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One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

quote by Thomas Sowell
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Young Conservatives

Have you heard the word?
The revolution's over.
Now the anger's disappeared
And the rebels are much older.
And the schools and universities
Are turning out a brand new breed of young conservatives.
Get yourself a brand new scene,
Keep your collars white and clean,
It's time to come and join the young conservatives.
Revolution used to be cool,
But now it's out of fashion.
Politeness is the rule,
And not an angry young man's passion.
And they've used up all the alternatives,
And they're rushing down the street to join
The young conservatives.
Conservatives.
Ban the bomb, oh how contemporary,
In your parents' car.
Another chip off the block, is that all that you are?
Look at all the young conservatives
Hanging out in the bars.
It's got to stop before it goes to fa-fa-fa-fa-far.
Get yourself some new attire,
Set your sights a little higher,
You're going to join the young conservatives.
The establishment is winning,
Now the battle's nearly won.
The rebels are conforming,
See the father, now the sons.
All the urgency and energy
Have turned into complacency,
Now the schools and universities are turning out a
Brand new breed of young conservatives.
Conservatives.
Rebel, rebel found a cause,
Now it's hampstead not east end
And now he's such a well respected man.
The only action that you see
Is in the sunday times.
Content to sit in bed and read between the lines.
Rebel, rebel join the young conservatives.
Be a devil join the new conservatives.
It's a victory for order
Now they've beaten everyone.
The rebels are too old now,
And the young just want to be young.
All the urgency and energy
Have turned into complacency.
Now the schools and universities are turning out a

[...] Read more

song performed by Kinks
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The Dream

'TWAS summer eve; the changeful beams still play'd
On the fir-bark and through the beechen shade;
Still with soft crimson glow'd each floating cloud;
Still the stream glitter'd where the willow bow'd;
Still the pale moon sate silent and alone,
Nor yet the stars had rallied round her throne;
Those diamond courtiers, who, while yet the West
Wears the red shield above his dying breast,
Dare not assume the loss they all desire,
Nor pay their homage to the fainter fire,
But wait in trembling till the Sun's fair light
Fading, shall leave them free to welcome Night!

So when some Chief, whose name through realms afar
Was still the watchword of succesful war,
Met by the fatal hour which waits for all,
Is, on the field he rallied, forced to fall,
The conquerors pause to watch his parting breath,
Awed by the terrors of that mighty death;
Nor dare the meed of victory to claim,
Nor lift the standard to a meaner name,
Till every spark of soul hath ebb'd away,
And leaves what was a hero, common clay.

Oh! Twilight! Spirit that dost render birth
To dim enchantments; melting Heaven with Earth,
Leaving on craggy hills and rumning streams
A softness like the atmosphere of dreams;
Thy hour to all is welcome! Faint and sweet
Thy light falls round the peasant's homeward feet,
Who, slow returning from his task of toil,
Sees the low sunset gild the cultured soil,
And, tho' such radliance round him brightly glows,
Marks the small spark his cottage window throws.
Still as his heart forestals his weary pace,
Fondly he dreams of each familiar face,
Recalls the treasures of his narrow life,
His rosy children, and his sunburnt wife,

To whom his coming is the chief event
Of simple days in cheerful labour spent.
The rich man's chariot hath gone whirling past,
And those poor cottagers have only cast
One careless glance on all that show of pride,
Then to their tasks turn'd quietly aside;
But him they wait for, him they welcome home,
Fond sentinels look forth to see him come;
The fagot sent for when the fire grew dim,
The frugal meal prepared, are all for him;
For him the watching of that sturdy boy,

[...] Read more

poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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The Spooniad

[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]

Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes
And loss to many, with engendered hate
That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands
To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck
A fairer temple rose and Progress stood --
Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles,
Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl
About Scamander, over walls, pursued
Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres
And sacred hecatombs, and first because
Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy
As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus' son,
Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil
Of war, and dearest concubine.
Say first,
Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes
No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,
What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis
The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,
Returning from her wandering with a troop
Of strolling players, walked the village streets,
Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings
And words of serpent wisdom and a smile
Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,
Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,
Made known his disapproval of the maid;
And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes
Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew
They feared her and condemned.
But them to flout
She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,
Brought from Peoria, and many youths,
But lately made regenerate through the prayers
Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,
Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,
Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes
Down straying might survey the snowy swale
Till it was lost in whiteness.
With the dance
The village changed to merriment from gloom.
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill
Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress
Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks

