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Best Famous Utopia Poems

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Written by Henry Kendall | Create an image from this poem

Mountains

RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, 
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; 
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare 
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; 
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, 
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud; 

Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines, 
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens. 

Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees, 
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze! 
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look 
Out across the hazy gloaming - out beyond the brawling brook! 
Over pathways leading skyward - over crag and swelling cone, 

Past long hillocks looking like to waves of ocean turned to stone; 
Yearning for a bliss unworldly, yearning for a brighter change, 
Yearning for the mystic Aidenn, built beyond this mountain range. 


Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone, 
And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one; 
Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream, 
All have passed me like to sunstreaks flying down a distant stream. 

Oh, the love returned by loved ones! Oh, the faces that I knew! 
Oh, the wrecks of fond affection! Oh, the hearts so warm and true! 
But their voices I remember, and a something lingers still, 
Like a dying echo roaming sadly round a far off hill. 


I would sojourn here contented, tranquil as I was of yore, 
And would never wish to clamber, seeking for an unknown shore; 
I have dwelt within this cottage twenty summers, and mine eyes 

Never wandered erewhile round in search of undiscovered skies; 
But a spirit sits beside me, veiled in robes of dazzling white, 
And a dear one's whisper wakens with the symphonies of night; 
And a low sad music cometh, borne along on windy wings, 
Like a strain familiar rising from a maze of slumbering springs. 


And the Spirit, by my window, speaketh to my restless soul, 
Telling of the clime she came from, where the silent moments roll; 

Telling of the bourne mysterious, where the sunny summers flee 
Cliffs and coasts, by man untrodden, ridging round a shipless sea. 

There the years of yore are blooming - there departed life-dreams dwell, 
There the faces beam with gladness that I loved in youth so well; 
There the songs of childhood travel, over wave-worn steep and strand - 
Over dale and upland stretching out behind this mountain land. 


``Lovely Being, can a mortal, weary of this changeless scene, 

Cross these cloudy summits to the land where man hath never been? 
Can he find a pathway leading through that wildering mass of pines, 
So that he shall reach the country where ethereal glory shines; 
So that he may glance at waters never dark with coming ships; 
Hearing round him gentle language floating from angelic lips; 
Casting off his earthly fetters, living there for evermore; 
All the blooms of Beauty near him, gleaming on that quiet shore? 


``Ere you quit this ancient casement, tell me, is it well to yearn 
For the evanescent visions, vanished never to return? 
Is it well that I should with to leave this dreary world behind, 
Seeking for your fair Utopia, which perchance I may not find? 
Passing through a gloomy forest, scaling steeps like prison walls, 
Where the scanty sunshine wavers and the moonlight seldom falls? 
Oh, the feelings re-awakened! Oh, the hopes of loftier range! 

Is it well, thou friendly Being, well to wish for such a change?'' 


But the Spirit answers nothing! and the dazzling mantle fades; 
And a wailing whisper wanders out from dismal seaside shades! 
``Lo, the trees are moaning loudly, underneath their hood-like shrouds, 
And the arch above us darkens, scarred with ragged thunder clouds!'' 
But the spirit answers nothing, and I linger all alone, 
Gazing through the moony vapours where the lovely Dream has flown; 

And my heart is beating sadly, and the music waxeth faint, 
Sailing up to holy Heaven, like the anthems of a Saint.


