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Art requires imagination. It requires Creativity. Creativity requires experience and experience comes from your life. And your life is expressed in your art.

quote by Bruce Lee
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Fifth Book

AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope
To speak my poems in mysterious tune
With man and nature,–with the lava-lymph
That trickles from successive galaxies
Still drop by drop adown the finger of God,
In still new worlds?–with summer-days in this,
That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?–
With spring's delicious trouble in the ground
Tormented by the quickened blood of roots.
And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves
In token of the harvest-time of flowers?–
With winters and with autumns,–and beyond,
With the human heart's large seasons,–when it hopes
And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?–with all that strain
Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh
In a sacrament of souls? with mother's breasts,
Which, round the new made creatures hanging there,
Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?–
With multitudinous life, and finally
With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,
Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,
Their radiant faces upward, burn away
This dark of the body, issuing on a world
Beyond our mortal?–can I speak my verse
So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,
That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,
As having the same warrant over them
To hold and move them, if they will or no,
Alike imperious as the primal rhythm
Of that theurgic nature? I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man,–and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,–
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,
Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is;
We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.
We strain our natures at doing something great,
Far less because it's something great to do,
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves
As being not small, and more appreciable
To some one friend. We must have mediators

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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Stream Line Consciousness

Big brother voyeur blimps unidentified spies
uncle sam peeping toms patrolling skies
bird brain police intelligence
remote viewing homeland pest control
pentagon private eye monitoring the public's every move
mass produced micro chips intercepting prayers patrolling citizens from heaven
Bentham's Panopticon NSA
super computer surveillance cameras
world police spying Manhattan streets

'Athens plummets Euro death spiral
suicide rates soar deepening into despair'

haaretz..the post.. the times
blogs tribunes dailies all in a mad gab
headlong headline attention grabbing scramble

'Yugoslavia - Iraq - Egypt - Yemen - Iran - Syria - United States'
bilderberg building blocks New American Century post apocalyptic prophecy

'foreign mercenaries …national guard...DOD
homeland security to amass covert munitions stockpile
Americans on guard anxieties mounting surrounding
the stripping of amendments 1st if you swing to your left
2nd if you stand on the right
whispers of martial law circulate Anarchical reverberations
emanate from internet Alt culture epicenters
bottle necking global tensions'

'common feeling of deepening disappointment...
heightened expectations...
people expecting an explosive situation over the
next few weeks'

...riot police respond 'to preserve public order'
public roads barricaded to 'protect security of citizens'

'blatant act of censorship
western mainstream media staying away
from Myanmar massacres of Mohammedan Angels
further showing strong anti Muslim bias'

'Media blackout Burmese army
seeking coverage under propaganda blankets'

from the middle east throughout the western world
planet consciousness blurring lines between conspiracy/reality
conflicting global network narratives multiply violent scenarios daily
Victims in a world wide scramble
Government Banking Military

[...] Read more

poem by Gregory Allen Uhan
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Magpie, My Keeper, Is Flying - Upon Freeing the Gift of Creativity Turned Inward

.
for Elaine Bellezza, Beloved Anima-as-Fate

'There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gift to those one loves most...The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.' - May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

This afternoon while still somewhat hungover from last night's rich meal and several glasses of strong red wine, I stumbled as one does when hungover, only today without feet but with eyes, upon the above quote by May Sarton. I had awakened this morning with fragments of a dream, repetitive of other dreams the past few months, where I am carrying something precious and just cannot put it down in any old place or upon just any available surface. I cannot put it down until I find the right surface and location.

These dreams are full of torrential flood waters, or backed up, stagnant water, toilets full of filth and pungent bright orange dark urine days old and fermenting. I cannot unhand the burden even though the urge to pee or flee or drive a car away or into flood waters is strong. I must not put down the burden odd as it is; it is my laptop carrying case made of canvas. It is large enough to carry not only my laptop but also many books with which I cannot, will not be parted from as they are the must-have-with-me-always 'bread', my staple and stability in a given to me world out of balance.

