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Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.

quote by E. Stanley Jones
Added by Lucian Velea
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Prayer Changes

Somebody just look back over your life and
See where he brought you from
How many of you know?
Prayer changes (I heard that)
Prayer changes (I believe that)
Prayer changes (I know that)
Prayer changes things
Prayer changes (I heard that)
Prayer changes (I believe that)
Prayer changes (I know that)
Prayer changes things
Now I was in a real bad abusive relationship
Knowing that that was no way for me to live
A young girl like me, raised up in a good family
Way too young to endure such misery
And every night I cry myself to sleep from all the pain
And the more I prayed for sunny days it seemed to rain
(He'd hit me) at any given time
(He'd hit me) no reason at all
(He'd hit me) so, so hard
(He'd hit me) my God, sometimes I'd fall
Mama asked what happened to me
And I'd take up for him
She said the devil's a liar
And prayed God get rid of him
And now I'm going to school
Hitting those books I'm doing fine
He's out my life I'm not confused
Got peace of mind man I tell you
Prayer changes (it changes)
Prayer changes (oh it changes)
Prayer changes (I'm a witness)
Prayer changes things (said I know)
Prayer changes (it changes)
Prayer changes (it changes)
Prayer changes (I'm a living witness)
Prayer changes things
I was a freshman in college and uh...
I had just made it on the basketball team (yeah)
I had all the skills it took to make it
But on my grades I would get nothing but all D's (whoa-ah)
And the coach came to me
And had a talk with me about my career
Said if you don't get your grades up
I'm gonna have to sit you down this year
Man as tough as I was I'd break down and cried
'Cause everybody knows me
Knows that basketball is my life
(Algebra) I studied hard
(Chemistry) I gave my all

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song performed by R. Kelly
Added by Lucian Velea
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Satan Absolved

(In the antechamber of Heaven. Satan walks alone. Angels in groups conversing.)
Satan. To--day is the Lord's ``day.'' Once more on His good pleasure
I, the Heresiarch, wait and pace these halls at leisure
Among the Orthodox, the unfallen Sons of God.
How sweet in truth Heaven is, its floors of sandal wood,
Its old--world furniture, its linen long in press,
Its incense, mummeries, flowers, its scent of holiness!
Each house has its own smell. The smell of Heaven to me
Intoxicates and haunts,--and hurts. Who would not be
God's liveried servant here, the slave of His behest,
Rather than reign outside? I like good things the best,
Fair things, things innocent; and gladly, if He willed,
Would enter His Saints' kingdom--even as a little child.

[Laughs. I have come to make my peace, to crave a full amaun,
Peace, pardon, reconcilement, truce to our daggers--drawn,
Which have so long distraught the fair wise Universe,
An end to my rebellion and the mortal curse
Of always evil--doing. He will mayhap agree
I was less wholly wrong about Humanity
The day I dared to warn His wisdom of that flaw.
It was at least the truth, the whole truth, I foresaw
When He must needs create that simian ``in His own
Image and likeness.'' Faugh! the unseemly carrion!
I claim a new revision and with proofs in hand,
No Job now in my path to foil me and withstand.
Oh, I will serve Him well!
[Certain Angels approach. But who are these that come
With their grieved faces pale and eyes of martyrdom?
Not our good Sons of God? They stop, gesticulate,
Argue apart, some weep,--weep, here within Heaven's gate!
Sob almost in God's sight! ay, real salt human tears,
Such as no Spirit wept these thrice three thousand years.
The last shed were my own, that night of reprobation
When I unsheathed my sword and headed the lost nation.
Since then not one of them has spoken above his breath
Or whispered in these courts one word of life or death
Displeasing to the Lord. No Seraph of them all,
Save I this day each year, has dared to cross Heaven's hall
And give voice to ill news, an unwelcome truth to Him.
Not Michael's self hath dared, prince of the Seraphim.
Yet all now wail aloud.--What ails ye, brethren? Speak!
Are ye too in rebellion? Angels. Satan, no. But weak
With our long earthly toil, the unthankful care of Man.

Satan. Ye have in truth good cause.

Angels. And we would know God's plan,
His true thought for the world, the wherefore and the why
Of His long patience mocked, His name in jeopardy.

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poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

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

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

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

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poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 2

LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night.

Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.

Let James rejoice with the Skuttle-Fish, who foils his foe by the effusion of his ink.

Let John rejoice with Nautilus who spreads his sail and plies his oar, and the Lord is his pilot.

Let Philip rejoice with Boca, which is a fish that can speak.

Let Bartholomew rejoice with the Eel, who is pure in proportion to where he is found and how he is used.

Let Thomas rejoice with the Sword-Fish, whose aim is perpetual and strength insuperable.

Let Matthew rejoice with Uranoscopus, whose eyes are lifted up to God.

Let James the less, rejoice with the Haddock, who brought the piece of money for the Lord and Peter.

