Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free, To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea! No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call, The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all. What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives? He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives. Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove, And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love; But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee; Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.
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The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music, And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love.
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O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields,...
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O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world ...
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January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps - but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
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Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; I want the one rapture of an inspiration. O then if in my lagging lines you miss
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O Sorrow, / Why dost borrow / Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?
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These lovers cry, O ho they die! Yet that which seems the wound to kill...
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The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy
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O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us. (O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)
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Back to the army again, sergeant, / Back to the army again, / Out o' the cold an' the rain.
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LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts.
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We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!...of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless...of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here...that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.' That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
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O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings
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Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: the Son, O how unlike the Father! First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.
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O, now, for ever Farewell the tranquil mind farewell content Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars That make ambition virtue O, farewell Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell Othello's occupation's gone
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O Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live:
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What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
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O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
(O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)
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O human race born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou fall.
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O! the one Life within us and abroad,
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January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
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O if we but knew what we do when we delve or hew -- hack and rack the growing green! Since country is so tender to touch, her being so slender, that like this sleek and seeing ball but a prick will make no eye at all, where we, even where we mean to mend her we end her, when we hew or delve: after-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
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O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;
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O Star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there, to waft us home the message of despair?
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O lyric Love, half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire.
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O many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken
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Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
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O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
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