Freedom of Speech
Beware of the Mind Police!
You might get caught,
They'll put a microchip in your brain:
You won't even have Freedom of Thought!
poem by John Thorkild Ellison
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Related quotes
Universal Freedom Is......
Freedom from hunger and freedom from pain
freedom from loss and so freedom from gain.
Freedom to give and freedom to share
freedom from want and that of despair.
Freedom to think and freedom to know
freedom to achieve and freedom to grow.
Freedom from bondage and freedom of liberation
freedom from ignorance and any unknown situation.
Freedom to come and freedom to leave
freedom to stay and freedom to conceive.
Freedom from struggle and freedom of ease
freedom to enjoy and the capacity to please.
Freedom from failure and freedom of success
freedom from denial and freedom of access.
Freedom from illusion and freedom of reality
freedom to become what we are in actuality.
Freedom to live and freedom to die
freedom to laugh and freedom to cry.
Freedom to speak and freedom to listen
freedom to act based on a wise decision.
Freedom from hate and freedom of love
freedom of below and freedom of above.
Freedom of the past and freedom of the present
freedom of the future and what it can represent.
Freedom from war and freedom of peace
freedom to begin and freedom to cease.
Freedom from sickness and freedom of health
freedom from poverty and mishandled wealth.
Freedom from wrong and freedom being right
freedom of the day and freedom of the night.
Freedom to choose and freedom to reject
freedom to imagine what there is to expect.
Freedom from lust and freedom from greed
freedom from anger and freedom from breed.
Freedom from jealousy and freedom from pride
freedom from within and freedom from outside.
Freedom of always not having anything to hide.
Freedom from space and also freedom from time
freedom from attachment and freedom from crime
Freedom to work and freedom to play
freedom to believe and freedom to pray.
[...] Read more
poem by George Krokos
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On the Innate Drive For What is Right
As life bled, martyrdom flared its buds.
Repression, red from irritation,
Rendered chinks and cracks; but thuds of
Armament - in cowardice - accomplice of the
Dictatorial blight thro' countless years -
Wreaked its retribution:
Yet hope began to bloom a coloured carapace
Enshrining their allegiance ‘gainst the
Terror in their tears.
And on! Splits yawned - breaches in the junta:
Flesh fought fanatical minds -
Bullets welcomed into open hands
And blessed with yearnings for morality:
Chiselled man-toys of death and mutilation
Couldn't repel the might of freedom
Surging at the bright horizon.
Crepuscular rays of purpose, body,
Flooded pandemonium with
Overwhelming clarity, direction -
Burdened clouds drifting wayward as the
Light channelled out a vision,
Intensifying focus on tomorrow -
Deepen their stride
As they home in to
What is theirs,
Rightfully theirs!
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
[...] Read more
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Extension 33
Living at the y, extension 33,
Nothing to care or to worry.
Once I was in love with a blind man,
But my auntie told me, dont do it, its not worth it.
Living at the y, 33 years,
No one to call or to write to.
Once I was in love with a married man,
But my instincts told me, dont tell him, itll kill you.
Im sad I didnt marry the blind man,
But whats a life with three blind children?
Im glad I never told the married man,
It saved my pride and freedom.
Living at the y, in 33 rooms,
Nowhere to visit or write to.
Once I was in love, it nearly killed me,
But now I have my pride and freedom.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom and pride.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom and pride.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom and pride.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom and pride.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom and pride.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Freedom, freedom, freedom.
song performed by Yoko Ono
Added by Lucian Velea
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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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Carrolling II-Parody Lewis CARROLL–The Mad Gardener’s Song
Carolling II
He Thought He Saw
He thought he saw new Internet
exchanging peer to peer,
he looked again and found it was
a mirage for each year
sees more control, “what rôle, ” he said,
“for values once held dear?
Some track to trace attack and get
convictions based on fear.'
He dreamt he saw spam disappear,
all consultations free,
he looked again and found it was
a spybot lottery.
“Is net neutrality”, he said,
“from rash risks viral clear? ”
He dreamt that Microsoft would steer
all trash deleted fast,
then woke to find world insincere
where independence past
was sacrificed throughout the year
to biometrics ghast.
He thought he saw a friend’s hello,
with an attachment piece,
he looked again and found it was
the porno scanning police.
“Politically correct”, he said,
“can’t guarantee release.”
He opened it, discovered though,
a trojan horse to fleece –
he looked again as data flow
declined, - mind not at peace -
and whispered with voice hoarse and low:
'when will our worries cease? ”
He thought he saw a hierophant,
who’d deal successful life,
he looked again and found it was
subpoena from ex-wife
demanding child support, he said,
“cards are cut by Time’s knife.”