Let Jude bless with the Bream, who is of melancholy from his depth and serenity.

Let Simon rejoice with the Sprat, who is pure and innumerable.

Let Matthias rejoice with the Flying-Fish, who has a part with the birds, and is sublimity in his conceit.

Let Stephen rejoice with Remora -- The Lord remove all obstacles to his glory.

Let Paul rejoice with the Scale, who is pleasant and faithful!, like God's good ENGLISHMAN.

Let Agrippa, which is Agricola, rejoice with Elops, who is a choice fish.

Let Joseph rejoice with the Turbut, whose capture makes the poor fisher-man sing.

Let Mary rejoice with the Maid -- blessed be the name of the immaculate CONCEPTION.

Let John, the Baptist, rejoice with the Salmon -- blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus for infant Baptism.

Let Mark rejoice with the Mullet, who is John Dore, God be gracious to him and his family.

Let Barnabus rejoice with the Herring -- God be gracious to the Lord's fishery.

Let Cleopas rejoice with the Mackerel, who cometh in a shoal after a leader.

Let Abiud of the Lord's line rejoice with Murex, who is good and of a precious tincture.

Let Eliakim rejoice with the Shad, who is contemned in his abundance.

Let Azor rejoice with the Flounder, who is both of the sea and of the river,

Let Sadoc rejoice with the Bleak, who playeth upon the surface in the Sun.

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poem by Christopher Smart
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The Believer's Principles : Chap. IV.

Faith and Sense Natural, compared and distinguished.

When Abram's body, Sarah's womb,
Were ripe for nothing but the tomb,
Exceeding old, and wholly dead,
Unlike to bear the promis'd seed:

Faith said, 'I shall an Isaac see;'
'No, no,' said Sense, 'it cannot be;'
Blind Reason, to augment the strife,
Adds, 'How can death engender life?'

My heart is like a rotten tomb,
More dead than ever Sarah's womb;
O! can the promis'd seed of grace
Spring forth from such a barren place?

Sense gazing but on flinty rocks,
My hope and expectation chokes:
But could I, skill'd in Abram's art,
O'erlook my dead and barren heart;

And build my hope on nothing less
That divine pow'r and faithfulness;
Soon would I find him raise up sons
To Abram, out of rocks and stones.

Faith acts as busy boatmen do,
Who backward look and forward row;
It looks intent to things unseen,
Thinks objects visible too mean.

Sense thinks it madness thus to steer,
And only trusts its eye and ear;
Into faith's boat dare thrust its oar,
And put it further from the shore.

Faith does alone the promise eye;
Sense won't believe unless it see;
Nor can it trust the divine guide,
Unless it have both wind and tide.

Faith thinks the promise sure and good;
Sense doth depend on likelihood;
Faith ev'n in storms believes the seers;
Sense calls all men, ev'n prophets, liars.

Faith uses means, but rests on none;
Sense sails when outward means are gone:

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poem by Ralph Erskine
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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
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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VII. Pompilia

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.

All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Vision Of Columbus - Book 8

And now the Angel, from the trembling sight,
Veil'd the wide world–when sudden shades of night
Move o'er the ethereal vault; the starry train
Paint their dim forms beneath the placid main;
While earth and heaven, around the hero's eye,
Seem arch'd immense, like one surrounding sky.
Still, from the Power superior splendors shone,
The height emblazing like a radiant throne;
To converse sweet the soothing shades invite,
And on the guide the hero fix'd his sight.
Kind messenger of Heaven, he thus began,
Why this progressive labouring search of man?
If man by wisdom form'd hath power to reach
These opening truths that following ages teach,
Step after step, thro' devious mazes, wind,
And fill at last the measure of the mind,
Why did not Heaven, with one unclouded ray,
All human arts and reason's powers display?
That mad opinions, sects and party strife
Might find no place t'imbitter human life.
To whom the Angelic Power; to thee 'tis given,
To hold high converse, and enquire of heaven,
To mark uncircled ages and to trace
The unfolding truths that wait thy kindred race.
Know then, the counsels of th'unchanging Mind,
Thro' nature's range, progressive paths design'd,
Unfinish'd works th'harmonious system grace,
Thro' all duration and around all space;
Thus beauty, wisdom, power, their parts unroll,
Till full perfection joins the accordant whole.
So the first week, beheld the progress rise,
Which form'd the earth and arch'd th'incumbant skies.
Dark and imperfect first, the unbeauteous frame,
From vacant night, to crude existence came;
Light starr'd the heavens and suns were taught their bound,
Winds woke their force, and floods their centre found;
Earth's kindred elements, in joyous strife,
Warm'd the glad glebe to vegetable life,
Till sense and power and action claim'd their place,
And godlike reason crown'd the imperial race.
Progressive thus, from that great source above,
Flows the fair fountain of redeeming love.
Dark harbingers of hope, at first bestow'd,
Taught early faith to feel her path to God:
Down the prophetic, brightening train of years,
Consenting voices rose of different seers,
In shadowy types display'd the accomplish'd plan,
When filial Godhead should assume the man,
When the pure Church should stretch her arms abroad,
Fair as a bride and liberal as her God;

