Darius' poetry Corner

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

UNFORGOTTEN
translated into English by: Laurence Hope (1865-1904)

DO you ever think of me? you who died
Ere our Youth's first fervour chilled,
With your soft eyes closed and your pulses stilled
Lying alone, aside,
Do you ever think of me, left in the light,
From the endless calm of your dawnless night?

I am faithful always: I do not say
That the lips which thrilled to your lips of old
To lesser kisses are always cold;
Had you wished for this in its narrow sense
Our love perhaps had been less intense;
But as we held faithfulness, you and I,
I am faithful always, as you who lie,
Asleep for ever, beneath the grass,
While the days and nights and the seasons pass,--
Pass away.

I keep your memory near my heart,
My brilliant, beautiful guiding Star,
Till long life over, I too depart
To the infinite night where perhaps you are.
Oh, are you anywhere? Loved so well!
I would rather know you alive in Hell
Than think your beauty is nothing now,
With its deep dark eyes and its tranquil brow
Where the hair fell softly. Can this be true
That nothing, nowhere, exists of you?
Nothing, nowhere, oh, loved so well
I have never forgotten.
Do you still keep
Thoughts of me through your dreamless sleep?

Oh, gone from me! lost in Eternal Night,
Lost Star of light,
Risen splendidly, set so soon,
Through the weariness of life's afternoon
I dream of your memory yet.
My loved and lost, whom I could not save,
My youth went down with you to the grave,
Though other planets and stars may rise,
I dream of your soft and sorrowful eyes
And I cannot forget.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

WHITE MAGIC
by: George Sterling (1869-1926)

KEEP ye her brow with starshine crost
And bind with ghostly light her hair,
O powers benign, lest I accost
Song's peaceless angel unaware!
 
One eve her whisper came to earth,
As eastward woke a thorny star,
To tell me of her kingdom's worth
And what her liberations are:
 
She hath the Edens in her gift
And songs of sovereignties unborn;
In realms agone her turrets lift,
Wrought from the purples of the morn.
 
Where swings to foam the dusky sea,
She waits with sapphires in her hand
Whose light shall make thy spirit be
Lost in a still, enchanted land.
 
Musing, she hears the subtle tunes
From chords where faery fingers stray--
A rain of pearl from crumbling moons
Less clear and delicate than they.
 
The strain we lost and could not find
Think we her haunted heart forgets?
She weaves it with a troubled wind
And twilight music that regrets.
 
Often she stands, unseen, aloof,
To watch beside an ocean's brink
The gorgeous, evanescent woof
Cast from the loom of suns that sink.
 
Often, in eyries of the West,
She waits a lover from afar--
Frailties of blossom on her breast
And o'er her brow the evening star.
 
She stands to greet him unaware,
Who cannot find her if he seek:
A sigh, a scent of heavenly hair--
And oh, her breath is on his cheek!

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

MELISINDA'S MISFORTUNE
by: Thomas Brown

TIRED with business of the day,
Upon her couch supinely lay
Fair Melisinda void of care,
No living creature being near:
When straight a calm and gentle sleep
Did o'er her drowsy eyelids creep;
Her senses thus be fetters tied,
By nimble fancy were supplied:
Her quick imagination brought
The ideas of her waking thought.
She dreamt herself a new made bride
In bed, by young Philander's side:
The posset eat, the stocking throw,
And all the company withdrawn;
And now the blest Elysium,
Of all her wished for joys, is come.
Philander, all dissolved in charms,
Lies raptured in her circling arms,
With panting breasts and swimming eyes
She meets the visionary joys;
In all the amorous postures love,
Which the height of ecstasy could move;
But as she roving did advance
Her trembling legs, O dire mischance!
The couch being near the fireside,
She expanded them, alas! too wide:
She exposed her nethermost attire
Unto the embraces of the fire;
So the chaste Phoenix of the East
With fluttering fires her spicy nest.
The flames at first did trembling seize
The dangling hem of the lost prize;
But finding no resistance, higher
As 'tis their nature to aspire,
Approaching near the seat of bliss,
The centre of earthly happiness,
Which vastly more of pleasure yields,
Than all the feigned Elysian fields.
 
At last the flames were grown so rude,
They boldly everywhere intrude;
They soon recalled the lady's sense,
And chased the pleasing vision thence:
Soon as her eyes recovered light,
She straight beheld the dismal sight.
 