[...] Read more

poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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The Holy Grail

From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,
Had passed into the silent life of prayer,
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl
The helmet in an abbey far away
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,
And honoured him, and wrought into his heart
A way by love that wakened love within,
To answer that which came: and as they sat
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn
That puffed the swaying branches into smoke
Above them, ere the summer when he died
The monk Ambrosius questioned Percivale:

`O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke,
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years:
For never have I known the world without,
Nor ever strayed beyond the pale: but thee,
When first thou camest--such a courtesy
Spake through the limbs and in the voice--I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamped with the image of the King; and now
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?'

`Nay,' said the knight; `for no such passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offered up to Heaven.'

To whom the monk: `The Holy Grail!--I trust
We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much
We moulder--as to things without I mean--
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,
But spake with such a sadness and so low
We heard not half of what he said. What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?'

`Nay, monk! what phantom?' answered Percivale.

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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It's More Than Something You Can Intellectualize

There's a lot more to caring than knowing
There's a lot more to caring than saying
There's a lot more to caring than thinking
You can 'know' you care
Think you care
Convince yourself you care, even think that you genuinely care
But that really isn't fair
If your actions don't match
The attitude of caring
The attitude of loving
It's more

It's more than those who love you
More than those who care for you
It's the ones who don't
It's the ones you don't know
It's those, it's them, they need you most
You can't just walk away
Caring is more than something you can think about
You can't be compassionate and ignore a need
You can't fulfill every need
Where is compassion?

Where is caring?
If it's so much more, what is it that we have?
Is it worth trying?
Won't you fail?

But you forget
Caring is more

It's more than something you can intellectualize
It's more than a concept
It's more than thinking
More than knowing
More than even an action
Caring is a lifestyle
For all those around you
Even beyond yourself

O and one more thing caring isn't about caring about
Yourself.

poem by David Knox
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Tamar

I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;
When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep
They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top,
Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;
Then, the quick frenzy finished, stiffening herself
Slid with her drunken rider down the ledges,
Shot from sheer rock and broke
Her life out on the rounded tidal boulders.

The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little
accident; grave Orion
Moved northwest from the naked shore, the moon moved to
meridian, the slow pulse of the ocean
Beat, the slow tide came in across the slippery stones; it drowned
the dead mare's muzzle and sluggishly
Felt for the rider; Cauldwell’s sleepy soul came back from the
blind course curious to know
What sea-cold fingers tapped the walls of its deserted ruin.
Pain, pain and faintness, crushing
Weights, and a vain desire to vomit, and soon again
die icy fingers, they had crept over the loose hand and lay in the
hair now. He rolled sidewise
Against mountains of weight and for another half-hour lay still.
With a gush of liquid noises
The wave covered him head and all, his body
Crawled without consciousness and like a creature with no bones,
a seaworm, lifted its face
Above the sea-wrack of a stone; then a white twilight grew about
the moon, and above
The ancient water, the everlasting repetition of the dawn. You
shipwrecked horseman
So many and still so many and now for you the last. But when it
grew daylight
He grew quite conscious; broken ends of bone ground on each
other among the working fibers
While by half-inches he was drawing himself out of the seawrack
up to sandy granite,
Out of the tide's path. Where the thin ledge tailed into flat cliff
he fell asleep. . . .
Far seaward
The daylight moon hung like a slip of cloud against the horizon.
The tide was ebbing
From the dead horse and the black belt of sea-growth. Cauldwell
seemed to have felt her crying beside him,

[...] Read more

poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Turn To Gold

SHINE!
I don't know why
all the fiction of your sleeping
doesn't visit you awake
I don't know how to get your storybook sunrise
to follow you above your cloudy day
all these gifts you left on you
with heaven painted on you
i wish this now with all my soul
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold
terrified the world will never turn to look at you
and the sun won't see you shine
she'll resign for rose cooked blush just from your smiling
let the water form a cry
only better luck should greet you
the road should rise to meet you
i wish this now with all i know
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold
loose inside your winter
feel the cold wind blowing
cutting through your head and through your ears
feel the fire growing
no more frozen danger
no more wrteched ice storm fear
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold
may all your visions turn to gold
to have and hold
may all your visions turn to gold

song performed by Audioslave
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A Time To Feel Forlorn and Reconstruct What's Torn

There's a designated time in the universe for everything:

A time to limit, a time to expand.
A time to rise, time to lower and lend a hand.