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poem by Joel Barlow
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Sophia

Sophia:
Affirmations and Meditations for a Positive and Meaningful Life

By Uriah Lee Hamilton

1. The universe seeks to treat you kindly like a friend. The stars shine for you in the dreamy midnight air. Doors are opening to you to enter in and find the love of your life, the joy of your being. Garden paths are beneath your feet to gaze affectionately upon every flower. The fountains of wine flow abundantly for you to imbibe the spirits of desire and happiness. Accept your destiny as gods and goddesses in the mystical realm of innocence.
2. Your eyes are open and there is nothing you cannot see or perceive with translucent vision of understanding. Every mystery is discernible and arrayed in magnificent and colorful robes of light. Every day is a magical journey of discovery and especially self-discovery. Find your important place in the happy scheme of this life, your intricate functioning with every other soul.
3. Your song is being played and you’re invited to sing along and join the dance. No longer think in terms of withdrawal and alienation. Think in terms of participation. There is nothing to fear and no one to impress. Just enjoy your every experience, they’re yours to possess. When you open yourself to joy, joy finds you and reminds you life is beautiful and brief.
4. More people love you than you will ever know. Prayers congregate in the heart of God for you like stars swimming in the night. People you have nearly forgotten have not forgotten you. Your impression continues to linger and leave a kind feeling in the hearts of those you’ve touched and they are every moment sending you powerful karma that rushes to your aid in the hour of need. Trust the thoughts that seek to uplift you.
5. You have the power to overcome any difficult situation. With every stressful development in your life there is an equal reserve of strength and determination to resist and conquer the armies of the negative and harmful. The human will is boundless and will not accept defeat but will lift you up until you are the victor over every power of darkness that assaults you.
6. Every mistake you have made is in the past. To linger on any mistake with regret or judgment serves no purpose. Today is a clean slate, a new beginning. Forgive yourself, accept forgiveness, and never judge yourself or anyone else unkindly. Every moment you become more enlightened.
7. If you can remember love when you’re abandoned in the rain and the universe is in tears, you can pull yourself through any sadness. Love is the reality of the soul and the desire of everyone’s inner being. Love is the strength that sustains us when we're weary and seemingly at the end of our rope, dangling at the edge of the cliff of despair. Love is the nature of divinity shared with humanity and will not leave us to wither like waterless flowers. Remember love when you have forgotten everything else.
8. Forget the sound of unkind words and don’t repeat them. Remember how you felt when someone hurt you or treated you insensitively and be determined to never make anyone feel that way. The smile you leave on someone’s face will fill your own heart with joy and return your own smile back to you.
9. The best way to appreciate your own unique godliness is to appreciate and praise the unique godliness of others. When you perceive others as special and angelic, you will understand you have arrived at the shore of humanity from the same sea of divinity. We are here at this stage of our journey to find God in others and offer others the kindness of God that exists within ourselves.
10. Respect the dignity of everyone. This is enlightenment. Never suppose that you are superior or inferior to anyone. You are unique and your neighbor is unique. Our differences make the human experience beautiful and mysterious. Learn to appreciate the differences in everyone and the glorious variety this offers. Everyone compliments everyone and when any soul departs this plane we have all lost someone and something precious.
11. Live the power of kindness. When you’re kind, you respect yourself. When you know that you have helped someone else, you feel the presence of angels and God surrounding you. You can live without an abundance of money and possessions but you cannot live without confronting yourself as a human. If someone judges you unjustly and negatively, that hurts but never as much as judging yourself and knowing the truth about whom you are if you’re not a good and kind person. Jesus said if someone asks you to walk one mile, walk two. Go the added distance to know you are a compassionate human being. If by chance there is no God and no final judgment, if the last judgment is nothing more than the last time you look yourself in the mirror, don’t fail that judgment.
12. You are eternal in spirit. Your essence is from the beginning and is unending. You originate in the heartbeat of God and eventually were sent to earth as a hopeful song. Sing your song to every receptive ear. Allow the universe to partake in your melody of joy. You can make your life a gift to everyone; you are a flower in the human bouquet. One day, you will return happily to God. Let the world know today you’re here and partake of your bliss and happiness.
13. Godliness is your nature, divinity your true personality. Maybe the world has labeled you a prostitute or a thief, a police officer or a lawyer, but your real soul is the essence of God, the substance of eternity, the DNA of spiritual greatness. Never accept restricting labels, never define your dreams with other people’s language of defeat. Birth has opened every possibility, and every second is a new rebirth. Begin now whatever dream and path you choose.
