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Trinity Of Carnatic Music 1-St.Thyagaraja

You're lost in the ism of Rama
Leaving behind a mission of Rama
Whence a practice of euphony
Across the compass of tones
Treasuring a supernal bliss long trailed

You know the heft of the bliss?
As much as that of Rama
Ethereally coloured quantum
Your-way-caressed to melt
Into our souls abundantly scaled

Your realm of scales, mode of melodies
Credence of pristine musical perseverence
Whole spirit alone with Rama
Ineffable elation of a doctrine for salvage

How am I to accost?
Guru? swamy, rishi, poet, writer, father?
You're the immortal, empyreal adept
Permeated and permeating intranssient
A cult of popularism for soul-liberation
How else be acclaimed than 'Nadabrahmam'
And 'Nadabrahmam' alone

poem by Indira Renganathan
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I Wanna Melt With U

I got 7 hours, baby. so what cha wanna do?
(ooh - I wanna melt with u)
(ooh - I wanna melt with u)
This is safe sex, (ooh - I wanna melt with u)
New power generation style
A funky little story about u and me (ooh - I wanna melt with u)
Gettin busy 4 awhile
From the tip of my typhoon (ooh - I wanna melt with u)
2 the bottom of your ankle chains
We gonna shake and shake and shake
Until were both deranged
With endorphins
This is the ultimate rave
Ooh - I wanna melt with u
S 2 the s
Slow and slippery, groovy
If we bathe in each others hips
In other words, get close enough to stick
And Ill melt with u
And u can melt with me 2
And well groove and groove until the earth moves
I want 2 melt with u, yeah
Dont look now, but theres a river of blood
U must have been a virgin
What am I guilty of? oh no (oh no)
Are u afraid? then take me 2 the next phase...
Slow and slippery, groovy
If we bathe in each others hips
In other words, get close enough to stick (oh yeah)
And Ill melt with u (melting)
And u can melt with me 2
And well groove and groove until the earth moves
I want 2 melt with u, yeah (hit me)
Im thinkin about the quivery ocean (ooh, I wanna melt with u)
And drippin all over your every motion
And thinkin about the way that u kiss (I wanna melt with u)
Im thinkin about some of this
And Im thinkin about some of that
And then my backbone slips (I wanna melt with u)
And my lips just drip
And then the hips just whip and whip and...
(I wanna melt with u)
(I wanna melt with u)
Yeah, do that baby
Yeah, do that baby
Yeah, do that baby, just like a dog (ooh, I wanna melt with u)
Yeah, do that baby, just like a dog (ooh, I wanna melt with u)
Yeah, do that baby, just like a dog
Slow and slippery, groovy
If we bathe in each others hips (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

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song performed by Prince
Added by Lucian Velea
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Pearl

Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
To grace in gold enclosed so clear,
I vow that from over orient seas
Never proved I any in price her peer.
So round, so radiant ranged by these,
So fine, so smooth did her sides appear
That ever in judging gems that please
Her only alone I deemed as dear.
Alas! I lost her in garden near:
Through grass to the ground from me it shot;
I pine now oppressed by love-wound drear
For that pearl, mine own, without a spot.

2
Since in that spot it sped from me,
I have looked and longed for that precious thing
That me once was wont from woe to free,
To uplift my lot and healing bring,
But my heart doth hurt now cruelly,
My breast with burning torment sting.
Yet in secret hour came soft to me
The sweetest song I e'er heard sing;
Yea, many a thought in mind did spring
To think that her radiance in clay should rot.
O mould! Thou marrest a lovely thing,
My pearl, mine own, without a spot.

3
In that spot must needs be spices spread
Where away such wealth to waste hath run;
Blossoms pale and blue and red
There shimmer shining in the sun;
No flower nor fruit their hue may shed
Where it down into darkling earth was done,
For all grass must grow from grains that are dead,
No wheat would else to barn be won.
From good all good is ever begun,
And fail so fair a seed could not,
So that sprang and sprouted spices none
From that precious pearl without a spot.

4
That spot whereof I speak I found
When I entered in that garden green,
As August's season high came round
When corn is cut with sickles keen.
There, where that pearl rolled down, a mound
With herbs was shadowed fair and sheen,
With gillyflower, ginger, and gromwell crowned,
And peonies powdered all between.

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poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Practice Every Step

Practice every step.
Do not second guess what it takes.
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

There's no sleeping for someone who has a place to go,
So...
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

Focus on that goal,
And tighten on your hold,
And...
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

Practice every step.
Do not second guess what it takes.
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

Every journey taken,
Must be thought of as a race...
And,
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

There's no other way to straighten out a crooked road,
So...
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

No matter what you're told,
There will be some doubts and woes...
But you,
Practice every step.
Yes you,
Practice every step.

