The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,

Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,

Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang'rous waist!

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,

Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,

Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise—

Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,

When the dusk holiday—or holinight

Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave

The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;

But, as I've read love's missal through today,

He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

John Keats

Bird

A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And the hopped sideways to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad, -

They looked like frightened beads, I thought

He stirred his velvet head.

Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rolled him softer home

Then oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, plashless, as they swim.

Emily Dickinson

Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XXII

The thought of night consoled him. To his vision

Natalia was dead only in false death,

The sleeping treason of some false misprision,

Some silent mystery of shortened breath,

Not dead in truth for ever and to him,

Or to that other life his dream foretold:--

Her murderers these. And in his heart the whim

Rose he should draw her from her cincture cold,

And set his lips upon her lips once more,

And free her spirit thus from its dull trance,

And all should be between them as before,

Only more dear for her deliverance.

And darkly there he smiled as, their work done,

The mourners left him with their dead alone.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

To an Isle in the Water

Shy one, shy one,

Shy one of my heart,

She moves in the firelight

Pensively apart.

She carries in the dishes,

And lays them in a row.

To an isle in the water

With her would I go.

She carries in the candles,

And lights the curtained room,

Shy in the doorway

And shy in the gloom;

As shy as a rabbit,

Helpful and shy.

To an isle in the water

With her would I fly.

William Butler Yeats

Clearly

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

Niels Bohr

Humor

The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.

Michael Patrick King

Perhaps

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.

Edna Ferber

Do not

Conquer, but don't triumph.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Without love

"A life without love is a sinful and immoral thing."

Vincent Van Gogh

The creative person

"The creative person is both; more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person."

Frank Barron

Enigma with Flower

Victory. It has come late, I had not learnt

how to arrive, like the lily, at will,

the white figure, that pierces

the motionless eternity of earth,

pushing at clear, faint, form,

till the hour strikes: that clay,

with a white ray, or a spur of milk.

Shedding of clothing, the thick darkness of soil,

on whose cliff the fair flower advances,

till the flag of its whiteness

defeats the contemptible deep of night,

and, from the motion of light,

spills itself in astonished seed.

Pablo Neruda

Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XXI

But when they had gone past him every one,

With new resolve begotten of his dream,

Adrian arose and followed where the stone

Yawned for his love, and there unseen by them

In the dark chauntry he beheld them lay

Her body in the grave with his own heart.

A bitter jest it seemed to him that they

Should all stand near and only he apart,

And through his soul a wind of anger swept

When any in the sad crowd chanced to be

Betwixt him and the woman he so wept,

And oftentimes he cursed them bitterly

That hands not his should touch her in the tomb,

Waiting till night and his revenge should come.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Better—than Music! For I—who heard it

Better—than Music! For I—who heard it—

I was used—to the Birds—before—

This—was different—'Twas Translation—

Of all tunes I knew—and more—

'Twasn't contained—like other stanza—

No one could play it—the second time—

But the Composer—perfect Mozart—

Perish with him—that Keyless Rhyme!

So—Children—told how Brooks in Eden—

Bubbled a better—Melody—

Quaintly infer—Eve's great surrender—

Urging the feet—that would—not—fly—

Children—matured—are wiser—mostly—

Eden—a legend—dimly told—

Eve—and the Anguish—Grandame's story—

But—I was telling a tune—I heard—

Not such a strain—the Church—baptizes—

When the last Saint—goes up the Aisles—

Not such a stanza splits the silence—

When the Redemption strikes her Bells—

Let me not spill—its smallest cadence—

Humming—for promise—when alone—

Humming—until my faint Rehearsal—

Drop into tune—around the Throne—

Emily Dickinson

Teignmouth

I.

Here all the summer could I stay,

For there's Bishop's teign

And King's teign

And Coomb at the clear Teign head--

Where close by the stream

You may have your cream

All spread upon barley bread.

II.

There's Arch Brook

And there's Larch Brook

Both turning many a mill,

And cooling the drouth

Of the salmon's mouth

And fattening his silver gill.

III.

There is Wild wood,

A Mild hood

To the sheep on the lea o' the down,

Where the golden furze,

With its green, thin spurs,

Doth catch at the maiden's gown.

IV.

There is Newton Marsh

With its spear grass harsh--

A pleasant summer level

Where the maidens sweet

Of the Market Street

Do meet in the dusk to revel.

V.

There's the Barton rich

With dyke and ditch

And hedge for the thrush to live in,

And the hollow tree

For the buzzing bee

And a bank for the wasp to hive in.

VI.

And O, and O

The daisies blow

And the primroses are waken'd,

And violets white

Sit in silver plight,

And the green bud's as long as the spike end.

