THE SCRAPBOOK

A new blog

2011-12-25T08:30:00.000-02:00

Color Book

I will be posting here until I decide what to do with this one.

Happy Holidays!!!:-)))

S.

Changes

2011-12-20T07:22:00.000-02:00

This blog will go through some changes soon, so there won´t be any updates at least until mid-January. Meanwhile, you can follow my Facebook page - see link on the right.

Thank you all!

:-)

S.

I will be silent for a while....

2011-12-17T07:13:00.000-02:00

It is not what I expected Santa to bring me this year. Only yesterday I almost bought an external hard drive, giving up at the last minute. Had I bought it, this would not have happened.

My pen drived just crashed. It is not the worst that could happen to anyone, but lost EVERYTHING that was in there - personal files, my writings, ebook collection, my image collection.... including the ones I used to post here daily. I spent years gathering all that and now it us gone It had been a while since I backed up some of it, so it is amazing how much data I lost. Only last week I deleted my entire collection of vintage postcards from my computer in order to free some memory space... Now it is all gone.

I will have to start all over again and it won´t be easy, I am not even sure I can. I will not abandon this blog, but I will probably be silent for a while.

Thank you all!

Wish me luck!

:-)

Sandra

Hard to plan

2011-12-17T06:18:00.000-02:00

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

Memories

2011-12-17T06:16:00.000-02:00

“And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

The best

2011-12-17T06:14:00.000-02:00

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”

Jane Austen

Looking out

2011-12-17T06:13:00.000-02:00

“In looking out upon the universe, we forget that the universe is looking at itself.”

Alan Watts

My favorite feeling in the world

2011-12-17T06:12:00.000-02:00

“I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I’m alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.”

Haruki Murakami

It does

2011-12-17T06:07:00.000-02:00

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

William James

Within

2011-12-17T06:04:00.000-02:00

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”

Henry David Thoreau

When you sell a man a book

2011-12-17T06:02:00.000-02:00

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

Christopher Morley

Fool

2011-12-17T05:53:00.000-02:00

Every fool finds a greater one to admire them.

Bioleau

Misunderstood

2011-12-16T15:31:00.000-02:00

"Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Knowing your darkness

2011-12-16T15:12:00.000-02:00

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

C.G. Jung

Sheltered

2011-12-16T15:05:00.000-02:00

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom: absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this or die like this without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”

Anaïs Nin

Dwell

2011-12-16T14:56:00.000-02:00

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

Marcus Aurelius

Infinitely stranger

2011-12-16T14:45:00.000-02:00

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Memory

2011-12-16T14:42:00.000-02:00

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”

Mario Vargas Llosa

I Have Lived With Shades

2011-12-16T07:57:00.000-02:00

I have lived with shades so long,

And talked to them so oft,

Since forth from cot and croft

I went mankind among,

That sometimes they

In their dim style

Will pause awhile

To hear my say;

And take me by the hand,

And lead me through their rooms

In the To-be, where Dooms

Half-wove and shapeless stand:

And show from there

The dwindled dust

And rot and rust

Of things that were.

III

"Now turn," spake they to me

One day: "Look whence we came,

And signify his name

Who gazes thence at thee." -

--"Nor name nor race

Know I, or can,"

I said, "Of man

So commonplace.

"He moves me not at all;

I note no ray or jot

Of rareness in his lot,

Or star exceptional.

Into the dim

Dead throngs around

He'll sink, nor sound

Be left of him."

"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,

Hath accents pitched like thine -

Thy mould and his define

A likeness each to each -

But go! Deep pain

Alas, would be

His name to thee,

And told in vain!"

"O memory, where is now my youth,

Who used to say that life was truth?"

"I saw him in a crumbled cot

Beneath a tottering tree;

That he as phantom lingers there

Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my joy,

Who lived with me in sweet employ?"

"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,

Where laughter used to be;

That he as phantom wanders there

Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my hope,

Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?"

"I saw her in a tomb of tomes,

Where dreams are wont to be;

That she as spectre haunteth there

Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my faith,

One time a champion, now a wraith?"

"I saw her in a ravaged aisle,

Bowed down on bended knee;

That her poor ghost outflickers there

Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my love,

That rayed me as a god above?"

"I saw him by an ageing shape

Where beauty used to be;

That his fond phantom lingers there

Is only known to me."

Thomas Hardy

Who ever desired each other as we do?

2011-12-16T07:51:00.000-02:00

Who ever desired each other as we do? Let us look

for the ancient ashes of hearts that burned,

and let our kisses touch there, one by one,

till the flower, disembodied, rises again.

Let us love that Desire that consumed its own fruit

and went down, aspect and power, into the earth:

We are its continuing light,

its indestructible, fragile seed

Pablo Neruda

Throw your dreams

2011-12-16T07:49:00.000-02:00

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

Anais Nin

Real

2011-12-16T07:46:00.000-02:00

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

Cornelia Funke

Apology

2011-12-16T07:42:00.000-02:00

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

Gary Paulsen

The cosmos is within us

2011-12-16T07:39:00.000-02:00

The Universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us.
There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries. The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff."

Carl Sagan

That perfect tranquility

2011-12-16T07:35:00.000-02:00

"That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library."

Aphra Behn

Too young

2011-12-16T07:34:00.000-02:00

He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past."

Gabriel García Márquez

The worst loneliness

2011-12-16T07:33:00.000-02:00

"The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself."

Mark Twain

Time

2011-12-16T07:32:00.000-02:00

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

J.R.R. Tolkien

I would rather

2011-12-16T07:26:00.000-02:00

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze that it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

Jack London

To One in Paradise

2011-12-16T07:23:00.000-02:00

Thou wast all that to me, love,

...For which my soul did pine--

A green isle in the sea, love,

...A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

...And all the flowers were mine.

Now all my days are trances,

...And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy grey eye glances,

...And where thy footstep gleams--

In what ethereal dances,

...By what eternal streams!

Edgar Allan Poe

Experience

2011-12-16T07:21:00.000-02:00

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

Vernon Sanders Law

Matter and mind

2011-12-16T07:20:00.000-02:00

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

Berkeley, George

From me

2011-12-15T13:29:00.000-02:00

Know you appear

Vivid at my side,

Denying you sprang out of my head,

Claiming you feel

Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,

Though it’s quite clear

All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,

From me.

S. Plath

Always

2011-12-15T09:49:00.000-02:00

“We are always the same age inside. ”

Gertrude Stein”

A Farewell

2011-12-15T08:04:00.000-02:00

My fairest child, I have no song to give you;

No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey:

Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you

For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:

And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever

One grand, sweet song.