I have understood the dreams only a little - something within the psyche is flooding up, over-spilling or has already, has not been adequately canalized, channeled, streamed and guided, shaped and formed. Or flushed. I knew that eventually, as dreams do when one sits consciously, patiently, persistently with them, they would yield their messages to me, and upon revelation these must be obeyed, brought out into the world, Carl Jung having said that one has a moral responsibility to dreams once they are kenned and must be conscientiously acted upon in the outer world. Just dreaming is not enough. Everyone dreams but not very many know to dream them out into the world, to let their messages unfurl, flood and flow to bring forth new consciousness, to reshape old forms no longer adequate to self, place and time into symbol and their sense, usually not literal.

And thus, only just now, upon opening up haphazardly in a book about Dostoevsky and his struggle with addictions which mirror the profound compulsion to create at any cost perhaps beyond one's capacities to renew oneself, I find May Sarton's quote and suddenly the dreams clarify and sharpen into focus; I understand them as the burden of creativity too long turned inward, the burden of writing, the burden of poetry which I have carried heavily for most of my life since middle school when I was 11 or 12 years old when books became my lifeline, my link to existence that I could live on in spite of not wanting to do so. Written words, books, kept me from disappearing though I was and remain a mostly invisible word.

And thus the floods. One cannot ignore them. Alphabets tumble and roil. One dare not ignore them. One must see them without a choice to not see them. In them I am suddenly made visible, bright orange p*ss pots and all. I am both appalled and pleased. My burden is upon my knees.

The backed up water, the urine, is creativity. A somewhat odd symbol of creativity, there is more than enough evidence that urination is symbolic of self expression which is creativity. In ancient Rome the highly valued dirt from the urinals of boys' schools was collected to be used as a cosmetic in order to restore youthful energy and looks. A young boy, or puer in Latin, is an archetypal symbol of ongoing creativity and inspiration, the puer aeternas, the eternal youth, well springs of ongoing creativity still imaged in solid fountains of the world where eternal waters flow from the peni of cherubic youth.

I have struggled my entire life with a strong urge to create, to write, to express in words that creative daemon within which torments no matter the completion of a poem or essay, a lecture, a psalm. And now my dreams have had me consciously, urgently seeking a place to put the burden down, to perhaps come to it anew. I imagine that landing the burden means bringing it down to earth, manifesting creativity all the more by bringing my efforts to others for the strongest part of the compulsive urge in my creativity has been to contribute one good thing, one good poem or piece of writing which in some way might further the culture even if only by a flea's leg length.

The dreams urge me to let the urine flow, to let the flood waters indeed flood over, to be less self conscious of what I write and say but to have at it all and to say my say. And to let whatever waves there are crest and break upon ever receptive banks and shores whose duty it is to allow what may come from motion without complaint, the more compliant toward as yet to be fully formed purposes as yet to be scored.

Synchronistically, a few days ago I listened to a lecture by poet Allen Ginsberg about Walt Whitman and his imitators, those who were goodly influenced by his effulgent, self indulgent style, his garrulous poems which presumed to express the very expansiveness of the North American continent over-flooded by a plague of itinerant, persistent poachers and prophets from Europe to Eastern disembarkation and then inland and Westward, compelled to overtake land and native peoples in their possessed, pushed wake. Ginsberg imagined himself to be a timely extension of this unruly school, as savage as the projected upon land and justly-resistant, resident humanity stretched beyond known bounds and sounds. Blood drowned and pounded the god-hounded land even now is flooded by unleashed mighty rivers seeking, if rivers seek at all, to undo and renew in horse shoe and other shapes the crimes of consciousness compelled to overtake while leaving it up to human souls to repent and repair, to prepare for more powerful insurgencies of land and Self ever seeking new and nower expressions of dirt and deity. There's enough history beneath layers to support the scarp and scrape of momentary yet monumental motions finally given mouths to utter what lies both beneath and within the heaping huzzahs of here here here full and deep. As in my dream, it is hard to steer in such surpassing tides and currents. Still, I am searching for holy campground that I may lay my burden down.

