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There is no sexuality that is greater or lesser than another.

quote by Jasmine Guy
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Sexuality

Stand up everybody, this is your life
Let me take u to another world, let me take u tonight
U dont need no money, u dont need no clothes
The second coming, anything goes
Sexuality is all ull ever need
Sexuality -- let your body be free
Cmon everybody, yeah, this is your life
Im talking about a revolution we gotta organize
We dont need no segregation, we dont need no race
New age revelation, I think we got a case
Im ok as long as u are here with me
Sexuality is all we ever need
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
Everybody...
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
One time say...
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
Reproduction of a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
We live in a world overrun by tourists
Tourists -- 89 flowers on their back...inventors of the accu-jack
They look at life through a pocket camera... what? no flash again?
Theyre all a bunch of double drags who teach their kids that love is bad
Half of the staff of their brain is on vacation
Mama, are u listening?
We need a new breed -- leaders, stand up, organize
Dont let your children watch television until they know how to read
Or else all theyll know how to do is cuss, fight and breed
No child is bad from the beginning... they only imitate their atmosphere
If theyre in the company of tourists, alcohol and us history
Whats to be expected is 3 minus 3... absolutely nothing
Stand up, organize
We need a new breed...leaders, stand up, organize
I wanna be in the new breed, stand up, organize
Sexuality is all Ill ever need
Sexuality, Im gonna let my body be free
Sexuality is all Ill ever need
Sexuality, Im gonna let my body be free
Sexuality

song performed by Prince
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With A Lesser Chance To Be Evil

Giving 'in' wasn't enough.
I had to give up and walk away,
From all that 'stuff'.
All that teasing 'bling',
I just had to touch...
With a belief I needed,
To sit on a throne as if I were king.

Giving 'in' wasn't enough.
Giving foolishness up I thought would be tough.
But...
When I did my heart felt free.
Renewed I then became everything...
I was meant all along to be.
With less chance to feel evil.
Or romanced wishes I had turf that would never be taxed.
So glad I gave up thoughts like that!

Oh,
Those delusions I did have packed and stacked on my back.
With chips on my shoulder to create my own Central Park.
Paved and tree lined with unforgiveable misery.

I removed a greed from me.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
I felt victory released to free.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
Darkness chased away from my side.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
Not within me will it reside.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
I rid myself of fantasies.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
I learned to take deep breaths to breathe.
With a lesser chance to be evil.

Giving 'in' wasn't enough.
I had to give up and walk away,
From all that 'stuff'.
All that teasing 'bling'.
Blinging me too much.

I rid myself of fantasies.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
I learned to take deep breaths to breathe.
With a lesser chance to be evil.

I learned to take deep breaths to breathe.
With a lesser chance to be evil.
I learned to take deep breaths to breathe.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Lesser Lights Of Heaven

The lesser lights of heaven are burning towards a dream
The eyes of mothers bleeding
Cast their children to the sea
The lesser lights of heaven are screaming in our mind
Listen to the chorus
So divine and unkind
The lesser lights of heaven are burning for their Son
Praying for the presence
That birthed them into one
The lesser lights of heaven, their bodies but a flame
A sky that knows no distance
A cut that feels no pain
The lesser lights of heaven are bending towards your will
Cutting through the person
Who would rather die than kill
The lesser lights of heaven cast crowns before your throne
Dissipate into nothing
We truly are alone
The lesser lights of heaven are burning for their Son
Praying for the presence
That birthed them into one
The lesser lights of heaven, their bodies but a flame
A sky that knows no distance
A cut that feels no pain
Can we live through this?
Can we live through this?
Can we live through this?
Can we live through this?
The lesser lights of heaven are burning towards a dream

song performed by Zao
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She Loved Me; I Loved Her Not

She was not the prettiest flower in the bouquet
but she had a perfumed heart

which shone through in a radiant smile and gentle nature;
she loved me dearly.

I, I awakened to puberty blinded by blond curls
and cheerleader bodies

and to those nasty girls
who flirted with my hormones
shaking me into the boy-way and impure thoughts;

sometimes at the wrong time
as the girls filed by us boys
we both on our
way to the gym and my embarrassment.

Where sometimes I had to skip gym and make excuses.
Audrey watched from afar;

I was not so much oblivious of how she felt
and I felt she was nice but, too nice

to be despoiled by what I wanted from girls
I wanted the fast girls because fast knows fast

and I was definitely fast in my sloppy jeans.

