Certainly not every good program is object-oriented, and not every object-oriented program is good.
quote by Bjarne Stroustrup
Added by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Object
You know you turn me on
Eyes so white and legs so long
But don't try to talk to me
I won't listen to your lies
You're just an object in my eyes
You're just an object in my eyes
Sophisticated smile
You seduce in such fine style
But don't try to fool me
'cause i can see through your disguise
You're just an object in my eyes
You're just an object in my eyes
But i don't mind
I just don't care
I've got no objection
To you touching me there
Object object
Object object
Object object
Object object
You know just what to do
Lick your lips
And i want you
But don't try to hold me
'cause i don't want any ties
You're just an object in my eyes
You're just an object in my eyes
But i don't mind
I just don't care
I've got no objections
To you touching me there
You're just an object object
Object object
You're just an object
song performed by Cure
Added by Lucian Velea
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Soccer Rollback
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[...] Read more
poem by Rwetewrt Erwtwer
Added by Poetry Lover
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Sex Object
Yes! No!
Yes! No!
I don't want to be your sex object
Show some feeling and respect
I don't want to be your sex object
I've had enough and that's a fact
Yes! No!
Yes! No!
I don't want to be your sex object
You play your tricks they're just perfect
I don't want to be your sex object
You turn me on then you forget
No! Why? [sex]
No! Why? [sex]
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
Yes! No!
Yes! No!
I don't want to be your sex object
You play your tricks they're just perfect
I don't want to be your sex object
I've had enough and that's a fact
[Spanish: No! Yes! Maybe Perhaps Yes]
No... si, si quieres
No... si, si quieres
Por que? No. Quizas.
Por que? No. A lo mejor.
Sex object
Sex object
No... si, si quieres
No... si, si quieres
Por que? No. Quizas.
Por que? No. A lo mejor.
No! Why? [sex]
No! Why? [sex]
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
[German?]
Sex object
Sex object
No! Why? [sex]
No! Why? [sex]
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
Maybe, Perhaps, Yes!
Sex object
Sex object
song performed by Kraftwerk
Added by Lucian Velea
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society
Epigraph
Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.
I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.
You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Be Good Johnny
Skip de skip, up the road
Off to school we go
Dont you be a bad boy johnny
Dont you slip up
Or play the fool
Oh no ma, oh no da,
Ill be your golden boy
I will obey evry golden rule
Get told by the teacher
Not to day-dream
Told by my mother:
Be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good be good (johnny)
Be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good (johnny)
Be good be good.
Are you going to play football this year, john?
No!
Oh, well you must be going to play cricket this year then,
Are you johnny?
No! no! no!
Boy, you sure are a funny kid, johnny, but I like you! so tell me,
What kind of a boy are you, john?
I only like dreaming
All the day long
Where no one is screaming
Be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good be good (johnny)
Be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Be good be good be good
Johnny!
song performed by Men At Work
Added by Lucian Velea
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IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus
Had I God's leave, how I would alter things!
If I might read instead of print my speech,—
Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower
Refuses obstinate to blow in print,
As wildings planted in a prim parterre,—
This scurvy room were turned an immense hall;
Opposite, fifty judges in a row;
This side and that of me, for audience—Rome:
And, where yon window is, the Pope should hide—
Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough.
A buzz of expectation! Through the crowd,
Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff,
Up comes an usher, louts him low, "The Court
"Requires the allocution of the Fisc!"
I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause
O'er the hushed multitude: I count—One, two—
Have ye seen, Judges, have ye, lights of law,—
When it may hap some painter, much in vogue
Throughout our city nutritive of arts,
Ye summon to a task shall test his worth,
And manufacture, as he knows and can,
A work may decorate a palace-wall,
Afford my lords their Holy Family,—
Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court
How such a painter sets himself to paint?
Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe
A-journeying to Egypt, prove the piece:
Why, first he sedulously practiseth,
This painter,—girding loin and lighting lamp,—
On what may nourish eye, make facile hand;
Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so)
From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk
Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves,—
This Luca or this Carlo or the like.
To him the bones their inmost secret yield,
Each notch and nodule signify their use:
On him the muscles turn, in triple tier,
And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man
"Familiarize thee with our play that lifts
"Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and foot!"
—Ensuring due correctness in the nude.
Which done, is all done? Not a whit, ye know!
He,—to art's surface rising from her depth,—
If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found,
May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance!)—
Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow,
Loseth no involution, cheek or chap,
Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives!
Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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VII. Pompilia
I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.
All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.
Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Good Love
Everytime I get to see you
I get this feelin
Its so fuzzy inside
And as soon as I walk away from you
Im still tasting your kiss
Saving it in my mind
Its not everyday I find
A guy that makes me smile all the time
Not the way that you do
All the guys I thought I used to love
Compared to you they dont match up
They got nothing on you
I think I found a good good good love
The kind that will put it on you
The kind that you wanna hold on to
I think I found a good good good love
We can be lovers and friends too
And theyll do anything for you
A good love
Baby you got somethin special
That has me thinking of settling down
Youre the one my mama told me
Would sooner or later one day finally come around
I think I found a good good good love
The kind that will put it on you
The kind that you wanna hold on to
I think I found a good good good love
We can be lovers and friends too
And theyll do anything for you
A good love
I think I found a good good good love
The kind that will put it on you
The kind that you wanna hold on to
I think I found a good good good love
We can be lovers and friends too
And theyll do anything for you
A good love
You bring me joy
And you bring me much pleasure
I could never see myself leaving you ever
Your soft touch is good and it cant get no better
You have got my mind so caught up
Im drunk off of your good love
I think I found a good good good love
The kind that will put it on you
The kind that you wanna hold on to
I think I found a good good good love
We can be lovers and friends too
And theyll do anything for you
A good love
[...] Read more
song performed by TLC
Added by Lucian Velea
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Nothing So Good
Aint nothin so good
As a sunday morning
When the day is dawnin? kinda makes you feel good
There aint nothing so fine
As a lazy weekend
Just hangin out with your best friend
There aint nothing so good
There aint nothing so good as a good time
Theres nothing so right as the right time
I said please ? dont count on me
Said please ? dont count on me
Theres nothing so good as a good time
Maybe there should
There aint nothing so good
Aint nothin so strong
As the strength of a good love
I cant get enough
Cant ever get too much love
There aint nothing so right
As the sound of your voice
Im gonna make it my choice
And get into something good
There aint nothing so good as a good time
There aint nothing so right as the right time
I said please ? dont count on me
Said please ? dont you count on me
Theres nothing so good as a good time
Maybe there should
There aint nothing so good
Sail away
Cant drift too far
Gotta get away
Be where you are
Sail away, sail away
Sail on far
Gotta find a way
Into your heart
Aint nothin so good
As a sunday morning
When the day is dawning
Kinda makes you feel good
There aint nothing so fine
As a lazy weekend
Just hangin out with your best friend
There aint nothing so good
There aint nothing so good as a good time
Aint nothing so right as the right time
I said please ? dont count on me
Said please ? dont count on me
Theres nothing so good as a good time
[...] Read more
song performed by Nazareth
Added by Lucian Velea
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Poetry Computer
A dozen universities united in one cause,
To make a program for PCs, a total tour de force.
Composing awesome poetry, that stirs the hearts of men,
Towards some global harmony, for now, beyond our ken.
At first, with basic rhymes to use, the program had no clue,
Until they gave it more to choose, to see what it could do.
And hooked up to the Internet, that program poured out stuff,
Though some of it they would regret, there were some things to love.
Their website asked for feedback, so, the visitors replied,
To criticise its form and flow and how they felt inside.
And while most praised it to the hilt, some hated what it wrote,
Poets are born, then taught not built, so they refused to vote.
A little child, aged ten, no more, condemned it from the start,
To state the program broke God's Law, because it lacked a heart.
It had no spirit, had no soul... and no morality...
And thus it lacked all self-control, indeed, true poetry.
The universities agreed, the program was erased...
They chose to help the ones in need, instead of words well phrased.
Their charity got worldwide fame, thanks to their devotion.
That ten-year-old gave them its name: Poetry In Motion...
Denis Martindale, copyright, March 2012.
poem by Denis Martindale
Added by Poetry Lover
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9904
9904
9904
CharlaXFabels
Ninenintyfour
Autofixation
A Dialog Fabel
Mrs. Smithster: BOSS let me help you clean up your computor today the new auto program disc is arrived in my snail mail box.
BOSS: OK just don't lose any of my contacts on the list the accounts are way too important.
JUNE: to her self: an aside: GET HIM who does he THINK he is giving me that guff so early in the mourning.
BOSS: Poor June is my secretary and eye love her like my sister but she is so dense the bullits bounce off her like she is Superman, or wait no Supergirl mabe.
