Citatepedia^®.com

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

quote by Henri Frederic Amiel
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Condition Critical

Oh the tension's mounting
The pressure starts to show
All the men in haunting
Please don't let me go
(Don't go)
Try to free my body
(Don't go)
Try to strap me down
(Don't go)
These'll never break me
(Don't go)
Free wheel to look at me
Condition critical
I'm feeling physical
Condition critical
Now I'm really cynical
The bells they are ringing
Or is it in my head
My nerves numb understanding
I'm falling out of bed
(Don't go)
So call it paranoia
(Don't go)
I don't see it that way
(Let's go)
You say I adore ya
(Hell no)
We're gonna rock they way
Condition critical
I'm feeling physical
Condition critical
Now I'm really cynical
Ooh ooh
Whips and chains
Don't feel no pain
What's so wrong
I think I'm going out of my head
Over heels
I can't feel
No pain, only pleasure
Get me out
Take me home
Can't you see my condition
Woo-woo-woo
Condition
Condition
Condition critical, critical
Condition
Condition
Condition critical

[...] Read more

song performed by Quiet Riot
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sympathy is worse than death….

Sympathy makes an organism feel dreadfully weak—as if the world around it had metamorphosed into a coffin of morose blackness; though an infinite streams of scarlet blood still ran enthusiastically through each of its blessed veins,

Sympathy makes an organism feel lividly inferior—with every living being in vicinity appearing to be a boundless times stronger; though they both were royally equal by the grace of the unparalleled Omnipotent Lord,

Sympathy makes an organism inadvertently lick decrepit dust—whereas it should’ve been unflinching marching forward in the fervor of bustling youth; head held high with its compatriot organism and only bowing down before the Lord Almighty,

Sympathy makes an organism a veritably devilish parasite-forever leaning and sucking upon its good-willed befriender; though volcano’s of latent energy itched to fulminate from each of its robustly handsome veins,

Sympathy makes an organism wholesomely lose its own voice—as it started to profusely relish the extravagant attention and care; preferred to fantasize about the things that it’d like to do in life; rather than honestly sweat it out and reach there,

Sympathy makes an organism overwhelmingly finicky and fastidious about the tiniest of things—again and again finding faults with the most majestically perfect of creation; as there was always a person to wholesomely commiserate with its every eccentricity and peevish demand,

Sympathy makes an organism haplessly infertile-pathetically unable to indulge into even the most sensuously bountiful pleasures of life; as inevitable habit compelled it to let others complete its job of proliferating its very own kin,

Sympathy makes an organism miserably fail again and again-as the inexplicably stabbing blackness that it’d enshrouded itself with; incorrigibly denied any beam of optimistic sunlight to triumphantly creep in,

Sympathy makes an organism look frenetically naked even when fully clothed-as it indefatigably kept begging for being fed even that morsel of food; which lay copiously sprawled right into the center of its palms,

Sympathy makes an organism an irrefutable devil on the prowl-inexhaustibly searching for that shoulder to baselessly weep; and then disgustingly sleep-float in an unfathomable ocean of tears,

Sympathy makes an organism a dreadfully unbearable burden upon the planet-as it neither wholesomely died nor lived; just kept flagrantly loitering in-between the dormitories of certainty and uncertainty,

Sympathy makes an organism hopelessly deteriorate into nothingness with every unleashing minute—as his unstoppably taking the support of others; made his very own spine rust and eventually crumble to inconspicuous dust,

Sympathy makes an organism an irrevocably maimed beggar—as he shamefully lost all his ability to sight; hear and fearlessly speak; wantonly clinging like a deplorable leech to the panic button of every second person on the street,

Sympathy makes an organism a coffin of cursed negativity-spreading the wretched stench of satanic dependency upon every step that he dared tread; and thereby maligning the true spirit of symbiotically independent life,

Sympathy makes an organism lose all priceless self respect-an attribute which was profoundly embedded in each of its veins just like an infinite other of its counterpart; right since its very first divinely breath,

Sympathy makes an organism look like an invisible ghost infront of the mirror-such an abominable jinx that was impossible to break; once it surreptitiously passed itself on upon another equally insipid organism,

Sympathy makes an organism come to such an exasperating stage—that it started to unceasingly ridicule its very ownself; as there virtually none else in this world who was as inconsolably sick and helpless as its rapidly flailing form,

Sympathy makes an organism come to an earth-screeching lifeless halt—as after a period of time every door on the Universe brutally shut up on its deliberately tear stained face; and that’s when the true reality and hardship of life hit it right in the center of its eye,

