Citatepedia^®.com

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

quote by Guy Debord
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Beliefs

I watch you gather round and pray
Its something I can feel
I hear you chant every other day
I think its not quite real
Covered up so close
So as not to see
Are you happy are you happy this way
Stop and look around the world
So many different ways to see ourselves
Is it right or wrong
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
A distance that is more than miles
Such a long long way
Its fine for men to be westernised
Will a woman ever see that day
Maybe maybe its not for me to understand
Do you think do you think
Do you think its better that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
Stop and look around the world
So many different ways to see ourselves
Is it right or wrong
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way

song performed by Texas
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Beliefs

I watch you gather round and pray
Its something I can feel
I hear you chant every other day
I think its not quite real
Covered up so close
So as not to see
Are you happy are you happy this way
Stop and look around the world
So many different ways to see ourselves
Is it right or wrong
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
A distance that is more than miles
Such a long long way
Its fine for men to be westernised
Will a woman ever see that day
Maybe maybe its not for me to understand
Do you think do you think
Do you think its better that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
Stop and look around the world
So many different ways to see ourselves
Is it right or wrong
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way
To put your beliefs on me
To put your beliefs on me
I dont want to live that way

song performed by Texas
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Holding On With Wishes To Experience This

Altrhough...
They're slipping with a gripping,
To a bottomless pit.
With an ignorance addicted unresisted.

And,
Holding on and wishing to experience it...
Are the ones who practice posing,
In a darkened abyss.
With a proving that an ignorance for them is bliss.

The people of today...
Are crazed with beliefs.
And refusing to release,
All delusions they've been feeding.

The people of today...
Are crazed with beliefs,
That the only life to live,
Is the one of deceit.

Holding on with wishes to experience this,
Darkened abyss...
With a proving that an ignorance for them is bliss.

Holding on with wishes to experience this,
Darkened abyss...
With a proving that an ignorance for them is bliss.

The people of today...
Are crazed with beliefs.
And refusing to release,
All delusions they've been feeding.

The people of today...
Are crazed with beliefs,
That the only life to live,
Is the one of deceit.

Holding on with wishes to experience this,
Darkened abyss...
With a proving that an ignorance for them is bliss.

They keep on holding onto to wishes to experience this,
Darkened abyss...
With a proving that an ignorance for them is bliss.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

God Damn

Oh your nothing but a
That's right, your nothing but a prick, my noveistic imbosole
A stupid, my novieistic imbosole
A stupid, my novieistic imbosole
Don't point your rules at me
A stupid, my novieistic imbosole
A stupid, my novieistic imbosole
A stupid, my novieistic imbosole
Don't point your rules at me
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs (keep your vision away from me)
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs
I'm about to tell you strait up yeah
All of your beliefs (keep your vision away from me)
Ohhhh
Ohhhh
Ohhhh
Ohhhh yeah
Goddamn
Goddamn, maybe I don't have a plan
I'm sucking up to the moneyman
Something that I will never do now
So I look
I hit him for all he took
Cuz everything I've learned in books
Has all but lied to me
I can't, no I can't understand
That I step into a land of my old man but
I can't, I won't pass away now
So I live all the pain everyday
So you can't ever say that
From you, I can't build the way
And at the time, you people are judging me
Cuz you can't be what you see
Is not anybody's fault now
Let you come fall into a religious day
Something that I really hate
In stilled, I'm by your family
Well goddamn I cannot understand
Living to your dreams left by your clan but
Like that, I won't pass away now

[...] Read more

song performed by Flaw
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Plain Truth and Blind Ignorance

Truth
'God speed you, ancient father,
And give you a good daye;
What is the cause, I praye you,
So sadly here you staye?
And that you keep such gazing
On this decayed place,
The which, for superstition,
Good princes down did raze?'

Ignorance
'Chill tell thee, by my vazen,
That zometimes che have knowne
A vair and goodly abbey
Stand here of bricke and stone;
And many a holy vrier,
As ich may say to thee,
Within these goodly cloysters
Che did full often zee.'