Woes you hold will eventually go,
So...
Practice every step.
Practice every step.
Practice every step.
Practice every step.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Loves of the Angels

'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory and young Time
Told his first birth-days by the sun;
When in the light of Nature's dawn
Rejoicing, men and angels met
On the high hill and sunny lawn,-
Ere sorrow came or Sin had drawn
'Twixt man and heaven her curtain yet!
When earth lay nearer to the skies
Than in these days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw without surprise
In the mid-air angelic eyes
Gazing upon this world below.

Alas! that Passion should profane
Even then the morning of the earth!
That, sadder still, the fatal stain
Should fall on hearts of heavenly birth-
And that from Woman's love should fall
So dark a stain, most sad of all!

One evening, in that primal hour,
On a hill's side where hung the ray
Of sunset brightening rill and bower,
Three noble youths conversing lay;
And, as they lookt from time to time
To the far sky where Daylight furled
His radiant wing, their brows sublime
Bespoke them of that distant world-
Spirits who once in brotherhood
Of faith and bliss near ALLA stood,
And o'er whose cheeks full oft had blown
The wind that breathes from ALLA'S throne,
Creatures of light such as still play,
Like motes in sunshine, round the Lord,
And thro' their infinite array
Transmit each moment, night and day,
The echo of His luminous word!

Of Heaven they spoke and, still more oft,
Of the bright eyes that charmed them thence;
Till yielding gradual to the soft
And balmy evening's influence-
The silent breathing of the flowers-
The melting light that beamed above,
As on their first, fond, erring hours,-
Each told the story of his love,
The history of that hour unblest,
When like a bird from its high nest

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poem by Thomas Moore
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New dimension

I fully agree with discarding the "ism"
Not disregarding totally their "ism"
As it has remained age old tradition
To confine with one and only condition

We are no authority to malign
Not to force any one to align
Wrap up in our thoughts
Some of the lessons forcibly taught

Let individual sticks to his own belief
Trust and profess that gives him relief
For worldly worries and tension
So it will be worthless for anything to mention

Yes nationalism has something greater role
Unity is must among population for honest call
To Breath for universal love and to profess
The kind of "ism" that has not been heard on surface

Love for country by people is understandable
But blind faith and "ism" for forcing others is condemnable
Here comes point of conflict where it assumes significance
Then it can't be discarded outright or at once

In my opinion there is greater role for humanism
This "ism" is holier than any other "ism"
It is not folly and should not be considered as such wholly
It is above all "isms" and so to be considered holy

No clever argument can push this "ism" in corner
It has to be realized sooner or later
Some of the intelligent people try to create confusion
It comes not out of pity but just out of infusion

Think of immense relief reaching to affected people
From all corners of world to the people in trouble
No religion or "ism" tag for rendering assistance
It is human face that is rushing without taking any chance

It is certainly not a new dogma
It is like fountain and flora
It flows from human heart with new dimension
Just waiting to show its class with worthless mention

poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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The Ballad of the White Horse

DEDICATION

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood

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poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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Wind-Clouds And Star-Drifts

FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM

I.

AMBITION

ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid,
The orb that waits my search is hid with them.
Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,
To plant my ladder and to gain the round
That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame,
Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won?
Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear
That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel
Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;
But the fair garland whose undying green
Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues
That speak my praise; but better far the sense
That in the unshaped ages, buried deep
In the dark mines of unaccomplished time
Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die
And coined in golden days,--in those dim years
I shall be reckoned with the undying dead,
My name emblazoned on the fiery arch,
Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade.
Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,
Sages of race unborn in accents new
Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old,
Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky
Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls
The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere
The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name
To the dim planet with the wondrous rings;
Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp,
And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove;
But this, unseen through all earth's ions past,
A youth who watched beneath the western star
Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men;
Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore
So shall that name be syllabled anew
In all the tongues of all the tribes of men:
I that have been through immemorial years
Dust in the dust of my forgotten time
Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath,
Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born
In shining stone, in undecaying bronze,
And stand on high, and look serenely down
On the new race that calls the earth its own.

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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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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Seeta, a pity.