A time to maintain, a time to abandon.
A time to develop, a time to rest at random.

A time to communicate, a time for silence.
A time to kiss your enemy, a time to concede wins.

A time to spite, a time to please.
A time for respite, a time to tease.

A time to process, a time to confess.
A time to do more. A time to do less.

A time to dominate. A time to captivate.
A time to plunge. A time to resurface straight.

A time to maximise. A time to minimise.
A time to diminish. A time to optimise.

A time to sacrifice. time to insist on rights.
A time to be selfish. A time to be concerned about plights.

A time to be big. A time to be small.
A time to care for a special one. A time to love all.

A time to add dimension. A time to simplify.
A time to advocate egalitarianism.
A time to exult.
A time to default.
A time to be accepting of imperfect humanism.

A time to enhance. A time to simplify.
A time to criticise. A time to dignify.

A time to produce. A time to use.
A time to relent. A time to refuse.

A time to demand. A time to give.
A time to die. a time to live.

A time to survive. A time to admit defeat.
A time to lie. A time to walk on your feet.

A time to compete. A time to not.
A time to remember. A time to concede you forgot.

[...] Read more

poem by Hercolena Oliver
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Who Are They Who Point to The Liberals?

Who are they who point to The Liberals?
Those of Conservative values?
Those who send others,
To end their conflicts?
Those who sit with their opinions...
And sip on dry martinis.
And discuss their vacation visits.

Those of 'right winged' policies...
Whose sons and daughters,
Hide behind college walls...
With no military,
Or civic duties to complete!

Those who feed their greed,
And learn skills of deception.
To earn positions on Wall Street!
With their cheating test scores,
That have granted them B.A., M.A....
And Doctorate degrees.

Who are they who point to The Liberals?
Those of Conservative values?
Those that have turned their quality of life...
Into a cesspool of decadence,
Created to instill fear and strife.
To all now witnessing their economic blight!

Who are they who point to The Liberals?
Those who wish to do things right.
Those who are concern about all human life.
Those who now must clean up the mess.
Left by separatists conservatives!
Thick with mindsets of incompetence.
And walking on destructive paths!

Who are they who point to The Liberals?

'Those who feel they should be invited...
To kneel before the Queen of England,
And be knighted! '

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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You Don't Need To Tell Me You Don't Care

You don’t need to tell me you don’t care, not caring
is an environmental condition since humans became
too dangerous to trust their own minds as the world,
let themselves be morning doves in the phoenix-fire of the sumac,
or a light within a light like a planet in the dusk,
the pink lilac of Mercury, the flashing white
gardenia of Venus. Killing only lets you be
one thing else
after you’ve deleted all the rest. Not caring
is the shape of a final heart, the rose recast by the minerals
as stone, cell by cell, nest by nest, petrified
by the cuckoo whose young shoulder the eggs of its host out
like refugees that take over the government
that gives them shelter. Not caring
is an ancient battlefield in the morning
where crows and old women, idiots, wretches, dogs
plunder the dead lying like islands in the mist,
a cemetery of maggots that froze before
they could finish eating the horse. Not caring
is deciding to live without punctuation
because everywhere you went something got in your way
like crosswalks or streetlights, your desire for precious metals,
to drink the silver pure, frustrated everywhere
by the corroded goblets and encrustations
of people who smiled like ores and tons of granite. Not caring,
is a leftover of porous slag and a gaping quarry,
and the gifts of not caring are always accidental
and come wrapped in the skins of old enemies, a relic of fangs
that fell out like the phases of the moon
when the new ones with their upgraded toxins appeared.