He looked once more with rage and rant
and swore like a fishwife
[...] Read more
poem by Jonathan Robin
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All The Girls In The World Beware!!!
I got tarter on my teeth, but I dont care.
I got dark brown stains, in my underwear.
Im a crumb and a bum, Im a slouch and a louse.
A crazy man who dont give a damn about his self.
Chorus
All the girls in the world beware!!!
All the girls in the world beware!!!
All the girls in the world beware!!!
All the girls in the world beware!!!
Im the crazy man.
Im the crazy man.
Im the craa ... zzy man.
I aint naive, I got a line or two.
Id even make one up, just to lay on you.
Im rude and Im shrewd, Im fat and Im bad.
Im a man who dont give a damn bout who he is.
Chorus
Chorus
Chorus
Im the crazy man.
Im the crazy man.
Im the craa ... zzy man.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware.
All the girls beware!!!
Im the crazy man.
All the girls in the world beware!!!
Im the crazy man.
All the girls in the world beware!!!
Im the craa ...
All the girls in the world beware!!!
... zzy man.
All the girls in the world beware!!!
Chorus
Craa ... zzy.
song performed by Grand Funk Railroad
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,
[...] Read more
poem by James Russell Lowell
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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
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Moore
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Beware My Love
Cant say Ive found out,
I cant tell you
Whats all about.
Dont know who does,
I tell you to
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Oh, oh, oh,
No, no, no.
I must be wrong, baby, yeah.
But I dont believe that hes the one,
But if you insist,
I must be wrong, I must be wrong,
I have to leave,
And when Im gone,
Ill leave my message in my song,
Thats right.
Beware, my love,
Hell bowl you over.
Beware, my love,
Before youre much older,
Hell sweep you up under his carpet.
Youd be in luck if you could stop it.
Come on, now.
Well, hell wear you out,
And in a miniute,
Youll hear a shout,
And then youll be in it.
So, so beware my love,
cause hell take you under.
Beware, my love,
The sound of his thunder;
Cant say (Ive) found out.
I tell you to
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
Beware, my love.
song performed by Paul McCartney
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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The House Of Dust: Complete
I.
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.
'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.
We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .
Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.
Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.
Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.
II.
[...] Read more
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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The Cōforte of Louers
The prohemye.
The gentyll poetes/vnder cloudy fygures
Do touche a trouth/and clokeit subtylly
Harde is to cōstrue poetycall scryptures
They are so fayned/& made sētēcyously
For som do wryte of loue by fables pryuely
Some do endyte/vpon good moralyte
Of chyualrous actes/done in antyquyte
Whose fables and storyes ben pastymes pleasaunt
To lordes and ladyes/as is theyr lykynge
Dyuers to moralyte/ben oft attendaunt
And many delyte to rede of louynge
Youth loueth aduenture/pleasure and lykynge
Aege foloweth polycy/sadnesse and prudence
Thus they do dyffre/eche in experyence
I lytell or nought/experte in this scyence
Compyle suche bokes/to deuoyde ydlenes
Besechynge the reders/with all my delygence
Where as I offende/for to correct doubtles
Submyttynge me to theyr grete gentylnes
As none hystoryagraffe/nor poete laureate
But gladly wolde folowe/the makynge of Lydgate
Fyrst noble Gower/moralytees dyde endyte
And after hym Cauncers/grete bokes delectable
Lyke a good phylozophre/meruaylously dyde wryte
After them Lydgate/the monke commendable
Made many wonderfull bokes moche profytable
But syth the are deed/& theyr bodyes layde in chest
I pray to god to gyue theyr soules good rest
Finis prohemii.
Whan fayre was phebus/w&supere; his bemes bryght
Amyddes of gemyny/aloft the fyrmament
Without blacke cloudes/castynge his pured lyght
With sorowe opprest/and grete incombrement
Remembrynge well/my lady excellent
Saynge o fortune helpe me to preuayle
For thou knowest all my paynfull trauayle
I went than musynge/in a medowe grene
Myselfe alone/amonge the floures in dede
With god aboue/the futertens is sene
To god I sayd/thou mayst my mater spede
And me rewarde/accordynge to my mede
Thou knowest the trouthe/I am to the true
Whan that thou lyst/thou mayst them all subdue
Who dyde preserue the yonge edyppus
Whiche sholde haue be slayne by calculacyon
To deuoyde grete thynges/the story sheweth vs
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poem by Stephen Hawes
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Carrolling - Parody Lewis CARROLL – The Mad Gardener’s Song
He thought he saw an Internet
exchanging peer to peer,
he looked again and hedged his bet, -
by middle of next year
new routing tables tuned as yet
unknown may well appear –
on track to trace attack and get
convictions based on fear.