14. Live in the moment. Experience the present. Breathe in the perfume of freshly bloomed flowers. Be conscious of the poetry of existence all around you. Compose your poems on trees and rocks and flower petals. Be the poem, be the flower. Compose your poems on human souls that will live in the heart of God for eternity. You’ve never had anything but this moment, perceive it as beautiful and make it more beautiful.
15. Never live in the past. The past is only a collection of memories that become sad overtime even if they were happy memories to begin with. The past is either defeat or forgotten glories. The present is your opportunity to shape the future in a positive manner. A few souls have lived their lives in such joy and kindness as to become spirits of the future. The future is about joy, acceptance, dreams accomplished, ideas realized, and the end of suffering. Every positive thought and action of today will transform tomorrow. Believe.
16. Celebrate the music of existence. The sparrow dawns, the symphonic engine hum of the highway, the locust afternoons of high summer, the angelic chatter of beautiful conversations, church bell Sunday mornings, the autumn chimes carried in by a cool breeze. Everything is music if you’re willing to listen and to rejoice.
17. In your life show kindness, express friendliness, make others feel comfortable in your presence and in their own. The karmic return for being a positive human being is receiving the eternal and universal goodwill of the divine; it is reaching that place where you see yourself in a beautiful and self-accepting mirror.
18. Find the true religion. The true religion is happiness, the welcoming, friendly smile, the exuberant heart. Most religious people throughout the human experience have embraced religion with a sad face for the purposes of judgment and condemnation, but hatred and cruelty must no longer have any place at the spiritual table, punishing one’s self for being human must cease. Love is the true religion and it is expressed with joy. Make laughing and dancing your greatest rituals.
19. Learn perspective and endurance. If you fail today, you are stronger tomorrow. If you fall today, you will soar tomorrow. A boxer has lost every round to eventually win the fight. He throws his bruised body into the pummeling of the opponent, his eyes are closed with blood and sweat but still looking for his opportunity until he lands the knockout punch. Life is a struggle but your heart must never be vanquished. Push forward in everything you do to make your existence meaningful. A hundred falls and a thousand mistakes will never define your being but your dogged determination to resist and succeed.
20. The past is a casket of despair, a realm of old ideas that embraced sadness and toil and dreams defeated. If you linger in the valley of regrets, there is only a bleak future of hopelessness to discover. If you abandon the unhappiness of history and embrace your child-like hopefulness, then the future is the home of ever unfolding potential where love is always waiting around the corner. In fact, you are love and you are no longer waiting, you have arrived. Your love is emanating like spring flowers in the sunlit day and you can waft your perfume for the world to breathe in and rejoice.
21. The life you are given at this moment should be heaven and can be heaven. If you accept unhappiness and loneliness and suffering to place your bet on the next lifetime, you will miss your opportunity to appreciate this lifetime. If the life you are living is hell, exchange it for heaven and exchange it now while you are breathing and not as a promise for the grave or reincarnation. Accept this life as your garden, as your paradise, as your heaven. Find something small in your life to appreciate until you can appreciate everything about your life. Do not practice rejection. Do not call the world evil or your life evil or believe that anything is evil. Practice acceptance and believe in the good. Accept everything as good and as a means to the eventual actualization of your real and lasting happiness.
22. You are god-like when you accept yourself, the qualities and tendencies that make up your unique personality. You are angry and pleasant, sad and happy, beautiful and ugly. You cannot divorce yourself anymore than God can divide or divorce himself. If you try to abandon or throw away half of yourself, you will lose all of yourself. Self-acceptance and self-love is the way of godliness and the means to loving and appreciating the beauty and uniqueness of others. It takes one lifetime at least if not innumerable lifetimes to learn who you are and it will never happen if you do not accept yourself for the entire all-encompassing creation you are.
23. Become everything and understand everything. Absorb the laughter of a child, the excitement of a bride, the sadness of a funereal, the love of a mother giving birth, the pride of a father at a child’s graduation, the fear of death, the pain of loneliness. Feel everything. Understand everything. Celebrate and commiserate with the world you live in as a human being and become life-positive and not life-negative. There is not joy without sadness; there is not laughter without tears. You will have them both. Learn from them both and then embrace your life with gratitude.
24. When a truly happy, dancing spirit ventures upon the scene, it attracts love and affection. Joy and happiness are magnets drawing our attention, our interests, and our passionate desire. The world has been so sad with terrible suffering and unhappiness and so many teachers have arisen to manipulate the fears and disappointments of the masses to instill hatred and judgment. The genuine happy person is rare, almost unheard of. The world is yours if you can harness your happiness and spiritual and psychological well-being. What do you have to lose? If you become happy and dancing and you’re happy and dancing alone in the world, you still have achieved more than every other soul. Claim your happiness, it is not selfish to do so because your happiness can only expand and become contagious. May your happiness become an ecstatic epidemic.