You don’t have to tell me you don’t care,
I’ve lived under glaciers long enough to know
the knives of the small arctics that plunge through the heart
like kingfishers never cry; I know
the striations of stone eyes
that leave their runic watermarks
like scars and coats of arms on a shield, how
the polar caps can descend down over a skull
for thousands of years and the people revert to hides.
Not caring is a moth-eaten charter
of inalienable human blights;
chained like a telephone book to the left side
of a junkie Medusa that sold Pegasus to a riding academy
for the last hit to take off her head
long before Perseus showed up like a rehab centre.
Not caring is a way of saying
the world has let you down like an elopement
you once waited for all night at a window
when windows were made of water,

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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Political World

We live in a political world
Where love dont have any place
Were living in times where men commit crimes
And crime dont have a face
We live in a political world
Icicles hangin down
Wedding bells ring and angels sing
And clouds cover up the ground
We live in a political world
Wisdom is thrown into jail
It rots in a cell misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up the trail
We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank
We live in a political world
Courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children arent wanted
Your next day could be your last
We live in a political world
The one we can see and feel
But theres no one to check, its all a stacked deck
We all know for sure that its real
We live in a political world
The cities are a lonesome fear
Little by little, you turn in the middle
Youre never sure why youre here
We live in a political world
Under the microscope
You could travel anywhere and hang yourself there
Youve always got more than enough rope
We live in a political world
Turning and a-thrashing about
As soon as youre awake youre trained to take
What looks like the easy way out
We live in a political world
Where peace is not welcome at all
Its turned away from the door to wander some more
Or put up against the wall
We live in a political world
Everythings hers and his
Climb into the flame and shout gods name
But youre not even sure what it is

song performed by Bob Dylan
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Smooth And Amiable, Opaque

Smooth and amiable, opaque,
with facades like scrims, genteel,
my friends are ones you ought to take
unseriously, and for a meal
just when you think you’ve nothing better
to do, like watching television,
or sending the White House a letter,
or working out with great precision
your taxes for another audit.
Should it be that you don’t wish
to do these things and can afford it,
invite your friends to where the fish
is tastier than what you eat
at home, and then, when you come back,
resolve that you will not repeat
such invitations till you crack,
or there is nothing on TV,
and you’re not writing letters to
the President––since you can see,
unusually, his point of view––
and you’ve heard from the IRS
that you don’t owe them––this time! ––taxes.
At times like these your friends, I guess,
won’t cause you anticlimaxes.

Inspired by an article in the NYT Book Review, by Ross Dothat, January 18,2009 (“When Buckley Met Reagan”) :
On the night that William F. Buckley met Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States put his elbow through a plate-glass window. The year was 1961, and the two men were in Beverly Hills, where Buckley, perhaps the most famous conservative in America at the tender age of 35, was giving an address at a school auditorium. Reagan, a former Hollywood leading man dabbling in political activism — the Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin of his day — had been asked to do the introductions. But the microphone was dead, the technician was nowhere to be found and the control room was locked. As the crowd began to grumble, Reagan coolly opened one of the auditorium windows, stepped onto a ledge two stories above the street and inched his way around to the control room. He smashed his elbow through the glass and clambered in through the broken window. “In a minute there was light in the upstairs room, ” Buckley later wrote, “and then we could hear the crackling of the newly animated microphone.” This anecdote kicks off The Reagan I Knew (Basic Books, $25) , a slight and padded reminiscence published posthumously this past autumn, nine months after Buckley’s death. As a personal portrait of the 40th president, the narrative is sketchy at best: the Reagan whom Buckley knew turns out to be the Reagan most of his friends and allies knew — amiable, smooth and ultimately opaque.
What the book does offer, though, is an expansion on the theme lurking in that opening vignette, in which the man of ideas came face to face with the man of action, and the intellectual famous for describing the world met the future president eager to change it. At its most interesting, “The Reagan I Knew” provides a case study on the relationship between intellectuals and power, and specifically on the marriage between right-wing thinkers and populist politicians that has defined the modern right from the Goldwater era to our own. This union occasioned a great deal of comment during 2008, which turned out to be an annus horribilis for conservatism, and little of it was positive. Populism’s corrosive influence on the conservative mind — or the conservative mind’s cynical manipulation of populism — was cited in briefs against Sarah Palin, against the record of George W. Bush and against the entire run of conservative governance going back to Richard Nixon. Sometimes it was liberals arguing that an earlier generation of high-minded conservatives (Buckley being the prime example) would be horrified by the anti-intellectual spirit that had overtaken their movement in the age of Bush and Palin. Sometimes it was conservatives, your David Frums and Peggy Noonans, hinting at the same. And sometimes it was left-wingers — like Rick Perlstein, in his teeming history “Nixonland” — arguing that conservatives had always been cynical manipulators of populist sentiment: the mask might have slipped a bit more in the Bush era, but beneath the genteel facade provided by wordsmiths like Buckley (or William Safire or George Will or whomever) , the modern right has been Palins all the way down.

