death thy presence sought,
Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought!
On foreign mountains may the sun refine
The grape's soft juice, and mellow it to wine,
With citron groves adorn a distant soil,
And the fat olive swell with floods of oil:
We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies,
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Tho' o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine:
'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's Isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains
smile.

Others with towering piles may please the sight,
And in their proud aspiring domes delight;
A nicer touch to the stretch'd canvas give,
Or teach their animated rocks to live:
'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate,
And hold in balance each contending state,
To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war,
And answer her afflicted neighbours' pray'r.
The Dane and Swede, rous'd up by fierce alarms,
Bless the wise conduct of her pious arms:
Soon as her fleets appear, their terrors cease,
And all the northern world lies hush'd in peace.

Th' ambitious Gaul beholds with secret dread
Her thunder aim'd at his aspiring head,
And fain her godlike sons would disunite
By foreign gold, or by domestic spite;
But strives in vain to conquer or divide,
Whom Nassau's arms defend and counsels guide.

Fir'd with the name, which I so oft have found
The distant climes and different tongues resound,
I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain.

But I've already troubled you too long,
Nor dare attempt a more advent'rous song.
My humble verse demands a softer theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling stream;
Unfit for heroes; whom immortal lays,
And lines like Virgil's, or like yours, should praise.

Joseph Addison

Fluctuations

What though the sun had left my sky;
To save me from despair
The blessed moon arose on high,
And shone serenely there.

I watched her, with a tearful gaze,
Rise slowly o'er the hill,
While through the dim horizon's haze
Her light gleamed faint and chill.

I thought such wan and lifeless beams
Could ne'er my heart repay,
For the bright sun's most transient gleams
That cheered me through the day:

But as above that mist's control
She rose, and brighter shone,
I felt her light upon my soul;
But now -- that light is gone!

Thick vapours snatched her from my sight,
And I was darkling left,
All in the cold and gloomy night,
Of light and hope bereft:

Until, methought, a little star
Shone forth with trembling ray,
To cheer me with its light afar --
But that, too, passed away.

Anon, an earthly meteor blazed
The gloomy darkness through;
I smiled, yet trembled while I gazed --
But that soon vanished too!

And darker, drearier fell the night
Upon my spirit then; --
But what is that faint struggling light?
Is it the Moon again?

Kind Heaven! increase that silvery gleam,
And bid these clouds depart,
And let her soft celestial beam
Restore my fainting heart!


Anne Bronte

The Early Morning

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

Hilaire Belloc

She Hears the Storm

There was a time in former years--
While my roof-tree was his--
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,
'The prickling rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old.'

But now the fitful chimney-roar,
The drone of Thorncombe trees,
The Froom in flood upon the moor,
The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty-wick'd,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves drops on the window flicked,
The clanking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;
He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.

Thomas Hardy

Song

I love all that thou lovest,
...Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
...And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms
...Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
...Every thing almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
...And such society
As is quiet, wise and good;
...Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love--though he has wings,
...And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
...Spirit, I love thee--
Thou art love and life! Oh, come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hopes and fears

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

François de la Rochefoucauld

Myth

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

James Feibleman

Boring

I have a fear of being boring.

Bale, Christian

Vacation

No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.

Elbert Hubbard

Originality

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Josh Billings

More

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

Bill Hoest

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Mark Twain

Virtue

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

Socrates

Sapphic Fragment

"Thou shalt be--Nothing."--Omar Khayyam.
"Tombless, with no remembrance."--W. Shakespeare.

Dead shalt thou lie; and nought
Be told of thee or thought,
For thou hast plucked not of the Muses' tree:
And even in Hades' halls
Amidst thy fellow-thralls
No friendly shade thy shade shall company!

Thomas Hardy

On a Fine Morning

I

Whence comes Solace?--Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

Thomas Hardy

Neutral Tones

WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Thomas Hardy

Nature's Questioning

WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to look at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
As though the master's ways
Through the long teaching days
Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.

And on them stirs, in lippings mere
(As if once clear in call,
But now scarce breathed at all)--
"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

"Has some Vast Imbecility,
Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

"Or come we of an Automaton
Unconscious of our pains?...
Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

"Or is it that some high Plan betides,
As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good,
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?"

Thus things around. No answerer I....
Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
And Earth's old glooms and pains
Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbors nigh.

Thomas Hardy

Farewell

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.

O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

If I may ne'er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.

That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.

That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; --
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.

Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.

And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?

Anne Bronte

To the Fair Clarinda

Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justifie my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint;
And without Blushes I the Youth persue,
When so much beauteous Woman is in view.
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv'st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves.

Though beauteous Wonder of a different kind,
Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join'd;
When e'er the Manly part of thee, wou'd plead
Though tempts us with the Image of the Maid,
While we the noblest Passions do extend
The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend.v

Arphra Behn

A Trinity

Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.

Hilaire Belloc

True Beauty

May I find a woman fair,
And her mind as clear as air,
If her beauty go alone,
'Tis to me as if't were none.

May I find a woman rich,
And not of too high a pitch;
If that pride should cause disdain,
Tell me, lover, where's thy gain?

May I find a woman wise,
And her falseliood not disguise;
Hath she wit as she hath will,
Double arm'd she is to ill.