25. Be whole in all your thoughts and completely embrace all the various facets of your life. Don’t try to deny the child within who wants to play beneath the sun, to laugh and to run rather than be sequestered into some adult room where you’re not allowed to smile. There’s a place for responsibility and sacrifice, for noble thoughts and placing others first but if you try to occupy this place consistently and permanently, you will wither away like an autumn leaf, you will be a shell of the human promise that was given to you at birth. Enjoy your body, relish your desires, and laugh with ecstasy when the spirit moves you. Don’t be sad or stoic forever, return to the merry-go-round you loved in your youth.
26. When you depart your mother’s body to begin your own journey, the path begins with your initial tears, the cry that accompanies existence. It then becomes easy to cry for a lifetime, to feel fear and abandonment, to know nothing but sorrow and despair, but there is joy and the goal is to learn to laugh. Laugh from the heart and make your way through the world cheerfully. It won’t happen in a moment or a single day, but you can turn your life into a dance that sways to the rhythm of laughter and happiness.
27. Enjoy lazy afternoons. Sit in the cricket grass in the summer sunlight. Gaze at the pattern of the leaves beneath shaded trees. One only finds his soul in stillness, not in much activity. When people are too busy, they are hiding from themselves. You have to find your real self before you cease to exist else you may have to wait a prolonged time before your next incarnation allows you a new opportunity of self-discovery. When you find yourself, then you learn what the heart needs for true happiness and communion with the eternal.
28. Life is a dream and the future unfolds in the hands of imagination. Dream your future in bright beautiful colors; make your landscapes lavish and rich and dazzling. Don’t be timid with your dreams, your aspirations, and your hopes of self-realization. With a single thought you may revolutionize all thinking; you may touch hundreds or thousands of lives and leave a lasting and meaningful impression. The power to transcend becoming a statistic is yours. You are not required to be an unknown entity or live in shadows. Walk out into the sunlight of a positive life that is waiting like a circus clown’s balloon for you to form it into a lovely shape that brings a smile.
29. In a time of war, one is taught to suppress his desires and his needs, to sacrifice for the cause until the victory is won. The battle now is for the soul of your happiness, and the battle will not be won by sacrifice and suppression, it will not be gained by self-coercion and intense rejection. Only by realizing what you want in the core of your being and granting yourself permission to pursue it unhindered by guilt will you win this victory. Grant yourself the right to be yourself, appreciate yourself, and pursue your joy. The long sleep will endure forever for the happy and the sad; it is your time to be happy if you choose it.
30. If you have followed a path or a plan that has led you to a loveless place, then take stock of yourself, evaluate your life-choices and begin anew. If your hands are empty, there is nothing to be lost in opening them and turning them over. To remain on the path you’re on and refuse to make any changes can only reinforce the status quo of your loneliness and unhappiness. You have been a stunted tree too long. Become a new person and begin to flower. At whatever age you are it is not too late to experience rebirth. Become a stranger to the alienated person you were in the past when you find your destiny in joyfulness. You can become a new creation in the blink of an eye.
31. Attain God in your own room where the candles pray in the moonlight that seeps through the window blinds at night. God is the silent compassion that ever surrounds you and finds you when you’re sad. You’re success in perceiving the presence of God is not dependent upon rules of religion or great moral feats and ascetic accomplishments but on your child-like desire to perceive that reality of love. God is your heartbeat when your kind to others and to yourself. Listen to your heartbeat and you will find God. Most of the world never finds God because they’re looking under every religious rock instead of looking inwardly for the God within.
32. Beginning today, I’ve become my ally and no longer my opponent. I will trust my instincts and my desires and no longer view them as separate from my spiritual being, my eternal soul. When I tell myself yes and no, I pursue my own personal civil war. For now on there is only yes. Yes to self-love, yes to confidence, yes to friendship, yes to health, yes to joy, yes to success. To everything positive and life-affirming there is nothing but yes. Denial and suppression and negative opinion has ceased. The doubting and judgmental man has vanished and will not be seen again.
33. To become a happy human being dancing in the soft summer moonlight is not easily done in the world of manipulative guilt. You may have to dance alone if everyone you know will only sing a dirge. If everyone has a sad face and a melancholy heart, resort to friendship with scattered roadside flowers and happy stray dogs. Eventually your joy will become infectious and pleasantly contaminate existence with the smile they’ve been waiting to express. It is never wrong to offer someone your cheerfulness. Practice charity of the spirit.
34. The soul is deathless and enters the spirit world where every fear has vanished in the sunlight of love. There is a heavenly wine creating communion with the divine. Everyone is a psychic essence connected to each other. The secrets of non-violence are intuitively imparted and the heart will not be wounded again. The meaning of God is the embrace of all existence in joyous celebration.