Written by Kathleen Raine | Create an image from this poem

Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva

 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s blind progress in wrong courses through wrong choices has brought us to nightmare where what seems, is, to the dreamer, the collective mind of the twentieth century — this world of wonders not divine creation but a big bang of blind chance, purposeless accident, mother earth’s children, their living and loving, their delight in being not joy but chemistry, stimulus, reflex, valueless, meaningless, while to our machines we impute intelligence, in computers and robots we store information and call it knowledge, we seek guidance by dialling numbers, pressing buttons, throwing switches, in place of family our companions are shadows, cast on a screen, bodiless voices, fleshless faces, where was the Garden a Disney-land of virtual reality, in place of angels the human imagination is peopled with foot-ballers film-stars, media-men, experts, know-all television personalities, animated puppets with cartoon faces — To whom can we pray for release from illusion, from the world-cave, but Time the destroyer, the liberator, the purifier? The curse of Midas has changed at a touch, a golden handshake earthly paradise to lifeless matter, where once was seed-time, summer and winter, food-chain, factory farming, monocrops for supermarkets, pesticides, weed-killers birdless springs, endangered species, battery-hens, hormone injections, artificial insemination, implants, transplants, sterilization, surrogate births, contraception, cloning, genetic engineering, abortion, and our days shall be short in the land we have sown with the Dragon’s teeth where our armies arise fully armed on our killing-fields with land-mines and missiles, tanks and artillery, gas-masks and body-bags, our air-craft rain down fire and destruction, our space-craft broadcast lies and corruption, our elected parliaments parrot their rhetoric of peace and democracy while the truth we deny returns in our dreams of Armageddon, the death-wish, the arms-trade, hatred and slaughter profitable employment of our thriving cities, the arms-race to the end of the world of our postmodern, post-Christian, post-human nations, progress to the nihil of our spent civilization.
But cause and effect, just and inexorable law of the universe no fix of science, nor amenable god can save from ourselves the selves we have become — At the end of history to whom can we pray but to the destroyer, the liberator, the purifier? In the beginning the stars sang together the cosmic harmony, but Time, imperceptible taker-away of all that has been, all that will be, our heart-beat your drum, our dance of life your dance of death in the crematorium, our high-rise dreams, Valhalla, Utopia, Xanadu, Shangri-la, world revolution Time has taken, and soon will be gone Cambridge, Princeton and M.
I.
T.
, Nalanda, Athens and Alexandria all for the holocaust of civilization — To whom shall we pray when our vision has faded but the world-destroyer, the liberator, the purifier? But great is the realm of the world-creator, the world-sustainer from whom we come, in whom we move and have our being, about us, within us the wonders of wisdom, the trees and the fountains, the stars and the mountains, all the children of joy, the loved and the known, the unknowable mystery to whom we return through the world-destroyer, — Holy, holy at the end of the world the purging fire of the purifier, the liberator!
Written by Jorie Graham | Create an image from this poem

The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia

 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves drowns out the cricket-chirping I was coming close to hear Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am indoors, of course, and this is a pane, here, and I have arranged the flowers for you again.
Have taken the dead cordless ones, the yellow bits past apogee, the faded cloth, the pollen-free abandoned marriage-hymn back out, leaving the few crisp blooms to swagger, winglets, limpid debris Shall I arrange these few remaining flowers? Shall I rearrange these gossamer efficiencies? Please don't touch me with your skin.
Please let the thing evaporate.
Please tell me clearly what it is.
The party is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.
It's a philosophy of life, of course, drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air above the heads -- how small they seem from here, the bobbing universal heads, stuffing the void with eloquence, and also tiny merciless darts of truth.
It's pulled on tight, the air they breathe and rip.
It's like a prize the way it's stretched on tight over the voices, keeping them intermingling, forcing the breaths to marry, marry, cunning little hermeneutic cupola, dome of occasion in which the thoughts re- group, the footprints stall and gnaw in tiny ruts, the napkins wave, are waved , the honeycombing thoughts are felt to dialogue, a form of self- congratulation, no?, or is it suffering? I'm a bit dizzy up here rearranging things, they will come up here soon, and need a setting for their fears, and loves, an architecture for their evolutionary morphic needs -- what will they need if I don't make the place? -- what will they know to miss?, what cry out for, what feel the bitter restless irritations for? A bit dizzy from the altitude of everlastingness, the tireless altitudes of the created place, in which to make a life -- a liberty -- the hollow, fetishized, and starry place, a bit gossamer with dream, a vortex of evaporations, oh little dream, invisible city, invisible hill I make here on the upper floors for you -- down there, where you are entertained, where you are passing time, there's glass and moss on air, there's the feeling of being numerous, mouths submitting to air, lips to protocol, and dreams of sense, tongues, hinges, forceps clicking in anticipation ofas if the moment, freeze-burned by accuracies--of could be thawed open into life again by gladnesses, by rectitude -- no, no -- by the sinewy efforts at sincerity -- can't you feel it gliding round you, mutating, yielding the effort-filled phrases of your talk to air, compounding, stemming them, honeying-open the sheerest innuendoes till the rightness seems to root, in the air, in the compact indoor sky, and the rest, all round, feels like desert, falls away, and you have the sensation of muscular timeliness,and you feel the calligraphic in you reach out like a soul into the midst of others, in conversation, gloved by desire, into the tiny carnage of opinionsSo dizzy.
Life buzzing beneath me though my feeling says the hive is gone, queen gone, the continuum continuing beneath, busy, earnest, in con- versation.
Shall I prepare.
Shall I put this further to the left, shall I move the light, the point-of-view, the shades are drawn, to cast a glow resembling disappearance, slightly red, will that fix it, will that make clear the task, the trellised ongoingness and all these tiny purposes, these parables, this marketplace of tightening truths? Oh knit me that am crumpled dust, the heap is all dispersed.
Knit me that am.
Say therefore.
Say philosophy and mean by that the pane.
Let us look out again.
The yellow sky.
With black leaves rearranging it
Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley | Create an image from this poem