Truth.
'Then I must tell thee, father,
In truthe and veritie,
A sorte of greater hypocrites
Thou couldst not likely see;
Deceiving of the simple
With false and feigned lies:
But such an order truly
Christ never did devise.'

Ignorance.
'Ah! ah! che zmell the enow, man;
Che know well what thou art;
A vellow of mean learning,
Thee was not worth a vart;
Vor when we had the old lawe,
A merry world was then,
And every thing was plenty
Among all zorts of men.'

Truth.
'Thou givest me an answer,
As did the Jewes sometimes
Unto the prophet Jeremye,
When he accus'd their crimes:
' 'Twas mercy,' sayd the people,
'And joyfull in our rea'me,
When we did offer spice-cakes
Unto the queen of hea'n.''

[...] Read more

poem by Anonymous Olde English
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

One's Beliefs

Beliefs aren't changed overnight,
Because of misdirection.
Beliefs are changed overnight,
When new ones are created.

Misdirection can be debated,
For reasons to entertain those who make changes.
But one's beliefs as they are...
Are only fed to keep them out of the way.
And kept faithfully attached,
For purposes to serve!
Not to discuss what are facts.

Beliefs aren't changed overnight,
Because of misdirection.
Beliefs are changed overnight,
When new ones are created.
Like one's knowledge of facts...
Depends on who is being pleased.
And for what reasons they've been directed,
To go first down on their knees,
Hoping to find their minds comforted.

And...
Beliefs,
As they are interpreted to be.
Aren't changed overnight,
Because of misdirection.
Beliefs are changed overnight,
When new ones are created.
To please and comfort the converted

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

quote by Winston Churchill
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

We Have No Similar Interests

You have spent your time attacking my beliefs.
But it is your beliefs that now attack you.

Not once did I ever say,
You should do things my way.
However...
Your way,
Done...
Lead to your undoing.

You have spent your time attacking my beliefs.
But it is your beliefs that now attack you.

You had fast backing from a society.
Many professed as normal.
The one that sets standards...
With values to achieve.

You also had 'close' friends,
You spent time with.
I lived in my own 'world'.
And your laughter persisted.
Until it recently has drifted,
Away.

You have spent your time attacking my beliefs.
But it is your beliefs that attack now you.

Not once did I ever say,
You should do things my way.
However...
Your way,
Done...
Lead to your undoing.

Why am I now,
Getting your unanswered calls?
We have no similar interests.
None that bestows a wish,
To speak to you.
And all that I have gone through...
I just let my telephone ring.
Often to go unnoticed.
Any hellos I wish to here...
Are personal and exchanged,
When I am near...
From ear to ear.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Gotham - Book III

Can the fond mother from herself depart?
Can she forget the darling of her heart,
The little darling whom she bore and bred,
Nursed on her knees, and at her bosom fed;
To whom she seem'd her every thought to give,
And in whose life alone she seem'd to live?
Yes, from herself the mother may depart,
She may forget the darling of her heart,
The little darling whom she bore and bred,
Nursed on her knees, and at her bosom fed,
To whom she seem'd her every thought to give,
And in whose life alone she seem'd to live;
But I cannot forget, whilst life remains,
And pours her current through these swelling veins,
Whilst Memory offers up at Reason's shrine;
But I cannot forget that Gotham's mine.
Can the stern mother, than the brutes more wild,
From her disnatured breast tear her young child,
Flesh of her flesh, and of her bone the bone,
And dash the smiling babe against a stone?
Yes, the stern mother, than the brutes more wild,
From her disnatured breast may tear her child,
Flesh of her flesh, and of her bone the bone,
And dash the smiling babe against a stone;
But I, (forbid it, Heaven!) but I can ne'er
The love of Gotham from this bosom tear;
Can ne'er so far true royalty pervert
From its fair course, to do my people hurt.
With how much ease, with how much confidence--
As if, superior to each grosser sense,
Reason had only, in full power array'd,
To manifest her will, and be obey'd--
Men make resolves, and pass into decrees
The motions of the mind! with how much ease,
In such resolves, doth passion make a flaw,
And bring to nothing what was raised to law!
In empire young, scarce warm on Gotham's throne,
The dangers and the sweets of power unknown,
Pleased, though I scarce know why, like some young child,
Whose little senses each new toy turns wild,
How do I hold sweet dalliance with my crown,
And wanton with dominion, how lay down,
Without the sanction of a precedent,
Rules of most large and absolute extent;
Rules, which from sense of public virtue spring,
And all at once commence a Patriot King!
But, for the day of trial is at hand,
And the whole fortunes of a mighty land
Are staked on me, and all their weal or woe
Must from my good or evil conduct flow,

