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The 'Poem' Project

Trying to convert poems, one format to another, plenty of headaches and bother.
A good friend helped with the issue, probably wished he hadn't agreed to.!
We weren't exactly the 'computer generation', as we tried to find a solution.
After all it couldn't be hard, so we thought, a lesson we'd be taught.! !
Discussing the problem, telephone and email, it became the 'holy grail'.

Formatting, copy, paste and scans, ideas, theories and part plans.!
Information read, advice requested, the 'poem' project we underestimated!
Errors, glitches, testing and trials, through scratching heads and 'gritted' smiles.
Bad and some good luck, we'd get a bit cocky, then again we got stuck!
Short lived success and celebrations, then frustrations and exasperations.,
One step forward, then three or four back, deep breaths, and a 'renewed attack'.!
Down loads, files, programmes, amid the the mental tantrums.
At our wits end, those computers sent us round the bend.
Those silicon chip sods, laughed at us like demon 'gods'.
At our attempts to solve the issue, as frustrations grew!

Settings and defaults, oh memories of old 'nuts 'n' bolts'! !
Those days were long gone, back to deciphering the silicone,
Frowns and mental anguish, those digital rascals had a 'death wish'.
Finding a solution mattered, in the process we got our heads battered.
On and on we battled, until the problem was settled.

Success came of our endeavours, against those callous computers.
It had been haphazard, hours on the mouse and keyboard.
Mentally battered and physically drained, our 'mouse fingers' strained.!
Twitches and withdrawn faces, those contraptions put us through our paces.
Our 'thousand yard stares', ready are our slippers, gowns, rocking chairs.
For that rest home and T.V. room, we may be occupying very soon.!

poem by Guy Lipmore
Added by Poetry Lover
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The Holy Grail

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Added by Poetry Lover
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My Generation

People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
Why dont you all f-fade away (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
And dont try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
Im just talkin bout my g-g-generation (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (talkin bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (talkin bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
This is my generation, baby

song performed by Who
Added by Lucian Velea
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My Generation

[Originally by The Who]
People try to put us d-down Talkin' 'Bout My Generation
just because we get around. Talkin' 'bout my generation
Things they do look awful c-c-cold. Talkin' 'bout my generation
I hope I die before I get old. Talkin' 'bout my generation
This is my generation,
this is my generation, baby.
Why don't you all f-fade away? Talkin' 'bout my generation
Yeah, don't try and dig what we all s-s-say. Talkin' 'bout my generation
I'm not tryin' to cause a big s-s-sensation, Talkin' 'bout my generation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation. Talkin' 'bout my generation
It's my generation,
it's my generation, baby.
Why don't you all f-fade away? Talkin' 'bout my generation
Yeah, don't try d-dig what we all s-s-s-s-s-say. Talkin' 'bout my generation
Not tryin' to cause a big sensation, Talkin' 'bout my generation
Just talkin' 'bout my g-generation. Talkin' 'bout my generation
Yeah, my generation,
this is my generation, baby,
generation, generation.
People try to put us d-down Talkin' 'bout my generation
just because we g-g-g-get around. Talkin' 'bout my generation
Things they do look awful c-c-cold. Talkin' 'bout my generation
I hope I die before I get old. Talkin' 'bout my generation
It's my generation,
this is my generation, baby,
ma-ma-my generation.
Talkin' 'bout my generation. Talkin' about
Talkin' 'bout my generation. my generation,
Talkin' 'bout my generation. my generation,
Talkin' 'bout my generation. my generation,
Talkin' 'bout my generation. yes, my generation, baby
Talkin' 'bout my gene

song performed by Iron Maiden
Added by Lucian Velea
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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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My Generation

People, people, people, people
People try to put us down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I don't die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation)
My generation
My generation, baby
Why don't you all fade away (talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all say (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a big sensation (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my generation (talkin' 'bout my generation)
My generation
My generation, baby
My generation
Why don't you all fade away (talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all say (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a b-big sensation (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my generation (talkin' 'bout my generation)
My generation
My generation, baby
My generation
My generation, baby
People try to put us down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I don't die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation)
My generation
My generation, baby
My generation
My generation, baby
My generation
My generation, baby
My generation
My generation, baby
People try to put us down

song performed by Hilary Duff
Added by Lucian Velea
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New Generation