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepair'd, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight.
I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows; and yet more Than all, with a remember'd friend I love To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove The living spray along the sunny air Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north; And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth Harmonizing with solitude, and sent Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
So, as we rode, we talk'd; and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not, But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours, Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours, None slow enough for sadness: till we came Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn The thoughts it would extinguish: 'twas forlorn, Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, The devils held within the dales of Hell Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, All that vain men imagine or believe, Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, We descanted, and I (for ever still Is it not wise to make the best of ill?) Argu'd against despondency, but pride Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paus'd ere it should alight, Over the horizon of the mountains--Oh, How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers Of cities they encircle! It was ours To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola.
As those who pause on some delightful way Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore, Pav'd with the image of the sky.
.
.
.
The hoar And aëry Alps towards the North appear'd Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent Among the many-folded hills: they were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles-- And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been Dissolv'd into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering as from waves of flame Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent.
"Ere it fade," Said my companion, "I will show you soon A better station"--so, o'er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven.
I was about to speak, when--"We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
"Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.
" I look'd, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island; such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, A windowless, deform'd and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance sway'd and swung; We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue: The broad sun sunk behind it, and it toll'd In strong and black relief.
"What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour Those who may cross the water, hear that bell Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers.
" "As much skill as need to pray In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they To their stern Maker," I replied.
"O ho! You talk as in years past," said Maddalo.
" 'Tis strange men change not.
You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim Beware of Providence.
" I look'd on him, But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
"And such," he cried, "is our mortality, And this must be the emblem and the sign Of what should be eternal and divine! And like that black and dreary bell, the soul, Hung in a heaven-illumin'd tower, must toll Our thoughts and our desires to meet below Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do For what? they know not--till the night of death, As sunset that strange vision, severeth Our memory from itself, and us from all We sought and yet were baffled.
" I recall The sense of what he said, although I mar The force of his expressions.
The broad star Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill, And the black bell became invisible, And the red tower look'd gray, and all between The churches, ships and palaces were seen Huddled in gloom;--into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola Convey'd me to my lodgings by the way.
The following morn was rainy, cold and dim: Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him, And whilst I waited with his child I play'd; A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made, A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being, Graceful without design and unforeseeing, With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam With such deep meaning, as we never see But in the human countenance: with me She was a special favourite: I had nurs'd Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first To this bleak world; and she yet seem'd to know On second sight her ancient playfellow, Less chang'd than she was by six months or so; For after her first shyness was worn out We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, When the Count enter'd.
Salutations past-- "The word you spoke last night might well have cast A darkness on my spirit--if man be The passive thing you say, I should not see Much harm in the religions and old saws (Though I may never own such leaden laws) Which break a teachless nature to the yoke: Mine is another faith"--thus much I spoke And noting he replied not, added: "See This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free; She spends a happy time with little care, While we to such sick thoughts subjected are As came on you last night.
It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise.
We might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek But in our mind? and if we were not weak Should we be less in deed than in desire?" "Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire How vainly to be strong!" said Maddalo: "You talk Utopia.
" "It remains to know," I then rejoin'd, "and those who try may find How strong the chains are which our spirit bind; Brittle perchance as straw.
.
.
.
We are assur'd Much may be conquer'd, much may be endur'd, Of what degrades and crushes us.
We know That we have power over ourselves to do And suffer--what, we know not till we try; But something nobler than to live and die: So taught those kings of old philosophy Who reign'd, before Religion made men blind; And those who suffer with their suffering kind Yet feel their faith, religion.
" "My dear friend," Said Maddalo, "my judgement will not bend To your opinion, though I think you might Make such a system refutation-tight As far as words go.
I knew one like you Who to this city came some months ago, With whom I argu'd in this sort, and he Is now gone mad--and so he answer'd me-- Poor fellow! but if you would like to go We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show How vain are such aspiring theories.
" "I hope to prove the induction otherwise, And that a want of that true theory, still, Which seeks a 'soul of goodness' in things ill Or in himself or others, has thus bow'd His being.
There are some by nature proud, Who patient in all else demand but this-- To love and be belov'd with gentleness; And being scorn'd, what wonder if they die Some living death? this is not destiny But man's own wilful ill.
" As thus I spoke Servants announc'd the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.
Written by Sidney Lanier | Create an image from this poem