[...] Read more

poem by Charles Churchill
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Religio Laici

(OR A LAYMAN'S FAITH)

Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul; and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere
So pale grows reason at religion's sight:
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head;
And found that one first principle must be:
But what, or who, that Universal He;
Whether some soul incompassing this ball
Unmade, unmov'd; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leapt into form (the noble work of chance
Or this great all was from eternity;
Not even the Stagirite himself could see;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he:
As blindly grop'd they for a future state;
As rashly judg'd of Providence and Fate:
But least of all could their endeavours find
What most concern'd the good of human kind.
For happiness was never to be found;
But vanish'd from 'em, like enchanted ground.
One thought content the good to be enjoy'd:
This, every little accident destroy'd:
The wiser madmen did for virtue toil:
A thorny, or at best a barren soil:
In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep;
But found their line too short, the well too deep;
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.
Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:
In this wild maze their vain endeavours end:
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than He.

The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground;
Cries [lang g]eur{-e}ka[lang e] the mighty secret's found:
God is that spring of good; supreme, and best;
We, made to serve, and in that service blest;
If so, some rules of worship must be given;
Distributed alike to all by Heaven:

[...] Read more

poem by John Dryden
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

However You May Lay Your 'Loo-Yahs

So given we are,
With beliefs our thoughts within us...
Are kept detached and private.
We are born into this 'reality'...
With a belief we jouney alone,
On a separate trip.
Alone and away from others,
Also participating in this experience...
We are taught in the process to call 'life'.

So given we are,
With beliefs our thoughts with us...
Are kept detached and private.
We even believe we are separate from the trees,
Birds and bees...
Are other created creatures upon thie Earth,
God, too, has made.

So given we are with beliefs,
There is something that will be achieved...
With the infliction of division, fear, hatred and greed.

There are some creatures God has blessed with life,
Who actually believe they have been certified...
As human kites.
To maneuver to heights,
And by themselves.

So given we are,
With beliefs our thoughts with us...
Are detached and kept private.
Some self righteous even perceive...
They can even deceive God!
As if God takes momentary leaves,
Of absences.

Only to discover,
When Mother Nature gets upset...
And has had it with our selfishness.
Just how fragile those who 'empower' themselves...
Are lost to fight against the true power of God,
His 'Diciples' and those messages delivered...

'Whether one is feeling blessed or cursed.
With abundance to enrich...
Or poverty experienced in cycles that are reversed.
What is here to witness on 'this' Earth...
Is 'not' one's dress rehearsal.

From birth...

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Running With A Faith That Is Done

With a stumbling numbed,
And...
Going through the paces.
So many people on the run,
But with a faith they choose to keep.

They are stumbling numbed,
And...
Feeling dedicated.
And...
Many feeling so elated,
With their sticking to beliefs.

They may show their wounds,
But...
People keeping faith will make it.
With their sticking to beliefs.
People know they can't fake,
A sticking to beliefs.
Even with heartache...
Or a stumbling numbed.

People keeping faith will make it.
With their sticking to beliefs.
People know they can't fake,
A sticking to beliefs.
Even with heartache...
Or a stumbling numbed.

They may show their wounds,
But...
With a stumbling numbed,
And...
Going through the paces.
So many people on the run,
But with a faith they choose to keep.

Not to be undone,
With a stumbling numbed.
Not to be undone,
With a stumbling numbed.
Not to be undone,
With a pace that keeps them running.
Running.
Running with a faith that is done.

