Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.
Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the Laoco?n coils of our conceit.
Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.
Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.
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Written by
Mihai Eminescu |
Two candles, tall sentry, beside an earth mound,
A dream with wings broken that trail to the ground,
Loud flung from the belfry calamitous chime...
'Tis thus that you passed o'er the bound'ries of time.
Gone by are the hours when the heavens entire
Flowed rivers of milk and grew flowers of fire,
When the thunderous clouds were but castles erect
Which the moon like a queen each in turn did inspect.
I see you a shadow bright silver transcending,
With wings high uplifted to heaven ascending,
I see you slow climbing through the sky's scaffold bars
Midst a tempest of light and a snowstorm of stars;
While the witches the sound of their spinning prolong,
Exalted in sunshine, swept up by a song,
O'er your breast like a saint you white arms crossed in prayer,
And gold on the water, and silver in the air.
I see your soul's parting, its flight I behold;
Then glaze at the clay that remains ... mute and cold,
At the winding-sheet clung to the coffin's rude sill,
At your smile sweet and candid, that seems alive still.
And i ask times unending my soul torn with doubt,
O why, pallid angel, your light has gone out,
For were you not blameless and wonderfully fair ?
Have you gone to rekindle a star in despair ?
I fancy on high there are wings without name,
Broad rivers of fire spanned by bridges of flame,
Strange castles that spires till the zenith up fling,
With stairways of incense and flowers that sing.
And you wonder among them, a worshipful queen,
With hair of bright starlight and eyes vespertine,
In a tunic of turquoise bespattered with gold,
While a wreath of green laurels does your forehead enfold.
O, death is a chaos, an ocean of stars gleaming,
While life is a quagmire of doubts and of dreaming,
Oh, death is an aeon of sun-blazoned spheres,
While life but a legend of wailing and tears.
Trough my head beats a whirlwind, a clamorous wrangle
Of thoughts and of dreams that despair does entangle;
For when suns are extinguished and meteors fail
The whole universe seems to mean nothing at all.
Maybe that one day the arched heavens will sunder,
And down through their break all the emptiness thunder,
Void's night o'er the earth its vast nothing extending,
The loot of an instant of death without ending.
If so, then forever your flame did succumb,
And forever your voice from today will be dumb.
If so, then hereafter can bring no rebirth.
If so, then this angel was nothing but earth.
And thus, lovely soil that breath has departed,
I stand by your coffin alone broken-hearted;
And yet i don't weep, rather praise for its fleeing
Your ray softly crept from this chaos of being.
For who shell declare which is ill and which well,
The is, or the isn't ? Can anyone tell ?
For he who is not, even grief can't destroy,
And oft is the grieving, and seldom the joy.
To exist! O, what nonsense, what foolish conceit;
Our eyes but deceive us, our ears but cheat,
What this age discovers, the next will deny,
For better just nothing than naught a lie.
I see dreams in men's clothing that after dreams chase,
But that tumble in tombs ere the end of the race,
And i search in may soul how this horror to fly,
To laugh like a madman ? To curse ? Or to cry ?
O, what is the meaning ? What sense does agree ?
The end of such beauty, had that what to be ?
Sweet seraph of clay where still lingers life's smile,
Just in order to die did you live for a while ?
O, tell me the meaning. This angel or clod ?
I find on her forehead no witness of God.
English version by Corneliu M. Popescu
Transcribed by Ana- Maria Ene
School No. 10, Focsani, Romania
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Written by
Jane Taylor |
Let those who're fond of idle tricks,
Of throwing stones, and hurling bricks,
And all that sort of fun,
Now hear a tale of idle Jim,
That warning they may take by him,
Nor do as he has done.
In harmless sport or healthful play
He did not pass his time away,
Nor took his pleasure in it;
For mischief was his only joy:
No book, or work, or even toy,
Could please him for a minute.
A neighbour's house he'd slyly pass,
And throw a stone to break the glass,
And then enjoy the joke!
Or, if a window open stood,
He'd throw in stones, or bits of wood,
To frighten all the folk.
If travellers passing chanced to stay,
Of idle Jim to ask the way,
He never told them right;
And then, quite harden'd in his sin,
Rejoiced to see them taken in,
And laugh'd with all his might.
He'd tie a string across the street,
Just to entangle people's feet,
And make them tumble down:
Indeed, he was disliked so much,
That no good boy would play with such
A nuisance to the town.
At last the neighbours, in despair,
This mischief would no longer bear:
And so to end the tale,
This lad, to cure him of his ways,
Was sent to spend some dismal days
Within the county jail.
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Written by
Robinson Jeffers |
Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.
The west wind is dead, the waves
Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons
Whole hillsides burst aglow
With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,
And every pool was rimmed
With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.
Now tall and slender suddenly
The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,
The pencilled ones on the hill;
This deerweed shivers with gold, the white globe-tulips
Blow out their silky bubbles,
But in the next glen bronze-bells nod, the does
Scalded by some hot longing
Can hardly set their pointed hoofs to expect
Love but they crush a flower;
Shells pair on the rock, birds mate, the moths fly double.
