The second song is called 'Easy As Life,' which really describes the complete conflict of the whole story, her struggle of being in love with the enemy and also being in love with her people.
quote by Deborah Cox
Added by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
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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XI. Guido
You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Tom Zart's 52 Best Of The Rest America At War Poems
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF WORLD WAR III
The White House
Washington
Tom Zart's Poems
March 16,2007
Ms. Lillian Cauldwell
President and Chief Executive Officer
Passionate Internet Voices Radio
Ann Arbor Michigan
Dear Lillian:
Number 41 passed on the CDs from Tom Zart. Thank you for thinking of me. I am thankful for your efforts to honor our brave military personnel and their families. America owes these courageous men and women a debt of gratitude, and I am honored to be the commander in chief of the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world.
Best Wishes.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF WORLD WAR III
Our sons and daughters serve in harm's way
To defend our way of life.
Some are students, some grandparents
Many a husband or wife.
They face great odds without complaint
Gambling life and limb for little pay.
So far away from all they love
Fight our soldiers for whom we pray.
The plotters and planners of America's doom
Pledge to murder and maim all they can.
From early childhood they are taught
To kill is to become a man.
They exploit their young as weapons of choice
Teaching in heaven, virgins will await.
Destroying lives along with their own
To learn of their falsehoods too late.
The fearful cry we must submit
And find a way to soothe them.
Where defenders worry if we stand down
The future for America is grim.
[...] Read more
poem by Tom Zart
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Would you ever believe
WOULD YOU EVER believe if I called a nondescript table of teakwood; as a vivacious bird soaring high in the sky,
Would you ever believe if I called a ruffled sheet of paper; as a chunk of glittering gold,
Would you ever believe if I called a grandiloquent watch embodied with diamonds; as a lump of bedraggled stone,
Would you ever believe if I called a mountain of compacted mud; as a switchboard of pugnacious electricity,
Would you ever believe if I called a resplendent rainbow in the sky; as a broomstick with incongruous bristles,
Would you ever believe if I called a rusty canister of dilapidated iron; as a mesmerizing rose growing in the garden,
Would you ever believe if I called a pink tablet of luxury soap; as a mosquito hovering acrimoniously in the cloistered room,
Would you ever believe if I called a boat rollicking merrily on the undulating waves; as a rustic jungle spider,
Would you ever believe if I called a valley profusely embedded with snow; as an unscrupulous dog on the street,
Would you ever believe if I called a pair of luscious lips; as a disdainfully fetid shoe,
Would you ever believe if I called a fluorescent rod of light; as a jagged bush of cactus growing in the sweltering desert,
Would you ever believe if I called the blazing sun; as a pudgy bar of delectable chocolate,
Would you ever believe if I called an angular sculptured bone; as acid bubbling in a swanky bottle,
Would you ever believe if I called a scintillating oyster; as an inarticulate matchstick coated with lead,
Would you ever believe if I called a cluster of bells jingling from the ceiling; as a sordid cockroach philandering beside the lavatory seat,
Would you ever believe if I called a fruit of succulent coconut; as a dead mans morbid tooth,
Would you ever believe If I called a steaming cup of filter coffee; as gaudily colored water emanating from the street fountains,
Would you ever believe if I called the majestic statue of a revered historian; as a slab of tangy peanut butter,
Would you ever believe if I called a vibrant shirt; as a protuberant pigeon discerningly pecking its beak at grains scattered on the floor,
Would you ever believe if I called a flocculent bud of cotton; as a camouflaged lizard transgressing through wild projections of grass,
Would you ever believe if I called a photograph depicting the steep gorges; as a gutter inundated with obnoxious sewage,
Would you ever believe if I called a lanky giraffe; as a convict nefariously lurking through solitary streets of the city,
Would you ever believe if I called a pair of flamboyant sunglasses; as a weird tattoo to be adhered to the chest,
Would you ever believe if I called a chicken’s egg; as logs of sooty charcoal abundantly stashed in the colossal warehouse,
Would you ever believe if I called a biscuit replete with golden honey; as a ominously slithering reptile in the jungles,
Would you ever believe if I called a bald man possessing a profoundly tonsured scalp; as a gas balloon floating in insipid air,
[...] Read more
poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Easy Skanking
Easy skanking (skankin it easy);
Easy skanking (skankin it slow);
Easy skanking (skankin it easy);
Easy skanking (skankin it slow).