Narrator Ed.Note: This is the twilight zoned for the next five minutiae you can not understand anything but this fable you have been transported to the twilight zone. This Lady Bosses Secretary one Mrs. June Smithster has been the receiver of a program sent to her inside her snail mail marked as a FIXIT program disc the entire story is now centered around what comes next let's watch what happens…
Charlax the Narrator: June reached into the envelope slowly and opened the disc cover reluctantly she was wondering now just where it had come from it was compelling her to use it she could feel its message somewhere near her left toe and the eye her left eye was twitching like a nervous wrecked her whole face was letting go she had to she had to over and over like a ROBOT compulsion she HAD to place the disc in the BOSSES computor NOW.
June: something is almost forcing me to use this new hardware it's an alien tech rippoff of an image of the MOON it makes me want to dress up and wear my cape out.
Charlax the Narrator: The Bosses Computor is slowly being eaten up by the disc all the contacts on the every list are gone the moral of the CharlaXFabel number 9904 poor gentle reader ewe is never use a disc program to enable accounts not meant to be edited by ewe. The computor is now gone the disc dropped to the floor lets go back and see what happens now…
BOSS: walking in to his office to check on his computor and June Smithster: well that is not funny did the android charlock pick up my computor for cleaning again?
Charlax the Narrator: but there is only silence from the corner of the room where June is laying down curled up in a ball of Supergirl costume her cape lay furled around her like a hobo blanket cover…
Narrator Ed.Note: CharlaXAndroidoneseven is now flying to the moon to save Supergirl he has to disable the program that sent the disc…
Stay tuned to find out more about the MOON in the new twilighted zoned series on CharlaXFabels@
poem by Charles Hice
Added by Poetry Lover
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IV. Tertium Quid
True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Interpretation of Nature and
I.
MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
II.
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.
III.
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
IV.
Towards the effecting of works, all that man can do is to put together or put asunder natural bodies. The rest is done by nature working within.
V.
The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all (as things now are) with slight endeavour and scanty success.
VI.
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
VII.
The productions of the mind and hand seem very numerous in books and manufactures. But all this variety lies in an exquisite subtlety and derivations from a few things already known; not in the number of axioms.
VIII.
Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.
IX.
The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this -- that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.
X.
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding; so that all those specious meditations, speculations, and glosses in which men indulge are quite from the purpose, only there is no one by to observe it.
XI.
As the sciences which we now have do not help us in finding out new works, so neither does the logic which we now have help us in finding out new sciences.
XII.
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. So it does more harm than good.
XIII.
[...] Read more
poem by Sir Francis Bacon
Added by Poetry Lover
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The Fyftene Loyes Of Maryage
Somer passed/and wynter well begone
The dayes shorte/the darke nyghtes longe
Haue taken season/and brynghtnes of the sonne
Is lytell sene/and small byrdes songe
Seldon is herde/in feldes or wodes ronge
All strength and ventue/of trees and herbes sote
Dyscendynge be/from croppe in to the rote
And euery creature by course of kynde
For socoure draweth to that countre and place
Where for a tyme/they may purchace and fynde
Conforte and rest/abydynge after grace
That clere Appolo with bryghtnes of his face
Wyll sende/whan lusty ver shall come to towne
And gyue the grounde/of grene a goodly gowne
And Flora goddesse bothe of whyte and grene
Her mantell large/ouer all the erthe shall sprede
Shewynge her selfe/apparayled lyke a quene
As well in feldes/wodes/as in mede
Hauynge so ryche a croune vpon her hede
The whiche of floures/shall be so fayre and bryght
That all the worlde/shall take therof a lyght
So now it is/of late I was desyred
Out of the trenche to drawe a lytell boke
Of .xv. Ioyes/of whiche though I were hyred
I can not tell/and yet I vndertoke
This entrepryse/with a full pyteous loke
Remembrynge well/the case that stode in
Lyuynge in hope/this wynter to begyn
Some Ioyes to fynde that be in maryage
For in my youth/yet neuer acquayntaunce
Had of them but now in myn olde aege
I trust my selfe/to forther and auaunce
If that in me/there lacke no suffysaunce
Whiche may dyspleasyr/clerely set a parte
I wante but all/that longeth to that arte
yet wyll I speke/though I may do no more
Fully purposynge/in all these Ioyes to trete
Accordynge to my purpose made to fore
All be it so/I can not well forgete
The payne/trauayle/besynes and hete
[...] Read more
poem by Anonymous Olde English
Added by Poetry Lover
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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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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!