He dreamt that spam would disappear,
all trash deleted fast.
He dreamt that Windows would be clear
of viral bugs’ wormcast.
He woke to find world insincere
where independence past
was sacrificed throughout the year
to biometrics ghast.
He thought he saw a friend’s hello
with an attachment piece,
he opened to discover, though,
a trojan horse release –
He looked again as data flow
declined, - mind not at peace -
and whispered with voice timbre low:
‘I’ll send for the Police! ”
He thought he saw a heirophant
predicting happy life.
He looked again, with rage and rant
discovered from ex-wife
an email angry claiming scant
support, which threatened strife:
“At length I see the immanent
attraction of Time’s knife! ”
He dreamt he saw as he awake
the euro reach a peak,
he saw he dreamt that Bush half bake
would leave the dollar weak: -
he woke to find what grave mistake
was made for the next week
the politicians put a stake
in budget – rocked boats leak!
He thought he saw Commission clerk
jump on bandwagon bus,
he looked again, just for a lark,
and found no tinker’s cuss
the former cared for bite was bark -
[...] Read more
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Canto the Fourth
I.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O’er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
II.
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
III.
In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone - but beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
IV.
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -
The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
V.
[...] Read more
poem by Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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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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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?
[...] Read more
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,—
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Three Women
My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.
Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where love, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.
Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.
1
I.
A dull little station, a man with the eye
Of a dreamer; a bevy of girls moving by;
A swift moving train and a hot Summer sun,
The curtain goes up, and our play is begun.
The drama of passion, of sorrow, of strife,
Which always is billed for the theatre Life.
It runs on forever, from year unto year,
With scarcely a change when new actors appear.
It is old as the world is-far older in truth,
For the world is a crude little planet of youth.
And back in the eras before it was formed,
The passions of hearts through the Universe stormed.
Maurice Somerville passed the cluster of girls
Who twisted their ribbons and fluttered their curls
In vain to attract him; his mind it was plain
Was wholly intent on the incoming train.
That great one eyed monster puffed out its black breath,
Shrieked, snorted and hissed, like a thing bent on death,
[...] Read more
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Amateur Photographer
Beware of those who slyly pilch
In many cunning ways;
Beware of little lyres that filch
From undisputed bays!
Beware the tumbler's beaded brim,
The ass in fiercer fur;
But most of all beware of him
Who makes my pen to stir--
THe Insecure
And Amateur
Implacable Photographer!
Beware lest, thieving for your thirst,
An earwig's in the plum!
Beware of folly, gay at first,
That later makes you glum!
Beware of pits when stars are dim,
The tooth of vagrant cur;
But most of all beware of him
That makes my pen to stir--
The masterful
Disasterful
Implacable Photographer!
Beware of angling in a stream
Whose trout are not for you;
Beware of trusting in a dream
That's gone before the dew!
Beware of truckling to a whim;
Of folks that always purr;
But most of all beware of him
That makes my pen to stir--
The premature
And Amateur
Implacable Photographer!
poem by Norman Rowland Gale
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Caught Up
Caught Up"
I'm the kind of brotha
Who been doin' it my way
Gettin' my way for years
In my career
And every lover
In and out my life
I've hit, love and left the tears
Without a care
Until I met this girl who turned the tables around
She caught me by surprise
I never thought I'd be the one breaking down
I cant figure it out why
I'm so
Caught up
Got me feelin' it
Caught up
I don't know what it is
But it seems shes got me twisted
I'm so
Caught up
Got me feelin' it
Caught up
I'm losin' control
This girls got a hold on me
Let me go baby
Now listen
My momma told me
Be careful who you do cuz karma comes back around
Same ol' song
But I was so sure
That it wouldnt happen to me
Cuz I know how to put it down
But I was so wrong
This girl was mean
She really turned me out
Her body was so tight
I'm lookin' for her in the daytime with a flashlight
My homies say this girl is crampin' my style
And I can't figure it out but
I'm so
Caught up
Got me feelin' it
Caught up
I don't know what it is
But it seems shes got me twisted
I'm so
Caught up
Got me feelin' it
Caught up
[...] Read more
song performed by Usher
Added by Lucian Velea
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