It's a new generation
Telling it the way they feel
(new generation)
It's a new generation
singing it loud and clear
(new generation)
It's a new generation
really know whats happening here.
(new generation)
It's a new generation
looking for a peace of mind
(new generation)
New generation
groovin' it down the line
(new generation)
new generation
groovin' it all the time
(new generation)
take it over
take it over,
sock it to 'em
sock it to 'em,
let 'em have it
let 'em have it,
give it to 'em
give it to 'em (2X)
It's a new generation
Telling it the way they feel
(new generation)
It's a new generation
singing it loud and clear
(new generation)
It's a new generation
really know whats happening here.
(new generation)
It's a new generation
looking for a peace of mind
(generation, new generation)
New generation
groovin' it down the line
(generation, new generation)
new generation
groovin' it all the time
(generation, new generation)
take it over
take it over,
sock it to 'em
sock it to 'em,
let 'em have it
let 'em have it,

[...] Read more

song performed by Violent Femmes
Added by Lucian Velea
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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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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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My Generation

People try to put us d-down
Talkin bout my generation
Just because we get around
Talkin bout my generation
Things they do look awful cold
Talkin bout my generation
I hope I die before I get old
Talkin bout my generation
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Why dont you all fade away
Talkin bout my generation
Yeah, and dont try and dig what we all say
Talkin bout my generation
Im not trying to cause a big sensation
Talkin bout my generation
Im just talkin bout my generation
Talkin bout my generation
My generation, this is my generation, baby
Why dont you all fade away
Talk-in bout my generation
Yeah, and dont try and dig what we all say
Talkin bout my generation
Im not trying to cause a big sensation
Talkin bout my generation
Im just talkin bout my generation
Talkin bout my generation
This is my generation, this is my generation, baby
My my my generation
My my my
My my my generation
People try to put us down
Talkin bout my generation
Just because we get around
Talkin bout my generation
Things they do look awful cold
Talkin bout my generation
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old
Talkin bout my generation
This is my generation,
This is my generation, baby
My my my my generation
This is my generation
This is my...

song performed by Oasis
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

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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V. Count Guido Franceschini

Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of … why, 't is wine,
Velletri,—and not vinegar and gall,
So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!
Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head
To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.
How cautious and considerate … aie, aie, aie,
Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart
An ordinary matter. Law is law.
Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,
From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,
I have been put to the rack: all's over now,
And neither wrist—what men style, out of joint:
If any harm be, 't is the shoulder-blade,
The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket,—Sirs,
Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,
Being past my prime of life, and out of health.
In short, I thank you,—yes, and mean the word.
Needs must the Court be slow to understand
How this quite novel form of taking pain,
This getting tortured merely in the flesh,
Amounts to almost an agreeable change
In my case, me fastidious, plied too much
With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)
To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,
And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.
Four years have I been operated on
I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—
My self-respect, my care for a good name,
Pride in an old one, love of kindred—just
A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,
That looked up to my face when days were dim,
And fancied they found light there—no one spot,
Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.
That, and not this you now oblige me with,
That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!
The poor old noble House that drew the rags
O' the Franceschini's once superb array
Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by,—
Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out
And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!
Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence
Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,
The father I have some slight feeling for,
Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends
Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe,
Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,
Properly push his child to wall one day!

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Fifth Book

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

[...] Read more

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

Too many problems, oh why am I here?
I need to be me, cause youre all to clear
And I can see theres something wrong with you
Oh, what do you expect me to do?
At least I gotta know what I wanna be
Dont come to me if you need pity
Are you lonely, you got no-one
You got your body in suspension
Thats a problem, problem, problem
The problem is you
Eat your heart out on a plastic tray
You dont do what you want and you fade away
You work for me, youre working nine-to-five
Its too much fun of being alive
Im using my feet for my human machine
You work for me, living for the screen
Are you lonely, all needs catered
You got your brains dehydrated
Problem, problem, problem, the problem is you
Oh what what you gonna do, problem, problem
Problem, problem, problem, the problem is you
Well, what you gonna do with your problem
The problem is you, problem
I aint death trip, but I aint automatic
You work for me, just stay ecstatic
Dont you give me any orders
To people like me, there is no order
Bet you thought you had it all worked out
Bet you thought you knew what I was about
Bet you thought youd solved all your problems
But you are the problem
Problem, problem, problem, the problem is you
Oh, what you gonna do with your problem?
Ill leave it up to you, oh problem
The problem is you, you got a problem
Oh what you gonna do?
They know a doctor, gonna take you away
Thay take you away and they throw away the key
They dont want you and they dont want me
You got a problem the problem is you
Problem, well, what you gonna do?
Problem, have you got a problem?
Problem, well you got a problem
Problem (x17)

song performed by Megadeth
Added by Lucian Velea
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A Fable For Critics

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing;
Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk,
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk;
And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her,
He somehow or other had never forgiven her;
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic,
Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic,
And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over
By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her.
'My case is like Dido's,' he sometimes remarked;
'When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked
In a laurel, as _she_ thought-but (ah, how Fate mocks!)
She has found it by this time a very bad box;
Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,-
You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it.
Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress!
What romance would be left?-who can flatter or kiss trees?
And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue
With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,-
Not to say that the thought would forever intrude
That you've less chance to win her the more she is wood?
Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves,
To see those loved graces all taking their leaves;
Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now,
As they left me forever, each making its bough!
If her tongue _had_ a tang sometimes more than was right,
Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.'