I have no wish to imitate Whitman nor Ginsberg - though both are easily imitated since they did so themselves, an occupational hazard for writers - but only to be obedient to the daemon, that urgent, emergent, creative force within. It rushes within and against me. No matter whether derived of the grandiose American continent and the even more grandiose sky or not, I have all too successfully braced against it in fear of failure, reprisal or, worse, complete indifference from others. My dreams now urge floods and resultant coagulations, they bring creative splurges to ground from hand to the hard world. And Nature, too, is indifferent but begs none the less and all the more to be given utterance and response.

Respondeo ergo sum. I respond, therefore I am. I respond, therefore the other, earth, all her ants, is as long as there are eyes, ears, and scanning minds to acknowledge and touch, wrestle, caress, shape - some in scansions - outer from inner, inner from outer, landscapes to be all too quickly discarded in time for what is sung just ahead. And seen. Or hoped, all praise to telescopes. We would be they, so addicted to horizons, to bring them close.

Something there is needs completion via coagulation, forming, shaping, and sharing with whomever may be open to clods delivered. If not, rivers will, as they will without reason, continue to overrun their banks and insist upon covering designated previous cultivations. Let then excess of creativity have its say, play out, and leave the critical post-considerations to others. I will surely sit and ponder spent what spills forth, to shape, to edit, to discard. And watch my little yard sink beneath needed and needy floods.

I will have done with deprivation and bring myself, what I have shaped and misshapen, to the world. These things, this burden, have I most loved and felt responsible for, have born the shame of. I have fought and have failed utterly again and again though my attempts have been, and still are, sincere though not blameless. Fear has been my encampment, a longing beneath knowing feet in secret cellars just beyond reach of contracted hands forever spelling hunger. I know open bastion doors and windows to now fling beyond embankments what has been wrung out of my floes and woes though hands wither from too much turning against and inward. What a relief to burst beyond boundaries too long successfully restraining.

I recently wrote a poem about much too too solid bastions of self, of forceful puer energy ramming through and over and into long buried storms and petrified forms, of passion mangling the delusion of 'norms' ignoring too sensitive alarms. Given May Sarton's May revelation this morning I now understand that the poem is about more than eros, it is about that powerful creative/destructive force, the daemon/tyro that ever urges outward intent on making and staking Self in new land and at least one aging man wrenched and rendered from dried and calcified encrustations. I am, to borrow from the insistent dream image, beginning to leak. And to break open.

Archeology - What The Stele Says 'Upon Taking A Much Younger Lover'

That this old ground yields to plow stuns.
What begins to be, earth swell, breaks
root-room open to blood means.

Old skeins tear upon what is new terrain,
hunger worn, long appended. There is
no blame for pain is the blessing.

All hurt now stings twilight quaked into being.
Your breath falls upon me now, taut, sinew,
bruising hand, purple inside flares warrior nerves

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
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Literature and Quantum Physics

Mind spoke:

I have been the Driver of all history
for animal and man,
I've fueled Progress,
built cities,
discovered science
literature, poetry
all of this due to me:
Mind.

Imagination Spoke:

You Mind
are not of consequence
without me
Imagination.

Whatever spark might have
fired your brain
came from my fashioning
events in you Mind
to creativity,
to art
for you are merely physical seat
the vehicle,
But I Imagination
am the driver.

Body Spoke:

The two of you have no independent existence,
no living space
without me Body.

I am that temple
which houses you.

I am the physical portal
which interacts with the
world.
Whatever you can see or think Mind
or you Imagination, can imagine
is filtered thorough me Body
and flesh though I am
few doubt my ultimate power.

