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In the period from 1824 to 1833, the tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the latter part of it that it was made really efficient.

quote by Henry Charles Carey
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What Part Of Life Are You Living

What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.

And what part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.

What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.

And what part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.

What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.

What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.

What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.

What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life is a drive by.
And...
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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You can kiss me; only If

You can kiss me on my voluptuously rubicund cheeks
all right; but only if your kiss had the power to
wonderfully transcend over every other conceivable
kiss drifting ominously towards my direction; for
times beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my seductively tantalizing nape all
right; but only if your kiss had the tenacity to
miraculously overpower every other conceivable kiss
drifting atrociously towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my rhapsodically vivacious hair all
right; but only if your kiss had the temerity to
supremely outshadow every other conceivable kiss
drifting egregiously towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my enthrallingly ebullient lips all
right; but only if your kiss had the charisma to
irrefutably nullify every other conceivable kiss
drifting vindictively towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my bountifully emollient palms all
right; but only if your kiss had the superiority to
timelessly conquer every other conceivable kiss
drifting baselessly towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my surreally royal forehead all
right; but only if your kiss had the magic to
unbelievably decimate every other conceivable kiss
drifting truculently towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my daintily embellished feet all
right; but only if your kiss had the magnetism to
insuperably supercede every other conceivable kiss
drifting salaciously towards my direction; for times
beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my robustly titillating belly all
right; but only if your kiss had the caress to
astronomically triumph over every other conceivable
kiss drifting parasitically towards my direction; for
times beyond an infinite more lifetimes,

You can kiss me on my uncontrollably trembling skin
all right; but only if your kiss had the color to

[...] Read more

poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Happy Heathen: (With limited apologies to G.K.C.)

The heathen's not efficient;
He sits down in the sun
And doesn't care a tuppn'y dump
When the day's work's begun.
He works to eat and eats to live,
All day he'll dance and sing;
And if you mention overtime
He laughs like anything.

But we are most efficient!
And, goodness! Look at us!
Our nights are filled with restless dreams,
Our days with fret and fuss.
And we can have depressions
And modern things like that,
And monoplanes and motor cars
And trousers and a hat.

The heathen's not efficient;
He does not value gold;
And when we'd teach him of its worth
He simply won't be told.
He'll hang gold coins about his neck
For foolish ornament,
While half a bread-fruit or a ham
Bring him complete content.

Oh, we are most efficient;
We'd pile up heaps of gold
And leave it to ungrateful heirs
When we descend to mould.
But the heathen's not efficient;
He is lazy, free, unkempt,
And from the highly civilized
Earns nothing but contempt.

poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Through the eyes of a Field Coronet (Epic)

Introduction

In the kaki coloured tent in Umbilo he writes
his life’s story while women, children and babies are dying,
slowly but surely are obliterated, he see how his nation is suffering
while the events are notched into his mind.

Lying even heavier on him is the treason
of some other Afrikaners who for own gain
have delivered him, to imprisonment in this place of hatred
and thoughts go through him to write a book.

Prologue

The Afrikaner nation sprouted
from Dutchmen,
who fought decades without defeat
against the super power Spain

mixed with French Huguenots
who left their homes and belongings,
with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Associate this then with the fact

that these people fought formidable
for seven generations
against every onslaught that they got
from savages en wild animals

becoming marksmen, riding
and taming wild horses
with one bullet per day
to hunt a wild antelope,

who migrated right across the country
over hills in mass protest
and then you have
the most formidable adversary
and then let them fight

in a natural wilderness
where the hunter,
the sniper and horseman excels
and any enemy is at a lost.

Let them then also be patriotic
into their souls,
believe in and read
out of the word of God

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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Crazy Love, Vol. Ii

Fat charlie the archangel
Slped into the room
He said i have no opinion about this
And i have no opinion about that
Sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon
He said well i don't claim to be happy about this, boys
And i don't seem to be happy about that
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
She says she knows about jokes
This time the joke is on me
Well, i have no opinion about that
And i have no opinion about me
Somebody could walk into this room
And say your life is on fire
It's all over the evening news
All about the fire in your life
On the evening news
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
Fat charlie the archangel
Files for divorce
He says well this will eat up a year of my life
And then there's all that weight to be lost
She says the joke is on me
I say the joke is on her
I said i have no opinion about that
Well, we'll just have to wait and confer
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of this crazy love

song performed by Paul Simon
Added by Lucian Velea
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Workin At The Car Wash Blues