And sympathy makes an organism entirely dead even in the heart of exuberantly infallible life-a lifelessly fetid carcass which was spat upon and shunted by every section of the society; even before it could try lifting its very first footstep on soil by itself…

poem by Nikhil Parekh
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Just Dropped In

To see what condition my condition was in)
(mickey newbury)
(yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)
I woke up this mornin with the sundown shinin in
I found my mind in a brown paper bag within
I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
(yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)
I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin out as I was a-crawlin in
I got up so tight I couldnt unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
(yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)
Someone painted april fool in big black letters on a dead end sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
Eight miles outta memphis and I got no spare
Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
I said I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Yeah yeah oh-yeah

song performed by Kenny Rogers
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Accept my sympathy

In all sincerity
It is a pathetic pity
I merely offer sympathy
With such velocity
This sadness born out of the blue
That decides to levy itself on you

In your fixed stillness
I sense your illness
Accept my sympathy

You lost a pet
Somebody made you upset
Accept my sympathy

You lost a friend
Your broken heart is yet to mend
Accept my sympathy

You were once abused
Possibly at times wrongly accused
Accept my sympathy

You marriage is on the rocks
You got divorced, left without a buck
Accept my sympathy

You lost a fortune
Your voice can't sing a decent tune
Accept my sympathy

You lost in love or lost your job
Or perhaps at one stage got robbed
Accept my sympathy

Your life is a mess
Everything around you depresses

Whatever the circumstances
Accept my sympathy
And if I happen to show no sympathy
Please accept my sympathy!

www.sylviachidi.co.uk

poem by Sylvia Chidi
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sympathy In End

In all sincerity
It is a pathetic pity
I merely offer sympathy
With such velocity
This sadness born out of the blue
That decides to levy itself on you

In your fixed stillness
I sense your illness
Accept my sympathy

You lost a pet
Somebody made you upset
Accept my sympathy

You lost a friend
Your broken heart is yet to mend
Accept my sympathy

You were once abused
Possibly at times wrongly accused
Accept my sympathy

You marriage is on the rocks
You got divorced, left without a buck
Accept my sympathy

You lost a fortune
Your voice can't sing a decent tune
Accept my sympathy

You lost in love or lost your job
Or perhaps at one stage got robbed
Accept my sympathy

Your life is a mess
Everything around you depresses

Whatever the circumstances
Accept my sympathy
And if I happen to show no sympathy
Please accept my sympathy! By SARTHAK DAS

poem by Sarthak Das
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Dont Break This Rhythm

Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
All this momentum keeps stealing through
Across the cornfields, through all the marshland
Theres nothing gonna stop this thing
Clear the trees, burn the brushwood
Bring the diggers in, Im gonna move this earth
Lay the big stones, put down the sleepers
Haul the steel in, I will beat this land
Dont care how but, Im coming through here
Whatever it takes, oh
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Right through these fences, cut through the stone walls
Dig out the tunnels from a solid stone
There she is, but so surrounded
All those fancy men with soft white hands
Come all this distance, that should be me there
Whatever it takes (whatever it takes), oh
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy
Dont break this rhythm, dont break this motion
We work together in sympathy

song performed by Peter Gabriel
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Im In No Condition

Dont look at me with love in your eyes
Go look at somebody that can make it worthwhile
Im hurt from a love affair I didnt want in
Im in no condition to try to love again
Dont smile at me because its no use
cause I dont have a smile that I can give to you
Someday, you might look me up, but let me be till then
For Im in no condition to try to love again
Im in no condition to try to love again
Man I love just broke my heart
And it must have time to mend
He have me the breeze
Now hes gone with the wind
Im in no condition to try to love again
Im in no condition to try to love again
Man I love just broke my heart
And it must have time to mend
He have me the breeze
Now hes gone with the wind
Im in no condition to try to love again
No, Im in no condition to try to love again

song performed by Dolly Parton
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Worn Out Nervous Condition

Written by John Mellencamp
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
I thought we were having fun
We were walking in the sun baby me and you
Now you give me the cheek every time we kiss
And I don't know what to do so
Go ahead and break my heart
It's your time to break my heart
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
I heard the miracle in your voice
The miracle gave me no choice
What am I gonna do here by myself
I'm so afraid of being all by myself so
Go ahead and break my heart
It's your time to break my heart
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
Go ahead and break my heart
It's your time to break my heart
Go ahead and break my heart
It's your time to break my heart
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you
I'm in a worn out nervous condition over you

song performed by John Mellencamp
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

If government, or those in positions of power and authority, can silence criticism by the argument that such criticism might be misunderstood somewhere, there is an end to all criticism, and perhaps an end to our kind of political system. For men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

quote by Henry Steele Commager
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Canto the First