For surely as you both have your place
but both of you are mental most
and cannot walk or run,

[...] Read more

poem by Lonnie Hicks
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It Must Be Imagination

by Kenny Loggins & Tom Snow
When the feeling isn't right
They say you see it in a lovers eye
But I'm wide awake tonight
'N I'm looking for a reason why
It doesn't show
Still somehow I know
Tell me that it just ain't so
Say I made the whole thing up
It must be imagination
Why can't I forget it
God, you'd think I'd know better
It must be imagination
Gone completely out of my mind
It must be imagination
Tearin' me apart
'N breakin' my heart
You can say what is real
You can tell me if I'm in a dream
'Cause I know what I feel
But I don't know what to believe
Turn on the night light
Even if it takes us all night
I gotta be sure by daylight
If I've made this whole thing up
It must be imagination
Tell me if I'm right
'Cause it's changing my life
It must be imagination
Everybody knows
There ain't no way to fight it
It must be imagination
Breakin' my heart
'N tearing me apart
If I'm only dreamin'
Then I'm cryin' in my sleep
You should be shakin' me
Why ain't you wakin' me up?
It must be imagination
God I must be losin' my mind
It must be imagination
Does anybody know
Is there anyway to fight it?
It must be imagination
All in my mind, all in my mind
It must be imagination
If you wanna go, I just got to know
It must be imagination
Oooh tell me what's the problem
Why you wanna go on breakin' my heart?

[...] Read more

song performed by Kenny Loggins
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Kahlo-Christ Conjunctions - Sacrificed Flesh, Broken Bread, Emmaus Vision

[The curious or, better, interested reader may view the images alluded to in this essay at this website: http: //falconwarren.blogspot.com/2011/01/kahlo-christ- conjunctions-sacrificed.html]

Kahlo Strophes

As with love, also the bellows.

Calavera*, the Future stands
hand to mouth, fingers to forehead
unfolding before still instatic shapes.
Hold desperately to frames before
these quaking perceptions.

She could not stop there,
had to flare out, dry paint,
and the dryer flesh peel down
to bone, a sexless esqueleto**,
skull no longer mustached,
a calavera, nothing more,
curved calcium reliant forever
upon canvas, what is congealed
there to fan and burn,
a 'cauda pavonis'***.

- the author, from the text below

*Skull
**Skeleton
***Peacock's Tail (an image in alchemy) .

'Poetry such as this attempts not just a new syntax of the word. Its revolution is aimed at the syntax of the mind itself. Its structuring of experience is purposive, not dreamlike. We are dealing with a self-induced, or naturally or mysteriously come by, creative state from which two of the most fundamental human activities diverge, the aesthetic and the mystic act. The creative matrix is the same in both, and it is that state of being that is most peculiarly and characteristically human, as the resulting aesthetic and mystic experience is the purist form of human act. There is a great deal of overlapping, today especially, when art is all the religion most people have and when they demand of it experiences that few people of the past demanded of religion....A visionary poem is not a vision. The religious experience is necessitated and ultimate.' - Kenneth Rexroth, World Outside the Window, the Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth, pg.255-256

Rexroth's words are pertinent to the images used in this essay, Kahlo's painting above is visionary, Grunewald's are religious, and several photos are both, and all are 'aimed at the syntax of the mind itself.. Its restructuring of experience is purposive, not dreamlike.' The images included in this essay, which is more a prose poem than regular prose, are meant to convey equally or more, at least as as much as, the words in their incantatory formations which may induce entrance into 'imaginal' spaces where word and image meet in a practical magic, inspire a felt understanding and perhaps gain a view or actual entrance into what ecstatic poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, calls 'the Greater Relation.'

I've decided to publish this piece-in-progress as it unwinds in spirals 'aimed at the syntax of the mind itself...its restructuring of experience' with the understanding that it may later appear in greatly altered form. In a real sense this writing writes itself; I try to heed, copy, then hone to the bone what might be wanting to be sung, for what is below, and often what I write, is more akin to music, a vocal/verbal lilt beyond a particular solid tilt of view of a world absolute, static logos.

Heraclitus noted thousands of years ago, 'All is flux.'

To this I would only add, and perhaps this is what all of my writing amounts to,

'All is reflux.'