1/18/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.

quote by Andrew Sullivan
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The Columbiad: Book X

The vision resumed, and extended over the whole earth. Present character of different nations. Future progress of society with respect to commerce; discoveries; inland navigation; philosophical, med and political knowledge. Science of government. Assimilation and final union of all languages. Its effect on education, and on the advancement of physical and moral science. The physical precedes the moral, as Phosphor precedes the Sun. View of a general Congress from all nations, assembled to establish the political harmony of mankind. Conclusion.

Hesper again his heavenly power display'd,
And shook the yielding canopy of shade.
Sudden the stars their trembling fires withdrew.
Returning splendors burst upon the view,
Floods of unfolding light the skies adorn,
And more than midday glories grace the morn.
So shone the earth, as if the sideral train,
Broad as full suns, had sail'd the ethereal plain;
When no distinguisht orb could strike the sight,
But one clear blaze of all-surrounding light
O'erflow'd the vault of heaven. For now in view
Remoter climes and future ages drew;
Whose deeds of happier fame, in long array,
Call'd into vision, fill the newborn day.

Far as seraphic power could lift the eye,
Or earth or ocean bend the yielding sky,
Or circling sutis awake the breathing gale,
Drake lead the way, or Cook extend the sail;
Where Behren sever'd, with adventurous prow,
Hesperia's headland from Tartaria's brow;
Where sage Vancouvre's patient leads were hurl'd,
Where Deimen stretch'd his solitary world;
All lands, all seas that boast a present name,
And all that unborn time shall give to fame,
Around the Pair in bright expansion rise,
And earth, in one vast level, bounds the skies.

They saw the nations tread their different shores,
Ply their own toils and wield their local powers,
Their present state in all its views disclose,
Their gleams of happiness, their shades of woes,
Plodding in various stages thro the range
Of man's unheeded but unceasing change.
Columbus traced them with experienced eye,
And class'd and counted all the flags that fly;
He mark'd what tribes still rove the savage waste,
What cultured realms the sweets of plenty taste;
Where arts and virtues fix their golden reign,
Or peace adorns, or slaughter dyes the plain.

He saw the restless Tartar, proud to roam,
Move with his herds and pitch a transient home;
Tibet's long tracts and China's fixt domain,
Dull as their despots, yield their cultured grain;
Cambodia, Siam, Asia's myriad isles
And old Indostan, with their wealthy spoils

[...] Read more

poem by Joel Barlow
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Children of Our Age

We are children of our age,
it's a political age.

All day long, all through the night,
all affairs--yours, ours, theirs--
are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it troubles the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape
was quarreled over for months;
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.

poem by Wislawa Szymborska
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The Cock And The Fox: Or, The Tale Of The Nun's Priest