Charles Kingsley

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

2011-12-15T08:03:00.000-02:00

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvelous error!—

that a spring was breaking

out in my heart.

I said: Along which secret aqueduct,

Oh water, are you coming to me,

water of a new life

that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvelous error!—

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvelous error!—

that a fiery sun was giving

light inside my heart.

It was fiery because I felt

warmth as from a hearth,

and sun because it gave light

and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,

I dreamt—marvelous error!—

that it was God I had

here inside my heart.

Antonio Machado

Her Last Letter

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-02:00

Sitting alone by the window,

Watching the moonlit street,

Bending my head to listen

To the well-known sound of your feet,

I have been wondering, darling,

How I can bear the pain,

When I watch, with sighs and tear-wet eyes;

And wait for your coming in vain.

For I know that a day approaches

When your heart will tire of me;

When by door and gate I may watch and wait

For a form I shall not see.

When the love that is now my heaven,

The kisses that make my life,

You will bestow on another,

And that other will be-your wife.

You will grow weary of sinning

(Though you do not call it so),

You will long for a love that is purer

Than the love that we two know.

God knows I have loved you dearly,

With a passion strong as true;

But you will grow tired and leave me,

Though I gave up all for you.

I was as pure as the morning

When I first looked on your face;

I knew I never could reach you

In your high, exalted place.

But I looked and loved and worshiped

As a flower might worship a star,

And your eyes shone down upon me,

And you seemed so far-so far.

And then? Well, then, you loved me,

Loved me with all your heart;

But we could not stand at the altar,

We were so far apart.

If a star should wed with a flower

The star must drop from the sky,

Or the flower in trying to reach it

Would droop on its stalk and die.

But you said that you loved me, darling,

And swore by the heavens above

That the Lord and all of His angels

Would sanction and bless our love.

And I? I was weak, not wicked.

My love was as pure as true,

And sin itself seemed a virtue

If only shared by you.

We have been happy together,

Though under the cloud of sin,

But I know that the day approaches

When my chastening must begin.

You have been faithful and tender,

But you will not always be,

And I think I had better leave you

While your thoughts are kind of me.

I know my beauty is fading-

Sin furrows the fairest brow-

And I know that your heart will weary

Of the face you smile on now.

You will take a bride to your bosom

After you turn from me;

You will sit with your wife in the moonlight,

And hold her babe on your knee.

Oh, God! I never could bear it;

It would madden my brain, I know;

And so while you love me dearly

I think I had better go.

It is sweeter to feel, my darling-

To know as I fall asleep-

That some one will mourn me and miss me,

That some one is left to weep,

Than to die as I should in the future,

To drop in the street some day,

Unknown, unwept and forgotten

After you cast me away.

Perhaps the blood of the Saviour

Can wash my garments clean;

Perchance I may drink of the waters

That flow through pastures green.

Perchance we may meet in heaven,

And walk in the streets above,

With nothing to grieve us or part us

Since our sinning was all through love.

God says, 'Love one another,'

And down to the depths of hell

Will he send the soul of a women

Because she loved-and fell?

And so in the moonlight he found her,

Or found her beautiful clay,

Lifeless and pallid as marble,

For the spirit had flown away.

The farewell words she had written

She held to her cold, white breast,

And the buried blade of a dagger

Told how she had gone to rest.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Expectation—is Contentment

2011-12-15T07:58:00.000-02:00

Expectation—is Contentment—

Gain—Satiety—

But Satiety—Conviction

Of Necessity

Of an Austere trait in Pleasure—

Good, without alarm

Is a too established Fortune—

Danger—deepens Sum—

Emily Dickinson

Miracles

2011-12-15T07:57:00.000-02:00

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the

water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with

any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, 10

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet

and bright,

Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;

Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--

mechanics, boatmen, farmers,

Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera,

Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,

Or behold children at their sports,

Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old

woman,

Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, 20

Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;

These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the

same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;

Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,

and all that concerns them,

All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle; 30

The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships,

with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XLV

2011-12-15T07:55:00.000-02:00

THE SAME CONTINUED

Do you remember how I laughed at you

In the Beaulieu woods, and how I made my peace?

It was your thirtieth birthday, and you threw

Stones like a school--girl at the chestnut trees.

The heavens were light above us and the breeze.

Your Corydon and all the merry crew

Had wandered to a distance, busier bees

Than we, who cared not where the hazels grew.

We were alone at last. I had been teasing

You with the burden of years left behind.

You were too fair to find my wit displeasing,

And I too tender to be less than kind.

Your pebbles struck me. ``Wretch,'' I cried. The word

Entered our hearts that instant like a sword.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

June

2011-12-15T07:54:00.000-02:00

SHE behind yon mountain lives,

Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.

Tell me, mount, how this can be!

Very glass thou seem'st to me,

And I seem to be close by,

For I see her drawing nigh;

Now, because I'm absent, sad,

Now, because she sees me, glad!

Soon between us rise to sight

Valleys cool, with bushes light,

Streams and meadows; next appear

Mills and wheels, the surest token

That a level spot is near,

Plains far-stretching and unbroken.

And so onwards, onwards roam,

To my garden and my home!

But how comes it then to pass?

All this gives no joy, alas!--

I was ravish'd by her sight,

By her eyes so fair and bright,

By her footstep soft and light.

How her peerless charms I praised,

When from head to foot I gazed!

I am here, she's far away,--

I am gone, with her to stay.

If on rugged hills she wander,

If she haste the vale along,

Pinions seem to flutter yonder,

And the air is fill'd with song;

With the glow of youth still playing,

Joyous vigour in each limb,

One in silence is delaying,

She alone 'tis blesses him.

Love, thou art too fair, I ween!

Fairer I have never seen!

From the heart full easily

Blooming flowers are cull'd by thee.

If I think: "Oh, were it so,"

Bone and marrow seen to glow!

If rewarded by her love,

Can I greater rapture prove?

And still fairer is the bride,

When in me she will confide,

When she speaks and lets me know

All her tale of joy and woe.

All her lifetime's history

Now is fully known to me.

Who in child or woman e'er

Soul and body found so fair?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Resumé

2011-12-15T07:53:00.000-02:00

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

A Swimmer's Dream

2011-12-15T07:52:00.000-02:00

Somno mollior unda

Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,

Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.

Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter,

Fair and flawless from face to feet,

Hailed of all when the world was golden,

Loved of lovers whose names beholden

Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden

Days more glad than their flight was fleet.