Seeta, you are a noble lady,
So chaste, so modest and so graceful.
Rama is your noble lord,
So virtuous, so chivalrous and so truthful.
Ravna is your bitter lover,
So passionate, so devoted and so lustful.
Rama waged a war to redeem you.
Ravna laid his life to retain you.
Rama loved you, as you are his wife.
Ravna wanted you for what you are.
Rama tested you by fire.
If you failed, what would be your fate?
Can Ravna do so, if he were in Rama’s shoes?
Love of Rama is conditional
Love of Ravna is categorical.
Rama loves you; Ravna devours you.
You are second to none to Ravna,
Who lost everything for you and
Who could do anything for you?
Have not you committed a sin
In being the cause for killing a loving dog?
The love for keeping chastity,
More than you love for Rama,
Weighed on you to reject Ravna.
The love for your chastity,
Rather than his love for you,
Weighed on Rama to own you back.
Ravna’s love for you is pure.
He desired you more than Rama did.
You would have lived more vividly
Had you met Ravna first and married.
Instead, you were at loss to earn a sin.
I pity you.
06.06.2002, pakd
[Based on the Hindu Epic

poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Melt The Guns

(andy partridge)
Programmes of violence,
As entertainment,
Brings the disease into your room.
We know the germ,
Which is man-made in metal,
Is really a key to your own tomb.
Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
Youll gather your senses Im sure
Then agree to,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.
Children will want them,
Mothers supply them,
As long as your killers are heroes.
And all the media
Will fiddle while rome burns,
Acting like modern-time neros.
Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
Youll gather your senses Im sure
Then agree to,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.
Im speaking to the justice league of america.
The u s of a,
Hey you,
Yes you in particular!
When it comes to the judgement day and youre standing at the gates with your weaponry,
You dead go down on one knee,
Clasp your hands in prayer and start quoting me,
cos we say...
Our father weve managed to contain the epidemic in one place, now,
Lets hope they shoot themselves instead of others,
Help to civilize the race now.
Weve trapped the cause of the plague,
In the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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song performed by Xtc
Added by Lucian Velea
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Melt The Guns

(andy partridge)
Programmes of violence,
As entertainment,
Brings the disease into your room.
We know the germ,
Which is man-made in metal,
Is really a key to your own tomb.
Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
Youll gather your senses Im sure
Then agree to,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.
Children will want them,
Mothers supply them,
As long as your killers are heroes.
And all the media
Will fiddle while rome burns,
Acting like modern-time neros.
Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
Youll gather your senses Im sure
Then agree to,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.
Im speaking to the justice league of america.
The u s of a,
Hey you,
Yes you in particular!
When it comes to the judgement day and youre standing at the gates with your weaponry,
You dead go down on one knee,
Clasp your hands in prayer and start quoting me,
cos we say...
Our father weve managed to contain the epidemic in one place, now,
Lets hope they shoot themselves instead of others,
Help to civilize the race now.
Weve trapped the cause of the plague,
In the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[...] Read more

song performed by Xtc
Added by Lucian Velea
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Who's Living With That Mission?

Who here,
Lives to dance and sing?
Who here,
Lives to hear the birds singing?
And who here,
Lives their life just to give?
Who's living with that mission?

Who's living with that mission?
Who's living with that mission?

Who here,
Wakes up to give a damn?
Who here,
Demands to give a helping hand?
And who here,
Knows that peace has a chance?
Who's living with that mission?

Who's living with that mission?
Who's living with that mission?

Who here,
Thinks about their fellowman?
Who here,
Gives their neighbor understanding?
And who here,
Wants the bleeding done by man...
To end and please them?

Who's living with that mission?
Who's living with that mission?

Who here,
Thinks about what is right?
Who here,
Wants to do that day and night?
And who here,
Prays conflicts and fights
Would end!

Who's living with that mission?
Who's living with that mission?

Who here,
Lives to dance and sing?
Who here,
Lives to hear the birds singing?
And who here,
Lives their life just to give?

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Lancelot And Elaine

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where the morning's earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon
All the devices blazoned on the shield
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climbed
That eastern tower, and entering barred her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it,
Conjecturing when and where: this cut is fresh;
That ten years back; this dealt him at Caerlyle;
That at Caerleon; this at Camelot:
And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there!
And here a thrust that might have killed, but God
Broke the strong lance, and rolled his enemy down,
And saved him: so she lived in fantasy.

How came the lily maid by that good shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not even his name?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond jousts,
Which Arthur had ordained, and by that name
Had named them, since a diamond was the prize.

For Arthur, long before they crowned him King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave
Like its own mists to all the mountain side:
For here two brothers, one a king, had met
And fought together; but their names were lost;
And each had slain his brother at a blow;
And down they fell and made the glen abhorred:
And there they lay till all their bones were bleached,
And lichened into colour with the crags:
And he, that once was king, had on a crown
Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.
And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,
All in a misty moonshine, unawares

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poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Not at a Loss Chord - after Adelaide Anne Procter – A Lost Chord

Not at a Loss Chord

Playing one day with my organ,
I was blissful – not ill at ease -
while five fingers wandered wildly
web-cams recording each wheeze.