And with a pace that keeps them running.
Running.
Running with a faith that is done.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Scandramada

Logo poachers.
Checking out feet,
And behinds...
In a survey to find,
Who is wearing anything.
Without a logo sign!

Scandramada,
In the restrooms...
In the bedrooms
Where the preacher sleeps.
Scandramada,
A snooping of beliefs!

Scandramada,
With sneaky peeks
And 'cruisers' seeking fresh new meat!
Scandramada...
Scoops on nakedness,
And screwing in the streets.

And no one wears a logo,
Approved by Wall Street!

Scandramada,
In the restrooms...
In the bedrooms
Where the preacher sleeps.
Scandramada,
A snooping of beliefs!

Amen...

Scandramada,
With sneaky peeks
And 'cruisers' seeking fresh new meat!
Scandramada...
Scoops on nakedness,
And screwing in the streets.

Logo poachers.
Checking out feet,
And behinds...
In a survey to find,
Who is wearing anything.
Without a logo sign!

But discovers...

Scandramada,

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Why Can't You Drop Them...

You 'believe'...
In concepts deep within you.
And yet your beliefs,
Satisfy you not with comfort?
Or free your steps,
Without regretful movement?

You attract conflicts,
That daily attack!
And yet a protection,
Of hypocrisy...
Has created that!
With a pattern offering no objection?

And you tell me,
The life I live...
Although free of those agonies
You suffer...
Is based on delusions I enforce?
That my 'divorce' from those 'realities'
You embrace with a loyal devotion...
Have been endorsed by a fantasy?
And dysfunctions I've set into motion,
Are disguises of my actual emotions?
And I've focused on pretentions,
Instead of pain that goes ignored?
That I have not honestly explored,
My limitations!

That may well be true!
However...
Which one of us expresses a happiness,
And a grateful attitude for its existence?

I wish not to question your beliefs.
But your faith in application,
Seems to lack a convincing appreciation.
With an uplifted joy to be so blessed!
Willing to confess it...
With each opportunity you get!

Unless that too,
Is absent of any truth...
You desire produced,
Behind your elaborate 'cloaking'!
And I am sure that is your reason,
And purpose...
To have such beliefs?
To keep them out of sight,
As you delight in discreeted loneliness.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

An Evolutionary Leap

An evolutionary leap
in life consciousness.

Born in pulse present lives
contemporary consciousness;
are apparently normal at surface appearance
radiant destined human beings;
developing transcendental paranormal capacities
as God sourced energy connections;
as part of an “Incarnated in the earth’s vibrations”
accelerated evolutionary vibration rate.

As a more purified
spiritual frequency
crossing the biological barrier
between this husk life
and states of vibrational existence
preceding birth
states of illuminated existence
ascending death.

As part of an incarnated accelerated
bridge to future potential
raising vibrations, reaching ultimately,
heaven immanent on earth.

Crossing the curtained barrier
between this learning life
and the world we were born
to aspire ascend to.

Released from modern disbelief
in imminent human transcendence
transforming psychosocial characteristics.

Released from chained dominated insecurity
arising from physical exploitation aspects
inducing perceived threatening life.

“Ignorance and lust are crippling chains
that need not be.”

Released from flesh soul tormented
fear incumbent upon incapacitated many
“trapped within [... this] physical density” life.
“Infinity pauses, momentarily, passes”.

Release fear spectres hunger, scarcity, impotency.
Release insecure need to control, manipulate, dominate.
Dissipate anger, greed, hate, envy and bitterness.

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Assessments to Seduce

Address this any way you wish.
But during my grief periods...
God was with me.
And both of us sat in sorrow alone.

Your judgements passed on me does not matter.
Nor your assessments to seduce your reality.

Address this any way you wish.
But during my grief periods...
God was with me.
And both of us sat in sorrow alone.

I chose to heal.
I chose to sing.
I chose to dance and do those things.

Your judgements passed on me does not matter.
Nor your assessments to seduce your reality.

I chose to stand.
I chose to walk.
I chose the Sun!
Not the miseries others wished upon me to bring.
Hoping from obstacles faced,
I would run.