Excuse me while I light my spliff; (spliff)
Good god, I gotta take a lift: (lift)
From reality I just cant drift; (drift)
Thats why I am staying with this riff. (riff)
Take it easy (easy skankin);
Lord, I take it easy! (easy skankin);
Take it easy (easy skankin);
Got to take it easy (easy skankin).
See: were takin it easy (ooh-wah-da da-da)
We taking it slow, (ooh-wah-da da-da)
Takin it easy (easy);
Got to take it slow (slow-slow)
So take it easy (easy skankin - da-da-da-da-da-da)
Wo-oh, take it easy (easy skankin)
Take it easy (easy skankin - da-da-da-da-da-da)
Take it easy. (easy skankin)
Excuse me while I light my spliff; (spliff)
Oh, god, I gotta take a lift: (lift)
From reality I just cant drift; (drift)
Thats why I am staying with this riff. (riff)
Take it easy (takin it easy);
Got to take it easy (takin it slow);
Take it easy (takin it easy);
Skanky, take it easy (takin it slow).
Tell you what:
Herb for my wine; (ooh-wa-da-da-da)
Honey for my strong drink; (ooh-wa-da-da-da)
Herb for my wine; (ooh-wa-da-da-da)
Honey for my strong drink.
I shake it easy (takin it easy);
Skanky, take it easy (skankin it slow);
Take it (takin it easy) easy;
Take it (skankin it slow) easy;
Take it easy (takin it easy);
Oh-oh-ooh! (skankin it slow);
Little bit easier (takin it easy);
Skanky, take it easy (skankin it slow).
Take it easy! take it easy! take it easy! /fadeout/
song performed by Bob Marley
Added by Lucian Velea
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[9] O, Moon, My Sweet-heart!
O, Moon, My Sweet-heart!
[LOVE POEMS]
