I leave from where the apostle arrived.
quote by Pope Benedict XVI
Added by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Pearl
Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
To grace in gold enclosed so clear,
I vow that from over orient seas
Never proved I any in price her peer.
So round, so radiant ranged by these,
So fine, so smooth did her sides appear
That ever in judging gems that please
Her only alone I deemed as dear.
Alas! I lost her in garden near:
Through grass to the ground from me it shot;
I pine now oppressed by love-wound drear
For that pearl, mine own, without a spot.
2
Since in that spot it sped from me,
I have looked and longed for that precious thing
That me once was wont from woe to free,
To uplift my lot and healing bring,
But my heart doth hurt now cruelly,
My breast with burning torment sting.
Yet in secret hour came soft to me
The sweetest song I e'er heard sing;
Yea, many a thought in mind did spring
To think that her radiance in clay should rot.
O mould! Thou marrest a lovely thing,
My pearl, mine own, without a spot.
3
In that spot must needs be spices spread
Where away such wealth to waste hath run;
Blossoms pale and blue and red
There shimmer shining in the sun;
No flower nor fruit their hue may shed
Where it down into darkling earth was done,
For all grass must grow from grains that are dead,
No wheat would else to barn be won.
From good all good is ever begun,
And fail so fair a seed could not,
So that sprang and sprouted spices none
From that precious pearl without a spot.
4
That spot whereof I speak I found
When I entered in that garden green,
As August's season high came round
When corn is cut with sickles keen.
There, where that pearl rolled down, a mound
With herbs was shadowed fair and sheen,
With gillyflower, ginger, and gromwell crowned,
And peonies powdered all between.
[...] Read more
poem by Anonymous Olde English
Added by Poetry Lover
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Ooh Baby
Oohbaby
Oohbaby
Oohoohooh
Since the day I saw you, baby, I knew you were for me
Always all by myself, I sought your company
All the fellas told me that you played me for a fool
Said I wouldnt hang out, id go home right after school
What did I do to you
To make you feel this way
You said youd be my baby
Never go away, go away
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohoohooh) how could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
Spent all my time, baby, just working on my form
Trying to improve myself so I could give you more
You told me I was turning out the way that I should be
How could I know that you would turn your back on me
What did I do to you
To make you feel this way
You said youd be my baby
Never go away, go away
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohoohooh) how could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohbaby) how could you leave when I need you, baby
(oohoohooh) how could you leave when I need you, baby
How could you leave when I need you, baby
Ooh, baby, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
How could you leave
Ooh, baby, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
How could you leave
How could you leave
How could you leave
How could you leave
Ooh, baby, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, baby, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
How could you leave
How could you leave
[...] Read more
song performed by New Edition
Added by Lucian Velea
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Leave Me Alone
Everybodys gonna try to tell you what to do, uhh-haa
And never, never, never, never, let it be said that its true
Oh-oh, hey, give it to my baby
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Theyre the kind of people thatll always let you down
I know you, too, you dont ever give it a frown
Oh, do it, do it, now, do it, do it
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Get down, baby
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Oh, come now, leave me alone, mam, okay, baby
Oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha
Dont you know some people, they just dont know when to stop
Give it to me, now
They cant tell the floor from the ceiling or the top
And therere other types, they always make you wait
And theyre always the first to say, the state you come from
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me forever
Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me forever
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone, oh
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me alone
Leave me alone
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha, oh, oh, yeah
Ah-ha-ha
song performed by Lou Reed
Added by Lucian Velea
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Leave This Man Alone
(Justin Hayward)
Ah, leave this man alone, Ah, leave this man alone
Young girls with long faces come to me at night and stay the night
Why am I so lonely?
Tell me is it right? (Is it right?)
Leave them, leave them, leave them, leave those things alone
Leave them, leave them, leave them, leave those things alone
Someone said I loved you, but I can't think where (I can't think where)
You know so much about me
So don't stand and stare, stand and stare
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave my mind alone
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave this man alone
Ah, ah, leave this man alone
Ah, ah, leave this
(Instrumental)
Ah, ah, leave this man alone
Ah, ah, leave this
Someone said I loved you, but I can't think where (I can't think where)
You know so much about me
So don't stand and stare, stand and stare
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave my mind alone
Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave this man alone
Ah, ah, leave this man alone
Ah, ah, leave this man alone
Ahhhh
*************************************************************
song performed by Moody Blues
Added by Lucian Velea
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Speeding to Leave Your Behind Behind!