So they sang: but for men that love her,

Souls that hear not her word in vain,

Earth beside her and heaven above her

Seem but shadows that wax and wane.

Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses,

Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses,

Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses

Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.

All the strength of the waves that perish

Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,

Sighs for love of the life they cherish,

Laughs to know that it lives and dies,

Dies for joy of its life, and lives

Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives --

Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives

Change that bids it subside and rise.

Hard and heavy, remote but nearing,

Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight,

Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering

Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate.

Dawn and even and noon are one,

Veiled with vapour and void of sun;

Nought in sight or in fancied hearing

Now less mighty than time or fate.

The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,

Pale and sweet as a dream's delight,

As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer,

Touched by dawn or subdued by night.

The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,

Swings the rollers to westward, clad

With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,

Lures and lulls him with dreams of light.

Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,

Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,

Fill the world of the skies whereunder

Heaves and quivers and pants aloud

All the world of the waters, hoary

Now, but clothed with its own live glory,

That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder

With light more living and word more proud.

III

Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,

Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee

Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,

Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,

Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.

Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd,

Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems

Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams

Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,

Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.

O russet-robed November,

What ails thee so to smile?

Chill August, pale September,

Endured a woful while,

And fell as falls an ember

From forth a flameless pile:

But golden-girt November

Bids all she looks on smile.

The lustrous foliage, waning

As wanes the morning moon,

Here falling, here refraining,

Outbraves the pride of June

With statelier semblance, feigning

No fear lest death be soon:

As though the woods thus waning

Should wax to meet the moon.

As though, when fields lie stricken

By grey December's breath,

These lordlier growths that sicken

And die for fear of death

Should feel the sense requicken

That hears what springtide saith

And thrills for love, spring-stricken

And pierced with April's breath.

The keen white-winged north-easter

That stings and spurs thy sea

Doth yet but feed and feast her

With glowing sense of glee:

Calm chained her, storm released her,

And storm's glad voice was he:

South-wester or north-easter,

Thy winds rejoice the sea.

A dream, a dream is it all -- the season,

The sky, the water, the wind, the shore?

A day-born dream of divine unreason,

A marvel moulded of sleep -- no more?

For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving

Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving

Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving

Sense of nought that was known of yore.

A purer passion, a lordlier leisure,

A peace more happy than lives on land,

Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure

The dreaming head and the steering hand.

I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow,

The deep soft swell of the full broad billow,

And close mine eyes for delight past measure,

And wish the wheel of the world would stand.

The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture

Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb,

So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture

Was felt that soothed me with sense of home.

To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever --

Such joy the vision of man saw never;

For here too soon will a dark day sever

The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam.

A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer

At once and brighter than dreams that flee,

The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer

Abides, remembered as truth may be.

Not all the joy and not all the glory

Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary;

For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer,

And here to south of them swells the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Semper eadem

2011-12-15T07:50:00.000-02:00

Semper eadem

«D'où vous vient, disiez-vous, cette tristesse étrange,

Montant comme la mer sur le roc noir et nu?»

— Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange

Vivre est un mal. C'est un secret de tous connu,

Une douleur très simple et non mystérieuse

Et, comme votre joie, éclatante pour tous.

Cessez donc de chercher, ô belle curieuse!

Et, bien que votre voix soit douce, taisez-vous!

Taisez-vous, ignorante! âme toujours ravie!

Bouche au rire enfantin! Plus encor que la Vie,

La Mort nous tient souvent par des liens subtils.

Laissez, laissez mon coeur s'enivrer d'un mensonge,

Plonger dans vos beaux yeux comme dans un beau songe

Et sommeiller longtemps à l'ombre de vos cils!

— Charles Baudelaire

Ever the Same

"Whence comes to you, you asked, this singular sadness

That rises like the sea on the naked, black rock?"

— Once our heart has gathered the grapes from its vineyard,

Living is an evil. That's a secret known to all,

A simple pain, with no mystery,

As obvious to all men as your gaiety.

So abandon your search, inquisitive beauty;

And though your voice is sweet, be still!

Be silent, ignorant! ever enraptured soul!

Mouth with the child-like laugh! Still more than Life,

Death holds us frequently with subtle bonds.

Let, let my heart become drunk with a lie; let it

Plunge into your fair eyes as into a fair dream

And slumber long in the shadow of your lashes.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Semper Eadem

"Whence," ask you, "does this strange new sadness flow

Like rising tides on rocks, black, bare, and vast?"

For human hearts, when vintage-time is past,

To live is bad. That secret all men know —

An obvious sorrow, with no mystery, shown,

Clear as your joy, to everyone around.

O curious one, seek nothing more profound,

And speak not, though your voice be sweet in tone.

Hush, ignorant! Hush, soul that's still enraptured,

And mouth of childish laughter! Neatly captured,

Death pulls us, more than life, with subtle wile.

Oh let my thought get drunk upon a lie,

And plunge, as in a dream, in either eye,

And in their lashes' shadow sleep awhile!

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Semper Eadem

"What in the world," you said, "has brought on this black mood,

Climbing you as the sea climbs up a naked reef?"

— When once the heart has made its harvest (understood

By all men, this) why, just to be alive is grief:

A pain quite simple, nothing mysterious at all,

And like that joy of yours, patent to all we meet;

Stop asking questions, then, I beg of you, and fall

Silent a while, fair prober, though your voice be sweet.

Ah, yes, be silent, ignorant girl, always so gay,

Mouth with the childlike laughter! More than Life, I say,

Death has the power to hold us by most subtle ties.

My one fictitious comfort, kindly, let me keep:

To plunge as into dreams into your lovely eyes,

And in the shadow of your lashes fall asleep.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

Semper eadam

you asked: "what floods of gloom engulf you — strange

as creeping tides against a bare black wall?"

— when hearts once crush their grapes and close the grange,

life is an evil. secret known to all,

'tis but the common grief each man betrays

to all, as you your joy, in eyes or brow

so veil, my fair one, your inquiring gaze

and though your voice is low, be silent now!

be silent, simple soul! mouth always gay

with girlish laughter! more than Life, today,

Death binds our hearts with tenuous webs of doom;

let mine be drunken with the wine of lies,

o let me delve for dreams in those deep eyes

and slumber long beneath your eyebrows' gloom!

— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)

Le Beau Navire

2011-12-15T07:48:00.000-02:00

Le Beau Navire

Je veux te raconter, ô molle enchanteresse!