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sympathy

(mark ashton, graham stansfield, david kaffinetti, stephen gould)
Now when you climb into your bed tonight
And when you lock and bolt the door
Just think about those out in the cold and dark
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round
And sympathy is what we need my friends
And sympathy is what we need
And sympathy is what we need my friends
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round
Now half the world hates the other half
And half the world has all the food
And half the world lies down and quietly starves
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round
And sympathy is what we need my friends
And sympathy is what we need
And sympathy is what we need my friends
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love
No theres not enough love to go round

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

Sympathy

So you've seen the sunrise on the Nile
solved the mystery of the mona lisa's smile
you proclaim your innocence
what you saying
makes no sense to me at all
So you help the needy and the sick
heard confessions of a lunatic
my eyes are growing dim
ghost shadows closing in
around me now
and there ain't no sympathy at all
just a sea of angry faces
staring at me
there ain't no sympathy at all
I gotta find someone
to make me happy
so you've scattered roses at Versailles
wiped a teardrop from an old man's eye
seeing you in such distress
I'm afraid I must confess
that boys don't cry
and there ain't no sympathy at all
just a sea of angry faces
staring at me
there ain't no sympathy at all
I gotta find someone
to make me happy
Solo
and there ain't no sympathy at all
just a sea of angry faces
staring at me
there ain't no sympathy at all
I gotta find someone,
gotta find someone,
gotta find someone

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

I Get Out

[Singing Chorus]
I get out, I get out of all your boxes
I get out, you can't hold me in these chains
I'll get out
Father free me from this bondage
Knowin' my condition
Is the reason I must change
[Verse 1]
Your stinkin' resolution
Is no type of solution
Preventin' me from freedom
Maintainin' your polution
I won't support your lie no more
I won't even try no more
If I have to die, oh Lord
That's how I choose to live
I won't be compromised no more
I can't be victimised no more
I just don't sympathize no more
Cuz now I understand
You just wanna use me
You say "love" then abuse me
You never thought you'd loose me
But how quickly we forget
That nothin' is for certain
You thought I'd stay here hurtin'
Your guilt trip's just not workin'
Repressin' me to death
Cuz now I'm choosin' life, yo
I take the sacrifice, yo
If everything must go, then go
That's how I choose to live
[Pause]
[Singing rest of Verse 1]
That's how I choose to live...
Hehehehe, awhh
No more compromises
I see past your diguises
Blindin' through mind control
Stealin' my eternal soul
Appealin' through material
To keep me as your slave
[Singing Chorus]
But I get out
Oh, I get out of all your boxes
I get out
Oh, you can't hold me in these chains
I'll get out
Oh, I want out of social bondage
Knowin' my condition

[...] Read more

song performed by Lauryn Hill
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Canto the Fourteenth

I
If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss --
But then 't would spoil much good philosophy.
One system eats another up, and this
Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.

II
But System doth reverse the Titan's breakfast,
And eats her parents, albeit the digestion
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast,
After due search, your faith to any question?
Look back o'er ages, ere unto the stake fast
You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;
And yet what are your other evidences?

III
For me, I know nought; nothing I deny,
Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
And both may after all turn out untrue.
An age may come, Font of Eternity,
When nothing shall be either old or new.
Death, so call'd, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.

IV
A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very Suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.

V
'T is round him, near him, here, there, every where;
And there's a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
The worst to know it -- when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o'er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns -- you can't gaze a minute
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Don Juan: Canto The Fourteenth

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss--
But then 'twould spoil much good philosophy.
One system eats another up, and this
Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.

But System doth reverse the Titan's breakfast,
And eats her parents, albeit the digestion
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast,
After due search, your faith to any question?
Look back o'er ages, ere unto the stake fast
You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;
And yet what are your other evidences?

For me, I know nought; nothing I deny,
Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
And both may after all turn out untrue.
An age may come, Font of Eternity,
When nothing shall be either old or new.
Death, so call'd, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.

A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very Suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.

'Tis round him, near him, here, there, every where;
And there's a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
The worst to know it:--when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o'er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns,--you can't gaze a minute
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.