Then viewing of her half-burnt smock,
Thus to herself the sad nymph spoke:
"Is this the effect of dreams? Is this
The fruit of all my fancy's bliss?
Misfortunes will, I see, betide,
When maidens throw their legs too wide:
Had I but kept my legs across,
I and my smock had had no loss:
I ought, I'm sure, to have more heed,
For ne'er had virgin greater need:
My kindness and my little care
Has left me scarce a smock to wear.
But I could bear the loss of them
Had not the fire disturbed my dream.
Ah! cruel flames, you're too unkind
To chase these fancies from my mind:
Down, down into your native cell
In your own blazing regions dwell:
Vex me no more, let me possess
My linen, or my dream in peace.
Thus the poor nymph, bewailed her treacherous luck,
At once to lose so good a dream and smock.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

BOSTON
by: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

THE rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
They did what freeman can,
Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.
The world was made for honest trade,--
To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
"Like us be free and bold!"
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;--
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor;--
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;--
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.

The wild rose and the barberry thorn
Hung out their summer pride
Where now on heated pavements worn
The feet of millions stride.

Fair rose the planted hills behind
The good town on the bay,
And where the western hills declined
The prairie stretched away.

What care though rival cities soar
Along the stormy coast:
Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore,
If Boston knew the most!

They laughed to know the world so wide;
The mountains said: "Good-day!
We greet you well, you Saxon men,
Up with your towns and stay!"
The world was made for honest trade,--
To plant and eat be none afraid.

"For you," they said, "no barriers be,
For you no sluggard rest;
Each street leads downward to the sea,
Or landward to the West."

O happy town beside the sea,
Whose roads lead everywhere to all;
Than thine no deeper moat can be,
No stouter fence, no steeper wall!

Bad news from George on the English throne:
"You are thriving well," said he;
"Now by these presents be it known,
You shall pay us a tax on tea;
'Tis very small,--no load at all,--
Honor enough that we send the call."

"Not so," said Boston, "good my lord,
We pay your governors here
Abundant for their bed and board,
Six thousand pounds a year.
(Your highness knows our homely word,)
Millions for self-government,
But for tribute never a cent."

The cargo came! and who could blame
If Indians seized the tea,
And, chest by chest, let down the same
Into the laughing sea?
For what avail the plough or sail
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The townsmen braved the English king,
Found friendship in the French,
And Honor joined the patriot ring
Low on their wooden bench.

O bounteous seas that never fail!
O day remembered yet!
O happy port that spied the sail
Which wafted Lafayette!
Pole-star of light in Europe's night,
That never faltered from the right.

Kings shook with fear, old empires crave
The secret force to find
Which fired the little State to save
The rights of all mankind.

But right is might through all the world;
Province to province faithful clung,
Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,
Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung.

The sea returning day by day
Restores the world-wide mart;
So let each dweller on the Bay
Fold Boston in his heart,
Till these echoes be choked with snows,
Or over the town blue ocean flows.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

THE SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA (from "Agamemnon")
by: Aeschylus

NOW long and long from wintry Strymon blew
The weary, hungry, anchor-straining blasts,
The winds that wandering seamen dearly rue,
Nor spared the cables worn and groaning masts;
And, lingering on, in indolent delay,
Slow wasted all the strength of Greece away.
But when the shrill-voiced prophet 'gan proclaim
That remedy more dismal and more dread
Than the drear weather blackening overhead,
And spoke in Artemis' most awful name,
The sons of Atreus, 'mid their armed peers,
Their sceptres dashed to earth, and each broke out in tears,
And thus the elder king began to say:
"Dire doom! to disobey the gods' commands!
More dire, my child, mine house's pride, to slay,
Dabbling in virgin blood a father's hands.
Alas! alas! which way to fly?
As base deserter quit the host,
The pride and strength of our great league all lost?
Should I the storm-appeasing rite deny,
Will not their wrathfullest wrath rage up and swell?
Exact the virgin's blood?--oh, would 't were o'er and well!"
 
So, 'neath Necessity's stern yoke he passed,
And his lost soul, with impious impulse veering,
Surrendered to the accursed unholy blast,
Warped to the dire extreme of human daring.
The frenzy of affliction still
Maddens, dire counselor, man's soul to ill.
 