35. The bright light illuminating true happiness flickers through time from ancient corridors of spiritual history and revelation. Some sainted madman playing a flute in the moonlight in the background hush of lakeside and the tune drifted into all future souls. Everyone has the melody of joy and tranquility encoded mystically into their DNA. Learn to access the songbook of your higher self that has all the answers to every difficult question pressing the spirit at the perfect time when you need them most.
36. It is difficult but meaningful to live life in the beauty of contradiction. To have a peaceful mind in the midst of turmoil and upheaval; to have an innocent heart engaged in romantic and intricate relationships of desire, to have a pure soul in the midst of thieves and cutthroats, to have the candlelight of your spiritual awareness burn steady amidst the storm of everyday confusion and societal manipulation. One can passionately embrace all of the world’s creatures both gentle and wild without ever forsaking his higher self of elevated ideals and inner truths.
37. Thousands of years of history, of wars and plagues and famines document the human will to survive and thrive and ever evolve to higher emotional and spiritual enlightenment. Poets and prophets slowly teach the way of joy and gentleness, the path to becoming a passionate soul that completely embraces his existence to the maximum potential of happiness. The day has arrived to believe in one’s own strength to completely express and possess his compassion and love under all circumstances. Completely loving on the battlefield or in the work place, at home or walking summer city streets, never separating the spiritual from the physical, the soul from the body, ever maintaining the highest goals of self-realization during all moments of his being.
38. The source of life and all knowledge of spiritual perfection emanates from your hidden God within. Every soul is an essence fragment of the One Soul. We live and move and find our destiny in eventually attaining communion with the One. The bliss is real and the ecstasy is true and indescribable. There is no death and our true self is ever peaceful. Find yourself in the tranquility of the God within.
39. The bondage of the soul by the chains of unhappiness is a delusion of false perceptions. No liberation movement is required. The soul is free and true reality is the awareness of bliss. Abandon false perceptions and definitions of unhappiness and accept the natural state of being one with everything positive and powerful. The true nature of the human spirit is divine with all the attributes and characteristics of divinity to lay claim to. Tranquility and joyfulness is always present and all one needs to do is open the eyes of the mind and perceive reality in the cosmic design of the eternal good.
40. Discard vain books outside the window, toss the directionless compass into the trash, abandon every previous form of knowledge and trust your intuition. Within your soul knowledge supreme is kept, you are part and parcel of the Over-Soul, the one truth established in eternity. Intuition is imperishable and not restricted by boundaries of time. Intuition is the instant flash of insight that dawns without hesitation or explanation. Intuition is your God within guiding your steps into the light. Trust the light that surrounds you, the light that comes from you and belongs to you.
41. There is no knowledge greater than the knowledge of the self. Most people remain alienated strangers from whom they really are. A lifetime of not knowing their own spiritual personality and then the grave. Too busy to quietly sit in the summer grass and gaze calmly into the mirror of their soul. Only in meditation is intuition discovered and realized. Not knowing yourself is the cause of loneliness and the sense of immense meaninglessness. No real connection with another human being can ever be made until a connection is made with the self. Find yourself in meditation and intuition.
42. As the spiritual life increases, the appetite for strife and struggle decreases, an inner sweetness is manifested and lovely new music is heard. As you recede into your true self, the desire for objects of unhappiness and lust for possessions of discontent fall away and leave a genuine beauty behind. This beauty is love and it must first be planted and nurtured before harvested. You are the seed, the sewer, and the harvest. Indeed, you are the love you have always sought.
43. Attain awareness through non-concern, gain knowledge by not seeking it, find trust by trusting yourself; everything worthwhile already belongs to you when you cease to pursue that which is outside yourself, when you find the quiet place within your soul and allow all doubts and fears to subside. God provides for every sparrow and arrays the flowers of the fields with immense beauty. God will also seek your good if you believe you are part and parcel of the compassionate heart of God.
44. There is no becoming; there is no fulfilled desire waiting to dawn; there is no completed destination at the end of the journey. You have become and are divine; you are the realization of beautiful desire at this very moment and forever; the journey and the destination are one in the same: you have arrived and always were present in your mystical soul reality.
45. One day, love will carry the heart to God. Love to love will be united, mystical soul will embrace sacred spiritual destination. Friendships never cease but find expression on eternal shores where there is no suffering or disease nor accidental cruelty by otherwise gentle and compassionate people. We live in beauty and offer the world beauty and finally become nothing but beauty. We are the hands of love, the clothes of love, the agents of love, the heart of love and love transports us to God to rest forever in his sanctuary of love.