Address this any way you wish.
But during my grief periods...
God was with me.
And both of us sat in sorrow alone.

I chose to heal.
I chose to sing.
I chose to dance and do those things.

And whatever it is prioritized on your agenda?
I wish you all the best!
But don't count on me,
To give it attention with signs of protest.

I have chosen to ignore people like you.
Knowing that a focus on my own happiness...
Is what God wishes!
And that gift God has given...
Has proven to me I am blessed!

Address this any way you wish.
Your judgements passed on me does not matter.
Nor your assessments to seduce your reality.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I'm Here to Give

It's raining on the inside of my heart.
Too long it has had periods of starting,
Without a stop.

I'm in a struggle to love.
Don't know why I've gotten like that.
I'd rather sit feeling trapped,
Than to be dropped...
Tapped and drained of it again.

I'm in a struggle to love.
And sometimes I want it back!
But the last time I gave in...
In my face I was slapped.

It's raining on the inside of my heart.
Too long it has had periods of starting,
Without a stop.
I've gotten so weak,
I can not sleep!
And I don't need to give love up...
To recieve another heart attack!

I'm in a struggle to love.
And sometimes I want it back!
But the last time I gave in...
In my face I was slapped.

I'm in a struggle to love.
Don't know why I've gotten like that.
I'd rather sit feeling trapped,
Than to be dropped...
Tapped and drained of it again.
To feel that pain like I did back then.

I'm in a struggle to love.
And sometimes I want it back!
But the last time I gave in...
In my face I was slapped.

It's raining on the inside of my heart.
Too long it has had periods of starting,
Without a stop.
It's the fear of letting go.
I want my need of it to show!
But who will know I'm here to give?

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Philosophical Note On Life After Death

Death’s is a plunge into oblivion self
As an extinction of being.
It annihilates sensations and our becoming
To replace them with death's existence,
Life-a non existent death
And death-a non existent life.
As Epicurus said 'When I am, death is not,
And when death is, I am not, '
We can decline the religious afterlife,
As Gonzalez-Cruzzi did,
But we will never be able to understand
Our born life.
We can deny the visions of crossing over into the light,
When we need to believe
In darkness, silence and engulfing emptiness,
Always understanding that the nothingness needs rectifying.
Because we can fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally.
Coming into life can be a re-awakening of self
The real death is “eternal night”, as Swinburne defined it.
Nothingness can be anything positively existent,
But blackness and emptiness
Are black holes swallowing up the victims of death.
Thinking of Edwards' celebrities,
We may imagine a universe devoid of souls, spirits and mental essences,
A universe having an essential core identity
And divisible selves,
Anticipating the nothingness.
'When I die I won't go to heaven or hell
, there will just be nothingness', Isaac Asimov said once.
'That stuff which does not exist”, he wrote.
I don't know if there exists something that doesn't exist, but
All I know is that the nothingness exists because we are existent
In after death to define it as being existent.
''This life is the only existence there is; afterward there is nothing.”
Robert Nozick also wrote.
Yes, maybe 'nothing” may be a state into which we go, never to return
Or may not be, as Paul Edwards said.
Remember that Anthony Burgess wrote that if there is only darkness after death,
Then that darkness is the ultimate reality
And that love of life is no preparation for it,
Light -keeping the life
Darkness-keeping the death.
This rage against the dying of the light is very human,
Light never dies
It may be reborn from darkness
And vice versus.
But this rage may sound like madness.
And Burgess was raging more than ever
Against the imminent arrival of nothingness,
The eternal experience of no experience, in which

[...] Read more

poem by Marieta Maglas
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Columbiad: Book IX

The Argument

Vision suspended. Night scene, as contemplated from the mount of vision. Columbus inquires the reason of the slow progress of science, and its frequent interruptions. Hesper answers, that all things in the physical as well as the moral and intellectual world are progressive in like manner. He traces their progress from the birth of the universe to the present state of the earth and its inhabitants; asserts the future advancement of society, till perpetual peace shall be established. Columbus proposes his doubts; alleges in support of them the successive rise and downfal of ancient nations; and infers future and periodical convulsions. Hesper, in answer, exhibits the great distinction between the ancient and modern state of the arts and of society. Crusades. Commerce. Hanseatic League. Copernicus. Kepler. Newton, Galileo. Herschel. Descartes. Bacon. Printing Press. Magnetic Needle. Geographical discoveries. Federal system in America. A similar system to be extended over the whole earth. Columbus desires a view of this.