Well, I had just got out from the county prison
Doin ninety days for non-support
Tried to find me an executive position
But no matter how smooth I talked
They wouldnt listen to the fact that I was a genius
The man say, we got all that we can use.
Now igot them steadily depressin, low down mind messin
Working at the car wash blues
Well, I should be sittin in an air conditioned office in a swivel chair
Talkin some trash to the secretaries
Sayin, here, now mama, come on over here.
Instead, Im stuck here rubbin these fenders with a rag
And walkin home in soggy old shoes
With them steadily depressin, low down mind messin
Workin at the car wash blues
You know a man of my ability
He should be smokin on a big cigar
But till I get myself straight I guess Ill just have to wait
In my rubber suit a-rubbin these cars
Well, all I can do is a shake my head
You might not believe that its true
For workin at this end of niagara falls
Is an undiscovered howard hughes
So baby, dont expect to see me
With no double martini in any high-brow society news
Cause I got them steadily depressin, low down mind messin
Workin at the car wash blues
So baby, dont expect to see me
With no double martini in any high-brow society news
Cause I got them steadily depressin, low down mind messin
Workin at the car wash blues
Yeah I got them steadily depressin, low down mind messin
Workin at the car wash blues

song performed by Jim Croce
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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.

[...] Read more

poem by Sir Francis Bacon
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Part 4 of Trout Fishing in America

THE AUTOPSY OF

TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

This is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if Trout

Fishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died in

Missolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shores

of Idaho again, never saw Carrie Creek, Worsewick Hot

Springs, Paradise Creek, Salt Creek and Duck Lake again.

The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America:

"The body was in excellent state and appeared as one that

had died suddenly of asphyxiation. The bony cranial vault

was opened and the bones of the cranium were found very

hard without any traces of the sutures like the bones of a

person 80 years, so much so that one would have said that

the cranium was formed by one solitary bone. . . . The

meninges were attached to the internal walls of the cranium

so firmly that while sawing the bone around the interior to

detach the bone from the dura the strength of two robust men

was not sufficient. . . . The cerebrum with cerebellum

weighed about six medical pounds. The kidneys were very

large but healthy and the urinary bladder was relatively

small. "

On May 2, 1824, the body of Trout Fishing in America

left Missolonghi by ship destined to arrive in England on the

evening of June 29, 1824.

[...] Read more

poem by Richard Brautigan
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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:

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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I Am Writing A Poem That You Can Understand So Easily

this is not to insult your intelligence
or your sensibility
your capacity for managing angst,
to see the wholeness
of the matter
in the eye of the needle
where the camel enters where you claim you have seen it,

this, this is it, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the river the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the riverthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog near the bank of the river

do you not find wisdom in it, it is filled with questions to be answered:

why is the fox quick
why is it brown? why does it jump on a lazy dog? and is the dog really lazy? is this not offensive to the dogs in the royalty? and why should the river be near? and this bank of the river? is this where the dog lives? or the fox or the dog, do they relate to the word quick and lazy?

i tell you, there is wisdom in every word, no matter where you place it.
every verb serves its purpose in giving us action,
every question calls for an answer
and every period serves the purpose it is intended to be.

rest.

the purpose of an easy poem is to understand it, and so the poem is written in the most familiar language that you know and speak,

period.

i don't want to understand things really, there is no point there.

period.

some poems are not meant to be understood, they are only meant to be read.

period.

some poems are not meant to be digested, they are meant to make
us full, even only for a while.

period.

some poems are written by Someone Else, and this writer does not
even understand it.

period.
rest.......

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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V. Count Guido Franceschini

Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of … why, 't is wine,
Velletri,—and not vinegar and gall,
So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!
Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head
To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.
How cautious and considerate … aie, aie, aie,
Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart
An ordinary matter. Law is law.
Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,
From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,
I have been put to the rack: all's over now,
And neither wrist—what men style, out of joint:
If any harm be, 't is the shoulder-blade,
The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket,—Sirs,
Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,
Being past my prime of life, and out of health.
In short, I thank you,—yes, and mean the word.
Needs must the Court be slow to understand
How this quite novel form of taking pain,
This getting tortured merely in the flesh,
Amounts to almost an agreeable change
In my case, me fastidious, plied too much
With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)
To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,
And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.
Four years have I been operated on
I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—
My self-respect, my care for a good name,
Pride in an old one, love of kindred—just
A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,
That looked up to my face when days were dim,
And fancied they found light there—no one spot,
Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.
That, and not this you now oblige me with,
That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!
The poor old noble House that drew the rags
O' the Franceschini's once superb array
Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by,—
Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out
And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!
Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence
Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,
The father I have some slight feeling for,
Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends
Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe,
Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,
Properly push his child to wall one day!

