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This idea that males are physically aggressive and females are not has distinct drawbacks for both sexes.

quote by Katherine Dunn
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The Problem of the Idea

The Philosopher:

'The Problem of the 21st century
is the problem of the Origins of the Idea.'

The Idea has driven much
of human history-
a major motivator
many taken together are
Articulators;
Ideas compose all Human Dreams.

But ask what is this Idea
and silence ensues;
ask where is it
in the human mind
and we'll get charts of its activity centers
but nothing about what it is
or where it comes from.

The Scientist:

Well, we don't have to know what a thing is
to utilize it.
We can identify behaviors and integrate
them-
harness them to purpose.

Philosopher:

Sure like the Atomic Bomb. It was built because
we could integrate various disciplines
and make things go bang
without thinking of Consequence.
technical Ideas-too have consequences.

Scientist:

So you would hold up all human progress
until the over-arching Idea comes along
before we act?

Philosopher:
Ah, but note that progress that destroys
the planet is not
progress at all
but only a blind mistake;
one I might add,
that did not have
an Idea or Clue

[...] Read more

poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Men Who Abuse Women

Men who abuse women a blight on mankind
And though aggressive males are not hard to find
Most males to the female sex respect only pay
And kind things of women only ever do say
Most abusive males were victims of abuse
Though for bad behaviour that should not be an excuse
Men who abuse women i would like to think rare
Though all sorts of strange sorts in the big World out there
They bring on themselves and the male gender shame
They are toxic people for want of a better name
To abuse another human being is a punishable crime
And all males who beat women in prison should serve time
And though aggressive males are not that hard to find
Not all males are abusive to woman kind.

poem by Francis Duggan
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The bird of paradise

The King of Saxony bird of paradise is a male
Black and yellow with brown iris, aqua-green mouth, grey legs,
With two enamel-blue brow-plumes. It seems to be so frail
Guarding its grey- brown female with chicks emerging from eggs

This wonderful bird is named in honor of King Albert.
A German king, devoted to military affair
Re-building Saint Afra School in Meissen like an expert
Proclaiming constitutional his monarchical chair.

He was a great Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece
And a Grand Cross of the Order of the Tower and Sword
Arbitrating between the claimants of Lippe for peace
He was a very wise king constantly moving forward.

Birds of paradise or Pteridophora alberti
In montane forests of New Guinea guard and stay
Their diet consists of fruits, arthropods and sweet berries
And they're hunted by natives for ceremonial play.

Bird of paradise,  Lophorina superba, is small
The male has iridescent green crown and erectile cape
Preparing its '' dance floor'', it attracts females with a call
Hopping in frantic circles having elliptical shape.

The competition amongst males for mates is very fierce
Because they do not have as many females as they need
It's like a bizarre courtship when their songs the silence pierce
Curious females approach but they're not prepared to cede.

Magnificent bird of paradise has complex plumage
The polygamous male owns incandescent yellow wings
Blue-green  feathers and the yellow mantle for its image,
Its olive-brown female laying two creamy yellow eggs.

 Wilson's bird of paradise male is very red and black
Its head is naked blue with black double cross pattern on it.
 With green mouth, blue feet and the yellow mantle on its neck,
It has a brownish female and eats small pieces of fruit.

So red iris has the Twelve-wired bird of paradise male.
It has yellow plumes and twelve blackish wire-like filaments,
While Blue Birds have wire-like feathers emerging from end- tail
Being sexually dimorphic they live on some   islands.

Lesser bird of paradise male has an emerald throat,

[...] Read more

poem by Marieta Maglas
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Dear Flowers

flowers are

females

with a soft...

flowers are

females

with a beauty...

flowers are

females

with a smiles...

flowers are

females

o...

otteri selvakumar

what is this

asking some

females...

but

females all are

not only flowers

human makers...

poem by Otteri Selvakumar
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An Idea

An Idea can change the world, how many
things can be done from an idea, every piece
of object was an idea, sense the beginning of
time idea was the first thought created in the
mind, an idea is what surround’s every being.
But an idea is still only an idea and it can't be
felt, you cannot touch an idea or kiss it, or hold it,
ideas do not bleed or feel pain or love, an idea
cannot be seen or heard, its created in our thoughts,
but then again an idea can become real. An idea
can be what ever you which it to be, an idea can
be destructive, an idea can be brilliant, I've seen
people get killed in the name of ideas, ideas,
we walk around with a little
light bulb blinking in our thoughts, ideas.

poem by Elenushka Toledo
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When You Rush To Judgement

You have no idea,
What you've done.
You have no idea...
None.