But now had Hesper from the Hero's sight
Veil'd the vast world with sudden shades of night.
Earth, sea and heaven, where'er he turns his eye,
Arch out immense, like one surrounding sky
Lamp'd with reverberant fires. The starry train
Paint their fresh forms beneath the placid main;
Fair Cynthia here her face reflected laves,
Bright Venus gilds again her natal waves,
The Bear redoubling foams with fiery joles,
And two dire dragons twine two arctic poles.
Lights o'er the land, from cities lost in shade,
New constellations, new galaxies spread,
And each high pharos double flames provides,
One from its fires, one fainter from the tides.

Centred sublime in this bivaulted sphere,
On all sides void, unbounded, calm and clear,
Soft o'er the Pair a lambent lustre plays,
Their seat still cheering with concentred rays;
To converse grave the soothing shades invite.
And on his Guide Columbus fixt his sight:
Kind messenger of heaven, he thus began,
Why this progressive laboring search of man?
If men by slow degrees have power to reach
These opening truths that long dim ages teach,
If, school'd in woes and tortured on to thought,
Passion absorbing what experience taught,
Still thro the devious painful paths they wind,
And to sound wisdom lead at last the mind,
Why did not bounteous nature, at their birth,
Give all their science to these sons of earth,
Pour on their reasoning powers pellucid day,
Their arts, their interests clear as light display?
That error, madness and sectarian strife
Might find no place to havock human life.

To whom the guardian Power: To thee is given
To hold high converse and inquire of heaven,
To mark untraversed ages, and to trace
Whate'er improves and what impedes thy race.
Know then, progressive are the paths we go
In worlds above thee, as in thine below
Nature herself (whose grasp of time and place
Deals out duration and impalms all space)

[...] Read more

poem by Joel Barlow
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Teares of the Muses

Rehearse to me ye sacred Sisters nine:
The golden brood of great Apolloes wit,
Those piteous plaints and sorrowful sad tine,
Which late ye powred forth as ye did sit
Beside the siluer Springs of Helicone,
Making your musick of hart-breaking mone.
For since the time that Phoebus foolish sonne
Ythundered through Ioues auengefull wrath,
For trauersing the charret of the Sunne
Beyond the compasse of his pointed path,
Of you his mournfull Sisters was lamented,
Such mournfull tunes were neuer since inuented.

Nor since that faire Calliope did lose
Her loued Twinnes, the dearlings of her ioy,
Her Palici, whom her vnkindly foes
The fatall Sisters, did for spight destroy,
Whom all the Muses did bewaile long space;
Was euer heard such wayling in this place.

For all their groues, which with the heauenly noyses,
Of their sweete instruments were wont to sound,
And th' hollow hills, from which their siluer voyces
Were wont redoubled Echoes to rebound,
Did now rebound with nought but rufull cries,
And yelling shrieks throwne vp into the skies.

The trembling streames, which wont in chanels cleare
To romble gently downe with murmur soft,
And were by them right tunefull taught to beare
A Bases part amongst their consorts oft;
Now forst to ouerflowe with brackish teares,
With troublous noyse did dull their daintie eares.

The ioyous Nymphes and lightfoote Faeries
Which thether came to heare their musick sweet,
And to the measure of their melodies
Did learne to moue their nimble shifting feete;
Now hearing them so heauily lament,
Like heauily lamenting from them went.

And all that els was wont to worke delight
Through the diuine infusion of their skill,
And all that els seemd faire and fresh in sight,
So made by nature for to serue their will,
Was turned now to dismall heauinesse,
Was turned now to dreadfull vglinesse.

Ay me, what thing on earth that all thing breeds,
Might be the cause of so impatient plight?

[...] Read more

poem by Edmund Spenser
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!