Originally Posted by Janine
JANINE .Can you tell me the album it's on, I love the singer and the poem. They seem made for each other
JANINE .Can you tell me the album it's on, I love the singer and the poem. They seem made for each other
parched with thirst am i, and dying.
nay, drink of me, the ever-flowing spring
where on the right is a fair cypress.
who are you? where are you?--i am the son
of earth and of star-filled heaven, but
from heaven alone is my house.
you will find to the left of the house of hades a spring,
and by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
to this spring approach not near.
but you shall find another, from the lake of memory
cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
say, "i am a child of Earth and starry heaven;
but my race is of heaven alone. this you know yourselves.
but i am parched with thirst and i perish. give me quickly
the cold water flowing forth from the lake of memory."
and of themselves they will give you to drink of the holy spring:
and thereafter you will have lordship among the other heroes.
Who's the poet ?
My lifelong love affair with books and reading continues unaffected by automation, computers, and all other forms of the twentieth-century gadgetry.
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith, 1931
its an ancient greek tomb prayer
on topic:
Tristesses de la lune
Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse;
Ainsi qu'une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,
Qui d'une main distraite et légère caresse
Avant de s'endormir le contour de ses seins,
Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches,
Mourante, elle se livre aux longues pâmoisons,
Et promène ses yeux sur les visions blanches
Qui montent dans l'azur comme des floraisons.
Quand parfois sur ce globe, en sa langueur oisive,
Elle laisse filer une larme furtive,
Un poète pieux, ennemi du sommeil,
Dans le creux de sa main prend cette larme pâle,
Aux reflets irisés comme un fragment d'opale,
Et la met dans son coeur loin des yeux du soleil.
— Charles Baudelaire
soundtrack included <3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--OfNFi8GJw
The Female Of The Species by Gauri Deshpande
[LEFT]Sometimes you want to talk
about love and despair
and the ungratefulness of children
A man is no use whatever then .
You want then your mother
or your sister
or the girl with whom you went to through the school,
and your first love ,and her -
first child -a girl-
and your second.
You sit with them and talk .
She sews and you sit and sip
and speak of the rate of rice
and the price of tea
and the scarcity of cheese.
You know both that you 've spoken
of love,despair and ungratefulness of children.
Because I'm growing old and will not be here much longer, I like poetry about age, the past, death, people you loved who have died, etc. This is one that I especially like.
Rock Me To Sleep, by Elizabeth Akers Allen
Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight;
Mother, come back from that echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth all the silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother, rock me to sleep.
Backward, flow backward, oh, tide of the years,
I am so weary of toil and of tears;
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain -
Take them, and give me my childhood again.
I have grown weary of dust and decay -
Weary of flinging my soul - wealth away,
Weary of sowing for others to reap -
Rock me to sleep, Mother rock me to sleep.
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue;
Mother, O Mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between.
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.
Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures-
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms over my heavy lids creep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.
Mother, dear Mother, the years been long,
Since I last listened to your lullaby song.
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood's years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;
Rock me to sleep, Mother-rock me to sleep.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-Wordsworth
Qasida in praise of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
When I saw his light shining forth,
In fear I covered my eyes with my palms,
Afraid for my sight because of the beauty of his form.
So I was scarcely able to look at him at all.
The lights from his light are drowned in his light
and his face shines out like the sun and moon in one.
A spirit of light lodged in a body like the moon,
a mantle made up of brilliant shining stars.
I bore it until I could bear it no longer.
I found the taste of patience to be like bitter aloes.
I could find no remedy to bring me relief
other than delighting in the sight of the one I love.
Even if he had not brought any clear signs with him,
the sight of him would dispense with the need for them.
Muhammad is a human being but not like other human beings.
Rather he is a flawless diamond and the rest of mankind is just stones.
Blessings be on him so that perhaps Allah may have mercy on us
on that burning Day when the Fire is roaring forth its sparks
-Hassan ibn Thabit.
[written 1400 years ago]
Prometheus
Shroud your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And do as you will, like the boy
That knocks the heads off thistles,
With oak-trees and mountain-tops;
Now you must leave alone
My Earth for Me,
And my hut, which you did not build,
And my hearth,
The glowing whereof
You envy me.
I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun, than you, you Gods!
Your majesty
Is barely nourished
By sacrificial offerings
And prayerful exhalations,
And should starve
Were children and beggars not
Fools full of Hope.
When I was a child,
And did not know the in or out,
I turned my wandering eyes toward
The sun, as if, beyond, there were
An ear to hear my lament,
A heart, like mine,
To be moved to pity for the afflicted.
Who helped me
Against the pride of the Titans?
Who delivered me from Death,
From Slavery?
Did you not accomplish it all yourself,
My holy, burning Heart?
And shone, young and good,
Deceived, your thanks for salvation
To the sleeping one above?
Should I honour you? Why?
Have you softened the sufferings,
Ever, of the burdened?
Have you stilled the tears,
Ever, of the anguished?
Was I not forged as a Man
By almighty Time
And eternal Fate,
My masters and thine?
Do you somehow imagine
That I should hate Life,
Flee to the desert,
Because not every
Flowering dream should bloom?
Here I sit, I form humans
After my own image;
A race, to be like me,
To sorrow, to weep,
To enjoy and delight itself,
And to heed you not at all -
Like Me!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/forians.htm
at the site click on "news" (upper left), scroll down page 1, click on to page 2, scroll and search for orpheus/ballada by vladislav khodasevich as translated to english from the russian by frazier.
Last edited by chasestalling; 11-29-2008 at 11:27 PM.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.
--Shakespeare
saladin:
wunderbar und fantastiche. danke schoen.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.
--Shakespeare
Dover Beach
by Mathew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair.
Upon the straights;-on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then begin again,
With tremendous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the AEgaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wild, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-1848
Elysium
Past the despairing wail--
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy to-day and joy to-morrow,
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to sorrow,
And pain is rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.
Here the pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;
Here the mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams,
Lulled with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams,
The fields, when the harvest is o'er.
Here, he, whose ears drank in the battle roar,
Whose banners streamed upon the startled wind
A thunder-storm,--before whose thunder tread
The mountains trembled,--in soft sleep reclined,
By the sweet brook that o'er its pebbly bed
In silver plays, and murmurs to the shore,
Hears the stern clangor of wild spears no more!
Here the true spouse the lost-beloved regains,
And on the enamelled couch of summer-plains
Mingles sweet kisses with the zephyr's breath.
Here, crowned at last, love never knows decay,
Living through ages its one bridal day,
Safe from the stroke of death!
- Friedrich von Schiller
Love it!
It answers Iago's; "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer." jibe, better than Desdemona's retort.
Last edited by prendrelemick; 12-08-2008 at 06:41 AM.
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