There lived, as authors tell, in days of yore,
A widow, somewhat old, and very poor;
Deep in a dale her cottage lonely stood,
Well thatched, and under covert of a wood.
This dowager, on whom my tale I found,
Since last she laid her husband in the ground,
A simple sober life, in patience led,
And had but just enough to buy her bread;
But huswifing the little Heaven had lent,
She duly paid a groat for quarter rent;
And pinched her belly, with her daughters two,
To bring the year about with much ado.
The cattle in her homestead were three sows,
An ewe called Mally, and three brinded cows.
Her parlour window stuck with herbs around,
Of savoury smell; and rushes strewed the ground.
A maple-dresser in her hall she had,
On which full many a slender meal she made,
For no delicious morsel passed her throat;
According to her cloth she cut her coat;
No poignant sauce she knew, nor costly treat,
Her hunger gave a relish to her meat.
A sparing diet did her health assure;
Or sick, a pepper posset was her cure.
Before the day was done, her work she sped,
And never went by candle light to bed.
With exercise she sweat ill humours out;
Her dancing was not hindered by the gout.
Her poverty was glad, her heart content,
Nor knew she what the spleen or vapours meant.
Of wine she never tasted through the year,
But white and black was all her homely cheer;
Brown bread and milk,(but first she skimmed her bowls)
And rashers of singed bacon on the coals.
On holy days an egg, or two at most;
But her ambition never reached to roast.
A yard she had with pales enclosed about,
Some high, some low, and a dry ditch without.
Within this homestead lived, without a peer,
For crowing loud, the noble Chanticleer;
So hight her cock, whose singing did surpass
The merry notes of organs at the mass.
More certain was the crowing of the cock
To number hours, than is an abbey-clock;
And sooner than the matin-bell was rung,
He clapped his wings upon his roost, and sung:
For when degrees fifteen ascended right,
By sure instinct he knew ’twas one at night.
High was his comb, and coral-red withal,
In dents embattled like a castle wall;

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poem by John Dryden
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Z. Comments

CRYSTAL GLOW

Madhur Veena Comment: Who is she? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ....You write good!

Margaret Alice Comment: Beautiful, it stikes as heartfelt words and touches the heart, beautiful sentiments, sorry, I repeat myself, but I am delighted. Your poem is like the trinkets I collect to adorn my personal space, pure joy to read, wonderful! Only a beautiful mind can harbour such sentiments, you have a beautiful mind. I am glad you have found someone that inspires you to such heights and that you share it with us, you make the world a mroe wonderful place.

Margaret Alice Comment: Within the context set by the previous poem, “Cosmic Probe”, the description of a lover’s adoration for his beloved becomes a universal ode sung to the abstract values of love, joy and hope personified by light, colours, fragrance and beauty, qualities the poet assigns to his beloved, thus elevating her to the status of an uplifting force because she brings all these qualities to his attention. The poet recognises that these personified values brings him fulfilment and chose the image of a love relationship to illustrate how this comes about; thus a love poem becomes the vehicle to convey spiritual epiphany.

FRAGRANT JASMINE

Margaret Alice Comment: Your words seem to be directed to a divine entity, you seem to be addressing your adoration to a divinity, and it is wonderful to read of such sublime sentiments kindled in a human soul. Mankind is always lifted up by their vision and awareness of divinity, thank you for such pure, clear diction and sharing your awareness of the sublime with us, you have uplifted me so much by this vision you have created!

Margaret Alice Comment: The poet’s words seem to be directed to a divine entity, express adoration to a divinity who is the personification of wonderful qualities which awakens a sense of the sublime in the human soul. An uplifting vision and awareness of uplifting qualities of innocence represented by a beautiful person.

I WENT THERE TO BID HER ADIEU

Kente Lucy Comment: wow great writing, what a way to bid farewell

Margaret Alice Comment: Sensory experience is elevated by its symbolical meaning, your description of the scene shows two souls becoming one and your awareness of the importance of tempory experience as a symbol of the eternal duration of love and companionship - were temporary experience only valid for one moment in time, it would be a sad world, but once it is seen as a symbol of eternal things, it becomes enchanting.

I’M INCOMPLETE WITHOUT YOU

Margaret Alice Comment: You elevate the humnan experience of longing for love to a striving for sublimity in uniting with a beloved person, and this poem is stirring, your style of writing is effective, everything flows together perfectly.

Margaret Alice Comment:

'To a resplendent glow of celestial flow
And two split halves unite never to part.'

Reading your fluent poems is a delight, I have to tear myself away and return to the life of a drudge, but what a treasure trove of jewels you made for the weary soul who needs to contemplate higher ideals from time to time!

