Written by
Pythagoras |
1.
First worship the Immortal Gods, as they are established and ordained by the Law.
2.
Reverence the Oath, and next the Heroes, full of goodness and light.
3.
Honour likewise the Terrestrial Daemons by rendering them the worship lawfully due to them.
4.
Honour likewise your parents, and those most nearly related to you.
5.
Of all the rest of mankind, make him your friend who distinguishes himself by his virtue.
6.
Always give ear to his mild exhortations, and take example from his virtuous and useful actions.
7.
Avoid as much as possible hating your friend for a slight fault.
8.
Power is a near neighbour to necessity.
9.
Know that all these things are just as what I have told you; and accustom yourself to overcome and vanquish these passions:--
10.
First gluttony, sloth, sensuality, and anger.
11.
Do nothing evil, neither in the presence of others, nor privately;
12.
But above all things respect yourself.
13.
In the next place, observe justice in your actions and in your words.
14.
And do not accustom yourself to behave yourself in any thing without rule, and without reason.
15.
But always make this reflection, that it is ordained by destiny that all men shall die.
16.
And that the goods of fortune are uncertain; and that just as they may be acquired, they may likewise be lost.
17.
Concerning all the calamities that men suffer by divine fortune,
18.
Support your lot with patience, it is what it may be, and never complain at it.
19.
But endeavour what you can to remedy it.
20.
And consider that fate does not send the greatest portion of these misfortunes to good men.
21.
There are many sorts of reasonings among men, good and bad;
22.
Do not admire them too easily, nor reject them.
23.
But if falsehoods are advanced, hear them with mildness, and arm yourself with patience.
24.
Observe well, on every occasion, what I am going to tell you:--
25.
Do not let any man either by his words, or by his deeds, ever seduce you.
26.
Nor lure you to say or to do what is not profitable for yourself.
27.
Consult and deliberate before you act, that you may not commit foolish actions.
28.
For it is the part of a miserable man to speak and to act without reflection.
29.
But do the thing which will not afflict you afterwards, nor oblige you to repentance.
30.
Never do anything which you do not understand.
31.
But learn all you ought to know, and by that means you will lead a very pleasant life.
32.
in no way neglect the health of your body;
33.
But give it drink and meat in due measure, and also the exercise of which it needs.
34.
Now by measure I mean what will not discomfort you.
35.
Accustom yourself to a way of living that is neat and decent without luxury.
36.
Avoid all things that will occasion envy.
37.
And do not be prodigal out of season, like someone who does not know what is decent and honourable.
38.
Neither be covetous nor stingy; a due measure is excellent in these things.
39.
Only do the things that cannot hurt you, and deliberate before you do them.
40.
Never allow sleep to close your eyelids, after you went to bed,
41.
Until you have examined all your actions of the day by your reason.
42.
In what have I done wrong? What have I done? What have I omitted that I ought to have done?
43.
If in this examination you find that you have done wrong, reprove yourself severely for it;
44.
And if you have done any good, rejoice.
45.
Practise thoroughly all these things; meditate on them well; you ought to love them with all your heart.
46.
It is those that will put you in the way of divine virtue.
47.
I swear it by he who has transmitted into our souls the Sacred Quaternion, the source of nature, whose cause is eternal.
48.
But never begin to set your hand to any work, until you have first prayed the gods to accomplish what you are going to begin.
49.
When you have made this habit familiar to you,
50.
You will know the constitution of the Immortal Gods and of men.
51.
Even how far the different beings extend, and what contains and binds them together.
52.
You shall likewise know that according to Law, the nature of this universe is in all things alike,
53.
So that you shall not hope what you ought not to hope; and nothing in this world shall be hidden from you.
54.
You will likewise know, that men draw upon themselves their own misfortunes voluntarily, and of their own free choice.
55.
Unhappy they are! They neither see nor understand that their good is near them.
56.
Few know how to deliver themselves out of their misfortunes.
57.
Such is the fate that blinds humankind, and takes away his senses.
58.
Like huge cylinders they roll back and forth, and always oppressed with innumerable ills.
59.
For fatal strife, natural, pursues them everywhere, tossing them up and down; nor do they perceive it.
60.
Instead of provoking and stirring it up, they ought to avoid it by yielding.
61.
Oh! Jupiter, our Father! If you would deliver men from all the evils that oppress them,
62.
Show them of what daemon they make use.
63.
But take courage; the race of humans is divine.
64.
Sacred nature reveals to them the most hidden mysteries.
65.
If she impart to you her secrets, you will easily perform all the things which I have ordained thee.
66.
And by the healing of your soul, you wilt deliver it from all evils, from all afflictions.
67.
But you should abstain from the meats, which we have forbidden in the purifications and in the deliverance of the soul;
68.
Make a just distinction of them, and examine all things well.
69.
Leave yourself always to be guided and directed by the understanding that comes from above, and that ought to hold the reins.
70.
And when, after having deprived yourself of your mortal body, you arrived at the most pure Aither,
71.