You have no idea,
What you've done.
You have no idea...
Not a one.

Oh, oh, oh...
When you rush to judgement,
Your emotions are your worst enemy.
When you rush to judgement,
Your emotions are your worst enemy.
When you rush to judgement,
Your emotions are your worst enemy.
When you rush to judgement.
Oh, oh, oh...
When you rush to judgement.
To pass your judgements,
When you rush to judgement.

You have no idea,
What you've done.
You have no idea...
None.

You have no idea,
What you've done.
You have no idea...
Not a one.

When you rush to judgement,
You have no idea.
No idea.
None.
When you rush to judgement,
No one has an idea...
What they've done.
When you rush to judgement,
What one does...
Affects more than one.
When you rush to judgement.
When you rush to judgement.

You have no idea,
What you've done.
You have no idea...
None.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Some Males

Some males to protect their egos for a woman's love do fight
The winner has the privilege of bedding her tonight
We are no better than animals when violence for us seen to pay
And some very swollen egos amongst the young males of today.

When violence does solve our problems of us what does that say
The males of some mammal species too behave in such a way
The right to mate with the female to the alpha male go
And when one say an animal behaves like an animal tell us something we don't know.

But when humans behave in such a way well that's a different thing
And the praises of human alpha males perhaps we should not sing
The warriors of the bedroom of the twenty first century
In their brawls for to copulate they prove their masculinity.

Some males for the love of a woman are prepared to brawl and fight
Without once considering violence in the human World is not right
If these be the makers and shapers of our humanity of today
Then humanity is in trouble that does seem sad to say.

poem by Francis Duggan
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I Love Ladies

Ya heard the ice was rockin, ticket sales were high
Bought some fresh adidas so you could look fly
Broke out from your crib rushin to get here
Tripped ans stumbled almost broke your neck comin down the stairs
Jumped into your ride, pushed the speed to the limit
Jumped out of your car faster than you jumped in it
Now youre at the jam but in for a shock
Stupid big line wrapped around the block
Through the walls of the hall you could hear me rhyme
Methodically you schemed a way to cut in line
But when you got inside the sight straightened your curls
Cause as you look around all you could see were girls
I love ladies
I think its time that I tell the truth
I been dissin females since my early youth
But you know thats a drag and theres no doubt
Cause females are the one thing that I cant do without
Female companionship is my one vice
I love to buy the girls things, love to treat em real nice
Homeboys you must admit the best part of each day
Is when a beautiful lady comes walkin your way
Females possess that one commodity that no man will ever have
Not that hangs around me
They got it, we want it, they move it, and flaunt it
They shake it and sway it, well die just to lay it
We try to supress it until they undress it
And beg em to use it, and cry not to lose it
No man can deny it so dont even try it!!!
I love ladies
Ladies are you with me? (yeeaahh!!)
I love ladies
Ladies are you with me? (yeeaahh!!)
That sounds nice (you know we love you ice!!)
Im junkie for females and thats a fact
Im not into havin my homeboys rubbin my back
Dont dig goin to the movies alone
Or talkin to myself on the telephone
Goin to a disco thats packed with men
Thats like tryin to get a dance in the federal pen
Walkin through a park with a gang of the guys
And a beach full of fellas never opened my eyes
And man if females are one thing that you dont need
You better get away from me at a high rate of speed
Cause if you dont like them you must like men
And homeboy thats where our serious problems begin
Because to me women are gods true gift
Theres absolutely no question who Id rather be with
I love ladies
I seen this fly girl walkin down the street
Jammin a box rockin to the beat

[...] Read more

song performed by Ice T
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It's that day again