Selah. WF

NYC,1/31/11

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Z. Comments

CRYSTAL GLOW

Madhur Veena Comment: Who is she? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ....You write good!

Margaret Alice Comment: Beautiful, it stikes as heartfelt words and touches the heart, beautiful sentiments, sorry, I repeat myself, but I am delighted. Your poem is like the trinkets I collect to adorn my personal space, pure joy to read, wonderful! Only a beautiful mind can harbour such sentiments, you have a beautiful mind. I am glad you have found someone that inspires you to such heights and that you share it with us, you make the world a mroe wonderful place.

Margaret Alice Comment: Within the context set by the previous poem, “Cosmic Probe”, the description of a lover’s adoration for his beloved becomes a universal ode sung to the abstract values of love, joy and hope personified by light, colours, fragrance and beauty, qualities the poet assigns to his beloved, thus elevating her to the status of an uplifting force because she brings all these qualities to his attention. The poet recognises that these personified values brings him fulfilment and chose the image of a love relationship to illustrate how this comes about; thus a love poem becomes the vehicle to convey spiritual epiphany.

FRAGRANT JASMINE

Margaret Alice Comment: Your words seem to be directed to a divine entity, you seem to be addressing your adoration to a divinity, and it is wonderful to read of such sublime sentiments kindled in a human soul. Mankind is always lifted up by their vision and awareness of divinity, thank you for such pure, clear diction and sharing your awareness of the sublime with us, you have uplifted me so much by this vision you have created!

Margaret Alice Comment: The poet’s words seem to be directed to a divine entity, express adoration to a divinity who is the personification of wonderful qualities which awakens a sense of the sublime in the human soul. An uplifting vision and awareness of uplifting qualities of innocence represented by a beautiful person.

I WENT THERE TO BID HER ADIEU

Kente Lucy Comment: wow great writing, what a way to bid farewell

Margaret Alice Comment: Sensory experience is elevated by its symbolical meaning, your description of the scene shows two souls becoming one and your awareness of the importance of tempory experience as a symbol of the eternal duration of love and companionship - were temporary experience only valid for one moment in time, it would be a sad world, but once it is seen as a symbol of eternal things, it becomes enchanting.

I’M INCOMPLETE WITHOUT YOU

Margaret Alice Comment: You elevate the humnan experience of longing for love to a striving for sublimity in uniting with a beloved person, and this poem is stirring, your style of writing is effective, everything flows together perfectly.

Margaret Alice Comment:

'To a resplendent glow of celestial flow
And two split halves unite never to part.'

Reading your fluent poems is a delight, I have to tear myself away and return to the life of a drudge, but what a treasure trove of jewels you made for the weary soul who needs to contemplate higher ideals from time to time!

IN CELESTIAL WINGS

Margaret Alice Comment: When you describe how you are strengthened by your loved one, it is clear that your inner flame is so strong that you need not fear growing old, your spirit seems to become stronger, you manage to convey this impression by your striking poetry. It is a privilege to read your work.

Obed Dela Cruz Comment: wow.... i remembered will shakespeare.... nice poem!

Margaret Alice Comment: The poet has transcended the barriers of time and space by becoming an image of his beloved and being able to find peace in the joy he confers to his beloved.

'You transcend my limits, transcend my soul, I forget my distress in your thoughts And discover my peace in your joy, For, I’m mere image of you, my beloved.'

Margaret Alice Comment: You are my peace and solace, I know, I am, yours too; A mere flash of your thoughts Enlivens my tired soul And fills me with light, peace and solace, A giant in new world, I become, I rise to divine heights in celestial wings. How I desire to reciprocate To fill you with light and inner strength raise you to divine heights; I must cross over nd hold you in arms, light up your soul, Fill you with strength from my inner core, Wipe away your tears burst out in pure joy How I yearn to instill hope and confidence in you we never part And we shall wait, till time comes right. the flame in my soul always seeks you, you transcend my limits, transcend my soul, I forget my distress in your thoughts And discover my peace in your joy, For, I’m mere image of you, my beloved.