VII.

Then who would go

Into dark Soho,

And chatter with dack'd-hair'd critics,

When he can stay

For the new-mown hay,

And startle the dappled Prickets?

John Keats

Answers

What is the end of each man's toil,

Brother, O Brother?

A handful of dust in a bit of soil-

His name forgotten as centuries roll,

Though blazoned to-day on Glory's scroll;

For the lordliest work of brain or hand

Is only an imprint made on sand;

When the tidal wave sweeps over the shore

It is there no more,

Brother, my Brother.

Then what is the use of striving at all,

Brother, O Brother?

Because each effort or great or small

Is a step on the long, long road that leads

To the Kingdom of Growth on the River of Deeds:

And that is the kingdom no man can gain

Till he uses his hand and his mind and brain,

And when he has used them and learned control

He finds his soul,

Brother, my Brother.

And after he finds it, what is the end,

Brother, O Brother?

Upward ever its course and trend;

For this is the purpose and aim and plan

To seek in the soul for the Super-man-

The man who is conscious that Heaven is near-

A bulletin bearer from There to Here,

Finding God dwells in the spirit within

Where He ever has been,

Brother, my Brother.

And what will the God-man do when He comes,

Brother, O Brother?

He will better the world or in courts or slums,

He will do in gladness his nearest duty:

He will teach the religion of love and beauty

In field or factory, mine or mart,

While He tells the world of the larger part

And the wider life that is yet to be

When spirit is free,

Brother, my Brother.

When spirit is free, then where will it go,

Brother, O Brother?

Its uttermost summit no man may know,

For it goes up to God in His holy Tower

To gather more knowledge and force and power;

Like a ray of the sun it shall shine again

To brighten new planets and races of men.

Life had no beginning, life has no end,

Brother and friend-

Brother, my Brother.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Verses Why Burnt

HOW many verses have I thrown

Into the fire because the one

Peculiar word, the wanted most,

Was irrecoverably lost!

Walter Savage Landor

Fable

Oh, there once was a lady, and so I've been told,

Whose lover grew weary, whose lover grew cold.

"My child," he remarked, "though our episode ends,

In the manner of men, I suggest we be friends."

And the truest of friends ever after they were-

Oh, they lied in their teeth when they told me of her!

Dorothy Parker

Book Of Suleika - Suleika 01

THE sun appears! A glorious sight!

The crescent-moon clings round him now.

What could this wondrous pair unite?

How to explain this riddle? How?

HATEM.

May this our joy's foreboder prove!

In it I view myself and thee;

Thou calmest me thy sun, my love,--

Come, my sweet moon, cling thou round me!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Most Happy Letters

Most happy letters, fram'd by skilful trade,

With which that happy name was first design'd:

The which three times thrice happy hath me made,

With gifts of body, fortune, and of mind.

The first my being to me gave by kind,

From mother's womb deriv'd by due descent,

The second is my sovereign Queen most kind,

That honour and large richesse to me lent.

The third my love, my life's last ornament,

By whom my spirit out of dust was raised:

To speak her praise and glory excellent,

Of all alive most worthy to be praised.

Ye three Elizabeths for ever live,

That three such graces did unto me give.

Edmund Spenser

A Farm-Picture

THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,

A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;

And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Walt Whitman

Against Indifference

More love or more disdain I crave,

...Sweet, be not still indifferent:

O send me quickly to my grave,

...Or else afford me more content!

Or love or hate me more or less,

For love abhors all lukewarmness.

Give me a tempest if 'twill drive

...Me to the place where I would be;

Or if you'll have me still alive,

...Confess you will be kind to me.

Give hopes of bliss or dig my grave:

More love or more disdain I crave.

Charles Webbe

... or not!

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

Jimmy Buffett

The greatest mystery

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

Andre Malraux

Fools

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.

Doug Larson

A great deal

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

Andrew Lang

Rich

Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Sarah Bernhardt

Pleasant pleasures

To make pleasures pleasant, shorten them.

Charles Buxton

Mind over matter

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Mark Twain

Love

Love is a friendship set to music.

E. Joseph Cossman

Imagination

Imagination is intelligence having fun

George Scialabba

Music Master

You that love lovers,

this is your home. Welcome!

In the midst of making form, love

made this form that melts form,

with love for the door,

soul the vestibule.

Watch the dust grains moving

in the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,

but we're all dancing to it nevertheless,

directed by the one who teaches us,

the pure joy of the sun,

our music master.

Rumi

Version by Coleman Barks

Learners

"In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."

Al Rogers

Better

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."

A. J. Liebling

Hopelessly

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Goethe

On the Beach at Night Alone

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, all inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

Walt Whitman

A Clear Midnight

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou

lovest best.