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Part Of My Life

Can you be a part of my life?
Can you be a part of my life?
Oh its easy to find some one to play with
And almost anyone will do to fill your idle time
But that very special someone,
You can share all your dreams with is so hard to find
And it use to be like me to settle for the physical
But these days it aint too easy to make up my mind
Cause apparently you body just to temporally to take up my precious time
See Ive got to know that
That I can be free with you and
Youve got to show that
That youre worthy of my time
Can you stimulate my mind?
And I know that it looks good,
But can you be a part of my life
And Im sure that it feels good
But can you be a part of my life
And it probably even taste good
But can you be a part of my life
Ive got to know
I still appreciate the beauty of a man
But theres more to what I need now than what meets the eye
And if beautys only skin deep,
Then your pretty skin wont send me to my highest high
Oh its been along time come for maturity
And I believe that its truly what it has to be
Cause as much as I admire you
My sexual desire, aint controlling me
See Ive got to know that
That I can be free with you and
Youve got to show that
That youre worthy of my time
Can you stimulate my mind?
And I know that it looks good,
But can you be a part of my life
And Im sure that it feels good
But can you be a part of my life
And it probably even taste good
But can you be a part of my life
Ive got to know
And I know that it looks good,
But can you be a part of my life
And Im sure that it feels good
But can you be a part of my life
And it probably even taste good
But can you be a part of my life
Ive got to know
Can you be a part of my life?
I got to know that

[...] Read more

song performed by India Arie
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Paradise Lost: Book X

Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood
Praying, for from the Mercie-seat above
Prevenient Grace descending had remov'd
The stonie from thir hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerat grow instead, that sighs now breath'd
Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer
Inspir'd, and wing'd for Heav'n with speedier flight
Then loudest Oratorie: yet thir port
Not of mean suiters, nor important less
Seem'd thir Petition, then when th' ancient Pair
In Fables old, less ancient yet then these,
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha to restore
The Race of Mankind drownd, before the Shrine
Of Themis stood devout. To Heav'n thir prayers
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious windes
Blow'n vagabond or frustrate: in they passd
Dimentionless through Heav'nly dores; then clad
With incense, where the Golden Altar fum'd,
By thir great Intercessor, came in sight
Before the Fathers Throne: Them the glad Son
Presenting, thus to intercede began.
See Father, what first fruits on Earth are sprung
From thy implanted Grace in Man, these Sighs
And Prayers, which in this Golden Censer, mixt
With Incense, I thy Priest before thee bring,
Fruits of more pleasing savour from thy seed
Sow'n with contrition in his heart, then those
Which his own hand manuring all the Trees
Of Paradise could have produc't, ere fall'n
From innocence. Now therefore bend thine eare
To supplication, heare his sighs though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let mee
Interpret for him, mee his Advocate
And propitiation, all his works on mee
Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those
Shall perfet, and for these my Death shall pay.
Accept me, and in mee from these receave
The smell of peace toward Mankinde, let him live
Before thee reconcil'd, at least his days
Numberd, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse)
To better life shall yeeld him, where with mee
All my redeemd may dwell in joy and bliss,
Made one with me as I with thee am one.
To whom the Father, without Cloud, serene.
All thy request for Man, accepted Son,
Obtain, all thy request was my Decree:
But longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The Law I gave to Nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal Elements that know

[...] Read more

poem by John Milton
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Berenice by edgar allan poe

MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, -as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? -from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars -in the character of the family mansion -in the frescos of the chief saloon -in the tapestries of the dormitories -in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory -but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings -in the fashion of the library chamber -and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.

The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes -of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before -that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? -let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms -of spiritual and meaning eyes -of sounds, musical yet sad -a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.

In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land -into a palace of imagination -into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition -it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye -that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers -it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life -wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, -not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew -I ill of health, and buried in gloom -she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side -mine the studies of the cloister -I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation -she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name -Berenice! -and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! -Oh! Naiad among its fountains! -and then -then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease -a fatal disease -fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim -where was she, I knew her not -or knew her no longer as Berenice.

Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself -trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease -for I have been told that I should call it by no other appelation -my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form -hourly and momently gaining vigor -and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; -such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.