Les diverses beautés qui parent ta jeunesse;

Je veux te peindre ta beauté,

Où l'enfance s'allie à la maturité.

Quand tu vas balayant l'air de ta jupe large,

Tu fais l'effet d'un beau vaisseau qui prend le large,

Chargé de toile, et va roulant

Suivant un rythme doux, et paresseux, et lent.

Sur ton cou large et rond, sur tes épaules grasses,

Ta tête se pavane avec d'étranges grâces;

D'un air placide et triomphant

Tu passes ton chemin, majestueuse enfant.

Je veux te raconter, ô molle enchanteresse!

Les diverses beautés qui parent ta jeunesse;

Je veux te peindre ta beauté,

Où l'enfance s'allie à la maturité.

Ta gorge qui s'avance et qui pousse la moire,

Ta gorge triomphante est une belle armoire

Dont les panneaux bombés et clairs

Comme les boucliers accrochent des éclairs;

Boucliers provoquants, armés de pointes roses!

Armoire à doux secrets, pleine de bonnes choses,

De vins, de parfums, de liqueurs

Qui feraient délirer les cerveaux et les coeurs!

Quand tu vas balayant l'air de ta jupe large

Tu fais l'effet d'un beau vaisseau qui prend le large,

Chargé de toile, et va roulant

Suivant un rythme doux, et paresseux, et lent.

Tes nobles jambes, sous les volants qu'elles chassent,

Tourmentent les désirs obscurs et les agacent,

Comme deux sorcières qui font

Tourner un philtre noir dans un vase profond.

Tes bras, qui se joueraient des précoces hercules,

Sont des boas luisants les solides émules,

Faits pour serrer obstinément,

Comme pour l'imprimer dans ton coeur, ton amant.

Sur ton cou large et rond, sur tes épaules grasses,

Ta tête se pavane avec d'étranges grâces;

D'un air placide et triomphant

Tu passes ton chemin, majestueuse enfant.

— Charles Baudelaire

The Beautiful Ship

I want to name for you, indolent sorceress!

The divers marks of beauty which adorn your youth;

I want to describe your beauty,

In which are blended childhood and maturity.

When you go sweeping by in your full, flowing skirts,

You resemble a trim ship as it puts to sea

Under full sail and goes rolling

Lazily, to a slow and easy rhythm.

On your large, round neck, on your plump shoulders,

Your head moves proudly and with a strange grace;

With a placid, triumphant air

You go your way, majestic child.

I want to name for you, indolent sorceress!

The divers marks of beauty which adorn your youth;

I want to describe your beauty,

In which are blended childhood and maturity.

Your exuberant breast which swells your silken gown,

Your triumphant breast is a lovely cabinet

Whose panels, round and bright,

Catch each flash of light like bucklers,

Exciting bucklers, armed with rosy points!

Cabinet of sweet secrets, crowded with good things,

With wines, with perfumes, with liqueurs

That would make delirious the minds and hearts of men!

When you go sweeping by in your full, flowing skirts,

You resemble a trim ship as it puts to sea

Under full sail and goes rolling

Lazily, to a slow and easy rhythm.

Your shapely legs beneath the flounces they pursue

Arouse and torment obscure desires

Like two sorceresses who stir

A black philtre in a deep vessel.

Your arms which would scorn precocious Hercules

Are the worthy rivals of glistening boas,

Made to clasp stubbornly Y

our lover, as if to imprint him on your heart.

On your large, round neck, on your plump shoulders,

Your head moves proudly and with a strange grace;

With a placid, triumphant air

You go your way, majestic child.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

The Splendid Ship

Oh soft enchantress, I'll record with truth

The diverse beauties that adorn your youth.

Yes, I will paint your charm

Of womanhood with childhood arm in arm.

When you go sweeping your wide skirts, to me

You seem a splendid ship that out to sea

Spreads its full sails, and with them

Goes rolling in a soft, slow, lazy rhythm.

Over your tall, round neck and those plump shoulders,

Your head swans forth its pride to all beholders,

With grace triumphant, mild,

And strange, you go your way, majestic child.

Oh soft enchantress, I'll record with truth

The diverse beauties that adorn your youth.

Yes, I will paint your charm

Of womanhood with childhood arm in arm.

Your bosom juts and stretches every stitch,

Triumphant bosom, like a coffer rich

With bosses round and rare,

Like shields that draw the lightning from the air.

Provoking shields, with rosy points uplifted!

Coffer of secret charms, superbly gifted,

Whose scents, liqueurs, and wine

Turn heart and brain deliriously thine.

When you go sweeping your wide skirts, to me

You seem a splendid ship that out to sea

Spreads its full sails, and with them

Goes rolling in a soft, slow, lazy rhythm.

Your noble thighs, beneath the silks they swirl,

Torment obscure desires and tease me, girl;

Like sorcerers they are

That stir black philtres in a deep, cool jar.

Your arms precocious Hercules would grace

And vie with pythons in their bright embrace:

The pressure they impart

Would print your lovers' image on your heart.

Over your tall, round neck and those plump shoulders

Your head swans forth its pride to all beholders,

With grace triumphant, mild,

And strange, you go your way, majestic child.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

The Beautiful Ship

I Want to tell you, indolent enchantress,

Of the various beauties that adorn your youth;

I want to paint for you your beauty

Of childish maturity.

When you go sweeping the air with your flaring skirts,

You look like a lovely slip taking to flight

Heavy with canvas, pitching,

Rolling in a soft rhythm, both lazy and slow.

On your wide, round neck, on your plump shoulders,

Your head parades its strange graces;

Placidly, triumphantly,

O child of majesty, you go your way.

I want to tell you, indolent enchantress,

Of the various beauties that adorn your youth;

I want to paint for you your beauty

Where childhood touches maturity.

Your breasts thrust forward, heaving their silk,

Your triumphing breasts are charming cases

Whose outlined, rounded panels

Hold flashes of light like twin shields;

Provocative shields, armed with pink tips,

Cases of sweet secrets, full of sweet things,

Of wines and perfumes and liqueurs

Making the brain, the heart delirious!

When you go sweeping the air with your flaring skirts,

You look like a lovely ship taking to flight,

Heavy with canvas, you go pitching,

Rolling in a soft rhythm, both lazy and slow.

Your full legs, under flounces they chase forward,

Torture and excite dark desires,

Like two witches who

Twist some black potion in a deep bowl.

Your arms, which would make light of precocious Hercules,

Rival well two glistening snakes,

Made to bind hopelessly

As if to imprison your lover in your heart.