Now, Daphne-before she was happily treeified-
Over all other blossoms the lily had deified,
And when she expected the god on a visit
('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit),
Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care,
To look as if artlessly twined in her hair,
Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses,
Like the day breaking through, the long night of her tresses;
So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible,
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table
(I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable,
Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel),-
He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it,
As I shall at the--, when they cut up my book in it.

Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning,
I've got back at last to my story's beginning:
Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress,
As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries,

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poem by James Russell Lowell
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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

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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II. Half-Rome

What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)
Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:
This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:
I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.
Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?
Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church
To hold a crowd at need, accommodate
All comers from the Corso! If this crush
Make not its priests ashamed of what they show
For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse
And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out
The beggarly transept with its bit of apse
Into a decent space for Christian ease,
Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.
Listen and estimate the luck they've had!
(The right man, and I hold him.)

Sir, do you see,
They laid both bodies in the church, this morn
The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,
Behind the little marble balustrade;
Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool
To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife
On the other side. In trying to count stabs,
People supposed Violante showed the most,
Till somebody explained us that mistake;
His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,
But she took all her stabbings in the face,
Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,
Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.
A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,
When you avenge your honour and only then,
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.
It was Violante gave the first offence,
Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:
While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death
Answered the purpose, so his face went free.
We fancied even, free as you please, that face
Showed itself still intolerably wronged;
Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,
Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,
Once the worst ended: an indignant air
O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned
Round and away, rolled from Violante's side
Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.
If so, if corpses can be sensitive,
Why did not he roll right down altar-step,
Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,
Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Second Book

TIMES followed one another. Came a morn
I stood upon the brink of twenty years,
And looked before and after, as I stood
Woman and artist,–either incomplete,
Both credulous of completion. There I held
The whole creation in my little cup,
And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank,
'Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine
And all these peoples.'
I was glad, that day;
The June was in me, with its multitudes
Of nightingales all singing in the dark,
And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.
I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God!
So glad, I could not choose be very wise!
And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull
My childhood backward in a childish jest
To see the face of't once more, and farewell!
In which fantastic mood I bounded forth
At early morning,–would not wait so long
As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings,
But, brushing a green trail across the lawn
With my gown in the dew, took will and way
Among the acacias of the shrubberies,
To fly my fancies in the open air
And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke
To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on,
As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves;
'The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned
Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone,
And so with me it must be, unless I prove
Unworthy of the grand adversity,–
And certainly I would not fail so much.
What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day
In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,
Before my brows be numb as Dante's own
To all the tender pricking of such leaves?
Such leaves? what leaves?'
I pulled the branches down,
To choose from.
'Not the bay! I choose no bay;
The fates deny us if we are overbold:
Nor myrtle–which means chiefly love; and love
Is something awful which one dare not touch
So early o' mornings. This verbena strains
The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by,
This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck
Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
Ah–there's my choice,–that ivy on the wall,
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow

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

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.

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poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
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The Grail

In the village Bellastrino
On the craggy Tuscan hills,
Lies an old abandoned Abbey
And the Church of San Michele,
Though the village was abandoned
There are two who would not go,
The Abbot, Father Grandier,
The Priest, Don Angelo.

The Abbey on the mountain top,
The Church down in the dell,
They'd fought, these two, for twenty years
Consigning each to Hell!
For in the Church of San Michele
Before the village failed,
Down in the crypt, beneath the floor
They'd found the Holy Grail.

A bowl, fine wrought in pale green glass,
There's no room for debate,
The Templar Knights had left it in
Eleven eighty-eight,
They'd always said they would return,
In fact, they never did,
They went to challenge Saladin
And died, as they had lived!

‘It's mine, ' said Father Grandier,
‘Not so, ' said Angelo,
‘I found it and I'm keeping it,
Here, in the Church below.'
‘It should be in the Abbey, '
Father Grandier opined,
‘Its glory on the mountain top…'
‘Not so! The Grail is mine! '

For years the two had tussled
Had approached the Holy See,
The Pope thought it ridiculous
And said: ‘Don't bother me!
We have two dozen of those things,
A heap of rusty nails,
All from the Cross at Calvary
But these are peasant tales.'

A Cardinal then came to call
And tried to sort them out,
Well practiced in diplomacy
He said: ‘No need to shout!
You have a choir each, ' he said

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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