RAGING FIRE

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poem by Praveen Kumar
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Your Imagination

Lyrics & music: daryl hall
I remember when i used to be the jealous kind
I got over it, now you're taking over my old line
You're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
I ain't doin' nothing that you could really say was wrong
Just one oversight and no that didn't last too long
Listen, you're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
Don't know what you're looking for
What's this thing about "true blue"
You know i ain't no danger boy
You're the one i like to touch, touch you, you
When the mood is right, change the light and the moment's gone
Better turn around, 'cause the light doesn't last too long
You're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
Imagination, your imagination
Imagination, use your imagination.

song performed by Hall & Oates
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The Believer's Jointure : Chapter II.

Containing the Marks and Characters of the Believer in Christ; together with some further privileges and grounds of comfort to the Saints.

Sect. I.

Doubting Believers called to examine, by marks drawn from their love to Him and his presence, their view of his glory, and their being emptied of Self-Righteousness, &c.

Good news! but, says the drooping bride,
Ah! what's all this to me?
Thou doubt'st thy right, when shadows hide
Thy Husband's face from thee.

Though sin and guilt thy spirit faints,
And trembling fears thy fate;
But harbour not thy groundless plaints,
Thy Husband's advent wait.

Thou sobb'st, 'O were I sure he's mine,
This would give glad'ning ease;'
And say'st, Though wants and woes combine,
Thy Husband would thee please.

But up and down, and seldom clear,
Inclos'd with hellish routs;
Yet yield thou not, nor foster fear:
Thy Husband hates thy doubts.

Thy cries and tears may slighted seem,
And barr'd from present ease;
Yet blame thyself, but never dream
Thy Husband's ill to please.

Thy jealous unbelieving heart
Still droops, and knows not why;
Then prove thyself to ease thy smart,
Thy Husband bids the try.

The following questions put to the
As scripture-marks, may tell
And shew, what'er thy failings be,
Thy Husband loves thee well.

MARKS.

Art thou content when he's away?
Can earth allay thy pants?
If conscience witness, won't it say,
Thy Husband's all thou wants?

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poem by Ralph Erskine
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Canto the Fourth

I.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O’er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

III.

In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone - but beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -
The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

V.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)
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Quatrains Of Life

What has my youth been that I love it thus,
Sad youth, to all but one grown tedious,
Stale as the news which last week wearied us,
Or a tired actor's tale told to an empty house?

What did it bring me that I loved it, even
With joy before it and that dream of Heaven,
Boyhood's first rapture of requited bliss,
What did it give? What ever has it given?

'Let me recount the value of my days,
Call up each witness, mete out blame and praise,
Set life itself before me as it was,
And--for I love it--list to what it says.

Oh, I will judge it fairly. Each old pleasure
Shared with dead lips shall stand a separate treasure.
Each untold grief, which now seems lesser pain,
Shall here be weighed and argued of at leisure.

I will not mark mere follies. These would make
The count too large and in the telling take
More tears than I can spare from seemlier themes
To cure its laughter when my heart should ache.

Only the griefs which are essential things,
The bitter fruit which all experience brings;
Nor only of crossed pleasures, but the creed
Men learn who deal with nations and with kings.

All shall be counted fairly, griefs and joys,
Solely distinguishing 'twixt mirth and noise,
The thing which was and that which falsely seemed,
Pleasure and vanity, man's bliss and boy's.

So I shall learn the reason of my trust
In this poor life, these particles of dust
Made sentient for a little while with tears,
Till the great ``may--be'' ends for me in ``must.''

My childhood? Ah, my childhood! What of it
Stripped of all fancy, bare of all conceit?
Where is the infancy the poets sang?
Which was the true and which the counterfeit?

I see it now, alas, with eyes unsealed,
That age of innocence too well revealed.
The flowers I gathered--for I gathered flowers--
Were not more vain than I in that far field.