Come one, come all and gather round
hear the sound
the story and tale
let not your ears fail
not now, for this is of great importance
Im not looking for acceptance
but for your deliverance
I must save you from what i did
by this vein i must forbid
you to guard your heart, for there is a lurking evil that consumes the young
an evil that rolls off the tongue
is sweet to hear, sweet to the hear, and dear
on this day on this February the thirteenth do not express
your love for someone until you address
this problem, because it's the ideas that are the worst poison
this is what ruins a person
before you profess that love, make certain
that you profess not in vain
for this is the simple trap that ensnares men
its the idea, the idea of her are you blind it's the idea thats trapped you again
Your LOVE is not true, because you are in love the idea of her
and when weeks pass and trials come... she will concur
that your love was imagined, you loved that way she made you feel
the way she held you and made you feel warm, so surreal
but that's not love, you imagined your dream girl
but fell in love with someone else, only to find that all along you loved an idea
that was the object of your love, this idea you made, let your reality unfurl
see past your blindness and see you never loved her and dont make
the mistake that i made, and dont you dare fake
this love, because you feel so lonely, don't settle for less but wait
for your real mate
it's that day, that day i remember, what not to do
now i come to you
to save, redeem, deliver, and expose this wrong this threatens the life
you need not fear if you guard your heart and trust in Him who can be trusted
your First Love, but do not forget that this world is rife
with that temptation to love the idea of a girl, dont get caught busted
the idea is so much more dangerous than the room, and yet it will
beg your love, as you attempt to wait, don't love an idea that is abstract
resist its power to attract
do not let it kill
as it has done to many before
and will do to more a score
tread carefully my friend, for you tread the ground trod by those who fell
in love with ideas so keep not your heart on your sleeve
but guard it in armor and do not tell
a girl that you love her, when you love an idea, don't be naive

poem by David Knox
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As I Sat Alone By Blue Ontario's Shores

AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return'd, and the dead
that return no more,
A Phantom, gigantic, superb, with stern visage, accosted me;
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America--
chant me the carol of victory;
And strike up the marches of Libertad--marches more powerful yet;
And sing me before you go, the song of the throes of Democracy.

(Democracy--the destin'd conqueror--yet treacherous lip-smiles
everywhere,
And Death and infidelity at every step.)

A Nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, 10
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

A breed whose proof is in time and deeds;
What we are, we are--nativity is answer enough to objections;
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves--We are sufficient in the variety of
ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves;
We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world;
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, 20
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or
sinful in ourselves only.

(O mother! O sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us;
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?
There can be any number of Supremes--One does not countervail
another, any more than one eyesight countervails another, or
one life countervails another.

All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals--All is for you,
No condition is prohibited--not God's, or any.

All comes by the body--only health puts you rapport with the
universe. 30

Produce great persons, the rest follows.

[...] Read more

poem by Walt Whitman
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The 'Body Size Advantages' Quartette.....[LONG; Human Body Size and Behavior; Humor? ]

The Advantages of Being Fat

Some may laugh when they read this title,
since for many American females (and males) slimness is an idol.
I admit a fat figure doesn't make me smile;
I'm attracted more easily, physically, to the anorexic style.
I know not all will think the same,
and some may think my thinking's lame,
but I believe it's true for both fat men and women
that in their lives less breaks they're given.

I don't mean grossly obese like a hippo,
but with REALLY BIG love handles, not just a ripple.
I myself could stand to lose some pounds.
It's not as easy as to some it sounds.

But I've taken up the task so now I must
speak of 'Advantages' of being fat. It's that or bust.:
Being fat can help anchor you in a storm,
and extra layers of fat in winter helps to keep you warm.
On a bus you can hold more stuff on your lap,
and few would dare to give your face a slap.
You can forge your way right through a crowd
and command attention without being loud.
You can push open doors that are heavy or stuck
and rock out of a muddy rut your pickup truck.
You can set a bowl of ice cream on your belly while in bed,
then, later, after ice cream, offer your navel-cushion to your lover's head.

Well I guess those are the 'Advantages' I can think of now.
A little applause would be nice when I take my bow.

The Advantages of Being Slender

When I think of someone, male or female, who is slender,
I picture someone who drinks each meal from a blender.
For breakfast there's wheat germ mixed with yogurt and with cherry juice.
For lunch almonds and prunes all chopped well, but not very loose.
Supper boasts broccoli, yams, and small portions of a goose.
(Snacks are juices of celery and carrots, and kiwi and peach.)

In America we often hear the 'benefits of being slender',
yet McDonalds feeds more people than are fed from a blender.
It's no wonder. To hear how many are poor in U.S. is quite a shock,
while McDonalds, with its dollar menu, is found on many a block.
But I must start listing 'Advantages of Being Slender', as I watch my clock.
(I'll try to be honest and from the truth not far reach.)