So like attracted like.

Like bears and honey

And like bears and honey

I didn't care if I got stung
I wanted honey.

Every boy in my school wanted the same three girls;

every girl in my school wanted the same three boys

the rest of us were bystanders, spectators and critics

to scenes we were not part of

not even able to offer solace to others like ourselves because

to be in the not-popular group was to be a social failure;

[...] Read more

poem by Lonnie Hicks
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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
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Sexuality

Do it
Anyway you like it
Give it
Everything you got
Shake it
Move your body
Move your body
Love it
If you like it or not
Sexuality
Sensuality
-chorus:
Come up to my room
Lets not pretend
Too shy about it
Sexuality
Come up to my room
Lets make amends
Cant do without it
Sexuality
Lose it
One step in the right direction
Use it
In every possible way
Sexuality
Sensuality
Chorus
Sensuality
Chorus
Strip it
Weve got obvious intentions
Show it
Lets tell the world about it
Play it
Weve got no rules or regulations
Do it
Sexuality
Sensuality

song performed by Erasure
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Hudibras: Part 2 - Canto II

THE ARGUMENT

The Knight and Squire, in hot dispute,
Within an ace of falling out,
Are parted with a sudden fright
Of strange alarm, and stranger sight;
With which adventuring to stickle,
They're sent away in nasty pickle.

'Tis strange how some mens' tempers suit
(Like bawd and brandy) with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand last
Only to have them claw'd and canvast;
That keep their consciences in cases,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases,
Ne'er to be us'd, but when they're bent
To play a fit for argument;
Make true and false, unjust and just,
Of no use but to be discust;
Dispute, and set a paradox
Like a straight boot upon the stocks,
And stretch it more unmercifully
Than HELMONT, MONTAIGN, WHITE, or TULLY,
So th' ancient Stoicks, in their porch,
With fierce dispute maintain'd their church;
Beat out their brains in fight and study,
To prove that Virtue is a Body;
That Bonum is an Animal,
Made good with stout polemic brawl;
in which some hundreds on the place
Were slain outright; and many a face
Retrench'd of nose, and eyes, and beard,
To maintain what their sect averr'd;
All which the Knight and Squire, in wrath,
Had like t' have suffered for their faith,
Each striving to make good his own,
As by the sequel shall be shown.

The Sun had long since, in the lap
Of THETIS, taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn,
When HUDIBRAS, whom thoughts and aking,
'Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy eyes,
And from his couch prepar'd to rise,
Resolving to dispatch the deed
He vow'd to do with trusty speed.
But first, with knocking loud, and bawling,
He rouz'd the Squire, in truckle lolling;

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Butler
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No Greater Love

The angels can sing, but they don't know it all.
Heaven may have, streets made of gold,
But they don't have you like I have you to hold.
And like a prayer, you're everywhere!
That's how I know there's
No greater love!
When it's just you and me
That's how it's meant to be, and I know
There's no greater love!
We'll always be together,
On both sides of forever, I know
There's no greater love!
Ohhh Oh Oh
The touch of your fingers, on my skin,
I want to lay down beside you again.
The taste of your lips, pressed against mine,
Lost in this moment, way beyond time.
And like a prayer, you're everywhere!
That's how I know there's
No greater love!
When it's just you and me,
That's how it's meant to be, and I know
There's no greater love!
We'll always be together,
On both sides of forever I know
There's no greater love!
I would lay down my life for you,
And you would do the same for me,
I know it's true.
With every breath I breathe,
Baby, I believe,
There's no greater love!
When it's just you and me,
That's how it's meant to be and I know
There's no greater love!
We'll always be together,
On both sides of forever, I know
There's no greater love!
No greater love.

song performed by Lonestar
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Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

The oftener seen, the more I lust,
The more I lust, the more I smart,
The more I smart, the more I trust,
The more I trust, the heavier heart;
The heavy hearty breeds mine unrest,
Thy absence, therefore, like I best.
The rarer seen, the lest in mind,
The less in mind, the lesser pain,
The lesser pain, less grief I find,
The lesser grief, the greater gain,
The greater gain, the merrier I,
The further off, the more I joy,
The more I joy, the happier life,
The happier life, less hurts annoy,
The lesser hurts, pleasure most rife:
Such pleasures rife shall I obtain
When distance doth depart us twain.

poem by Barnabe Googe
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Less’er Love, And A Rose, In My Garden