O it Is time for us now
Mouth kindling mouth to entangle our maiden bodies
To make that burning flower.
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Written by
Michael Drayton |
NEAR to the silver Trent
SIRENA dwelleth;
She to whom Nature lent
All that excelleth;
By which the Muses late
And the neat Graces
Have for their greater state
Taken their places;
Twisting an anadem
Wherewith to crown her,
As it belong'd to them
Most to renown her.
On thy bank,
In a rank,
Let thy swans sing her,
And with their music
Along let them bring her.
Tagus and Pactolus
Are to thee debtor,
Nor for their gold to us
Are they the better:
Henceforth of all the rest
Be thou the River
Which, as the daintiest,
Puts them down ever.
For as my precious one
O'er thee doth travel,
She to pearl paragon
Turneth thy gravel.
On thy bank...
Our mournful Philomel,
That rarest tuner,
Henceforth in Aperil
Shall wake the sooner,
And to her shall complain
From the thick cover,
Redoubling every strain
Over and over:
For when my Love too long
Her chamber keepeth,
As though it suffer'd wrong,
The Morning weepeth.
On thy bank...
Oft have I seen the Sun,
To do her honour,
Fix himself at his noon
To look upon her;
And hath gilt every grove,
Every hill near her,
With his flames from above
Striving to cheer her:
And when she from his sight
Hath herself turned,
He, as it had been night,
In clouds hath mourned.
On thy bank...
The verdant meads are seen,
When she doth view them,
In fresh and gallant green
Straight to renew them;
And every little grass
Broad itself spreadeth,
Proud that this bonny lass
Upon it treadeth:
Nor flower is so sweet
In this large cincture,
But it upon her feet
Leaveth some tincture.
On thy bank...
The fishes in the flood,
When she doth angle,
For the hook strive a-good
Them to entangle;
And leaping on the land,
From the clear water,
Their scales upon the sand
Lavishly scatter;
Therewith to pave the mould
Whereon she passes,
So herself to behold
As in her glasses.
On thy bank...
When she looks out by night,
The stars stand gazing,
Like comets to our sight
Fearfully blazing;
As wond'ring at her eyes
With their much brightness,
Which so amaze the skies,
Dimming their lightness.
The raging tempests are calm
When she speaketh,
Such most delightsome balm
From her lips breaketh.
On thy bank...
In all our Brittany
There 's not a fairer,
Nor can you fit any
Should you compare her.
Angels her eyelids keep,
All hearts surprising;
Which look whilst she doth sleep
Like the sun's rising:
She alone of her kind
Knoweth true measure,
And her unmatched mind
Is heaven's treasure.
On thy bank...
Fair Dove and Darwen clear,
Boast ye your beauties,
To Trent your mistress here
Yet pay your duties:
My Love was higher born
Tow'rds the full fountains,
Yet she doth moorland scorn
And the Peak mountains;
Nor would she none should dream
Where she abideth,
Humble as is the stream
Which by her slideth.
On thy bank...
Yet my pour rustic Muse
Nothing can move her,
Nor the means I can use,
Though her true lover:
Many a long winter's night
Have I waked for her,
Yet this my piteous plight
Nothing can stir her.
All thy sands, silver Trent,
Down to the Humber,
The sighs that I have spent
Never can number.
On thy bank,
In a rank,
Let thy swans sing her,
And with their music
Along let them bring her.
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Written by
Rabindranath Tagore |
Do not go, my love, without asking
my leave.
I have watched all night, and now
my eyes are heavy with sleep.
I fear lest I lose you when I'm
sleeping.
Do not go, my love, without asking
my leave.
I start up and stretch my hands to
touch you. I ask myself, "Is it a
dream?"
Could I but entangle your feet with
my heart and hold them fast to my
breast!
Do not go, my love, without asking
my leave.
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Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
[Pg 239] SONNET III. L' ardente nodo ov' io fui, d' ora in ora. ON THE DEATH OF ANOTHER LADY. That burning toil, in which I once was caught,While twice ten years and one I counted o'er,Death has unloosed: like burden I ne'er bore;That grief ne'er fatal proves I now am taught.But Love, who to entangle me still sought,Spread in the treacherous grass his net once more,So fed the fire with fuel as before,That my escape I hardly could have wrought.And, but that my first woes experience gave,Snarèd long since and kindled I had been,And all the more, as I'm become less green:My freedom death again has come to save,And break my bond; that flame now fades, and fails,'Gainst which nor force nor intellect prevails. Nott.
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Written by
Edmund Spenser |
WHat guyle is this, that those her golden tresses,
She doth attyre vnder a net of gold:
and with sly skill so cunningly them dresses,
that which is gold or heare, may scarse be told?
Is it that mens frayle eyes, which gaze too bold,
she may entangle in that golden snare:
and being caught may craftily enfold,
theyr weaker harts, which are not wel aware?
Take heed therefore, myne eyes, how ye doe stare
henceforth too rashly on that guilefull net,
in which is euer ye entrapped are,
out of her bands ye by no meanes shall get.
Fondnesse it were for any being free,
to couet fetters, though they golden bee.
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