Written by
Aleister Crowley |
Kill off mankind,
And give the Earth a chance!
Nature might find
In her inheritance
The seedlings of a race
Less infinitely base.
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Written by
Mahmoud Darwish |
On the day when my words
were earth...
I was a friend to stalks of wheat.
On the day when my words
were wrath
I was a friend to chains.
On the day when my words
were stones
I was a friend to streams.
On the day when my words
were a rebellion
I was a friend to earthquakes.
On the day when my words
were bitter apples
I was a friend to the optimist.
But when my words became
honey...
flies covered
my lips!...
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Written by
Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
This one sits shivering in Fortune’s smile,
Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath.
This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while
Laughs in the teeth of Death.
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Written by
Herman Melville |
When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country's ills--
The tempest burning from the waste of Time
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.
Nature's dark side is heeded now--
(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened flown)--
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storms we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
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Written by
Howard Nemerov |
On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
The ordinary night was graced
For them by the swift tide of blood
That silently they took at flood,
And for a little time they prized
Themselves emparadised.
Then, as if shaken by stage-fright
Beneath the hard moon's bony light,
They stood together on the sand
Embarrassed in each other's sight
But still conspiring hand in hand,
Until they saw, there underfoot,
As though the world had found them out,
The goose fish turning up, though dead,
His hugely grinning head.
There in the china light he lay,
Most ancient and corrupt and grey.
They hesitated at his smile,
Wondering what it seemed to say
To lovers who a little while
Before had thought to understand,
By violence upon the sand,
The only way that could be known
To make a world their own.
It was a wide and moony grin
Together peaceful and obscene;
They knew not what he would express,
So finished a comedian
He might mean failure or success,
But took it for an emblem of
Their sudden, new and guilty love
To be observed by, when they kissed,
That rigid optimist.
So he became their patriarch,
Dreadfully mild in the half-dark.
His throat that the sand seemed to choke,
His picket teeth, these left their mark
But never did explain the joke
That so amused him, lying there
While the moon went down to disappear
Along the still and tilted track
That bears the zodiac.
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Written by
Robert William Service |
My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
With much of blame, with little praise.
Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
And face your audience again.
That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
What hath the Old Year meant to you?
And you, O neighbour on my right
So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
What read you in that withered face?
And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
What see you in the dying year?
And so from face to face I flit,
The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough! Oh, ring the curtain down!
Old weary year! it's time to go.
My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!
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Written by
Henry Lawson |
I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best,
For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
With humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
Where my lovable characters roam.
There are lovable characters drag through the scrub,
Where the Optimist ever prevails;
There are lovable characters hang round the pub,
There are lovable jokers at sales
Where the auctioneer's one of the lovable wags
(Maybe from his "order" estranged),
And the beer is on tap, and the pigs in the bags
Of the purchasing cockies are changed.
There were lovable characters out in the West,
Of fifty hot summers, or more,
Who could not be proved, when it came to the test,
Too old to be sent to the war;
They were all forty-five and were orphans, they said,
With no one to keep them, or keep;
And mostly in France, with the world's bravest dead,
Those lovable characters sleep.
I long for the streets, but the Lord knoweth best,
For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
With humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
Where my lovable characters roam.
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