On your wide, round neck, on your plump shoulders,

Your head parades its strange graces

Placid, triumphantly,

O child of majesty, you go your way.

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

Power

2011-12-15T07:45:00.000-02:00

"Power over others is weakness disguised as strength, true power is within."

Ekhart Tolle

If I were in a book

2011-12-15T07:42:00.000-02:00

If I were in a book it would be the book

in which some lesser angel bemoans

the state of my soul

and is comforted for it

and is corrected for it

by some greater angel who knows

as the reader knows that it is not one’s soul

that suffers the indignities of ignobility:

the inability to curb the petty smallness

of spirit, ungladness in the company

of bureaucrats, anger’s decay,

in the sense that my soul itself cannot be

harmed nor tarnished though it can witness

my sorrow on finding that illness alters me

from the self I thought I’d more or less known.

What can one do about one’s nature?

I look at the spider that’s finally

restrung its great wheel away from the door.

I’d like to close the door, go away,

leaving the spider be.

I’d like to preclude the possibility

of angel, as of prey.

Prayer by Liz Waldner

Colors

2011-12-15T07:40:00.000-02:00

“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites”

Marc Chagall

Metaphors

2011-12-15T07:38:00.000-02:00

"There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women."

Fernando Pessoa

Map

2011-12-15T07:37:00.000-02:00

"Even a map cannot show you the way back to a place that no longer exists."

Sandra M. Castillo

Treasures

2011-12-15T07:35:00.000-02:00

"Simplicity,

patience,

compassion—

these three are your greatest treasures."

Lao Tzu

His library

2011-12-15T07:34:00.000-02:00

His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

Ray Bradbury

What a miracle it is

2011-12-15T07:31:00.000-02:00

What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

Anne Lamott

Find your eternity

2011-12-15T07:29:00.000-02:00

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."

Henry David Thoreau

Lovely

2011-12-15T07:27:00.000-02:00

"O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come."

Richard Llewellyn

High thoughts

2011-12-15T07:26:00.000-02:00

When I only begin to read, I forget I’m on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.

Anzia Yezierska

Flaws

2011-12-15T07:24:00.000-02:00

"I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."

Augusten Burroughs

Nonsense

2011-12-15T07:21:00.000-02:00

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities."

Dr. Seuss

In the Garden at Swainston

2011-12-15T07:18:00.000-02:00

Nightingales warbled without,

...Within was weeping for thee:

Shadows of three dead men

...Walk'd in the walks with me:

...Shadows of three dead men, and thou wast one of the three.

Nightingales sang in the woods:

...The Master was far away:

Nightingales warbled and sang

...Of a passion that lasts but a day;

...Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay.

Two dead men have I known

In courtesy like to thee:

Two dead men have I loved

...With a love that ever will be:

...Three dead men have I loved, and thou art last of the three.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Madness

2011-12-15T07:16:00.002-02:00

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Silence

2011-12-15T07:15:00.000-02:00

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

Paradise

2011-12-15T07:14:00.000-02:00

Paradise is always where love dwells.

Jean Paul F. Richter

Flexible mirror

2011-12-14T15:55:00.000-02:00

“A book is a flexible mirror of the mind and the body. Its overall size and proportions, the color and texture of the paper, the sound it makes as the pages turn, and the smell of the paper, adhesive and ink, all blend with the size and form and placement of the type to reveal a little about the world in which it was made. If the book appears to be only a paper machine, produced at their own convenience by other machines, only machines will want to read it.”

Robert Bringhurst

Spring Rain

2011-12-14T15:32:00.000-02:00

I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

To-night with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway

Where we stood while the storm swept by,

Thunder gripping the earth

And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,

For the street was a river of rain,

Lashed into little golden waves

In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder

My heart was wild and gay;

Your eyes said more to me that night

Than your lips would ever say. . . .

I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

To-night with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

Sara Teasdale

Evil

2011-12-14T15:28:00.000-02:00

“What if evil doesn’t really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except our own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”

Libba Bray

Reality

2011-12-14T15:20:00.000-02:00

“Reality is always so obstructive.”

Eric Ambler

A soul mate

2011-12-14T15:18:00.000-02:00

“A soul mate is an ongoing connection with another individual that the soul picks up again in various times and places over lifetimes. We are attracted to another person at a soul level not because that person is our unique complement, but because by being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves.”

Edgar Cayce

I adore Life

2011-12-14T14:57:00.000-02:00

“I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love.”

Katherine Mansfield

Deep

2011-12-14T14:54:00.000-02:00

“… I spend my life wondering if I’m deep or not…”

Fernando Pessoa

Funny

2011-12-14T14:52:00.000-02:00

“In the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.”

Philip K Dick

That is the mystery

2011-12-14T14:51:00.000-02:00

“Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.”

Katherine Mansfield

Habit

2011-12-14T09:04:00.000-02:00

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Life

2011-12-14T08:30:00.000-02:00

LIFE, believe, is not a dream

So dark as sages say;

Oft a little morning rain

Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,

But these are transient all;

If the shower will make the roses bloom,

O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,

Life's sunny hours flit by,

Gratefully, cheerily,

Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in

And calls our Best away ?

What though sorrow seems to win,

O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,

Unconquered, though she fell;

Still buoyant are her golden wings,

Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,

The day of trial bear,

For gloriously, victoriously,

Can courage quell despair !

Charlotte Bronte

The Night of Sorrow

2011-12-14T08:29:00.000-02:00

A lovely woman rolls up

The delicate bamboo blind.

She sits deep within,

Twitching her moth eyebrows.

who may it be

That grieves her hearrt?

On her face one sees

only the wet traces of tears.

Li Bai

Le Serpent qui danse

2011-12-14T08:26:00.000-02:00

Le Serpent qui danse

Que j'aime voir, chère indolente,

De ton corps si beau,

Comme une étoffe vacillante,

Miroiter la peau!

Sur ta chevelure profonde

Aux âcres parfums,

Mer odorante et vagabonde

Aux flots bleus et bruns,

Comme un navire qui s'éveille

Au vent du matin,

Mon âme rêveuse appareille

Pour un ciel lointain.

Tes yeux, où rien ne se révèle

De doux ni d'amer,

Sont deux bijoux froids où se mêle

L'or avec le fer.

À te voir marcher en cadence,

Belle d'abandon,

On dirait un serpent qui danse

Au bout d'un bâton.

