Written by
Hermann Hesse |
Only on me, the lonely one,
The unending stars of the night shine,
The stone fountain whispers its magic song,
To me alone, to me the lonely one
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds
Move like dreams over the open countryside.
Neither house nor farmland,
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me,
What is mine belongs to no one,
The plunging brook behind the veil of the woods,
The frightening sea,
The bird whir of children at play,
The weeping and singing, lonely in the evening, of a man secretly in love.
The temples of the gods are mine also, and mine
the aristocratic groves of the past.
And no less, the luminous
Vault of heaven in the future is my home:
Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward,
To gaze on the future of blessed men,
Love, overcoming the law, love from people to people.
I find them all again, nobly transformed:
Farmer, king, tradesman, busy sailors,
Shepherd and gardener, all of them
Gratefully celebrate the festival of the future world.
Only the poet is missing,
The lonely one who looks on,
The bearer of human longing, the pale image
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world
Has no further need. Many garlands
Wilt on his grave,
But no one remembers him.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
The triumph of faith or, Christ's unchangeable love.
Rom. 8:33ff.
Who shall the Lord's elect condemn?
'Tis God that justifies their souls;
And mercy, like a mighty stream,
O'er all their sins divinely rolls.
Who shall adjudge the saints to hell?
'Tis Christ that suffered in their stead;
And, the salvation to fulfil,
Behold him rising from the dead!
He lives! he lives and sits above,
For ever interceding there:
Who shall divide us from his love?
Or what should tempt us to despair?
Shall persecution, or distress,
Famine, or sword, or nakedness?
He that hath loved us bears us through,
And makes us more than conquerors too.
Faith hath an overcoming power;
It triumphs in the dying hour:
Christ is our life, our joy, our hope,
Nor can we sink with such a prop.
Not all that men on earth can do,
Nor powers on high, nor powers below,
Shall cause his mercy to remove,
Or wean our hearts from Christ our love.
|
Written by
Delmore Schwartz |
Come, let us rejoice in James Joyce, in the greatness of this poet,
king, and king of poets
For he is our poor dead king, he is the monarch and Caesar of English,
he is the veritable King of the King's English
The English of the life of the city,
and the English of music;
Let them rejoice because he rejoiced and was joyous;
For his joy was superior, it was supreme, for it was accomplished
After the suffering of much evil, the evil of the torment of pride,
By the overcoming of disgust and despair by means of the confrontation of them
By the enduring of nausea, the supporting of exile, the drawing from
the silence of exile, the pure arias of the
hidden music of all things, all beings.
For the joy of Joyce was earned by the sweat of the bow of his mind
by the tears of the agony of his heart;
hence it was gained, mastered, and conquered,
(hence it was not a gift and freely given,
a mercy often granted to masters,
as if they miraculous were natural -)
For he earned his joy and ours by the domination of evil by
confrontation and the exorcism of language
in all its powers of imitation and
imagination and radiance and delight....
|
Written by
John Berryman |
Peter's not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.
The architecture is far from reassuring.
I feel uneasy.
A pity,-”the interview began so well:
I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away
and sloshed out a martini
strangely needed. We spoke of indifferent matters-”
God's health, the vague hell of the Congo,
John's energy,
anti-matter matter. I felt fine.
Then a change came backward. A chill fell.
Talk slackened,
died, and began to give me sideways looks.
'Chirst,' I thought 'what now?' and would have askt for another
but didn't dare.
I feel my application failing. It's growing dark,
some other sound is overcoming. His last words are:
'We betrayed me.'
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
Victory over death.
1 Cor. 15:55ff
O for an overcoming faith
To cheer my dying hours;
To triumph o'er the monster Death,
And all his frightful powers!
Joyful with all the strength I have
My quiv'ring lips should sing-
Where is thy boasted vict'ry, Grave?
And where the monster's sting?
If sin be pardoned, I'm secure,
Death hath no sting beside;
The law gives sin its damning power;
But Christ, my ransom, died.
Now to the God of victory
Immortal thanks be paid,
Who makes us conquerors while we die,
Through Christ our living head.
|