Yet let me not be misapprehended. -The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio 'de Amplitudine Beati Regni dei'; St. Austin's great work, the 'City of God'; and Tertullian 'de Carne Christi, ' in which the paradoxical sentence 'Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est' occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.

Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning -among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday -and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her -not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream -not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze -not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now -now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, -one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon*, -I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.

*For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon -Simonides.

Was it my own excited imagination -or the misty influence of the atmosphere -or the uncertain twilight of the chamber -or the gray draperies which fell around her figure -that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, I -not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface -not a shade on their enamel -not an indenture in their edges -but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! -the teeth! -they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They -they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, 'que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments, ' and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! -ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees! -ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.

And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went -and the day again dawned -and the mists of a second night were now gathering around -and still I sat motionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was -no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.

I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive -at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror -horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed -what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, 'what was it? '

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, 'Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.' Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?

There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? -some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night -of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; -and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave -of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!

He pointed to garments; -they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; -it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; -I looked at it for some minutes; -it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

poem by Erie Morganmaples
Added by Poetry Lover
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Out Is Through

Every time you raise your voice
I see the greener grass
Every time you run for cover
I see this pasture
Every time we're in a funk
I picture a different choice
Every time we're in a rut
This distant grandeur
My tendency to want to do away feels natural
My urgency to dream of softer places feels understandable and I know
The only way out is through
The faster we're in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we'll feel better
The only way out is through ultimately
Every time I'm confused
I think there must be easier ways
Every time our horns are locked on toweling throwing
Every time we're at a loss, we've bolted from difficulty
Anytime we're still made of final bowing
My tendency to want to hide away feels easier and
The tendency is picturing another place comforting to go and I know
The only way out is through
The faster we're in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we'll feel better
The only way out is through ultimately
We could just walk away and hide our hands in the sand
We could just call it quits, only to start over again
With somebody else
Every time we're stuck in struggle, I'm down for the count that down
Every time I dream of quick fix I'm assuaged
Now I know it's hard when it's through
And I'm damned if I don't know quick fix way
What formerly was treatment silent's now outdated
My tendency to want to run feels unnatural now
The urgency to want to give to you what I want most feels good and I know
The only way out is through
The faster we're in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we'll feel better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The faster we're in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we'll feel better

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song performed by Alanis Morissette
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Cremona Violin

Part First

Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
Her on the clean, flagged path. The sky behind
The distant town was black, and sharp defined
Against it shone the lines of roofs and towers,
Superimposed and flat like cardboard flowers.

A pasted city on a purple ground,
Picked out with luminous paint, it seemed. The cloud
Split on an edge of lightning, and a sound
Of rivers full and rushing boomed through bowed,
Tossed, hissing branches. Thunder rumbled loud
Beyond the town fast swallowing into gloom.
Frau Altgelt closed the windows of each room.

She bustled round to shake by constant moving
The strange, weird atmosphere. She stirred the fire,
She twitched the supper-cloth as though improving
Its careful setting, then her own attire
Came in for notice, tiptoeing higher and higher
She peered into the wall-glass, now adjusting
A straying lock, or else a ribbon thrusting

This way or that to suit her. At last sitting,
Or rather plumping down upon a chair,
She took her work, the stocking she was knitting,
And watched the rain upon the window glare
In white, bright drops. Through the black glass a flare
Of lightning squirmed about her needles. 'Oh!'
She cried. 'What can be keeping Theodore so!'

A roll of thunder set the casements clapping.
Frau Altgelt flung her work aside and ran,
Pulled open the house door, with kerchief flapping
She stood and gazed along the street. A man
Flung back the garden-gate and nearly ran
Her down as she stood in the door. 'Why, Dear,
What in the name of patience brings you here?

Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin
I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light.
This clasp is very much too worn and thin.
I'll take the other fiddle out to-night
If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite
Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I -
Give me the candle. No, the inside's dry.

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poem by Amy Lowell
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Intuition

ladedada
ladedada
ladedada da dum
I'm just a simple girl
In a high tech digital world
I really try to understand
All the powers that rule this land
They say Miss J's big butt is boss
Kate Moss can't find a job
In a world of post modern fad
What was good now is bad
It's not hard to understand
Just follow this simple plan
Follow your heart
Your intuition
It will lead you in the right direction
Let go of your mind
Your intuition
It's easy to find
Just follow your heart baby
ladedada
ladedada
ladedada da dum
You look at me
But you're not quite sure
Am I it or could you get more?
You learn cool from magazines
You learn love from Charlie Sheen
If you want me let me know
I promise i won't say no
Follow your heart
Your intuition
It will lead you in the right direction
Let go of your mind
Your intuition
It's easy to find
Just follow your heart baby
You got something that you want me to sell
Sell your sin
Just cash in
You got something that you want me to tell
You'll love me
Wait and see
If you want me
Don't play games
I promise
It won't be in vain
Uh-uh-uh
Follow your heart
Your intuition