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poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Intrigue

THOU art my love
And thou art the peace of sundown
When the blue shadows soothe
And the grasses and the leaves sleep
To the song of the little brooks
Woe is me.

Thou art my love,
And thou art a storm
That breaks black in the sky
And, sweeping headlong,
Drenches and cowers each tree
And at the panting end
There is no sound
Save the melancholy cry of a single owl
Woe is me!

Thou art my love
And thou art a tinsel thing
And I in my play
Broke thee easily
And from the little fragments
Arose my long sorrow
Woe is me.

Thou art my love
And thou art a weary violet
Drooping from sun-caresses.
Answering mine carelessly
Woe is me.

Thou art my love
And thou art the ashes of other men's love
And I bury my face in these ashes
And I love them
Woe is me.

Thou art my love
And thou art the beard
On another man's face
Woe is me.

Thou art my love
And thou art a temple
And in this temple is an altar
And on this altar is my heart
Woe is me.

Thou art my love
And thou art a wretch.

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poem by Stephen Crane
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The Growth of Love

1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.

2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As are those gentle souls by angels kisst
In pictures seen leaving their marble cist
To go before the throne of grace unblamed.
Nor surer am I water hath the skill
To quench my thirst, or that my strength is freed
In delicate ordination as I will,
Than that to be myself is all I need
For thee to be most mine: so I stand still,
And save to taste my joy no more take heed.

3
The whole world now is but the minister
Of thee to me: I see no other scheme
But universal love, from timeless dream
Waking to thee his joy's interpreter.
I walk around and in the fields confer
Of love at large with tree and flower and stream,
And list the lark descant upon my theme,
Heaven's musical accepted worshipper.
Thy smile outfaceth ill: and that old feud
'Twixt things and me is quash'd in our new truce;
And nature now dearly with thee endued
No more in shame ponders her old excuse,
But quite forgets her frowns and antics rude,
So kindly hath she grown to her new use.

4

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poem by Robert Seymour Bridges
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Economy, A Rhapsody, Addressed to Young Poets

Insanis; omnes gelidis quaecunqne lacernis
Sunt tibi, Nasones Virgiliosque vides.
~Mart.
Imitation.

--Thou know'st not what thou say'st;
In garments that scarce fence them from the cold
Our Ovids and our Virgils you behold.

Part first.

To you, ye Bards! whose lavish breast requires
This monitory lay, the strains belong;
Nor think some miser vents his sapient saw,
Or some dull cit, unfeeling of the charms
That tempt profusion, sings; while friendly Zeal,
To guard from fatal ills the tribe he loves,
Inspires the meanest of the Muse's train!
Like you I loathe the grovelling progeny,
Whose wily arts, by creeping time matured,
Advance them high on Power's tyrannic throne,
To lord it there in gorgeous uselessness,
And spurn successless Worth that pines below!
See the rich churl, amid the social sons
Of wine and wit, regaling! hark, he joins
In the free jest delighted! seems to show
A meliorated heart! he laughs, he sings!
Songs of gay import, madrigals of glee,
And drunken anthems, set agape the board,
Like Demea, in the play, benign and mild,
And pouring forth benevolence of soul,
Till Micio wonder; or, in Shakspeare's line,
Obstreperous Silence, drowning Shallow's voice,
And startling Falstaff, and his mad compeers.
He owns 'tis prudence, ever and anon
To smooth his careful brow, to let his purse
Ope to a sixpence's diameter!
He likes our ways; he owns the ways of wit
Are ways of pleasance, and deserve regard.
True, we are dainty good society,
But what art thou? Alas! consider well,
Thou bane of social pleasure, know thyself:
Thy fell approach, like some invasive damp
Breathed through the pores of earth from Stygian caves
Destroys the lamp of mirth; the lamp which we,
Its flamens, boast to guard: we know not how,
But at thy sight the fading flame assumes
A ghastly blue, and in a stench expires.
True, thou seem'st changed; all sainted, all enskied:
The trembling tears that charge thy melting eyes

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poem by William Shenstone
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About My Imagination