May I find a woman kind,
And not wavering like the wind:
How should I call that love mine,
When 'tis his, and his, and thine?

May I find a woman true,
There is Bettutv's fairest hue,
There is Beauty, Love, and Wit:
Happy he can compass it.

Francis Beaumont

On the Marriage of a Beauteous Young Gentlewoman with an Ancient Man

Fondly, too curious Nature, to adorn
Aurora with the blushes of the morn:
Why do her rosy lips breath gums and spice;
Unto the East, and sweet to Paradise?
Why do her eyes open the day? her hand
And voice intrance the panther, and command
Incensed winds; her breasts, the tents of love,
Smooth as the godded swan, or Venus' dove;
Soft as the balmy dew whose every touch
Is pregnant; but why those rich spoils, when such
Wonder and perfection must be led
A bridal captive unto Tithon's bed?
Ag'd, and deformed Tithon! must thy twine
Circle and blast at once what care and time
Had made for wonder? must pure beauty have
No other foil but ruin and a grave?
So have I seen the pride of Nature's store,
The orient pearl chained to the sooty Moor;
So hath the diamond's bright ray been set
In night, and wedded to the negro jet.
See, see, how thick those showers of pearl do fall
To weep her ransom, or her funeral,
Whose every treasured drop, congealed, might bring,
Freedom and ransom to a fettered kin,
While tyrant Wealth stands by, and laughs to see
How he can wed love and antipathy.
Hymen, thy pine burns with adulterate fire;
Thou and thy quivered boy did once conspire
To mingle equal flames, and then no shine
Of gold, but beauty, dressed the Paphian shrine;
Roses and lilies kiss'd; the amorous vine
Did with the fair and straight-limb'd elm entwine.

Francis Beaumont

Verses Written In An Alcove

NOW the moon-beam's trembling lustre
Silvers o'er the dewy green,
And in soft and shadowy colours
Sweetly paints the checquer'd scene.

Here between the opening branches
Streams a flood of soften'd light,
There the thick and twisted foliage
Spreads the browner gloom of night.

There is sure the haunt of fairies,
In yon cool Alcove they play ;
Care can never cross the threshold,
Care was only made for day.

Far from hence be noisy clamour,
Sick disgust and anxious fear ;
Pining grief and wasting anguish
Never keep their vigils here.

Tell no tales of sheeted spectres,
Rising from the quiet tomb ;
Fairer forms this cell shall visit,
Brighter visions gild the gloom.

Choral songs and sprightly voices
Echo from her cell shall call ;
Sweeter, sweeter than the murmur
Of the distant water fall.

Every ruder gust of passion
Lull'd with music dies away,
Till within the charmed bosom
None but soft affections play :

Soft, as when the evening breezes
Gently stir the poplar grove ;
Brighter than the smile of summer,
Sweeter than the breath of love.

Thee, th' inchanted Muse shall follow,
LISSY ! to the rustic cell,
And each careless note repeating
Tune them to her charming shell.

Not the Muse who wreath'd with laurel,
Solemn stalks with tragic gait,
And in clear and lofty vision
Sees the future births of fate ;

Not the maid who crown'd with cypress
Sweeps along in scepter'd pall,
And in sad and solemn accents
Mourns the crested heroe's fall ;

But that other smiling sister,
With the blue and laughing eye,
Singing, in a lighter measure,
Strains of woodland harmony :

All unknown to fame or glory,
Easy, blith and debonair,
Crown'd with flowers, her careless tresses
Loosely floating on the air.

Then, when next the star of evening
Softly sheds the silent dew,
Let me in this rustic temple,
LISSY ! meet the Muse and you.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

To Wisdom

O WISDOM ! if thy soft controul
Can sooth the sickness of the soul,
Can bid the warring passions cease,
And breathe the balm of tender peace,
WISDOM ! I bless thy gentle sway,
And ever, ever will obey.

But if thou com'st with frown austere
To nurse the brood of care and fear ;
To bid our sweetest passions die,
And leave us in their room a sigh ;

Of if thine aspect stern have power
To wither each poor transient flower,
That cheers the pilgrimage of woe,
And dry the springs whence hope should flow ;
WISDOM, thine empire I disclaim,
Thou empty boast of pompous name !
In gloomy shade of cloisters dwell,
But never haunt my chearful cell.
Hail to pleasure's frolic train ;
Hail to fancy's golden reign ;
Festive mirth, and laughter wild,
Free and sportful as the child ;
Hope with eager sparkling eyes,
And easy faith, and fond surprise :
Let these, in fairy colours drest,
Forever share my careless breast ;
Then, tho' wise I may not be,
The wise themselves shall envy me.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

August Night

On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
...In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness, ...But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.

I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
...I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, 'Look down, see the glow-worm!'
...It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.

We watched while it brightened as though it were breathed on and burning,
...this tiny creature moving over earth's floor . . .
'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle,'
...You said, and no more.

Sara Teasdale

Human nature

"It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion."

Anatole France

How happy

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

True master

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

Einstein, Albert

Accurate

We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.

Robbins, Anthony

Unresting cells

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt held in cohesion by unresting cells. Which work they know not why, which never halt, myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

Masefield, John