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song performed by Jewel
Added by Lucian Velea
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Love Street

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ohh...ho...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ohh...ho...
It seems we've lost our touch
Used to be so in love, yeah, uh
But somehow we've gotten off-track
And we never really got it back, no, yeah
I think we better find a way, yeah
And get right back to them good old days, good old days
Wanna make it to Heaven's gate, yeah (oh)
And we need to escalate, I need
I need direction (whoo, I need direction)
To that street called love (to that street called love, yeah)
Lead me to that road (trying to get home, yeah)
Trying to get home (oh take me to love street, yeah)
Now life is gone and skipped a beat
Tell me where are all the dancing feet? Yeah
Boy I tell you there's always something going wrong
Tell me why can't we all just get along
Keep struggling (yeah) just to get by, oh (oh yeah)
So many hills, mountains to climb, yeah
We should all be ashamed of ourselves
'Cause if we don't love ourselves
Tell me how can we love somebody else?
I need direction (whoo, we need direction)
To that street called love (to that street called love yeah)
Lead me to that road (I'm trying to get home)
Trying to get home (come on and take me to love street)
Easter Sunday morning (yeah)
We weredressed up (yeah)
Ready to go and have some... Church
(And I remember feeling so joyful)
Whether East side or the West side
Or the North side or the South side
You were at... Church
(So tell me what is all this fighting for?)
So what is all this pouting about? (and whoa)
What is all this hating about? (whoa)
(We have got to figure out how to get right back to love street)
I need directions (we need direction, whoa)
To that street called love (to that street called love, yeah)
Lead me to that road (trying to get home)
Trying to get home (would you take me straight to love street, yeah)
I need directions (I need some direction yeah) (ohh)
To that street called love (yes I do, yes I do) (yes I do, yeah)
Lead me to that road (please let me lead me to that road) (yeah)
Trying to get home
Heard somebody say (Toot-toot, beep-beep)
Heard somebody say (Tell me how to get to love street) yeah

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song performed by R. Kelly
Added by Lucian Velea
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Canto the Second

I
Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain:
The best of mothers and of educations
In Juan's case were but employ'd in vain,
Since, in a way that's rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.

II
Had he but been placed at a public school,
In the third form, or even in the fourth,
His daily task had kept his fancy cool,
At least, had he been nurtured in the north;
Spain may prove an exception to the rule,
But then exceptions always prove its worth -—
A lad of sixteen causing a divorce
Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.

III
I can't say that it puzzles me at all,
If all things be consider'd: first, there was
His lady-mother, mathematical,
A—never mind; his tutor, an old ass;
A pretty woman (that's quite natural,
Or else the thing had hardly come to pass);
A husband rather old, not much in unity
With his young wife—a time, and opportunity.

IV
Well—well, the world must turn upon its axis,
And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us,
The priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name.

V
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz -—
A pretty town, I recollect it well -—
'T is there the mart of the colonial trade is
(Or was, before Peru learn'd to rebel),
And such sweet girls—I mean, such graceful ladies,
Their very walk would make your bosom swell;
I can't describe it, though so much it strike,
Nor liken it—I never saw the like:

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poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Remember Me

I stand here face to face
With someone that I used to know
He used to look at me and laugh
But now he claims
That hes known me for so very long
But I remember being no one
I wanted to be just like you
So perfect, so untouchable
Now you want me to be with you
Someone who used to have it all
Do you remember now
You acted like you never noticed me
Forget it
Cause the gone has come around
And youre not allowed to be a part of me
Did you know me?
Or were you too preoccupied
With playing king in your small kingdom
And now the real world
Has stripped you of your royalty
And from your kingdom youre evicted
I wanted to be just like you
So perfect, so untouchable
Now you want me to be with you
Someone who used to have it all
Do you remember now
You acted like you never noticed me
Forget it
Cause the gone has come around
Youre not allowed to be a part of me
Part of me
Part of me
Part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Youre never going to be a part of me
Do you remember now
You acted like you never noticed me
Forget it
Cause the gone has come around
Youre not allowed to be a part of me
Part of me
Part of me
Part of me

song performed by Hoobastank
Added by Lucian Velea
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