I am gardener…. I prune, sheer… at times
…at times I have lesser love
And in less is more, very much more
…………….and there is this garden
..the garden, ours by the Grace of the Life Force, supreme God
..there is this Rose, and those Roses there… all chose a place to be
I, the Gardner choose the blooms from which Rose goes to the glass next my bed
I love this Rose, and less but similar those other
….they decide when to bloom
In sping late winter their souls weep, as I sheer, as I must
In spring and summer and early winter we rejoice as they bloom abundantly
…..every night one bloom from The Rose that’ad also chosen me
in the glass of water next my bed read to me, and comfort me
the delicate-, bewitching fragrance the bookmark for tomorrow night
I love that Rose as my chosen

I am gardener…. I prune, sheer… at times

…..only one Rose reads to me… I a lesser Gardener
Lesser, cause I’m only able t’love one Rose…..this Rose here
….those Roses there, some’r lessor Roses, some’r superior Roses, are my friends
Lesser in texture, shape and fiber and fragrance
Some superior in texture, or shape and or fiber and or fragrance
Friends equal in dimension with the Rose, but less in love than the Rose
…..every night one bloom from The Rose, that’s chosen me
in the glass of water next my bed read to me, and comfort me
the delicate-, bewitching fragrance the bookmark for tomorrow night
I love that Rose as my chosen

I, the gardener…. I prune, sheer…. at times
These other Roses who chose my garden
...so valuable in a muchness o’ Friendship,
…the quality their love much the same as that The Rose
Different the lesser my love, even though my caring equals that towards The Rose
We are blessed, those of us in the garden
…the magnificence of this garden in my life is the sumtotal of you all in my garden
I drink your fragrance intoxicated with love
I love The Rose, and my friends these other Roses in the garden Bless this love

poem by Johan Fourie
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Days of My Life

Greater do I feel today, above all other days,
Yet not one person sees me.
Normal do I feel today, like the rest of the days,
Yet not one person sees me.
Lesser do I feel today, for the rest of my days,
Yet not one person sees me.

Greater do I feel today, above all other days,
Yet not one person hears me.
Normal do I feel today, like the rest of the days,
Yet not one person hears me.
Lesser do I feel today, for the rest of my days.
Yet not one person hears me.

Greater do I feel today, above all other days,
Yet not one person knows me.
Normal do I feel today, like the rest of the days,
Yet not one person knows me.
Lesser do I feel today, for the rest of my days,
Yet not one person knows me.

poem by Stephen Howard
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The Farewell XXVIII

And now it was evening.

And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken."

And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?

Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.

And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.

Even while the earth sleeps we travel.

We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.

But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,

And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.

Yea, I shall return with the tide,

And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.

And not in vain will I seek.

If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.

I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;

And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.

The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.

And not unlike the mist have I been.

In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,

And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.

Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.

And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.

[...] Read more

poem by Khalil Gibran
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The Song Of Solomon

The song of solomon
The song of everyone
Who walks the path
Of the solitary heart
The soul cries out
Hear a woman singing
Dont want your bullshit, yeah
Just want your sexuality
Dont want excuses, yeah
Write me your poetry in motion
Write it just for me, yeah
And sing it with a kiss
Mmm, just take any line
Comfort me with apples
For I am sick of love
His left hand is under my head
And his right hand
Doth embrace me
This is the song of solomon
Heres a woman singing
Dont want your bullshit, yeah
Just want your sexuality
Dont want your excuses, yeah
Write me your poetry in motion
Write it just for me, yeah
And sign it with a kiss
And Ill do it for you
Ill be the rose of sharon for you
Ill do it for you
Ill be the lily of the valley for you
Ill do it for you
Ill be isolde or marion for you
Ill do it for you
Ooh Ill come in a hurricane for you
Ill do it for you
A wop bam boom
Dont want your bullshit, yeah
Just want your sexuality

song performed by Kate Bush
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Decoding History In Bed

Our histories, though cryptically encoded,
can be decoded once we go to bed,
when sperm and cunty juices are downloaded,
or when a dream removes our maidenhead.

Inspired by Adam Phillips’s review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, ” in the LRB, April 26,2007:

The important thing here—and in all forms of history writing which, like Daniel Mendelsohn’s, have been affected by Freud—is not that everything is ‘reduced’ to sexuality, but that everything is subsumed by memory: desire for the past has the urgency and ingenuity once accorded to sexuality. Sexuality matters because it is one’s history at its most cryptically encoded. Family history shows up at one’s most intimate exchanges with other people. The lost—the literal and more figurative losses from one’s past—are never, in this view, quite as lost as one feared, or indeed hoped.