I know the spot vibrating,
less what I was dreaming then,
but I strummed with both will and spirit
and an “Oh My God! Amen! ”

Adrenaline flowed not vainly
from heart to crimson palm,
as it coursed both veins and spirit
with little akin to calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
like love overcoming strife;
it seem[en]ed orgasmic echo
to tune discordant life.

It linked all perplexèd meanings
into one perfect peace,
and trembled away into silence
although I was loth to cease.

I have sought, and I seek not vainly,
that one G spot divine,
which linked my soul to the organ
so manifestly mine.

La petite morte delightful
strikes shivering molten core,
as this little verse insightful
calls for en corps encore!

It may be that Death's bright angel
will speak in that chord again,
for it’s surely in seventh Heaven
one sings “Oh My God! Amen! ”

Parody Adelaide Anne PROCTER – A Lost Chord
8 April 2007

ROBIN Jonathan 1947_2006 robi3_1338_proc1_0001 PXY_MXX Not at a Loss Chord_Playing one day with my organ
A Lost Chord

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

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poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Tamar

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

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

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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Undying One- Canto III

'THERE is a sound the autumn wind doth make
Howling and moaning, listlessly and low:
Methinks that to a heart that ought to break
All the earth's voices seem to murmur so.
The visions that crost
Our path in light--
The things that we lost
In the dim dark night--
The faces for which we vainly yearn--
The voices whose tones will not return--
That low sad wailing breeze doth bring
Borne on its swift and rushing wing.
Have ye sat alone when that wind was loud,
And the moon shone dim from the wintry cloud?
When the fire was quench'd on your lonely hearth,
And the voices were still which spoke of mirth?

If such an evening, tho' but one,
It hath been yours to spend alone--
Never,--though years may roll along
Cheer'd by the merry dance and song;
Though you mark'd not that bleak wind's sound before,
When louder perchance it used to roar--
Never shall sound of that wintry gale
Be aught to you but a voice of wail!
So o'er the careless heart and eye
The storms of the world go sweeping by;
But oh! when once we have learn'd to weep,
Well doth sorrow his stern watch keep.
Let one of our airy joys decay--
Let one of our blossoms fade away--
And all the griefs that others share
Seem ours, as well as theirs, to bear:
And the sound of wail, like that rushing wind
Shall bring all our own deep woe to mind!

'I went through the world, but I paused not now
At the gladsome heart and the joyous brow:
I went through the world, and I stay'd to mark
Where the heart was sore, and the spirit dark:
And the grief of others, though sad to see,
Was fraught with a demon's joy to me!

'I saw the inconstant lover come to take
Farewell of her he loved in better days,
And, coldly careless, watch the heart-strings break--
Which beat so fondly at his words of praise.
She was a faded, painted, guilt-bow'd thing,
Seeking to mock the hues of early spring,
When misery and years had done their worst

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poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII (Entire)

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,

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poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Idols

An Ode
Luce intellettual, piena d' amore

Prelude
Lo, the spirit of a pulsing star within a stone
Born of earth, sprung from night!
Prisoned with the profound fires of the light
That lives like all the tongues of eloquence
Locked in a speech unknown!
The crystal, cold and hard as innocence,
Immures the flame; and yet as if it knew
Raptures or pangs it could not but betray,
As if the light could feel changes of blood and breath
And all--but--human quiverings of the sense,
Throbs of a sudden rose, a frosty blue,
Shoot thrilling in its ray,
Like the far longings of the intellect
Restless in clouding clay.

Who has confined the Light? Who has held it a slave,
Sold and bought, bought and sold?
Who has made of it a mystery to be doled,
Or trophy, to awe with legendary fire,
Where regal banners wave?
And still into the dark it sends Desire.
In the heart's darkness it sows cruelties.
The bright jewel becomes a beacon to the vile,
A lodestar to corruption, envy's own:
Soiled with blood, fought for, clutched at; this world's prize,
Captive Authority. Oh, the star is stone
To all that outward sight,
Yet still, like truth that none has ever used,
Lives lost in its own light.

Troubled I fly. O let me wander again at will
(Far from cries, far from these
Hard blindnesses and frozen certainties!)
Where life proceeds in vastness unaware
And stirs profound and still:
Where leafing thoughts at shy touch of the air
Tremble, and gleams come seeking to be mine,
Or dart, like suddenly remembered youth,
Like the ache of love, a light, lost, found, and lost again.
Surely in the dusk some messenger was there!
But, haunted in the heart, I thirst, I pine.--
Oh, how can truth be truth
Except I taste it close and sweet and sharp
As an apple to the tooth?

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poem by Robert Laurence Binyon
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VII. Pompilia

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.

All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—

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