You shall be a God, immortal, incorruptible, and Death shall have no more dominion over you.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry
Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!
|
Written by
Phillis Wheatley |
Who taught thee conflict with the pow'rs of night,
To vanquish satan in the fields of light?
Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown,
How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown!
War with each princedom, throne, and pow'r is o'er,
The scene is ended to return no more.
O could my muse thy seat on high behold,
How deckt with laurel, how enrich'd with gold!
O could she hear what praise thine harp employs,
How sweet thine anthems, how divine thy joys!
What heav'nly grandeur should exalt her strain!
What holy raptures in her numbers reign!
To sooth the troubles of the mind to peace,
To still the tumult of life's tossing seas,
To ease the anguish of the parents heart,
What shall my sympathizing verse impart?
Where is the balm to heal so deep a wound?
Where shall a sov'reign remedy be found?
Look, gracious Spirit, from thine heav'nly bow'r,
And thy full joys into their bosoms pour;
The raging tempest of their grief control,
And spread the dawn of glory through the soul,
To eye the path the saint departed trod,
And trace him to the bosom of his God.
|
Written by
William Strode |
Though Death to good men be the greatest boone,
I dare not think this Lady dyde so soone.
She should have livde for others: Poor mens want
Should make her stande, though she herselfe should faynt.
What though her vertuous deeds did make her seeme
Of equall age with old Methusalem?
Shee should have livde the more, and ere she fell
Have stretcht her little Span unto an Ell.
May wee not thinke her in a sleep or sowne,
Or that shee only tries her bedde of grounde?
Besides the life of Fame, is shee all deade?
As deade as Vertue, which together fledde:
As dead as men without it: and as cold
As Charity, that long ago grewe old.
Those eyes of pearle are under marble sett,
And now the Grave is made the Cabinett.
Tenne or an hundred doe not loose by this,
But all mankinde doth an Example misse.
A little earth cast upp betweene her sight
And us eclypseth all the world with night.
What ere Disease, to flatter greedy Death,
Hath stopt the organ of such harmlesse breath,
May it bee knowne by a more hatefull name
Then now the Plague: and for to quell the same
May all Physitians have an honest will:
May Pothecaries learne the Doctors skill:
May wandring Mountebanks, and which is worse
May an old womans medicine have the force
To vanquish it, and make it often flie,
Till Destiny on's servant learne to die.
May death itselfe, and all its Armory
Bee overmatcht with one poore Recipe.
What need I curse it? for, ere Death will kill
Another such, so farre estrang'd from ill,
So fayre, so kinde, so wisely temperate,
Time will cutt off the very life of Fate.
To make a perfect Lady was espyde
No want in her of anything but Pride:
And as for wantonnesse, her modesty
Was still as coole as now her ashes bee.
Seldome hath any Daughter lesse than her
Favourde the stampe of Eve her grandmother.
Her soule was like her body; both so cleare
As that a brighter eye than mans must peere
To finde a Blott; nor can wee yet suspect
But only by her Death the least defect:
And were not that the wages due to Sinne
Wee might beleeve that spotlesse she had bin.
|
Written by
John McCrae |
".
.
.
defeated, with great loss.
"
Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.
That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the harvest of their garnering.
Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear
By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.
We might have yielded, even we, but death
Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.
The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon
Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,
Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon
Among the wheat fields of the olden years.
Before our eyes a boundless wall of red
Shot through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!
Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead
And rest came on us like a quiet rain.
Not we the conquered! Not to us the shame,
Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease
To hold them ever; victors we, who came
In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
Small knowledge have we that by knowledge met
May not some day be quaint as any told
In almagest or chronicle of old,
Whereat we smile because we are as yet
The last—though not the last who may forget
What cleavings and abrasions manifold
Have marked an armor that was never scrolled
Before for human glory and regret.
With infinite unseen enemies in the way
We have encountered the intangible,
To vanquish where our fathers, who fought well,
Scarce had assumed endurance for a day;
Yet we shall have our darkness, even as they,
And there shall be another tale to tell.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
Satan's devices.
Now Satan comes with dreadful roar
And threatens to destroy;
He worries whom he can't devour
With a malicious joy.
Ye sons of God, oppose his rage,
Resist, and he'll begone;
Thus did our dearest Lord engage
And vanquish him alone.
Now he appears almost divine,
Like innocence and love;
But the old serpent lurks within
When he assumes the dove.
Fly from the false deceiver's tongue,
Ye sons of Adam, fly;
Our parents found the snare too strong,
Nor should the children try.
|
Written by
Emile Verhaeren |
So soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more luminous together that it would seem as though two Gods loved and united in us.
We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and so renewed by their virgin light that, in their brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.
In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of the world that ripens and becomes fruitful innumerably on our roads here below; as in clusters spring up among the silken lakes on which sails travel the myriad blossoms of the stars above.
Order dazzles us as fire embers, everything bathes us in its light and appears a torch to us: our simple words have a sense so lovely that we repeat them to hear them without end.
We are the sublime conquerors who vanquish eternity without pride and without a thought of trifling time: and our love seems to us always to have been.
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