I'm not referring to people who are nearly just bones and skin,
but those without love handles. Call them not skinny, but thin.

[...] Read more

poem by Bri Edwards
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No more domination

Many female chauvinist organizations demand,
“Husband or males should taken to remand”
No leniency on cruelty or their atrocity”
But reasonable try for compromise and amity,

Males always abuse and prefer domination,
Sometimes resort to violence and subordination,
Simply forget they are essential wheels of life,
Matter little who is husband or wife?

Females still not considered equal partner,
Many incidences of abuses are just eye opener,
What can we do to prevent further disgrace?
Congenial atmosphere with affectionate embrace,

Respect for each others sentiments with simple care,
Not aggravating the situation which leads no where,
Keep nature kind with follow and forgive,
Life is after all take and give,

Basically human being is wild animal,
Always perform the show dismal,
Never repent for disgraceful act,
Revengeful attitude and violently react,

Ladies meekly submit for fear of reprisal,
Problem age old and no solution or redressal,
Time has come to change the system and laws,
Simple procedure with removal of flaws,

Law has inherent weakness and different opinion,
Severity of it leads to era of draconian,
Innocent and guilty face same criteria,
Clear should be division and marked area,

Not all males are to be blamed,
Ladies too should not unnecessarily framed,
Wisdom should be essence and due respect,
Reforms within but with clear ability to inspect.,

Society may suffer and fabric weaken,
Families in disarray and certainly broken,
If allowed to happen may affect the entire structure,
Wounds all over with body fracture,

poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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Chance and turn

You must compromise with the situation
Get updates and make evaluation
What so ever you may think and do
See to your self and go through

Females have their chance and turn
Either wake up or make run
No favor may be shown to males
This will take your liberty away and turn you pale

Now wind blowing in different direction
It is time to watch our own action
No disrespect or hostile gesture will be appreciated
You will not only turn things worse but vitiated

There is tremendous blow and complete change
Ladies have excelled in all the fields with clear edge
The beauty shows are over and good positions occupied
They have secured positions and not simply copied

They are provided with protection and cover
The days of tyranny and torture are over
You can not dream to violate and harm their modesty
This can push you behind bars and land in custody

For very long time they were under bondage
The society as such had kept them in virtual cage
There are still hypocrites in world today
The solution is not found out in reasonable way

Many countries have framed legislations
This may give some respite with good indication
There may be less harassment and torture
They can witness good days with bright future

The complete scene is managed by males even today
The females are denied all rights and blocked the way
So much humiliation and insult for no fault
Forget about respect not even confidence is built

We owe so much to ladies
Even though they are concern of no body
We could not have taken birth on this land
If they were unreasonable and hostile friends

Wed employ all methods to stall their progress
They are always under tension and duress
They have enough of courage and simplicity

[...] Read more

poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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The Hermit

WHEN Venus and Hypocrisy combine,
Oft pranks are played that show a deep design;
Men are but men, and friars full as weak:
I'm not by Envy moved these truths to speak.
Have you a sister, daughter, pretty wife?
Beware the monks as you would guard your life;
If in their snares a simple belle be caught:
The trap succeeds: to ruin she is brought.
To show that monks are knaves in Virtue's mask;
Pray read my tale:--no other proof I ask.

A HERMIT, full of youth, was thought around,
A saint, and worthy of the legend found.
The holy man a knotted cincture wore;
But, 'neath his garb:--heart-rotten to the core.
A chaplet from his twisted girdle hung,
Of size extreme, and regularly strung,
On t'other side was worn a little bell;
The hypocrite in ALL, he acted well;
And if a female near his cell appeared,
He'd keep within as if the sex he feared,
With downcast eyes and looks of woe complete,
You'd ne'er suppose that butter he could eat.

NOT far from where the hermit's cell was placed,
Within a village dwelled a widow chaste;
Her residence was at the further end
And all her store--a daughter as a friend,
Who candour, youth, and charms supreme possessed;
And still a virgin lived, howe'er distressed.
Though if the real truth perhaps we name,
'Twas more simplicity than virtuous aim;
Not much of industry, but honest heart;
No wealth, nor lovers, who might hope impart.
In Adam's days, when all with clothes were born,
She doubtless might like finery have worn;
A house was furnished then without expense;
For sheets or mattresses you'd no pretence;
Not e'en a bed was necessary thought
No blankets, pillowbiers, nor quilts were bought.
Those times are o'er; then Hymen came alone;
But now a lawyer in his train is shown.