So he endured to be the priest
In that child-slaughtering rite unblest,
The first full offering of that host
In fatal war for a bad woman lost.
 
The prayers, the mute appeal to her hard sire,
Her youth, her virgin beauty,
Naught heeded they, the chiefs for war on fire.
So to the ministers of that dire duty
(First having prayed) the father gave the sign,
Like some soft kid, to lift her to the shrine.
 
There lay she prone,
Her graceful garments round her thrown;
But first her beauteous mouth around
Their violent bonds they wound,
With their rude inarticulate might,
Lest her dread curse the fatal house should smite.
But she her saffron robe to earth let fall:
The shaft of pity from her eye
Transpierced that awful priesthood--one and all.
Lovely as in a picture stood she by
As she would speak. Thus at her father's feasts
The virgin, 'mid the reveling guests,
Was wont with her chaste voice to supplicate
For her dear father an auspicious fate.
 
I saw no more! to speak more is not mine;
Not unfulfilled was Calchas' lore divine.
Eternal justice still will bring
Wisdom out of suffering.
So to the fond desire farewell,
The inevitable future to foretell;
'Tis but our woe to antedate;
Joint knit with joint, expands the full-formed fate.
Yet at the end of these dark days
May prospering weal return at length;
Thus in his spirit prays
He of the Apian land the sole remaining strength.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

PORTRAIT OF A BABY
by: Stephen Vincent Benét

HE LAY within a warm, soft world
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled,
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red,
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled
To vanish in the grey-green gloom,
Perspectiveless and shadowy.
A bulging world that had no walls,
A flowing world, most like the sea,
Compassing all infinity
Within a shapeless, ebbing room,
An endless tide that swells and falls . . .
He slept and woke and slept again.
As a veil drops, Time dropped away;
Space grew a toy for children's play,
Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense--
He lay in naked impotence;
Like a drenched moth that creeps and crawls
Heavily up brown, light-baked walls,
To fall in wreck, her task undone,
Yet somehow striving toward the sun.
So, as he slept, his hands clenched tighter,
Shut in the old way of a fighter,
His feet curled up to grip the ground,
His muscles tautened for a bound;
And though he felt, and felt alone,
Strange brightness stirred him to the bone,
Cravings to rise--till deeper sleep
Buried the hope, the call, the leap;
A wind puffed out his mind's faint spark.
He was absorbed into the dark.
He woke again and felt a surge
Within him, a mysterious urge
That grew one hungry flame of passion;
The whole world altered shape and fashion.
Deceived, befooled, bereft and torn,
He scourged the heavens with his scorn,
Lifting a bitter voice to cry
Against the eternal treachery--
Till, suddenly, he found the breast,
And ceased, and all things were at rest,
The earth grew one warm languid sea
And he a wave. Joy, tingling, crept
Throughout him. He was quenched and slept.
 
So, while the moon made broad her ring,
He slept and cried and was a king.
So, worthily, he acted o'er
The endless miracle once more.
Facing immense adventures daily,
He strove still onward, weeping, gayly,
Conquered or fled from them, but grew
As soil-starved, rouph pine-saplings do.
Till, one day, crawling seemed suspect.
He gripped the air and stood erect
And splendid. With immortal rage
He entered on man's heritage!

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD
by: William Knox (1789-1825)

OH! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
 
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high
Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.
 
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,--
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
 
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
 
The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.
 
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep;
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
 
The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven;
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven;
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
 
So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
 
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
 
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
 
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
The scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
 
They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
 
Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
 
'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

THE STAR
by: Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)

I AM a certain god
Who slipped down from a remote height
To a place of pools and stars.
And I sat invisible
Amid a clump of trees
To watch the mad men.
 
There were cries and groans about me,
And shouts of laughter and curses.
Figures passed by with self-absorbed contempt
Wrinkling in bitter smiles about their lips.
Others hurried on with set eyes
Pursuing something.
Then I said this is the place for mad Frederick--
Mad Frederick will be here.
 