Ode To The Johns Hopkins University

 How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands
Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands!
In four brief cycles round the punctual sun
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
Howbeit she was born Unnoised as any stealing summer morn.
From far the sages saw, from far they came And ministered to her, Led by the soaring-genius'd Sylvester That, earlier, loosed the knot great Newton tied, And flung the door of Fame's locked temple wide.
As favorable fairies thronged of old and blessed The cradled princess with their several best, So, gifts and dowers meet To lay at Wisdom's feet, These liberal masters largely brought -- Dear diamonds of their long-compressed thought, Rich stones from out the labyrinthine cave Of research, pearls from Time's profoundest wave And many a jewel brave, of brilliant ray, Dug in the far obscure Cathay Of meditation deep -- With flowers, of such as keep Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews -- The violet with her low-drooped eye, For learned modesty, -- The student snow-drop, that doth hang and pore Upon the earth, like Science, evermore, And underneath the clod doth grope and grope, -- The astronomer heliotrope, That watches heaven with a constant eye, -- The daring crocus, unafraid to try (When Nature calls) the February snows, -- And patience' perfect rose.
Thus sped with helps of love and toil and thought, Thus forwarded of faith, with hope thus fraught, In four brief cycles round the stringent sun This youngest sister hath her stature won.
Nay, why regard The passing of the years? Nor made, nor marr'd, By help or hindrance of slow Time was she: O'er this fair growth Time had no mastery: So quick she bloomed, she seemed to bloom at birth, As Eve from Adam, or as he from earth.
Superb o'er slow increase of day on day, Complete as Pallas she began her way; Yet not from Jove's unwrinkled forehead sprung, But long-time dreamed, and out of trouble wrung, Fore-seen, wise-plann'd, pure child of thought and pain, Leapt our Minerva from a mortal brain.
And here, O finer Pallas, long remain, -- Sit on these Maryland hills, and fix thy reign, And frame a fairer Athens than of yore In these blest bounds of Baltimore, -- Here, where the climates meet That each may make the other's lack complete, -- Where Florida's soft Favonian airs beguile The nipping North, -- where nature's powers smile, -- Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands Spread wide with invitation to all lands, -- Where now the eager people yearn to find The organizing hand that fast may bind Loose straws of aimless aspiration fain In sheaves of serviceable grain, -- Here, old and new in one, Through nobler cycles round a richer sun O'er-rule our modern ways, O blest Minerva of these larger days! Call here thy congress of the great, the wise, The hearing ears, the seeing eyes, -- Enrich us out of every farthest clime, -- Yea, make all ages native to our time, Till thou the freedom of the city grant To each most antique habitant Of Fame, -- Bring Shakespeare back, a man and not a name, -- Let every player that shall mimic us In audience see old godlike Aeschylus, -- Bring Homer, Dante, Plato, Socrates, -- Bring Virgil from the visionary seas Of old romance, -- bring Milton, no more blind, -- Bring large Lucretius, with unmaniac mind, -- Bring all gold hearts and high resolved wills To be with us about these happy hills, -- Bring old Renown To walk familiar citizen of the town, -- Bring Tolerance, that can kiss and disagree, -- Bring Virtue, Honor, Truth, and Loyalty, -- Bring Faith that sees with undissembling eyes, -- Bring all large Loves and heavenly Charities, -- Till man seem less a riddle unto man And fair Utopia less Utopian, And many peoples call from shore to shore, `The world has bloomed again, at Baltimore!'


Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

Big Hair

 Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel.
Dinner, consisting of three parts gin and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written only when the poet is clad in black underwear.
But that's Jorie for you.
Always cracking wise, always where the action is, the lights, and the sexy lingerie.
Poems, she said, were meant to be written on the run, like ladders on the stockings of a gun moll at a bar.
Jorie had to introduce the other poet with the fabulous hair that night.
She'd have preferred to work out at the gym.
She'd have preferred to work out with Jim.
She'd have preferred to be anywhere but here, where young men gawked at her hair and old men swooned at the thought of her lingerie.
"If you've seen one, you've seen the moll," Jorie said when asked about C.
"Everything she's written is an imitation of E.
" Some poems can be written only when the poet has fortified herself with gin.
Others come easily to one as feckless as Moll Flanders.
Jorie beamed.
"It happened here," she said.
She had worn her best lingerie, and D.
made the expected pass at her.
"My hair was big that night, not that I make a fetish of hair, but some poems must not be written by bald sopranos.
" That night she lectured on lingerie to an enthusiastic audience of female gymnasts and gin- drinking males.
"Utopia," she said, "is nowhere.
" This prompted one critic to declare that, of them all, all the poets with hair, Jorie was the fairest moll.
The New York Times voted her "best hair.
" Iowa City was said to be the place where all aspiring poets went, their poems written on water, with blanks instead of words, a tonic of silence in the heart of noise, and a vision of lingerie in the bright morning -- the lingerie to be worn by a moll holding a tumbler of gin, with her hair wet from the shower and her best poems waiting to be written.
Written by William Butler Yeats | Create an image from this poem

In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz

 The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears Blossom from the summer's wreath; The older is condemned to death, Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams - Some vague Utopia - and she seems, When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek One or the other out and speak Of that old Georgian mansion, mix pictures of the mind, recall That table and the talk of youth, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all, All the folly of a fight With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful.
Have no enemy but time; Arise and bid me strike a match And strike another till time catch; Should the conflagration climb, Run till all the sages know.
We the great gazebo built, They convicted us of guilt; Bid me strike a match and blow.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things