Sous le fardeau de ta paresse

Ta tête d'enfant

Se balance avec la mollesse

D'un jeune éléphant,

Et ton corps se penche et s'allonge

Comme un fin vaisseau

Qui roule bord sur bord et plonge

Ses vergues dans l'eau.

Comme un flot grossi par la fonte

Des glaciers grondants,

Quand l'eau de ta bouche remonte

Au bord de tes dents,

Je crois boire un vin de Bohême,

Amer et vainqueur,

Un ciel liquide qui parsème

D'étoiles mon coeur!

— Charles Baudelaire

The Dancing Serpent

Indolent darling, how I love

To see the skin

Of your body so beautiful

Shimmer like silk!

Upon your heavy head of hair

With its acrid scents,

Adventurous, odorant sea

With blue and brown waves,

Like a vessel that awakens

To the morning wind,

My dreamy soul sets sail

For a distant sky.

Your eyes where nothing is revealed

Of bitter or sweet,

Are two cold jewels where are mingled

Iron and gold.

To see you walking in cadence

With fine abandon,

One would say a snake which dances

On the end of a staff.

Under the weight of indolence

Your child-like head sways

Gently to and fro like the head

Of a young elephant,

And your body stretches and leans

Like a slender ship

That rolls from side to side and dips

Its yards in the sea.

Like a stream swollen by the thaw

Of rumbling glaciers,

When the water of your mouth rises

To the edge of your teeth,

It seems I drink Bohemian wine,

Bitter and conquering,

A liquid sky that scatters

Stars in my heart!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

The Snake that Dances

I love to watch, while you are lazing,

Your skin. It iridesces

Like silk or satin, smoothly-glazing

The light that it caresses.

Under your tresses dark and deep

Where acrid perfumes drown,

A fragrant sea whose breakers sweep

In mazes blue or brown,

My soul, a ship, to the attraction

Of breezes that bedizen

Its swelling canvas, clears for action

And seeks a far horizon.

Your eyes where nothing can be seen

Either of sweet or bitter

But gold and iron mix their sheen,

Seem frosty gems that glitter.

To see you rhythmically advancing

Seems to my fancy fond

As if it were a serpent dancing

Waved by the charmer's wand.

Under the languorous moods that weigh it,

Your childish head bows down:

Like a young elephant's you sway it

With motions soft as down.

Your body leans upon the hips

Like a fine ship that Iaves

Its hull from side to side, and dips

Its yards into the waves.

When, as by glaciers ground, the spate

Swells hissing from beneath,

The water of your mouth, elate,

Rises between your teeth —

It seems some old Bohemian vintage

Triumphant, fierce, and tart,

A liquid heaven that showers a mintage

Of stars across my heart.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Dancing Serpent

Indolent love, with what delight

I watch the tawny flesh

Of your sweet body shimmer bright

As a bright silken mesh.

On your thick tresses, love, you wear

Sharp perfumes for a crown,

A venturesome sweet sea, your hair,

With billows blue and brown.

Your eyes never betray by sign

What grief or joy they hold,

They are cold jewels that combine

Strong iron and rare gold.

Even as a vessel that awakes

When morning breezes rise,

So my dream-laden spirit takes

Off for strange distant skies.

Your sinuous cadenced walk enhancing

Your slim proud gait, a frond

Swaying, you are, or a snake dancing

Atop a fakir's wand.

Under a laziness like lead

Your childlike head aslant

Sways soft and gentle as the head

Of a young elephant,

Your body like a slender ship

In tense or bowing motion

Rolls, slow, from side to side to dip

Its yards deep in the ocean.

Ice thawed by currents from the south

Swell the swift streams beneath,

So when the water of your mouth

Rises against your teeth,

I seem to drink Bohemian wine

Victorious and tart,

A liquid sky that strews benign

Stars in my peaceful heart.

— Jacques LeClercq, Flowers of Evil (Mt Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958)

The Dancing Serpent

How I love to watch, dear indolent creature,

The skin of your so

Beautiful body glisten, like some

Quivering material!

On your deep coiffure

Bitter scented,

Scented, restless sea,

With the blue and brown waves,

Like a ship waking

To the wind of morning,

My dreamy soul prepares

For skies far away.

Your eyes, where nothing is revealed

Of sweet or sour,

Are two cold gems whose gold

Is mixed with iron.

Seeing your harmonious walk,

Abandoned beauty,

One would say a snake was dancing

At the end of a stick.

Under the weight of your sloth

Your infant head

Is balanced with the indolence

Of a young elephant,

And your body bends and stretches

Like a delicate ship

Pitching from side to side and sinking

Its spars in the water.

Like a wave swelled by the melting

Of a groaning glacier,

When your saliva rises

To the edges of your teeth,

I feel I drink some Bohemian wine,

Bitter, victor,

A liquid sky that scatters

Stars in my heart!

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/125

La Béatrice

2011-12-14T08:25:00.000-02:00

La Béatrice

Dans des terrains cendreux, calcinés, sans verdure,

Comme je me plaignais un jour à la nature,

Et que de ma pensée, en vaguant au hasard,

J'aiguisais lentement sur mon coeur le poignard,

Je vis en plein midi descendre sur ma tête

Un nuage funèbre et gros d'une tempête,

Qui portait un troupeau de démons vicieux,

Semblables à des nains cruels et curieux.

À me considérer froidement ils se mirent,

Et, comme des passants sur un fou qu'ils admirent,

Je les entendis rire et chuchoter entre eux,

En échangeant maint signe et maint clignement d'yeux:

— «Contemplons à loisir cette caricature

Et cette ombre d'Hamlet imitant sa posture,

Le regard indécis et les cheveux au vent.

N'est-ce pas grand'pitié de voir ce bon vivant,

Ce gueux, cet histrion en vacances, ce drôle,

Parce qu'il sait jouer artistement son rôle,

Vouloir intéresser au chant de ses douleurs

Les aigles, les grillons, les ruisseaux et les fleurs,

Et même à nous, auteurs de ces vieilles rubriques,

Réciter en hurlant ses tirades publiques?»

J'aurais pu (mon orgueil aussi haut que les monts

Domine la nuée et le cri des démons)

Détourner simplement ma tête souveraine,

Si je n'eusse pas vu parmi leur troupe obscène,

Crime qui n'a pas fait chanceler le soleil!

La reine de mon coeur au regard nonpareil

Qui riait avec eux de ma sombre détresse

Et leur versait parfois quelque sale caresse.