But everywhere I could see
Figures sitting or standing
By little pools.
Some seemed grown into the soil
And were helpless.
And of these some were asleep.
Others laughed the laughter
That comes from dying men
Trying to face Death.
And others said "I should be content."
And others said "I will fly."
Whereupon sepulchral voices muttered,
As of creatures sitting or hanging head down
From limbs of the trees,
"We will not let you."
And others looked in their pools
And clasped hands and said "Gone--all gone."
By other pools there were dead bodies,
Some of youth, some of age.
They had given up the fight,
They had drunk poisoned water,
They had searched
Until they fell--
All had gone mad.
 
Then I, a certain god,
Curious to know
What it is in pools and stars
That drives men and women
Over the earth in this quest,
Waited for mad Frederick
And then I heard his step.
 
I knew that long ago
He sat by one of these pools
Enraptured of a star's image
And that hands, for his own good,
As they said,
Dumped clay into the pool
And blotted his star.
And I knew that after that
He had said: "They will never spy again
Upon my ecstasy.
They will never see me watching one star.
I will fly by rivers
And by little brooks
And by the edge of lakes
And by little bends of water
Where no wind blows,
And glance at stars as I pass--
They will never spy again
Upon my ecstasy."
 
And I knew that mad Frederick
In this flight
Through years of restlessness and madness
Was caught by the image of a star
In a mere beyond a meadow,
Down from a hill, under a forest,
And had said:
"No one sees;
Here I can find life
Through vision of eternal things!"
But they had followed him.
They stood on the brow of the hill,
And when they saw him gazing into the water
They rolled a great stone down the hill,
And shattered the star's image.
Then mad Frederick fled with laughter.
It echoed through the wood.
And he said, "I will look for moons.
I will punish them who disturb me,
By worshipping moons."
But when he sought moons
They left him alone.
And he did not want the moons.
And he was alone, and sick from the moons,
And covered as with a white blankness,
Which was the worst madness of all.
 
And I, a certain god,
Waiting for mad Frederick
To enter this place of pools and stars,
Saw him at last.
With a sigh he looked about upon his fellows
Sitting or standing by their pools.
And some of the pools were covered with scum
And some were glazed as of filth
And some were grown with weeds
And some were congealed as of the north wind
And a few were yet pure
And held the star's image.
And by these some sat and were glad.
Others had lost the vision:
The star was there, but its meaning vanished.
And mad Frederick going here and there
With no purpose
Only curious and interested
As I was, a certain god,
Came by a certain pool
And saw a star.
 
He shivered.
He clasped his hands.
He sank to his knees.
He touched his lips to the water!
 
Then voices from the limbs of the trees muttered:
"There he is again."
"He must be driven away."
"The pool is not his."
"He does not belong here."
So as when bats fly in a cave
They swooped from their hidings in the trees
And dashed themselves in the pool.
Then I saw what these flying things were.
But no matter;
They were thoughts evil and envious
And selfish and dull,
But with power to destroy.
And mad Frederick turned away from the pool
And covered his eyes with his arms.
Then a certain god
Of less power than mine
Came and sat beside me and said:
"Why do you allow this to be?
They are all seeking,
Why do you not let them find their heart's delight?
Why do you allow this to be?"
But I did not answer.
The lesser god did not know
That I have no power,
That only the God has the power
And that this must be
In spite of all lesser gods.
 
And I saw mad Frederick
Arise and ascend to the top of a high hill.
And I saw him find the star
Whose image he had seen in the pool.
Then he knelt and prayed:
"Give me to understand, O star,
Your inner self, your eternal spirit,
That I may have you and not images of you,
So that I may know what has driven me through the world,
And may cure my soul.
For I know that you are Eternal Love
And I can never escape you.
And if I cannot escape you
Then I must serve you.
And if I must serve you
It must be to good and not ill--
You have brought me from the forest of pools
And the images of stars,
Here to the hill's top.
Where now do I go?
And what shall I do?"

[Julius]

Stop multiple double-posting?

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

BEFORE THE RAIN
by: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1906)

WE knew it would rain, for all the morn
A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst.
Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens--
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,
To sprinkle them over the land in showers.
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

Christmas 2000

Hustle and bustle and hurry and run
looking for gifts that bring so much fun.
A visit to Santa we also must make
because of our children for all of our sakes.

The food preparations must get underway
like cookies and candies for our special day.
Gifts must be wrapped and bows must be ties
and trees must be trimmed and lights hung outside.