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poem by Uriah Hamilton
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The Loves of the Angels

'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory and young Time
Told his first birth-days by the sun;
When in the light of Nature's dawn
Rejoicing, men and angels met
On the high hill and sunny lawn,-
Ere sorrow came or Sin had drawn
'Twixt man and heaven her curtain yet!
When earth lay nearer to the skies
Than in these days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw without surprise
In the mid-air angelic eyes
Gazing upon this world below.

Alas! that Passion should profane
Even then the morning of the earth!
That, sadder still, the fatal stain
Should fall on hearts of heavenly birth-
And that from Woman's love should fall
So dark a stain, most sad of all!

One evening, in that primal hour,
On a hill's side where hung the ray
Of sunset brightening rill and bower,
Three noble youths conversing lay;
And, as they lookt from time to time
To the far sky where Daylight furled
His radiant wing, their brows sublime
Bespoke them of that distant world-
Spirits who once in brotherhood
Of faith and bliss near ALLA stood,
And o'er whose cheeks full oft had blown
The wind that breathes from ALLA'S throne,
Creatures of light such as still play,
Like motes in sunshine, round the Lord,
And thro' their infinite array
Transmit each moment, night and day,
The echo of His luminous word!

Of Heaven they spoke and, still more oft,
Of the bright eyes that charmed them thence;
Till yielding gradual to the soft
And balmy evening's influence-
The silent breathing of the flowers-
The melting light that beamed above,
As on their first, fond, erring hours,-
Each told the story of his love,
The history of that hour unblest,
When like a bird from its high nest

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poem by Thomas Moore
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Spiritual City

Spiritual thought
Spiritual life
Spiritual city
Spiritual wife
Spiritual work
Spiritual war
Spiritual people
Spiritual law
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Spiritual call
Spiritual tie
Spiritual seeker
Spiritual high
Spiritual need
Spiritual thirst
Spiritual beauty
Spiritual birth
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Spiritual child
Spiritual man
Spiritual power
Spiritual land
Spiritual love
Spiritual rage
Spiritual vision
Spiritual age
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Hey ho skdoodle-addle-o
Spiritual city gonna watch you grow
Blood of the world, mother of mine
Gonna see you rise higher in time
Blood of the world, mother of mine
Gonna see you rise higher in time
Blood of the world, mother of mine
Gonna see you rise higher in time
Blood of the world, mother of mine
Open your eyes and let em shine !
Everybodys born to do a certain thing
And if youre dead jammy you find it.
And if youre good at it just keep doing it
Until youre fed up then do something else.
Youre here to make babies and look after the place.
You know ? (billy connolly)

song performed by Waterboys
Added by Lucian Velea
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Poem: Will You Travel With Me To Heaven?

When you wake up in the morning
From a dream you think is okay
You see your spouse and family
Get ready for another day

The dream you saw, the things you see
The bed on which you soundly sleep
Your kids all grown up, your husband
And old memories that you keep

Who do you think created them?
Were they created from nothing?
If there is no god who made these
All, then what's the point of living?

D'you think we were made from nothing
Then from nothing we live for fun
To eat and drink, to love and hate
Then when we die, what comes is none?

The eyes with which your body sees
Those sockets that keep your eyeballs
The mouth you use for food and speech
The way you answer random calls

The languages you use to speak
And another –your mother tongue-
The way you carry yourself, and
How you breathe through your heart and lungs

The muscles that stretch when you smile
Your friends who often make you laugh
The words you try to understand
And how you sign your name so fast

Your kids who once stayed in your womb
The months you carried them in you
Your feelings when you saw their first
Walk and when they smile back at you

The food you eat and cook each day
The rainfalls that fall from above
The earth you walk on each night and

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poem by Miriam Mababaya
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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

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poem by John Milton
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The Door Of Humility

ENGLAND
We lead the blind by voice and hand,
And not by light they cannot see;
We are not framed to understand
The How and Why of such as He;

But natured only to rejoice
At every sound or sign of hope,
And, guided by the still small voice,
In patience through the darkness grope;

Until our finer sense expands,
And we exchange for holier sight
The earthly help of voice and hands,
And in His light behold the Light.

I

Let there be Light! The self-same Power
That out of formless dark and void
Endued with life's mysterious dower
Planet, and star, and asteroid;

That moved upon the waters' face,
And, breathing on them His intent,
Divided, and assigned their place
To, ocean, air, and firmament;

That bade the land appear, and bring
Forth herb and leaf, both fruit and flower,
Cattle that graze, and birds that sing,
Ordained the sunshine and the shower;

That, moulding man and woman, breathed
In them an active soul at birth
In His own image, and bequeathed
To them dominion over Earth;

That, by whatever is, decreed
His Will and Word shall be obeyed,
From loftiest star to lowliest seed;-
The worm and me He also made.

And when, for nuptials of the Spring
With Summer, on the vestal thorn
The bridal veil hung flowering,
A cry was heard, and I was born.