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Get up and ready we gotta go.
Speeding to leave your behind.
You can't benefit if you're dragging slow.
Speeding to leave your behind.
Who said what you do,
Doesn't get you where your'e going.
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Get up and ready we gotta go.
Speeding to leave your behind.
You can't benefit if you're dragging slow.
Speeding to leave your behind.
Who said what you do,
Doesn't get you where your'e going.
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Why stay up half the night!
Looking for a falling star?
To make a wish...
Then,
Dismiss it.
And why,
Do you wish to fight with me?
Someone who's always there for you!
Someone who wants to have life,
Like you do!
I don't wanna do it but I'm...
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
But I'm...
Speeding to leave your behind behind!
Speeding to leave your behind.
Get up and ready we gotta go.
Speeding to leave your behind.
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Leave Those Cranky People Alone
It is best to leave those cranky alone.
It pays to leave those cranky people alone.
Leave those cranky people,
Seeking nothing but an evil.
You,
Just...
Leave those cranky people alone!
When you answer your telephone,
To stop a constant ringing.
Just leave those cranky people alone.
And all you hear is whining,
With a blues heard singing.
Just,
Leave those cranky people alone.
It pays to leave those cranky people alone.
It is best to leave those cranky...
Alone.
Don't condone it.
Leave those people alone.
Don't you try to own it!
Leave those people alone.
Don't,
Condone it.
Leave those people alone.
Don't you try to even own it!
Leave those people alone.
When nothing but complaints,
Drop out of their mouths.
Just,
Leave those cranky people alone.
It is best to leave those cranky alone.
It pays to leave those cranky...
Alone.
Keep your mind freed from heating.
Leave those people alone.
Don't you dare accept their beating.
Leave those people alone.
When you feel a headache brewing,
And you don't know what to do.
Hey..
Leave those cranky people alone!
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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VIII. Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator
Ah, my Giacinto, he's no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we're eight?
Seven and one's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
—Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans,
Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood,
Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry)
And chews Corderius with his morning crust!
Look eight years onward, and he's perched, he's perched
Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,
Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?
—Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case
Like this, papa shall triturate full soon
To smooth Papinianian pulp!
It trots
Already through my head, though noon be now,
Does supper-time and what belongs to eve.
Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play!
—The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold
Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,
Cinuolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own,
That makes gruff January grin perforce!
For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth
Escaping from so many hearts at once—
When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,
Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort
To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key
O' the box beneath his pillow every night,—
Which box may hold a parchment (someone thinks)
Will show a scribbled something like a name
"Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end,
"To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,
"Estates, tenements, hereditaments,
"When I decease as honest grandsire ought."
Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps—
Shan't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!
Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world,
May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind,
Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There's cookery in a certain dwelling-place!
Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,
Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,
And so find door, put galligaskin off
At entry of a decent domicile
Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love,
All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!
Well,
Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp!
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Leave Them. Leave Them Alone
When people are immuned,
To get a message that is coming...
Leave them.
Leave them alone.
When people stubbornly refuse to hear a message,
Others hear...
Just leave them,
Alone on their own.
Too many have been fitted to be limited!
So leave them.
Leave them alone.
Too many have been gifted with the flapping of lips.
So leave them.
Leave them alone.
When people are immuned,
To get a message that is coming...
Just leave them.
Leave them alone.
When people rather shuck and jive,
To realize their own survival...
Just leave them,
Alone on their own.
Too many wish to sit and make a game of it.
So leave them.
Leave them alone.
Too many rather drift and not take benefit,
So leave them...
Leave them alone.
Fools are taking numbers just to stand and wait.
So leave them.
Leave them alone.
Fools like this await for frosting on their cake.
So leave them,
To taste it alone.
Too many wish to sit and make a game of it.
So leave them.
Leave them alone.
Too many rather drift and not take benefit,
So leave them...
Leave them alone.
When people are immuned,
To get a message that is coming...
Just leave them.
Leave them alone.
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
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Through the eyes of a Field Coronet (Epic)
Introduction
In the kaki coloured tent in Umbilo he writes
his life’s story while women, children and babies are dying,
slowly but surely are obliterated, he see how his nation is suffering
while the events are notched into his mind.