Cards must be bought and then must be signed
And addresses and mailed to reach friends on time.
The kids must be bathed and tucked into bed
where they will wait to hear Santa's sled.

But when morning comes midst all the squeals,
faces depicting what our children feel;
it makes all the hustle and hurry and run
so very worthwhile for these little ones.

Now let's remember the child in our lives
given to us when God's son arrived
to teach is to love each other and then
to die on the cross to save us from sin.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

ON THE TOMB OF SAYID
by: Abd Almalec Alharithy

BLEST are the tenants of the tomb!
With envy I their lot survey;
For SAYID shares the solemn gloom,
And mingles with their mouldering clay.
 
Dear youth! I'm doom'd thy loss to mourn
When gathering ills around combine;
And whither now shall MALEC turn,
Where look for any help but thine?
 
At this dread moment when the foe
My life with rage insatiate seeks,
In vain I strive to ward the blow,
My buckler falls, my sabre breaks.
 
Upon thy grassy tomb I knelt,
And sought from pain a short relief--
Th' attempt was vain -- I only felt
Intenser pangs and livelier grief.
 
The bud of woe no more represt,
Fed by the tears that drench'd it there,
Shot forth and fill'd my labouring breast
Ready to blossom in despair.
 
But tho' of SAYID I'm bereft,
From whom the stream of bounty came,
SAYID a nobler meed has left--
Th' exhaustless heritage of fame.
 
Tho' mute the lips on which I hung,
Their silence speaks more loud to me
Than any voice from mortal tongue,
"What SAYID was let MALEC be."

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

WHAT POLLY FOUND IN HER STOCKING
by: Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

WITH the first pale glimmer,
Of the morning red,
Polly woke delighted
And flew out of bed.
To the door she hurried,
Never stopped for clothes,
Though Jack Frost's cold fingers
Nipt her little toes.
There it hung! the stocking,
Long and blue and full;
Down it quickly tumbled
With a hasty pull.
Back she capered, laughing,
Happy little Polly;
For from out the stocking
Stared a splendid dolly!
Next, what most she wanted,
In a golden nut,
With a shining thimble,
Scissors that would cut;
Then a book all pictures,
"Children in the Wood."
And some scarlet mittens
Like her scarlet hood.
Next a charming jump-rope,
New and white and strong;
(Little Polly's stocking
Though small was very long,)
In the heel she fumbled,
"Something soft and warm,"
A rainbow ball of worsted
Which could do no harm.
In the foot came bon-bons,
In the toe a ring,
And some seeds of mignonette
Ready for the spring.
There she sat at daylight
Hugging close dear dolly;
Eating, looking, laughing,
Happy little Polly!

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD

by: Charles Baudelaire

O SHADOWY Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep
In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;
When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep
Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;
 
And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,
And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,
Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,
And holds those feet from their adventurous race;
 
Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,
(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)
During long nights when sleep is far from thee,
 
Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend
The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"--
And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.

[Devlyn, the special edition]

Are the Dutch that traumatized then?

--------------

yes, that was a response to you signature

[nunya]

remembered from my 6th grade teacher - the worlds shortest poem.

FLEAS
by: Anon

Adam
Had'em

[nunya]

Their once was a man from Nantucket .......

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

THE DREAM CALLED LIFE

by: Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681)

[size=16]A[/size] DREAM it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so big and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now,
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen; but anon
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Ay, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
With acclamations, leaving me to wake
In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
From this that waking is; or this and that,
Both waking and both dreaming; such a doubt
Confounds and clouds our mortal life about.
But whether wake or dreaming, this I know
How dreamwise human glories come and go;
Whose momentary tenure not to break,
Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,
So fairly carry the full cup, so well
Disordered insolence and passion quell,
That there be nothing after to upbraid
Dreamer or doer in the part he played;
Whether tomorrow's dawn shall break the spell,
Or the last trumpet of the Eternal Day,
When dreaming, with the night, shall pass away.

[GrimReaper of Wrestling]

TO THE SUPREME BEING

by: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

THE prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
If Thou the spirit give by which I pray:
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
Which of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
Which quickens only where Thou say'st it may;
Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way,
No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead.
Do Thou, then, breathe those thoughts into my mind
By which such virtue may in me be bred
That in Thy holy footsteps I may tread;
The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Thy praises everlastingly.