OUR anchorite, in begging through the place;
This girl beheld,--but not with eyes of grace.
Said he, she'll do, and, if thou manag'st right,
Lucius, at times, with her to pass the night.
No time he lost, his wishes to secure:
The means, we may suppose, not over pure.

[...] Read more

poem by La Fontaine
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Be Aggressive

I started this
Its all for me
Whats yours is mine and mine is mine
Thats plain to see
So give it up
Ive got to have
I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow
Be aggressive
B-e aggressive
B-e-a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e
What someone else
Would leave behind
And spit it out, let go to waste
I claim as mine
Youre my flavour of the week
I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow
Tall and reckless
Ugly seed
Reach down my throat
You filthy bird
Thats all I need
The empty pit
Ive got to feed
To prove Im fit
A healthy man
Ive got to be
Malnutrition, my submission
Youre the master and I take it on my knees
Ejaculation
Tribulation
I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow, I swalllow
Be aggressive
B-e aggressive
B-e-a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e
Go, fight, go, fight, go, fight, go, fight, win

song performed by Faith No More
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Loves and laws

Loves and laws…
Loves will bend and loves have bench.
Bet my Betty loves in tents.
Hold to be the looks for best.
Men have chances are better rest.

Money ranks are fruits are trees.
Smart will pay our simple fees.
Wealth is ill to get but smart.
Heads and mouth are loving arts.

Love our smart as captain grand.
Roles of sexes are loves with DAN..
Strong and active all can love.
All the ways to banks have laughs.

Beauty trades are good to buy.
Dance on beds are happy guys.
Cat is fat and ranks are dirt.
Tyrants' ways are bad from birth.

Peking models sexes have BIO.
Loves as cats or dogs that mind.
Model BIO are teacher pets.
Free are open active sexes.

Jonny cash are PEKING MISS.
Greenish books are secret means.
Some are secret agents tools.
Goble crimes are gods as told.
--Cheung Shun sang=Cauchy3---
.

poem by Cheung Shun Sang
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My God Is Special

I am physically blind...
But oh God, thanks be to you for your spiritual sight.
I am physically deaf...
But oh God, thanks be to you that
Iam able to hear your sweet, sweet voice.
I physically cannot speak...
But God, thaks be to you for knowing
And understanding all my needs.
I physically cannot walk...
But oh God, thanks be to you for leading
And guiding me in your righteous way.
Thanks be to you oh God, for letting me know
That I am special.
Because you are special to me.

Evelyn Clayborn

poem by suchul Jin
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My God Is Special

I am physically blind...
But oh God, thanks be to you for your spiritual sight.
I am physically deaf...
But oh God, thanks be to you that
Iam able to hear your sweet, sweet voice.
I physically cannot speak...
But God, thaks be to you for knowing
And understanding all my needs.
I physically cannot walk...
But oh God, thanks be to you for leading
And guiding me in your righteous way.
Thanks be to you oh God, for letting me know
That I am special.
Because you are special to me.

poem by Evelyn Clayborn
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Berenice by edgar allan poe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

poem by Erie Morganmaples
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Fifth Book

AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope
To speak my poems in mysterious tune
With man and nature,–with the lava-lymph
That trickles from successive galaxies
Still drop by drop adown the finger of God,
In still new worlds?–with summer-days in this,
That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?–
With spring's delicious trouble in the ground
Tormented by the quickened blood of roots.
And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves
In token of the harvest-time of flowers?–
With winters and with autumns,–and beyond,
With the human heart's large seasons,–when it hopes
And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?–with all that strain
Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh
In a sacrament of souls? with mother's breasts,
Which, round the new made creatures hanging there,
Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?–
With multitudinous life, and finally
With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,
Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,
Their radiant faces upward, burn away
This dark of the body, issuing on a world
Beyond our mortal?–can I speak my verse
So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,
That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,
As having the same warrant over them
To hold and move them, if they will or no,
Alike imperious as the primal rhythm
Of that theurgic nature? I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man,–and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,–
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,
Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is;
We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.
We strain our natures at doing something great,
Far less because it's something great to do,
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves
As being not small, and more appreciable
To some one friend. We must have mediators

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poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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