POET: MAHENDRA BHATNAGAR
POEMS
1 Passion And Compassion / 1
2 Affection
3 Willing To Live
4 Passion And Compassion / 2
5 Boon
6 Remembrance
7 Pretext
8 To A Distant Person
9 Perception
10 Conclusion
10 You (1)
11 Symbol
12 You (2)
13 In Vain
14 One Night
15 Suddenly
16 Meeting
17 Touch
18 Face To Face
19 Co-Traveller
20 Once And Once only
21 Touchstone
22 In Chorus
23 Good Omens
24 Even Then
25 An Evening At ‘Tighiraa’ (1)
26 An Evening At ‘Tighiraa’ (2)
27 Life Aspirant
28 To The Condemned Woman
29 A Submission
30 At Midday
31 I Accept
32 Who Are You?
33 Solicitation
34 Accept Me
35 Again After Ages …
36 Day-Dreaming
37 Who Are You?
38 You Embellished In Song
[...] Read more
poem by Mahendra Bhatnagar
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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
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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His Story
Yo, this is a story of a male female threat to society
You know being misjudged and not respected for what we are
But I want to send this special shout out to my girl tawana brawley
Cause no matter what we say or what we do
Theyll always believe his story (ow)
Chorus:
His story (yeahee, yeahee, yeahee)
Hist story (ow)
Theyre gonna believe
His story
His story
Why does it have to be that we get labeled for what we do
Its hard enough for us to be ourselves without being used
Girls have an image too
But when they get mad at you
There is no telling what theyll say to hurt you
This is a story of a male female threat to society
Why you wanna go and tell a lie on me? (yeahee, yeah, oooh)
His story over mine his story will be his story
And my story is a waste of time (aaaah-aah-aah)
Theyre gonna believe
Chorus
Sometimes I feel like there is no reason for me to explain
No matter how much we complain
You know it all stays the same
They try to call us freaks
Why does it have to be
We cant get justified until we speak up (oooh)
This is a story of a male female threat to society
Why you wanna go and tell a lie on me? (yeahee, yeah, oooh)
His story over mine his story will be his story
And my story is a waste of time (aaaah-aah-aah)
(you know its just a waste of my time)
Theyre gonna believe
His story over mine
So what you gonna do
Dont let it take over you (hey)
My story is a waste of time
Its hard enough to be ourselves without being used
So yo take it from me
Dont be a victim of society
You cant put yourself in a position to be neglected
And disrespected
You have to do whats not expected
Alright
Or all be his story
His story over mine
His story will be his story
(this is a story of) how could you do this to us
Theyre gonna believe
[...] Read more
song performed by TLC
Added by Lucian Velea
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Easy Thing
Love, love is so hard
Love is so hard to find
When love, such an easy thing
Such an easy thing
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah
Words, words are so hard
Words are so hard to find
When love, such an easy thing
Such an easy thing
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah
When you find your love
Will you know its real
When you lose it all
Will you really feel love
Love, love is so hard
Love is so hard to find
cause loves such an easy thing
Such an easy thing
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah
When you find your love
Will you know its real
When you lose it all
Will you really feel love
Love, love is so hard
Love is so hard to find
cause love (love) such an easy thing (so easy)
Such an easy thing (love is so easy)
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah (love)
Love (love) such an easy thing (so easy)
Such an easy thing (love is so easy)
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah (love, love is so easy to lose)
Love (love) such an easy thing (so easy)
Such an easy thing (love is so easy)
Such an easy thing to lose, yeah (love)
Love (love) such an easy thing (so easy)
Such an easy thing (love is so easy)
Such an easy thing to lose, (love, love is so easy to lose)
song performed by Kiss
Added by Lucian Velea
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Backdoor Medley
I. backdoor love affair
Got to have you, baby, even
Though you say that you dont care.
Got to have you, baby, even
Though you say that you dont care.
Any way you want it,
Settle for a backdoor love affair.
Ii. mellow down easy
Jump, jump here, jump, jump there,
Jump, jump, baby, everywhere.
Dont you mellow down easy,
Babe, you got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy, babe.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Mellow down easy when you really wanna blow your top.
Shake, shake here, shake, shake there,
Shake, shake, baby, everywhere.
Dont you mellow down easy,
Babe, you got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy, babe.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Mellow down easy when you really wanna blow your top.
Shake, shake here, shake, shake there,
Shake, shake, baby, everywhere.
Dont you mellow down easy,
Babe, you got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy, babe.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Got to mellow down easy.
Dont you mellow down easy.
Mellow down easy when you really wanna blow your top.
Iii. backdoor love affair no.2
Baby baby baby baby, dont you want a man like me?
Uh-huh uh-huh, yes I do, yes I do.
Oh, baby baby baby baby, dont you want a man like me?
Uh-huh uh-huh, uh-huh uh-huh, uh-huh uh-huh.
Oh, I give you lovin by the daytime,
[...] Read more
song performed by ZZ Top
Added by Lucian Velea
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Three Women
My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.
Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where love, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.
Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.
1
I.
A dull little station, a man with the eye
Of a dreamer; a bevy of girls moving by;
A swift moving train and a hot Summer sun,
The curtain goes up, and our play is begun.
The drama of passion, of sorrow, of strife,
Which always is billed for the theatre Life.
It runs on forever, from year unto year,
With scarcely a change when new actors appear.
It is old as the world is-far older in truth,
For the world is a crude little planet of youth.
And back in the eras before it was formed,
The passions of hearts through the Universe stormed.
Maurice Somerville passed the cluster of girls
Who twisted their ribbons and fluttered their curls
In vain to attract him; his mind it was plain
Was wholly intent on the incoming train.