I kept my eyes open and tried to see
The point of what went on in front of me
I kept what moved me, forgot about the rest
And took my young imagination to the acid test
And it was easy then to say what love could do
It's so easy when your world is new
It's been so hard sometimes to find my way
I let my pleasure lead my little world astray
And if I'm truthful I'll say that I was blind
To everything about this life but what I had in mind
And it was easy then to say where love could go
It's so easy when there's so much you don't know
About my imagination, it got me through somehow
Without my imagination, I wouldn't be here now
And it was easy then when love was guaranteed
It's so easy when love is all you need
About my imagination
I'm making this investigation
Into my imagination
According to my computations
We're overdue for a transformation
Or is it my imagination?
I keep my eyes open and try to see
This life in terms of possibility
With so much changing, and changing for the worse
You got to keep your head up, Baby
From the cradle to the hearse
And it was easy then to say where love could go
It's so easy when love is all you know
About my imagination
I'm getting ready for the celebration
I'm bringing my imagination
Taking charge of my elevation
No fear, no trepidation
Register my affirmation
No doubt, no hesitation
People get ready for the embarkation
About my imagination
Calling out across the nation
It's time for some kind of re-dedication
Not talking 'bout just my generation
I'm sending out this invocation
I keep getting these excitations
More light, more love
More truth, and more innovation
Lyrics by Jackson Browne
Music by Jackson Browne, Kevin McCormick, Mark Goldenberg, Mauricio Lewak, Jeff Young
(Swallow Turn Music, ASCAP; Eye Cue Music, ASCAP; Bossypants Music/Songs of Windswept Pacific, BMI; Bateria Music, ASCAP; Glad Brad Music, Inc., ASCAP)

song performed by Jackson Browne
Added by Lucian Velea
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

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poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Cenci : A Tragedy In Five Acts

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Count Francesco Cenci.
Giacomo, his Son.
Bernardo, his Son.
Cardinal Camillo.
Orsino, a Prelate.
Savella, the Pope's Legate.
Olimpio, Assassin.
Marzio, Assassin.
Andrea, Servant to Cenci.
Nobles, Judges, Guards, Servants.
Lucretia, Wife of Cenci, and Step-mother of his children.
Beatrice, his Daughter.

The Scene lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.
Time. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.

ACT I

Scene I.
-An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
Enter Count Cenci, and Cardinal Camillo.

Camillo.
That matter of the murder is hushed up
If you consent to yield his Holiness
Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.-
It needed all my interest in the conclave
To bend him to this point: he said that you
Bought perilous impunity with your gold;
That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded
Enriched the Church, and respited from hell
An erring soul which might repent and live:-
But that the glory and the interest
Of the high throne he fills, little consist
With making it a daily mart of guilt
As manifold and hideous as the deeds
Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.

Cenci.
The third of my possessions-let it go!
Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
Had sent his architect to view the ground,
Meaning to build a villa on my vines
The next time I compounded with his uncle:
I little thought he should outwit me so!

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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The Interpretation of Nature and

I.

MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.


II.

Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.

III.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

IV.

Towards the effecting of works, all that man can do is to put together or put asunder natural bodies. The rest is done by nature working within.

V.

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all (as things now are) with slight endeavour and scanty success.

VI.

It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

VII.

The productions of the mind and hand seem very numerous in books and manufactures. But all this variety lies in an exquisite subtlety and derivations from a few things already known; not in the number of axioms.

VIII.

Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

IX.

The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this -- that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.

X.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding; so that all those specious meditations, speculations, and glosses in which men indulge are quite from the purpose, only there is no one by to observe it.

XI.

As the sciences which we now have do not help us in finding out new works, so neither does the logic which we now have help us in finding out new sciences.

XII.

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. So it does more harm than good.

XIII.

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poem by Sir Francis Bacon
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XI. Guido

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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The Tower

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
I

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
-- Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out Of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

WHAT shall I do with this absurdity --
O heart, O troubled heart -- this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible --
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,

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poem by William Butler Yeats
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