— Charles Baudelaire

Beatrice

One day as I was making complaint to nature

In a burnt, ash-gray land without vegetation,

And as I wandered aimlessly, slowly whetting

Upon my heart the dagger of my thought,

I saw in broad daylight descending on my head

A leaden cloud, pregnant with a tempest,

That carried a herd of vicious demons

Who resembled curious, cruel dwarfs.

They began to look at me coldly,

And I heard them laugh and whisper to each other,

Exchanging many a sign and many a wink

Like passers-by who discuss a fool they admire:

— "Let us look leisurely at this caricature,

This shade of Hamlet who imitates his posture

With indecisive look, hair streaming in the wind.

Is it not a pity to see this bon vivant,

This tramp, this queer fish, this actor without a job,

Because he knows how to play skillfully his role,

Wish to interest in the song of his woes

The eagles, the crickets, the brooks, and the flowers,

And even to us, authors of that hackneyed drivel,

Bellow the recital of his public tirades?"

I could have (my pride as high as mountains

Dominates the clouds and the cries of the demons)

Simply turned away my sovereign head

If I had not seen in that obscene troop

A crime which did not make the sun reel in its course!

The queen of my heart with the peerless gaze

Laughing with them at my somber distress

And giving them at times a lewd caress.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Beatrice

In charred and ashen fields without a leaf,

While I alone to Nature told my grief,

I sharpened, as I went, like any dart,

My thought upon the grindstone of my heart —

When by a troop of vicious demons led,

A great black cloud rushed down towards my head.

As loafers at a lunatic they leered

And in my face inquisitively peered.

With nods and signs, like dwarfed and apish elves,

They laughed, and winked, and spoke among themselves.

"This parody of Hamlet, take his measure,

And contemplate the travesty at leisure.

Is it not sad to see the puzzled stare,

The halting gait, and the dishevelled hair

With which this clownish actor, on half-pay,

Because he is an artist in his way,

Attempts to interest, in the griefs he sings,

Eagles, and crickets, flowers, and running springs,

And even us, the authors of his woe,

Howling his sorrows as a public show?"

I could have dominated with my pride

That horde of demons and the taunts they cried,

Just by the mere aversion of my face —

Had I not seen, amongst that evil race,

(A crime that did not even daze the sun!)

Queen of my heart, the peerless, only one,

Laughing with them to see my dark distress,

And giving them, at times, some lewd caress.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

My Beatrice

While I was walking in a pitted place,

crying aloud against the human race,

letting thoughts ramble here and there apart —

knives singing on the whetstones in my heart —

I saw a cloud descending on my head

in the full noon, a cloud inhabited

by black devils, sharp, humped, inquisitive

as dwarfs. They knew where I was sensitive,

now idling there, and looked me up and down,

as cool delinquents watch a madman clown.

I heard them laugh and snicker blasphemies,

while swapping signs and blinking with their eyes.

"Let's stop and watch this creature at our leisure —

all sighs and sweaty hair. We'll take his measure.

It's a great pity that this mountebank

and ghost of Hamlet strutting on his plank

should think he's such an artist at his role

he has to rip the lining from his soul

and paralyze the butterflies and bees

with a peepshow of his indecencies —

and even we, who gave him his education,

must listen to his schoolboy declamation."

Wishing to play a part (my pride was high

above the mountains and the devil's cry)

like Hamlet now, I would have turned my back,

had I not seen among the filthy pack

(Oh crime that should have made the sun drop dead!)

my heart's queen and the mistress of my bed

there purring with the rest at my distress,

and sometimes tossing them a stale caress.

— Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)

Beatrice

In a burned-over land, where not a blade or leaf

Showed green, through a charred world, whetting my ancient grief

Slowly upon my heart, and making sad lament

To Nature, at broad noon, not knowing where I went,

I walked... and saw above me a big cloud — which at first

I took to be a storm — blacken, and swell and burst,

And pour upon my head instead of rain a rout

Of demons, dwarfed and cruel, which ringed me all about.

As passersby, no matter upon what errands bent,

Will always stop and stare with cold astonishment

At some poor man gone mad, then bait him wittily,

Just so they gaped and nudged, and jeered aloud at me.

— "Come! Have a look at this! What is it, should you say?

The shade of Hamlet — why, of course! — look at the way

He stands! — that undecided eye! — the wild hair, too!

Come here! Do look! Oh, wouldn't it wring a tear from you!

This shabby bon-vivant, this pompous tramp, this ham -

Actor out of a job, thinking that he can cram,

By ranting, stale gesticulations, crocodile-tears,

His tragic fate into the ears of crickets, into the ears

Of eagles! — yes, who knows? — along with brooks and flowers

Forgetting we invented these tricks, even into ours!"

But for one thing — no mountain is taller than my pride;

No demon horde can scale me — I could have turned aside

My sovereign thought, and stood alone... had I not seen

Suddenly, amongst this loathsome troupe, her, my heart's queen —

And the sun did not reel, it stood unmoved above! —

Her of the pure deep gaze, my life, my peerless love,

Mocking and pointing, laughing at my acute distress;

Or fondling some foul dwarf in an obscene caress.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/185

A Song in Time of Order

2011-12-14T08:23:00.000-02:00

PUSH hard across the sand,

For the salt wind gathers breath;

Shoulder and wrist and hand,

Push hard as the push of death.

The wind is as iron that rings,

The foam-heads loosen and flee;

It swells and welters and swings,

The pulse of the tide of the sea.

And up on the yellow cliff

The long corn flickers and shakes;

Push, for the wind holds stiff,

And the gunwale dips and rakes.

Good hap to the fresh fierce weather,

The quiver and beat of the sea!

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

Out to the sea with her there,

Out with her over the sand;

Let the kings keep the earth for their share!

We have done with the sharers of land.

They have tied the world in a tether,

They have bought over God with a fee;

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

We have done with the kisses that sting,

The thief’s mouth red from the feast,

The blood on the hands of the king

And the lie at the lips of the priest.

Will they tie the winds in a tether,

Put a bit in the jaws of the sea?

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

Let our flag run out straight in the wind!

The old red shall be floated again

When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned,

When the names that were twenty are ten;

When the devil’s riddle is mastered

And the galley-bench creaks with a Pope,

We shall see Buonaparte the bastard

Kick heels with his throat in a rope.

While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep

And the emperor halters his kine,

While Shame is a watchman asleep

And Faith is a keeper of swine,

Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,

Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

All the world has its burdens to bear,

From Cayenne to the Austrian whips;

Forth, with the rain in our hair

And the salt sweet foam in our lips;

In the teeth of the hard glad weather,

In the blown wet face of the sea;

While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Requiescat

2011-12-14T08:21:00.000-02:00

Tonight my love is sleeping cold

Where none may see and none shall pass.