Lying even heavier on him is the treason
of some other Afrikaners who for own gain
have delivered him, to imprisonment in this place of hatred
and thoughts go through him to write a book.
Prologue
The Afrikaner nation sprouted
from Dutchmen,
who fought decades without defeat
against the super power Spain
mixed with French Huguenots
who left their homes and belongings,
with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Associate this then with the fact
that these people fought formidable
for seven generations
against every onslaught that they got
from savages en wild animals
becoming marksmen, riding
and taming wild horses
with one bullet per day
to hunt a wild antelope,
who migrated right across the country
over hills in mass protest
and then you have
the most formidable adversary
and then let them fight
in a natural wilderness
where the hunter,
the sniper and horseman excels
and any enemy is at a lost.
Let them then also be patriotic
into their souls,
believe in and read
out of the word of God
[...] Read more
poem by Gert Strydom
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Transformation Inquisition Saul Into Paul Of Tarsus
What caused miraculous;
transformation inquisition
Saul into Paul of Tarsus?
Saul had previously hated persecuted;
Jews who converted to Christianity
with fanatical deadly holocaust passion?
Infamous Saul of Tarsus;
had one crazed goal
for all followers of Jesus.
To capture then bring to public trial execution;
all Christians he could lay his hands on.
Saul an elite member of the Sanhedrin even
instigated approved ancient equivalent;
of vigilante mob lynchings public stonings.
Saul actively present when first Christian
martyr Stephen was by an angry mob killed;
assumed responsibility of guarding clothes
of all who zealously to death stoned Stephen.
For is it not written?
'At this they covered their ears
and, yelling at the top of their voices,
they all rushed at him, (Stephen)
dragged him out of the city and began
to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses
laid their clothes at the feet
of a young man named Saul.
While they were stoning him, Stephen
prayed, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'
Then he fell on his knees
and cried out, 'Lord, do not hold this sin
against them.' When he had said this,
he fell asleep. (To death Stephen
was by the mob executed.) Acts 7: 57-60.
What did Saul think what then were his actions?
'Saul was there, giving approval to his death' Saul
for his part approved the mob murder of Stephen. Acts 8: 1.
Saul like a ravenous wolf after Stephen was martyred;
went door to door in Jerusalem finding Jews to arrest
[...] Read more
poem by Terence George Craddock
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What Power On Earth Changes Saul?
What miracle of transformation
what power on earth in heaven changes
Saul into amazing Apostle Paul?
Saul of Tarsus changed his name, became widely known,
as Apostle Paul, wrote about 25% of New Testament;
devoted next 32 years, witnessing Jesus as the Messiah.
Yes Apostle Paul was martyred;
for his faith in Jesus as Messiah
a man chosen personally by God;
Paul's written words;
are the testimony of a man
that violently persecuted;
as many early Christians
as he could arrest seize execute;
then became a Christian
due to a supernatural spiritual experience;
God assigns Saul a unique transformation Acts 22: 6-11
as Apostle Paul he will preach to gentiles.
Split imaging from the poem ‘Transformation Inquisition Saul Into Paul Of Tarsus'.
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
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Stranded
Standing here helpless
Where do I go
If you leave me alone
Where do I turn now
If it don't work out
As for as I can see
This isn't the way
That you said it would be...
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
If you walk away now
You leave me empty handed
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
Don't leave me now
Don't leave me...
Wasn't it you
Who brought me here
To the place lovers go
Just look at these arms
Reaching out to you
You said that you'd always care
I just turned around
And there's nobody there
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
If you walk away now
You leave me empty handed
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
Don't leave me now
Don't leave me...
You said that you'd always care
I just turned around and there's
nobody there
Don't leave me like...