Night, sleep, and the stars.

Walt Whitman

Like as a Huntsman

Like as a huntsman after weary chase,

Seeing the game from him escap'd away,

Sits down to rest him in some shady place,

With panting hounds beguiled of their prey:

So after long pursuit and vain assay,

When I all weary had the chase forsook,

The gentle deer return'd the self-same way,

Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.

There she beholding me with milder look,

Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:

Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,

And with her own goodwill her firmly tied.

Strange thing, me seem'd, to see a beast so wild,

So goodly won, with her own will beguil'd.

Edmund Spenser

Book Of Suleika - Love For Love

LOVE for love, and moments sweet,

Lips returning kiss for kiss,

Word for word, and eyes that meet;

Breath for breath, and bliss for bliss.

Thus at eve, and thus the morrow!

Yet thou feeblest, at my lay,

Ever some half-hidden sorrow;

Could I Joseph's graces borrow,

All thy beauty I'd repay!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Experience

Some men break your heart in two,

Some men fawn and flatter,

Some men never look at you;

And that cleans up the matter.

Dorothy Parker

Verse

Past ruined Ilion Helen lives,

Alcestis rises from the shades.

Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives

Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall oblivion's deepening veil

Hide all the peopled hills you see,

The gay, the proud, while lovers hail

These many summers you and me.

Walter Savage Landor

Answered Prayers

I prayed for riches, and achieved success;

All that I touched turned into gold. Alas!

My cares were greater and my peace was less,

When that wish came to pass.

I prayed for glory, and I heard my name

Sung by sweet children and by hoary men.

But ah! the hurts – the hurts that come with fame.

I was not happy then.

I prayed for Love, and had my heart’s desire.

Through quivering heart and body, and through brain,

There swept the flame of its devouring fire,

And but the scars remain.

I prayed for a contented mind. At length

Great light upon my darkened spirit burst.

Great peace fell on me also, and great strength –

Oh, had that prayer been first!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In A Drear-Nighted December

1.

In drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree,

Thy branches ne'er remember

Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them

With a sleety whistle through them;

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

2.

In drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy brook,

Thy bubblings ne'er remember

Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

3.

Ah! would 'twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any

Writhed not at passed joy?

The feel of not to feel it,

When there is none to heal it

Nor numbed sense to steel it,

Was never said in rhyme.

John Keats

Between My Country—and the Others

Between My Country—and the Others—

There is a Sea—

But Flowers—negotiate between us—

As Ministry.

Emily Dickinson

Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XX

Oh, pitiful awaking! What was Adrian's pleasure,

That it had earned for him such bitterness?

What his soul's pride that its new tender measure

Should find its echo in a dirge like this?

The chaunters chaunting slow were sable priests

Robed for a requiem; the laughters clear,

Women that wept; the untasted marriage feasts,

Death's banquet spread, and she upon the bier,

Natalia's self in her white robe of death,

Mourned by the hard eyes of unfriendly men,

And with them he, her husband, with set teeth

And visage pale which ne'er should smile again

In any welcome. Adrian neither moved

Nor spoke, but gazed upon the form he loved.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

from If you should know her

Dawn turned to dusk and they found each other.

The sun went down leaving all of it's glory on their burned skin.

He had fallen asleep and she...

she went to the sea.

She glances behind- tenderness swells deep within her.

His image gets smaller and smaller-

Soon his presence just a remembrance.

She sees him in the distance-- he is as still as a starry night.

Faintly his hand beckons her.

She races towards him,

grabs it greedily- aching for his soft caress.

She wanted to love him.

She wanted him to love her.

She pulls him close to her chest and rests his head there,

it's so peaceful, so safe.

Time stood still.

The urchins at sea blessed them with a loving night.

Just one night.

Then they wandered off...

Anne Berlin

Irresistible

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Robert Frost

Misbehave

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

Welles, Orson

Sin and grin

The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin.

Nash, Ogden

Universal

The two universal languages on earth are music and silence. They are also the two primary languagesof heaven.

Peter Kreeft

Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XIX

And still the music sounded near and near,

Loud and more loud on Adrian's nuptial way,

Preluding soft, as 'twere a dulcimer,

But gathering strength and volume with delay,

And sadness too. In truth, as strange a chaunt

As ever bridegroom's ear might choose to know,

Or lover's voice to listening lover vaunt,

(Thus Adrian argued in his dream) for, lo,

The dirge resolved itself to words of pain,

And ``Miserere mei Domine''

Became the burden of its dolorous strain,

Till the love faded from Natalia's glee,

And with a sudden shudder in the sun

Adrian awoke and his brave dream was done.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt