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You cannot conceive the many without the one.

Plato in Dialogues, Parmenides
Added by Lucian Velea
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Look What Has Happened To Me

In the morning when I wake,
And my feet can find the floor,
I stumble down the hall,
And I open up the door,
Then I look into the mirror,
Just like I know you do.
Stopping for a moment,
I can feel my mind go through,
The boundries of time,
Back to a heart without his
Love inside.
I was more than just alone;
I was dying on my own,
Thinking that nothing was ever gonna
Save my life.
Look what has happened to me,
I find it hard to believe.
His love has taken my life
This far, so far....
Looking what has happened to me,
My mind can hardly conceive
What Im beginning to be,
Look what, look what....
When you stop and think it over,
Do you think youre doing well?
Are you getting stronger?
Can you really tell?
If youre truthful with your feelings,
Then you see theres room to grow,
Though you may have found the answer,
There is so much more to know....
More to this life.
You can never stop growing, or youll
Start to die.
I can not survive alone.
I am nothing on my own.
But seeings believing, and if you
Need to see,
Look at me.
Ahhhh....
Look what has happened to me,
I find it hard to believe.
His love has taken my life
This far, so far....
Look what has happened to me,
My mind can hardly conceive.
Look what has happened,
Look what, look what....
Look what has happened to me,
I find it hard to believe.

[...] Read more

song performed by Amy Grant
Added by Lucian Velea
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Easter-Day

HOW very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
—Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
Effecting thus complete and whole,
A purpose or the human soul—
For that is always hard to do;
But hard, I mean, for me and you
To realise it, more or less,
With even the moderate success
Which commonly repays our strife
To carry out the aims of life.
“This aim is greater,” you may say,
“And so more arduous every way.”
—But the importance of the fruits
Still proves to man, in all pursuits,
Proportional encouragement.
“Then, what if it be God’s intent
“That labour to this one result
“Shall seem unduly difficult?”
—Ah, that’s a question in the dark—
And the sole thing that I remark
Upon the difficulty, this;
We do not see it where it is,
At the beginning of the race:
As we proceed, it shifts its place,
And where we looked for palms to fall,
We find the tug’s to come,—that’s all.

II.
At first you say, “The whole, or chief
“Of difficulties, is Belief.
“Could I believe once thoroughly,
“The rest were simple. What? Am I
“An idiot, do you think? A beast?
“Prove to me only that the least
“Command of God is God’s indeed,
“And what injunction shall I need
“To pay obedience? Death so nigh
“When time must end, eternity
“Begin,—and cannot I compute?
“Weigh loss and gain together? suit
“My actions to the balance drawn,
“And give my body to be sawn
“Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied
“To horses, stoned, burned, crucified,
“Like any martyr of the list?
“How gladly,—if I made acquist,
“Through the brief minutes’ fierce annoy,
“Of God’s eternity of joy.”

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning
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Shadows Of Doubt

The reality of not knowing
After the curtain falls,
Breeds a fear deep inside
That runs through us all.
Selfish curiosity,
Self-made reasoning.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt.
When you look into yourself
What do you see?
And do you think that what you are
Will always be?
Inner sanctuary.
Dream immortality.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt.
Do you go your own way?
Or do you answer the call?
Do you cower and fear for your soul?
Or just laugh at it all.
Popular philosophy
Or plain insecurity.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt

song performed by Xentrix
Added by Lucian Velea
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Dreams

Dreams come in any shape or form
With a positive or negative outcome
You got to believe
In the ideas you conceive

Dreams come and go
Let your thoughts flow
You got to believe
In the ideas you conceive

Dreams can suddenly explode
From novice to advanced mode
Dreams can be boring or be fun
To be real they all need to be worked on

You got to believe
And live with the ideas you conceive
You got to believe
If you give you will eventually receive

Dreams are special
Dreams are emotional
But many a dream
Is only attained as a team

(2007)

poem by Sylvia Chidi
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Shadows Of Doubt

The reality of not knowing
After the curtain falls,
Breeds a fear deep inside
That runs through us all.
Selfish curiosity,
Self-made reasoning.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt.
When you look into yourself
What do you see?
And do you think that what you are
Will always be?
Inner sanctuary.
Dream immortality.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt.
Do you go your own way?
Or do you answer the call?
Do you cower and fear for your soul?
Or just laugh at it all.
Popular philosophy
Or plain insecurity.
Is it for real, your paradise?
Or just a symptom of your mind?
Can you conceive? Can you believe?
Beyond your own shadows of doubt

song performed by Xentrix
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
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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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The Weary Philosopher

I can conceive no heav'nly bliss
More perfectly complete than this:
To sit and smoke and idly chew
Reflection's cud, with nought to do.
This is, in my pet social plan,
The right of ev'ry honest man.

I can conceive no punishment
For wicked men of evil bent,
Who cheat and lie and drink and rob,
More meet than giving them a job.
This is, to my unruffled mind,
Correction of the sternest kind.

I can conceive a world, in dreams;
A happy, restful world it seems;
A wise, well-ordered globe wherein
Men toil to expiate a sin,
While harmless and right-thinking folk
Have nought to do but sit and smoke.

I ask but to be left alone;
And let the wicked man atone
In graft for having energy
To sin against society.
For, clearly, I commit no crime,
Since I do nothing all the time.