5/20/07

poem by Gershon Hepner
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She Just Wants To Be

Its not that she walked away,
Her world got smaller.
All the usual places, the same destinations,
Only somethings changed.
Its not that she wasnt rewarded
With pomegranate afternoons
And mingus, chet baker and chess.
Its not the stampede and fortune
Of prim affectations
Shes off on a right and she knows now
Its greater than the whole
Of the past
Its greater
And now she knows.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
Its not that the transparency
Of earlier incarnations
Now were back on, were enriched
And loaded
With beautiful vulnerability
And now she knows.
Now is greater
And she knows that.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
Now is greater
Now is greater
And she knows that
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
Its not like the angels
Could truly look down
Stir up the trappings
And light on the ground.
Remind us of what, when,
Why or who?
The hows up to us, me and you
And now is greater than the whole
Of the past
Is greater and now she knows that.
Now she knows.

song performed by REM
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The Greater Love Unanswered

The greater love unanswered; it could only end this way,
a star without planets shining into the inhuman solitude
that receives everything without distinction or caste
like mountains toppling into the valleys that shadowed their rising
or the luminous myriads of the night
into the visionary cauldron of the dawn
that drowns them in their own beginnings, an excess of light
that drew too near to read the fading scrawl
of disenfranchised love letters
from a god fashionably unfaced. And I have seen birds
disappearing into the quiescent dusk like prayers
that fold their wings in an unknown grove
to wait for a morning that rarely comes, a song
that would hurl them back into the light, redeemed,
because the greater love unanswered,
it could only end this way. This world, a scintillance of dust
in the gaping darkness of implacable aeons
whose indifference to mind and matter alike
is worse than any judgment, grows lonelier with the truth.
A smile and a wound, one heart nudged toward another
in the frenzy of mad water
drawn out by the poultice of the moon, life is a cannibal
that wolfs its own, eats the candle and the flame
to pursue a scheme of persistence
shuffling the portfolios of proven minerals
to maximize the largesse of its living issue
with intensified affinities of blood and vision.
Bless the modern man who has sloughed his life
like a skin of chrome for an aimless longevity
that cannot grow older than the eternity he is.
The greater love unanswered; it could only end this way.
He passes away like a pore on the cheek
of someone he never met.
Without going anywhere everything passes,
spring buds on the branches and Jupiter
flashing its tiny plinths of lightning
at the cradles of the elm in the upper boughs
sweeping the sky of stars,
and love, and friendship, and family,
and arrayed in the veils of its own enigma, beauty,
the only acceptable apology
for the serial distortions of time.
Transformations of the orthodoxy I call myself
keep turning the mirror inside out
so that one word of enlightenment
might be poised on my tongue when I die, but
until then, I am bound by a serpent of doubt
to drink from its fountains of fire
a martyr to my own desire. The greater love unanswered;
it could only end this way, a creature

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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God`s Proclamations 2012

Foreword:

I spoke the other day
These words of my proclamations
To one Dinesh Nair a dwarf bard in the East.
I spoke to him aloud,
'If you are a mortal honest, write now
My proclamations in words sans mercy incarnate'.

No sooner did I learn that I was not there than I was there.
I came from nothing and everything came from me all say..
I was confused first and more confused now.
I spoke out my heart for a while
And your hearts must be filled now fast
With thoughts great.

I

I am:
I am the Alfa and the Omega some say,
I am omnipotent and omnipresent they add
And I enjoy the eulogies ever and ever.
I am merciful and bounteous some chant.
I am the bread giver and the protector of millions many chant
And I feel like going mad.

I am aloft the universe void
And I am not your father nor is his son henceforth.
I am the one doomed to rule your minds in vain yet.

I once kept a flute on the mouth
And led a herd of cattle; not men or women,
I made a battle for killing a hundred cousins
For the five, their cousins stood by me ever.
I was a leveler for sometime, many said.