II

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poem by Alfred Austin
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Christmas-Eve

I.
OUT of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common’s centre,
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter:
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch,
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,
Four feet long by two feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside—
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving:
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
The congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the mainroad, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common’s self thro’ the paling-gaps,—
—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,
“Mount Zion,” with Love-lane at the back of it,
They front you as little disconcerted,
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II.
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,

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poem by Robert Browning
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Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto II

THE ARGUMENT

The Saints engage in fierce Contests
About their Carnal interests;
To share their sacrilegious Preys,
According to their Rates of Grace;
Their various Frenzies to reform,
When Cromwel left them in a Storm
Till, in th' Effigy of Rumps, the Rabble
Burns all their Grandees of the Cabal.

THE learned write, an insect breeze
Is but a mungrel prince of bees,
That falls before a storm on cows,
And stings the founders of his house;
From whose corrupted flesh that breed
Of vermin did at first proceed.
So e're the storm of war broke out,
Religion spawn'd a various rout
Of petulant Capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts,
That first run all religion down,
And after ev'ry swarm its own.
For as the Persian Magi once
Upon their mothers got their sons,
That were incapable t' enjoy
That empire any other way;
So PRESBYTER begot the other
Upon the good old Cause, his mother,
Then bore then like the Devil's dam,
Whose son and husband are the same.
And yet no nat'ral tie of blood
Nor int'rest for the common good
Cou'd, when their profits interfer'd,
Get quarter for each other's beard.
For when they thriv'd, they never fadg'd,
But only by the ears engag'd:
Like dogs that snarl about a bone,
And play together when they've none,
As by their truest characters,
Their constant actions, plainly appears.
Rebellion now began, for lack
Of zeal and plunders to grow slack;
The Cause and covenant to lessen,
And Providence to b' out of season:
For now there was no more to purchase
O' th' King's Revenue, and the Churches,
But all divided, shar'd, and gone,
That us'd to urge the Brethren on;
Which forc'd the stubborn'st for the Cause,

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poem by Samuel Butler
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Quatrains Of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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XI. Guido

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

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Ghost - Book IV

Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
'Bove other men, and, gravely wise,
Affect those pleasures to despise,
Which, merely to the eye confined,
Bring no improvement to the mind,
Rail at all pomp; they would not go
For millions to a puppet-show,
Nor can forgive the mighty crime
Of countenancing pantomime;
No, not at Covent Garden, where,
Without a head for play or player,
Or, could a head be found most fit,
Without one player to second it,
They must, obeying Folly's call,
Thrive by mere show, or not at all
With these grave fops, who, (bless their brains!)
Most cruel to themselves, take pains
For wretchedness, and would be thought
Much wiser than a wise man ought,
For his own happiness, to be;
Who what they hear, and what they see,
And what they smell, and taste, and feel,
Distrust, till Reason sets her seal,
And, by long trains of consequences
Insured, gives sanction to the senses;
Who would not (Heaven forbid it!) waste
One hour in what the world calls Taste,
Nor fondly deign to laugh or cry,
Unless they know some reason why;
With these grave fops, whose system seems
To give up certainty for dreams,
The eye of man is understood
As for no other purpose good
Than as a door, through which, of course,
Their passage crowding, objects force,
A downright usher, to admit
New-comers to the court of Wit:
(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen;
When I say Wit, I Wisdom mean)
Where (such the practice of the court,
Which legal precedents support)
Not one idea is allow'd
To pass unquestion'd in the crowd,
But ere it can obtain the grace
Of holding in the brain a place,
Before the chief in congregation
Must stand a strict examination.
Not such as those, who physic twirl,
Full fraught with death, from every curl;

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poem by Charles Churchill
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Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 2.

SCENE I. -- CHORUS OF ANGELS Singing.

Now let us garlands weave
Of all the fairest flowers,
Now at this early dawn,
For new-made man, and his companion dear;
Let all with festive joy,
And with melodious song,
Of the great Architect
Applaud this noblest work,
And speak the joyous sound,
Man is the wonder both of Earth and Heaven.

FIRST Angel.

Your warbling now suspend,
You pure angelic progeny of God,
Behold the labour emulous of Heaven!
Behold the woody scene,
Decked with a thousand flowers of grace divine;
Here man resides, here ought he to enjoy
In his fair mate eternity of bliss.

SECOND Angel.

How exquisitely sweet
This rich display of flowers,
This airy wild of fragrance,
So lovely to the eye,
And to the sense so sweet.

THIRD Angel.

O the sublime Creator,
How marvellous his works, and more his power!
Such is the sacred flame
Of his celestial love,
Not able to confine it in himself,
He breathed, as fruitful sparks
From his creative breast,
The Angels, Heaven, Man, Woman, and the World.

FOURTH Angel.

Yes, mighty Lord! yes, hallowed love divine!
Who, ever in thyself completely blest,
Unconscious of a want,
Who from thyself alone, and at thy will,
Bright with beignant flames,
Without the aid of matter or of form,

[...] Read more

poem by William Cowper
Added by Poetry Lover
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