Sins of omssion, you will see,
Don't count in my philosophy
And it is safer far to shirk,
Lest, working, one might find more work.
No man is able to foresee
The far effects of energy.

But in this thoughtless, restless age
What honor is there for the sage?
When Philistines, in manner rude,
Disturb my sleepy solitude,
Where in my peaceful bower I lurk,
And coarsely shout at me: 'Get work!'

poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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The Minds of Those Like These

The escalation of a hatred,
By those accustomed to doing it...
Produces for them great sorrow.
And on borrowed time,
They proceed to show themselves...
Out of their minds with a choice to grieve.

Incredible.
Incredible...
Wh at people know.
What people know..
And find it,
Hard to believe.
And,
Incredible.
Incredible...
What people know.
What people know...
And find it,
Hard to conceive.

Self seekers enforcing to impose their will,
For the purpose to fulfill...
The prophesy of their demise.
So unwise are they who do not pay attention.
So unwise are they who do not listen!
As they forge ahead,
In disbelief of what has been 'envisioned'.
Or comprehend words to them said.
As they forge ahead,
Strickened by positions...
That restrict their minds to limited conditions.

Incredible.
Incredible...What people know.
What people know..
And find it,
Hard to believe.
And,
Incredible.
Incredible...
What people know.
What people know...
And find it,
Hard to conceive.

The escalation of a hatred,
By those accustomed to doing it...
Produces for them great sorrow.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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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 Challenge

I had a dream
To challenge a scheme
And with my scheme
I shattered my dream
I had a scheme
To challenge a dream
And with my dream
I shattered my scheme
The scheme the brain and the dream
They challenged my self-esteem
I had a brain that conceived the dream
That challenged the scheme
That shattered the dream
That challenged my self-esteem
I had a brain that conceived the scheme
That challenged the dream
That shattered the scheme
That challenged my self-esteem
The brain the scheme and the dream
They challenged my self-esteem
With my self-esteem,
I challenge my scheme
To challenge my brain
To conceive the dream
That shattered the scheme
With my, scheme
I challenge my self-esteem
To challenge my brain
To conceive the dream
That shattered my self-esteem
With my, dream
I challenge my self-esteem
To challenge my brain
To conceive the scheme
That shattered the dream
My self-esteem the brain and the dream
They challenged the scheme

6/20/07

poem by Jim Milks
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The best thing going for us is Al Gore. I cannot conceive how the American people could elect him. On the other hand, I couldn't conceive how they could elect a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton - especially Clinton in '96.

quote by Lyn Nofziger
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I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

quote by Blaise Pascal
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Five Children I

Five Children I
Once helped conceive,
I watched them grow
I watched them leave,
And each one left
A wound in me,
And some left two
And some left three.

And now when I
Cry out in pain
There’s not one left
To call my name,
There’s not one left
To grieve for me
Though I wept through
Each history.

But when they grow
They may conceive,
May learn to know
What wounds we leave,
And think back on
Some long despite
When I lay staring
Late at night.

2 October 1981

poem by David Lewis Paget
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Love And Hatred II

If you conceive hatred,
You will give birth to hatred on this earth!
But, if you conceive love,
You will give birth to love on this earth;
That is why love and hatred are always at war with each other! !

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Imagination

Maurice white, charles stepney & philip bailey
Magic mirror come and search my heart
Can you tell me what you see
Theres a thousand voices whispering
Songs and youre the melody
So I imagine my heart with you
See what imagination can do
Its not hard to conceive
Love ecstasy imagining you with me
Many, many days our shadows passed
Seeing visions of a new bright horizon
Set the morning light
And that morning light is you
So I imagine my heart with you
See what imagination can do
Its not hard to conceive
Love ecstasy imagining you, imagining me
The beauty we both can see
Youre the dream I prayed would come along
To make my fantasy
Day and night you live inside my heart
Youre the flame of love to me

song performed by Earth Wind And Fire
Added by Lucian Velea
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I Am A Child

I am a child, Ill last a while.
You cant conceive of the pleasure in my smile.
You hold my hand, rough up my hair,
Its lots of fun to have you there.
God gave to you, now, you give to me,
Id like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea.
What is the color, when black is burned?
What is the color?
You are a man, you understand.
You pick me up and you lay me down again.
You make the rules, you say whats fair,
Its lots of fun to have you there.
God gave to you, now, you give to me,
Id like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea.
What is the color, when black is burned?
What is the color?
I am a child, Ill last a while.
You cant conceive of the pleasure in my smile.

song performed by Neil Young
Added by Lucian Velea
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Tribute

Defness is a blindness deny through that burn inside
Will life go on any longer a blank page in the book of life
Conceive this time behind me because the future is gone
Meet face to face with a bad dream the thought remains
It can't go on
Will you be standing there
Call my name at the ending light
I'll set my soul beside you
God forgive this ending life
Dave where are you going
This burn in my heart is growing
Down on myself, I don't want to be
Set my soul apart constrict the feelings
I want to break free
Escape
Defness is a blindness deny through that burn inside
Will life go on any longer a blank page in the book of life
Conceive this time behind me because the future is gone
Meet face to face with a bad dream the thought remains
It can't go on
Will you be standing there
Call my name at the ending light
I'll set my soul beside you
God forgive this ending life
Dave where are you going
This burn in my heart is growing
Down on myself, I don't want to be
Set my soul apart constrict the feelings
I want to break free

song performed by Unwritten Law
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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

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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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)
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