'Tis true, you don't - but, pale and struck with terror,
Retire: but look into your past impression!
And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror
Of your own thoughts, in all their self--confession,
The lurking bias, be it truth or error,

[...] Read more

poem by Byron
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sympathy

I don't want nothing
Cause nothing's all you give
I don't need your touch
That could be too much for me
I don't want your lies
Burning deep inside of me
Look into my eyes
I don't want your sympathy

Should've known it was over
Can we still bring back before
As the love is certainly colder
You don't need me any more
Now nothing lasts forever like I said before
I don't want your sympathy no more

I don't want my love
It's been misunderstood
So I think I'm giving up
I can never give it up fair way

I don't want your lies
Burning deep inside of me
Look into my eyes
I don't want your sympathy

I don't want your sympathy
I don't need you here with me
I don't want your sympathy
I can't take it anymore
Because I'm hurt enough before

song performed by BBMak from Into Your Head
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sympathy

Stranger than your sympathy
And this is my apology
I killed myself from the inside out
And all my fears have pushed you out
And I wished for things that I dont need
(all I wanted)
And what I chased wont set me free
(all I wanted)
And I get scared but Im not crawlin on my knees
Oh, yeah
Everythings all wrong, yeah
Everythings all wrong, yeah
Where the hell did I think I was?
And stranger than your sympathy
Take these things, so I dont feel
Im killing myself from the inside out
And now my heads been filled with doubt
Were taught to lead the life you choose
(all I wanted)
You know your loves run out on you
(all I wanted)
And you cant see when all your dreams arent coming true
Oh, yeah
Its easy to forget, yeah
When you choke on the regrets, yeah
Who the hell did I think I was?
And stranger than your sympathy
And all these thoughts you stole from me
And Im not sure where I belong
And no wheres home and no more wrong
And I was in love with things I tried to make you believe I was
And I wouldnt be the one to kneel before the dreams I wanted
And all the dark and all the lies were all the empty things disguised as me
Mmm, yeah
Stranger than your sympathy
Stranger than your sympathy
Mmm hmmm mmm

song performed by Goo Goo Dolls
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Livin

Here it is, a dope hit
Iceman comin with a dope hit
Cause a few suckers need their throats slit
Jealous cause I went multi-platinum
Now Im gonna blast em in the head till theyre dead with my magnum
Lyrics might be simplistic, but Im no gimp
On the strip, cause I know how to pimp it
Now I got grip and suckers keep sinking in my quicksand
Vanilla ice, vocal hitman
Got the number three in my crosses, sittin on the rooftop
Bop bop bop
And you fools drop, (scratching over pop goes the weasel
Was a big fl-fl-flop flop
Brothers didnt like your record 'cause it wasnt hip hop hop
But this aint a dis 'cause you sold gold
Still, I made a killin and it aint even a 10 - 11 million
Given my rhyming spice while my djs on the slice
Vanilla ice is back on the map, with the wrath of the ice king
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
Chorus
Why is that I disperse
Why does God shun
Why does my man try to run my actions
Why is that I disperse
Why does God shun
Why does my man try to run my actions
Its my living condition
Its my living condition
Its my living condition
Its my living condition
Etch on a sketch on a rhyme like an architect
Now watch your back son, cause you might lose your neck
Pound-for-pound, I rock the ground I stand on
I rock records, every record at random
Flyin heads, as the heads get full
Thoughts and speakers get ripped and torn
To my tomb
Im wicked as a witch on a broom stick
I smash bricks with one lick
Chorus
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
No one will stop me
You dont get a second chance
Cause and tremors bring the scales in hand

[...] Read more

song performed by Vanilla Ice
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Study in the 'Nood

He was bare—we don’t want to be rude—
(His condition was owing to drink)
They say his condition was nood,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think
(We mean his condition, we think,
’Twas a naked condition, or nood,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think)
Uncovered he lay on the grass
That shrivelled and shrunk; and he stayed
Three hot summer days, while the glass
Was one hundred and ten in the shade.
(We nearly remarked that he laid,
But that was bad grammar we thought—
It does sound bucolic, we think
It smacks of the barnyard—
Of farming—of pullets in short.)

Unheeded he lay on the dirt;
Beside him a part of his dress,
A tattered and threadbare old shirt
Was raised as a flag of distress.
(On a stick, like a flag of distress—
Reversed—we mean that the tail-end was up
half-mast—on a stick—an evident flag of distress.)

Perhaps in his dreams he persood
Bright visions of heav’nly bliss;
And artists who study the nood
Never saw such a study as this.
The ‘luggage’ went by and the guard
Looked out and his eyes fell on Grice—
We fancy he looked at him hard,
We think that he looked at him twice.

They say (if the telegram’s true)
When he woke up he wondered (good Lord!)
‘Why the engine-man didn’t heave to—
‘Why the train didn’t take him aboard.’
And now, by the case of poor Grice,
We think that a daily express
Should travel with sunshades and ice,
And a lookout for flags of distress.

poem by Henry Lawson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!