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
If you walk away now
You leave me empty handed
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
stranded
Don't leave me like this
Don't leave me stranded
[...] Read more
song performed by Heart from Brigade
Added by Lucian Velea
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Love 'em And Leave 'em
My limousine is a-waitin'
And I see you comin' my way, hey, hey, hey
I'm sittin' by the window
And you ask me which hotel I stay in
Well, make a reservation
Between the hours of ten and two, how do you do
You've got the time to remember
I've gotta slick proposition you
There's nothing else I'd rather do
So you lift your dress
You wanna impress
There's one thing I've got to confess
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Mmm, so I give you my number
You say you will see me tonight
You just have to remember
Check with me if it's alright
You wanna sit in my driver's seat
If you do it's alright with me
I've got to hand it to you, baby
You know what a girl's gotta do
There's nothing else I'd rather do
With you, but I, but I
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em, yeah
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em, yeah
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em, yeah
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em
Love 'em, leave 'em, love 'em, leave 'em, yeah
Love 'em, leave 'em
song performed by Kiss
Added by Lucian Velea
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Love em & Leave em
My limousine is a-waitin
And I see you comin my way, hey, hey, hey
Im sittin by the window
And you ask me which hotel I stay in
Well, make a reservation
Between the hours of ten and two, how do you do
Youve got the time to remember
Ive gotta slick proposition you
Theres nothing else Id rather do
So you lift your dress
You wanna impress
Theres one thing Ive got to confess
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Mmm, so I give you my number
You say you will see me tonight
You just have to remember
Check with me if its alright
You wanna sit in my drivers seat
If you do its alright with me
Ive got to hand it to you, baby
You know what a girls gotta do
Theres nothing else Id rather do
With you, but i, but i
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em, yeah
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em, yeah
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em, yeah
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em
Love em, leave em, love em, leave em, yeah
Love em, leave em
song performed by Kiss
Added by Lucian Velea
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Orlando Furioso Canto 17
ARGUMENT
Charles goes, with his, against King Rodomont.
Gryphon in Norandino's tournament
Does mighty deeds; Martano turns his front,
Showing how recreant is his natural bent;
And next, on Gryphon to bring down affront,
Stole from the knight the arms in which he went;
Hence by the kindly monarch much esteemed,
And Gryphon scorned, whom he Martano deemed.
I
God, outraged by our rank iniquity,
Whenever crimes have past remission's bound,
That mercy may with justice mingled be,
Has monstrous and destructive tyrants crowned;
And gifted them with force and subtlety,
A sinful world to punish and confound.
Marius and Sylla to this end were nursed,
Rome with two Neros and a Caius cursed;
II
Domitian and the latter Antonine;
And, lifted from the lowest rabble's lees,
To imperial place and puissance, Maximine:
Hence Thebes to cruel Creon bent her knees,
Mezentius ruled the subject Agiline,
Fattening his fields with blood. To pests like these
Our Italy was given in later day,
To Lombard, Goth, and Hun a bleeding prey.
III
What shall I of fierce Attila, what say
Of wicked Ezzeline, and hundreds more?
Whom, because men still trod the crooked way,
God sent them for their pain and torment sore.
Of this ourselves have made a clear assay,
As well as those who lived in days of yore;
Consigned to ravening wolves, ordained to keep
Us, his ill-nurturing and unuseful sheep;
IV
Who, as if having more than served to fill
Their hungry maw, invite from foreign wood
Beyond the mountain, wolves of greedier will,
With them to be partakers of their food.
The bones which Thrasymene and Trebbia fill,
And Cannae, seem but few to what are strewed
On fattened field and bank, where on their way
Adda and Mella, Ronco and Tarro stray.
[...] Read more
poem by Ludovico Ariosto
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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,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Infinitely, Before You Arrived
You can not borrow from my time,
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
Infinitely...You can not borrow from my time,
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
Infinitely...To take,
And try to make your mission my condition.
To leave me in suspicion wishing,
For your absence I was missing...
Before you arrived.
You can not borrow my time to take...
And try to make your mission,
My condition.
Before you arrived.
You can not borrow from my time,
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
Infinitely...To take,
And try to make your mission my condition.
To leave me in suspicion wishing,
For your absence I was missing...
Before you arrived.
To lie and scheme by my side.
Infinitely.
Before you arrived.
Infinitely.
To lie and scheme by my side.
Infinitely.
Before you arrived.
Infinitely.
To lie and scheme by my side.
Infinitely.
Before you arrived.
Infinitely.
To lie and scheme by my side.
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
Infini tely...
To lie and scheme by my side.
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
Infinitely.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
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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)
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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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III. The Other Half-Rome
Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,
And—with best smile of all reserved for him—
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!
There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit—justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was.
Then the priests followed properly,—a soul
To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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