That great one eyed monster puffed out its black breath,
Shrieked, snorted and hissed, like a thing bent on death,
[...] Read more
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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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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Take Love Easy
Easy
Easy
Take love easy, easy easy
Never let your feelings show
Make it breezy, breezy breezy
Easy come and easy go
Never smile too brightly brightly
When your heart is riding high
Let your heart break, oh so slightly
When your baby says goodbye
That well known flame is mighty hot
As all of us have learned
So handle it with velvet gloves
And you wont get your fingers burned
Take love easy, easy
On the free and easy plan
And if you cant take it easy
Take it easy as you can
Take love easy, easy
Never let your feelings show
Make it breezy, breezy, easy
Easy, easy come and easy go
Never smile too brightly brightly
When your heart is riding high
Let your heart break, oh so slightly
When your baby says goodbye
That well known flame is mighty hot
As all of us have learned
So handle it, handle it with velvet gloves
And you wont get your fingers burned
Take love easy, easy easy
On the free and easy plan
And if you cant take it easy
Take it easy as you can
Take it easy
Take it easy
Take it easy, take it easy, take it easy, take it easy
song performed by Ella Fitzgerald
Added by Lucian Velea
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Song of Wink Star
The Song of Wink Star
a happy story for children of all ages
story and text © Raj Arumugam, June 2008
☼ ☼
☼ Preamble
Come…children all, children of all ages…sit close and listen…
Come and listen to this happy story of the stars and of life…
Come children of the universe, children of all nations and of all races, and of all climates and of all kinds of space and dimensions and universes…
Come, dearest children of all beings of the living universe, come and listen to The Song of Wink Star…
Come and listen to this story, this happy story…listen, as the story itself sings to you…
Sit close then, and listen to the story that was not made by any, or written by a poet, or fashioned by grandfathers and grandmothers warming themselves at the fire of burning stars…
O dearest children all, come and listen to the story that lives
of itself, and that glows bright and happy….
Come…children all, children of all ages, come and listen to this happy story, the story so natural and smooth as life, as it sings itself to you….
☼ The Song of Wink Star
a happy story for children of all ages
☼ 1
Night Child, always so light and gentle, slept on a flower.
And every night, before he went to sleep, he would look up at the sky.
He would look at the eastern corner, five o’clock.
And there he would see all the stars in near and distant galaxies that were only visible to the People of Star Eyes.
Night Child was one of the People of Star Eyes. And so he could see the stars. And of all the stars he could see, he loved to watch Wink Star.
Wink Star twinkled and winked and laughed.
Every night Wink Star did that. Winked and laughed.
[...] Read more
poem by Raj Arumugam
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III. The Other Half-Rome
Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,
And—with best smile of all reserved for him—
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!
There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit—justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was.
Then the priests followed properly,—a soul
To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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IV. Tertium Quid
True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi
Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.
"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!
"Let him but decently disembroil himself,
"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,
"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—
"Counsel the Court in this extremity,
"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips!
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, was retaken by the same,
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—
(I being disallowed to interfere,
Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,
For you and law were guardians quite enough
O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—
And that he has butchered her accordingly,
As she foretold and as myself believed,—
And, so foretelling and believing so,
We were punished, both of us, the merry way:
Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?
Pompilia is only dying while I speak!
Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?
My masters, there's an old book, you should con
For strange adventures, applicable yet,
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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II. Half-Rome
What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)
Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:
This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:
I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.
Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?
Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church
To hold a crowd at need, accommodate
All comers from the Corso! If this crush
Make not its priests ashamed of what they show
For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse
And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out
The beggarly transept with its bit of apse
Into a decent space for Christian ease,
Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.
Listen and estimate the luck they've had!
(The right man, and I hold him.)
Sir, do you see,
They laid both bodies in the church, this morn
The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,
Behind the little marble balustrade;
Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool
To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife
On the other side. In trying to count stabs,
People supposed Violante showed the most,
Till somebody explained us that mistake;
His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,
But she took all her stabbings in the face,
Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,
Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.
