Written by
Robinson Jeffers |
I
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
II
I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
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Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
1901
Not in the camp his victory lies
Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation's sacrifice
To turn the judgement from his race.
Happy is he who, bred and taught
By sleek, sufficing Circumstance --
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance --
Seese, on the threshold of his days,
The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to unheralded dismays
Submits his body and his soul;
The fatted shows wherein he stood
Foregoing, and the idiot pride,
That he may prove with his own blood
All that his easy sires denied --
Ultimate issues, primal springs,
Demands, abasements, penalties --
The imperishable plinth of things
Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.
For, though ensnaring ritual dim
His vision through the after-years,
Yet virtue shall go out of him --
Example profiting his peers.
With great things charged he shall not hold
Aloof till great occasion rise,
But serve, full-harnessed, as of old,
The Days that are the Destinies.
He shall forswear and put away
The idols of his sheltered house;
And to Necessity shall pay
Unflinching tribute of his vows.
He shall not plead another's act,
Nor bind him in another's oath
To weigh the Word above the Fact,
Or make or take excuse for sloth.
The yoke he bore shall press him still,
And, long-ingrained effort goad
To find, to fasion, and fulfil
The cleaner life, the sterner code.
Not in the camp his victory lies --
The world (unheeding his return)
Shall see it in his children's eyes
And from his grandson's lips shall learn!
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Written by
Omar Khayyam |
If this life were indeed an empty play,
Each day would be an 'lid of festal day,
And men might conquer all their hearts' desire,
Fearless of after penalties to pay!
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Written by
Omar Khayyam |
Now bring me dancers, wine, and a houri with charming,
ravishing features—if houris there be. Or find a
beautiful brook within a green ravine, if such there be.
Ask nothing better; think no more of Hell's hot penalties,
for, verily, none is, nor any Paradise more fair than
that I sing, if Paradise there be.
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