II

What I still do:
With an ire of no reason
I ever cast my eyes on your lands green,
Then I divided the world altogether
And made haves and have-nots at a spell.
I sent demons of dark shades
To ensure the fall of the East and the West
And in between the Pacific and the Atlantic
I painted a white President in black
And asked him to under go the ordeal twice.
I set fire on Somalia,
Cast a spell of terror on the subcontinent of Asia,

[...] Read more

poem by M.d Dinesh Nair
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Paradise Lost: Book 07

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwellest; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering: with like safety guided down
Return me to my native element:
Lest from this flying steed unreined, (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime,)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere;
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east: still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores:
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.
Say, Goddess, what ensued when Raphael,
The affable Arch-Angel, had forewarned
Adam, by dire example, to beware
Apostasy, by what befel in Heaven
To those apostates; lest the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his race,
Charged not to touch the interdicted tree,
If they transgress, and slight that sole command,
So easily obeyed amid the choice
Of all tastes else to please their appetite,
Though wandering. He, with his consorted Eve,

[...] Read more

poem by John Milton
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Orlando Furioso Canto 18

ARGUMENT
Gryphon is venged. Sir Mandricardo goes
In search of Argier's king. Charles wins the fight.
Marphisa Norandino's men o'erthrows.
Due pains Martano's cowardice requite.
A favouring wind Marphisa's gallery blows,
For France with Gryphon bound and many a knight.
The field Medoro and Cloridano tread,
And find their monarch Dardinello dead.

I
High minded lord! your actions evermore
I have with reason lauded, and still laud;
Though I with style inapt, and rustic lore,
You of large portion of your praise defraud:
But, of your many virtues, one before
All others I with heart and tongue applaud,
- That, if each man a gracious audience finds,
No easy faith your equal judgment blinds.

II
Often, to shield the absent one from blame,
I hear you this, or other, thing adduce;
Or him you let, at least, an audience claim,
Where still one ear is open to excuse:
And before dooming men to scaith and shame,
To see and hear them ever is your use;
And ere you judge another, many a day,
And month, and year, your sentence to delay.

III
Had Norandine been with your care endued,
What he by Gryphon did, he had not done.
Profit and fame have from your rule accrued:
A stain more black than pitch he cast upon
His name: through him, his people were pursued
And put to death by Olivero's son;
Who at ten cuts or thrusts, in fury made,
Some thirty dead about the waggon laid.

IV
Whither fear drives, in rout, the others all,
Some scattered here, some there, on every side,
Fill road and field; to gain the city-wall
Some strive, and smothered in the mighty tide,
One on another, in the gateway fall.
Gryphon, all thought of pity laid aside,
Threats not nor speaks, but whirls his sword about,
Well venging on the crowd their every flout.

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poem by Ludovico Ariosto
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Lohengrin

THE holy bell, untouched by human hands,
Clanged suddenly, and tolled with solemn knell.

Between the massive, blazoned temple-doors,
Thrown wide, to let the summer morning in,
Sir Lohengrin, the youngest of the knights,
Had paused to taste the sweetness of the air.
All sounds came up the mountain-side to him,
Softened to music,— noise of laboring men,
The cheerful cock-crow and the low of kine,
Bleating of sheep, and twittering of the birds,
Commingled into murmurous harmonies—
When harsh, and near, and clamorous tolled the bell.
He started, with his hand upon his sword;
His face, an instant since serene and fair,
And simple with the beauty of a boy,
Heroic, flushed, expectant all at once.
The lovely valley stretching out beneath
Was now a painted picture,— nothing more;
All music of the mountain or the vale
Rang meaningless to him who heard the bell.
'I stand upon the threshold, and am called,'
His clear, young voice shrilled gladly through the air,
And backward through the sounding corridors.

'And have ye heard the bell, my brother knights,
Untouched by human hands or winds of heaven?
It called me, yea, it called my very name!'
So, breathing still of morning, Lohengrin
Sprang 'midst the gathering circle of the knights,
Eager, exalted. 'Nay, it called us all:
It rang as it hath often rung before,—
Because the good cause, somewhere on the earth,
Requires a champion,' with a serious smile,
An older gravely answered. 'Where to go?
We know not, and we know not whom to serve.'
Then spake Sir Percivale, their holiest knight,
And father of the young Sir Lohengrin:
'All that to us seems old, familiar, stale,
Unto the boy is vision, miracle.
Cross him not, brethren, in his first desire.
I will dare swear the summons rang to him,
Not sternly solemn, as it tolled to us,
But gracious, sweet, and gay as marriage-bells.'
His pious hands above the young man's head
Wandered in blessing, lightly touching it,
As fondly as a mother. 'Lohengrin,
My son, farewell,— God send thee faith and strength.'
' God send me patience and humility,'
Murmured the boyish knight, from contrite heart,

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poem by Emma Lazarus
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