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Spotless object
Spotless object
I saw spotless emerging object
Very much silvery and natural act
Slowly rising from the bottom of the sky
With full size and feeling very shy
Beauty can seldom be narrated
Now with any of the object equated
Such a beautiful scene with no blockade
Whole of sky illuminated with no sign of shade
I saw spotless character
As if highly integrated as lady actor
What a beautiful show altogether!
In fine atmosphere with cool weather
Not a single person can resist temptation
Few words in praise with so much elation
How come an object rise with so much of elegance?
Lovers across the world give so much of importance
Stars have no place to twinkle
Only moon has space and capable
Complete sway over millions of hearts
An object seen as unparallel natural art
Can you imagine few spots on the face?
As if cried for few minutes in waiting race
The smile was clearly reflected as sign of happiness
That is why there was brightness all over on the face
The sadness and pain was left all behind
We have no means to point out or find
The wonders behind such a artful show
Where you find all inspirations with glow
Such a humble and all round show in universe
Where all love hungry people see and converse
Express their desire with full of promises
Not to part with any of the reasons with slight miss
I shall depict it as heavenly creature
Where only peace and love resides for future
No hatred but enough of space for future generations
With a sole aim to rise again for maintaining relation
We may miss such a scene for times to come
If not adhere to in our life and welcome
What we need to see at this object and learn!
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poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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Youre So Good For Me
If you were an apple
I would take a bite
If you were a lemon
I would squeeze you tight
Youre so good Ive got to have you
Youre so good that nothing else matters
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good for me
If you were a penny
Youd be good as good
If you were a snowball
I would love the cold
cause youre so good Ive got to have you
Youre so good that nothing else matters
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good for me
If you were a candle
I would light your fire
And if you were hot labor
I would never tire
cause youre so good Ive got to have you
Youre so good that nothing else matters
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good for me
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good
Youre so good for me
Youre so good
1: if you were an apple, I would take a bite.
If you were a lemon, I would squeeze you tight.
Chorus: youre so good Ive got to have you.
Youre so good, that nothing else a-matters.
Youre so good, youre so good, youre so good for me.
2: if you were a penny, youd be good as good.
A-if you were a snowball, I would a-love the cold.
Chorus: cause youre so good Ive got to got to have you.
Youre so good that nothin else a-matters.
Youre so good, youre so good, youre so good,
Youre so good for me.
3: if you were a candle, I would a-light your fire.
A-if you were hard labor, I would a-never tire.
Chorus: cause youre so good Ive got to got to have you.
Youre so good that nothin else a-matters.
Youre so good, youre so good, youre so good,
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song performed by Monkees
Added by Lucian Velea
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XI. Guido
You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock
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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Regiment of Princes
Musynge upon the restlees bysynesse
Which that this troubly world hath ay on honde,
That othir thyng than fruyt of bittirnesse
Ne yildith naght, as I can undirstonde,
At Chestres In, right faste by the Stronde,
As I lay in my bed upon a nyght,
Thoght me byrefte of sleep the force and might. 1
And many a day and nyght that wikkid hyne
Hadde beforn vexed my poore goost
So grevously that of angwissh and pyne
No rycher man was nowhere in no coost.
This dar I seyn, may no wight make his boost
That he with thoght was bet than I aqweynted,
For to the deeth he wel ny hath me feynted.
Bysyly in my mynde I gan revolve
The welthe unseur of every creature,
How lightly that Fortune it can dissolve
Whan that hir list that it no lenger dure;
And of the brotilnesse of hir nature
My tremblynge herte so greet gastnesse hadde
That my spirites were of my lyf sadde.
Me fil to mynde how that nat longe agoo
Fortunes strook doun thraste estat rial
Into mescheef, and I took heede also
Of many anothir lord that hadde a fal.
In mene estat eek sikirnesse at al
Ne saw I noon, but I sy atte laste
Wher seuretee for to abyde hir caste.
In poore estat shee pighte hir pavyloun
To kevere hir fro the storm of descendynge 2
For shee kneew no lower descencion
Sauf oonly deeth, fro which no wight lyvynge
Deffende him may; and thus in my musynge
I destitut was of joie and good hope,
And to myn ese nothyng cowde I grope.
For right as blyve ran it in my thoght,
Thogh poore I be, yit sumwhat leese I may.
Than deemed I that seurtee wolde noght
With me abyde; it is nat to hir pay
Ther to sojourne as shee descende may.
And thus unsikir of my smal lyflode,
Thoght leide on me ful many an hevy lode.
I thoghte eek, if I into povert creepe,
Than am I entred into sikirnesse;
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poem by Thomas Hoccleve
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