IN CELESTIAL WINGS

Margaret Alice Comment: When you describe how you are strengthened by your loved one, it is clear that your inner flame is so strong that you need not fear growing old, your spirit seems to become stronger, you manage to convey this impression by your striking poetry. It is a privilege to read your work.

Obed Dela Cruz Comment: wow.... i remembered will shakespeare.... nice poem!

Margaret Alice Comment: The poet has transcended the barriers of time and space by becoming an image of his beloved and being able to find peace in the joy he confers to his beloved.

'You transcend my limits, transcend my soul, I forget my distress in your thoughts And discover my peace in your joy, For, I’m mere image of you, my beloved.'

Margaret Alice Comment: You are my peace and solace, I know, I am, yours too; A mere flash of your thoughts Enlivens my tired soul And fills me with light, peace and solace, A giant in new world, I become, I rise to divine heights in celestial wings. How I desire to reciprocate To fill you with light and inner strength raise you to divine heights; I must cross over nd hold you in arms, light up your soul, Fill you with strength from my inner core, Wipe away your tears burst out in pure joy How I yearn to instill hope and confidence in you we never part And we shall wait, till time comes right. the flame in my soul always seeks you, you transcend my limits, transcend my soul, I forget my distress in your thoughts And discover my peace in your joy, For, I’m mere image of you, my beloved.

RAGING FIRE

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poem by Praveen Kumar
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It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives' recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.

quote by Michael Kinsley
Added by Lucian Velea
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M'Fingal - Canto IV

Now Night came down, and rose full soon
That patroness of rogues, the Moon;
Beneath whose kind protecting ray,
Wolves, brute and human, prowl for prey.
The honest world all snored in chorus,
While owls and ghosts and thieves and Tories,
Whom erst the mid-day sun had awed,
Crept from their lurking holes abroad.

On cautious hinges, slow and stiller,
Wide oped the great M'Fingal's cellar,
Where safe from prying eyes, in cluster,
The Tory Pandemonium muster.
Their chiefs all sitting round descried are,
On kegs of ale and seats of cider;
When first M'Fingal, dimly seen,
Rose solemn from the turnip-bin.
Nor yet his form had wholly lost
Th' original brightness it could boast,
Nor less appear'd than Justice Quorum,
In feather'd majesty before 'em.
Adown his tar-streak'd visage, clear
Fell glistening fast th' indignant tear,
And thus his voice, in mournful wise,
Pursued the prologue of his sighs.

"Brethren and friends, the glorious band
Of loyalty in rebel land!
It was not thus you've seen me sitting,
Return'd in triumph from town-meeting;
When blust'ring Whigs were put to stand,
And votes obey'd my guiding hand,
And new commissions pleased my eyes;
Blest days, but ah, no more to rise!
Alas, against my better light,
And optics sure of second-sight,
My stubborn soul, in error strong,
Had faith in Hutchinson too long.
See what brave trophies still we bring
From all our battles for the king;
And yet these plagues, now past before us,
Are but our entering wedge of sorrows!

"I see, in glooms tempestuous, stand
The cloud impending o'er the land;
That cloud, which still beyond their hopes
Serves all our orators with tropes;

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poem by John Trumbull
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Only You Make It Better-whenever

I can't give dates when this happens,
Or...
Who this will touch.
But...
Someone's 'bout to fall in love,
And...
That is a must.

No I...
Can't give dates
Or time when this happens,
Or...
Who this will touch.
But...
Someone's 'bout to fall in love,
And...
That is a must.

Looking into your eyes I see me...
And that is a must.
When you ask me what I've got on mind...
I know you're there.
Looking into your eyes I see me...
And that is a must.
To show how much is there,
Io love...
And share.
I know that you'll love me.
I know you're caring.

Looking into your eyes I see me...
And that is a must.
When you ask me what I've got on mind...
I know you're there.
I know you're caring.

Only you make it better whenever I'm down.
I know you are there,
Caring.
And when we take our walks around...
I know you like it sharing.
I know you like it caring.
And when we take our walks around...
I know you like it sharing.
I know you like it caring.

Looking into your eyes I see me...
And that is a must.
When you ask me what I've got on mind...
I know you're there.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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