The daisies quicken in the mold,

And richer fares the meadow grass.

The warding cypress pleads the skies,

The mound goes level in the rain.

My love all cold and silent lies-

Pray God it will not rise again!

Dorothy Parker

Joy

2011-12-14T08:20:00.000-02:00

A DRAGON-FLY with beauteous wing

Is hov'ring o'er a silv'ry spring;

I watch its motions with delight,--

Now dark its colours seem, now bright;

Chameleon-like appear, now blue,

Now red, and now of greenish hue.

Would it would come still nearer me,

That I its tints might better see

It hovers, flutters, resting ne'er!

But hush! it settles on the mead.

I have it safe now, I declare!

And when its form I closely view,

'Tis of a sad and dingy blue--

Such, Joy-Dissector, is thy case indeed

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XLIX

2011-12-14T08:18:00.000-02:00

THE SAME CONTINUED

A ``woman with a past.'' What happier omen

Could heart desire for mistress or for friend?

Phoenix of friends, and most divine of women,

Skilled in all fence to venture or defend

And with love's science at your fingers' end,

No tears to vex, no ignorance to bore,

A fancy ripe, the zest which sorrows lend!--

I would to God we had not met before!

--I would to God! and yet to God I would

That we had never met. To see you thus

Is grief and wounds and poison to my blood.

Oh, this is sacrilege and foul abuse.

You were a thing for honour not vile use,

Not for the mad world's wicked sinks and stews.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Me Imperturbe

2011-12-14T08:17:00.000-02:00

ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,

Master of all, or mistress of all--aplomb in the midst of irrational

things,

Imbued as they--passive, receptive, silent as they,

Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less

important than I thought;

Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary--all these subordinate,

(I am eternally equal with the best--I am not subordinate;)

Me toward the Mexican Sea, or in the Mannahatta, or the Tennessee, or

far north, or inland,

A river man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life in These

States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada,

Me, wherever my life is lived, O to be

self-balanced for

contingencies!

O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as

the trees and animals do.

Walt Whitman

Exhilaration—is within

2011-12-14T08:15:00.000-02:00

Exhilaration—is within—

There can no Outer Wine

So royally intoxicate

As that diviner Brand

The Soul achieves—Herself—

To drink—or set away

For Visitor—Or Sacrament—

'Tis not of Holiday

To stimulate a Man

Who hath the Ample Rhine

Within his Closet—Best you can

Exhale in offering.

Emily Dickinson

Haunted

2011-12-14T08:14:00.000-02:00

What are these nameless mysteries,

These subtleties of life and death,

That bring before our spirit eyes

The loved and lost; or, like a breath

Of lightest air, will touch the cheek,

And yet a wordless language speak?

In every breeze that blows, to-day,

One voice seems speaking unto me;

And north or south, whichever way

I turn my gaze, one face I see,

And closely, closely at my side

A mystic shadow seems to glide.

A motley crowd we move among,

We surge on with the mighty mass,

And yet no one in all the throng

Looks strangely on us as we pass.

No eye but mine own seems to see

The nameless thing that walks by me.

I cannot touch a proffered hand

But this strange shadow glides between.

Why came he from the spirit land?

What brought him from the world unseen?

Why am I troubled and oppressed

By the vague presence of my guest?

He was my friend! I should rejoice!

I loved him once! Why do I fear?

And yet I shudder as his voice

Speaks in the wind. I feel him near,

This restless spirit of the dead,

And shiver with a nameless dread.

I loved him once; he was my friend;

He held the first place in my heart,

And might have held it to the end.

But our two ways spread wide apart:

I kept the path upon the hill,

And he went down and down, until

He reached the depths of sin and shame,

And died as sots and drunkards die.

I ceased to even speak his name.

God knows I never thought that I,

Who blamed his lack of moral strength,

Might answer for his fall, at length!

O restless dead, lost friend of mine!

I might have saved you, had I tried.

I saw you lift the glass of wine,

And, seeing, had I warned you, cried,

'Touch not, taste not the drink accursed!'

I might have saved you from the thirst

That swallowed up your brain and soul.

But nay! I scorned you when you fell,

And, looking upward to my goal,

Left you to stagger down to hell.

Accusing spirit of the dead,

Your presence fills my heart with dread!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Book snobs

2011-12-14T08:13:00.000-02:00

There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story… don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words—the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers who won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

Stephen King

I wish I could

2011-12-14T08:11:00.000-02:00

"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being."

Hafiz

Heaven and hell

2011-12-14T08:09:00.002-02:00

"I am my own heaven and hell."

J.C.F. Von Schiller

Silence

2011-12-14T08:08:00.003-02:00

"We ought to be slient or speak things that are better than silence"

Pythagoras

For some of us

2011-12-14T08:08:00.000-02:00

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."

Anne Lamott

Inner house

2011-12-14T08:05:00.000-02:00

"I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone."

Edith Wharton

In your eyes

2011-12-14T08:04:00.000-02:00

"What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life."

Walt Whitman

My idea

2011-12-14T08:03:00.000-02:00

"Rest, nature, books, music… such is my idea of happiness."

Leo Tolstoy

The man had killed the thing he loved

2011-12-14T08:01:00.000-02:00

The man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard

Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word

The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword

Some kill their love when they are young, and some when they are old

Some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold

The kindest use a knife, because the dead so soon grow cold

Some love too little, some too long, some sell, and others buy

Some do the deed with many tears, and some without a sigh

For each man kills the thing he loves, yet each man does not die

Oscar Wilde

Portable

2011-12-14T07:46:00.000-02:00

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

Stephen King

Work

2011-12-14T07:45:00.000-02:00

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

James M. Barrie

Never

2011-12-14T07:38:00.002-02:00

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

Galileo Galilei

The secret of ugliness

2011-12-14T07:37:00.000-02:00

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Second

2011-12-14T07:34:00.002-02:00

Take a second look...

It costs you nothing.

Chinese Proverb

Light

2011-12-13T09:31:00.000-02:00

"My first memory is of light — the brightness of light — light all around.”

Georgia O’Keeffe

Exactitude

2011-12-13T09:30:00.000-02:00

"Exactitude is not truth.”

Henri Matisse

Edge

2011-12-13T09:28:00.000-02:00

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and must take a step into the darkness of the unknown, believe that one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid for you to stand on - or you will be taught how to fly.”

Patrick Overton