A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,
When you avenge your honour and only then,
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.
It was Violante gave the first offence,
Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:
While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death
Answered the purpose, so his face went free.
We fancied even, free as you please, that face
Showed itself still intolerably wronged;
Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,
Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,
Once the worst ended: an indignant air
O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned
Round and away, rolled from Violante's side
Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.
If so, if corpses can be sensitive,
Why did not he roll right down altar-step,
Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,
Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Seventh Book
'THE woman's motive? shall we daub ourselves
With finding roots for nettles? 'tis soft clay
And easily explored. She had the means,
The moneys, by the lady's liberal grace,
In trust for that Australian scheme and me,
Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,
And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,
She served me (after all it was not strange,;
'Twas only what my mother would have done)
A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.
'Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,
But smooth green grasses are more common still;
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;
A miller's wife at Clichy took me in
And spent her pity on me,–made me calm
And merely very reasonably sad.
She found me a servant's place in Paris where
I tried to take the cast-off life again,
And stood as quiet as a beaten ass
Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up
To let them charge him with another pack.
'A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,
Was easy with me, less for kindness than
Because she led, herself, an easy time
Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,
Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.
She felt so pretty and so pleased all day
She could not take the trouble to be cross,
But sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,
Would tap me softly with her slender foot
Still restless with the last night's dancing in't,
And say 'Fie, pale-face! are you English girls
'All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?
'And first-communion colours on your cheeks,
'Worn past the time for't? little fool, be gay!'
At which she vanished, like a fairy, through
A gap of silver laughter.
'Came an hour
When all went otherwise. She did not speak,
But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes
As if a viper with a pair of tongs,
Too far for any touch, yet near enough
To view the writhing creature,–then at last,
'Stand still there, in the holy Virgin's name,
'Thou Marian; thou'rt no reputable girl,
'Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!
'I think thou mock'st me and my house,' she said;
'Confess thou'lt be a mother in a month,
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poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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Psychological Warfare
This above all remember: they will be very brave men,
And you will be facing them. You must not despise them.
I am, as you know, like all true professional soldiers,
A profoundly religious man: the true soldier has to be.
And I therefore believe the war will be over by Easter Monday.
But I must in fairness state that a number of my brother-officers,
No less religious than I, believe it will hold out till Whitsun.
Others, more on the agnostic side (and I do not contemn them)
Fancy the thing will drag on till August Bank Holiday.
Be that as it may, some time in the very near future,
We are to expect Invasion ... and invasion not from the sea.
Vast numbers of troops will be dropped, probably from above,
Superbly equipped, determined and capable; and this above all,
Remember: they will be very brave men, and chosen as such.
You must not, of course, think I am praising them.
But what I have said is basically fundamental
To all I am about to reveal: the more so, since
Those of you that have not seen service overseas—
Which is the case with all of you, as it happens—this is the first time
You will have confronted them. My remarks are aimed
At preparing you for that.
Everyone, by the way, may smoke,
And be as relaxed as you can, like myself.
I shall wander among you as I talk and note your reactions.
Do not be nervous at this: this is a thing, after all,
We are all in together.
I want you to note in your notebooks, under ten separate headings,
The ten points I have to make, remembering always
That any single one of them may save your life. Is everyone ready?
Very well then.
The term, Psychological Warfare
Comes from the ancient Greek: psycho means character
And logical, of course, you all know. We did not have it
In the last conflict, the fourteen-eighteen affair,
Though I myself was through it from start to finish. (That is point one.)
I was, in fact, captured—or rather, I was taken prisoner—
In the Passchendaele show (a name you will all have heard of)
And in our captivity we had a close opportunity
(We were all pretty decently treated. I myself
Was a brigadier at the time: that is point two)
An opportunity I fancy I was the only one to appreciate
Of observing the psychiatry of our enemy
(The word in those days was always psychology,
A less exact description now largely abandoned). And though the subject
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poem by Henry Reed
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