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A Request That You Simply Mind Your Own Business...

there is this tail end
of the wind that tells you
that the journey
was never smooth and easy

there are eddies of the mind
that must finally tell you that

oh well,
not every thing has been alright
that there are no clearer ponds except those that you have not really gone to

oh yes, far pastures are always greener than we think
or that, you never really understand what one had gone through
all those fast flying years

these goddamn quick years that leave us with nothing
but suppressed memories
which still carry the needles in their hands and prick us on those
empty nights

at the height of this upheaval
you still have no right to grasp
what details are there

go somewhere else
and read between the armpits of these lines

there is this Notice on the Wall which tells you
with accuracy (and even warn you about respect)

(i.e. to simply mind your own business, ok?)

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Added by Poetry Lover
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Its Alright

(void)
---------------
(its alright)
(its alright)
I can hear it
(alright alright alright alright)
(alright alright alright alright)
Dictation being forced in afghanistan
Revolution in south africa taking a stand
People in eurasia on the brink of oppression
I hope its gonna be alright
cause the music plays forever
(for it goes on and on and on and on)
Yeahah
I hope its gonna be alright
(alright alright alright alright)
Generations will come and go (will come and go)
But theres one thing for sure
Music is our lifes foundation
And shall succeed all the nations to come
Yeahah
I hope its gonna be alright
cause the music plays forever
(for it goes on and on and on and on...)
(yeahah)
I hope its gonna be alright
(on and on and on...)
cause the music plays forever
(for it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on)
The year three thousand may still come to pass
But the music shall last
I can hear it on a timeless wavelength
Never dissipating but giving us strength
I hope its gonna be alright
(alright alright alright alright)
(alright alright alright alright)
(alright alright alright alright)
I hope its gonna be alright
(pu bu dup dup pu pu du bu dup...)
(alright alright alright alright)
(alright alright alright alright)
(for it goes on and on and on and on)
(alright alright alright alright)
Let your body move tonight
cause its gonna be alright
(its alright) (it will be alright)
(its alright) (its gonna be alright)
(aaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaahaahahahahaaaaaaaaaheheheeeeehheeeeeh...)
(its gonna be)
(its gonna be)

[...] Read more

song performed by Pet Shop Boys
Added by Lucian Velea
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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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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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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
Added by Poetry Lover
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Shout & Shimmy

Do you feel alright? well do you feel alright children? do you feel alright?
Do you feel alright? well do you feel alright children? do you feel alright?
You know you make me want to shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
You know you make me want to shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you know I walk up to the front, I try to do the flop,
Oh yeah you know I walk up to the front, I try to do the flop,
I walk up to the back, and I move on side to side,
I walk up to the back, and I move on side to side,
Then I stop, oh yeah and then I drop,
Then I stop, oh yeah and then I drop,
Oh yeah and then I drop, oh yeah and then I do a little thing ? ? ? ? ? ,
Oh yeah and then I drop, oh yeah and then I do a little thing ? ? ? ? ? ,
Do you feel alright? do you feel so good? do you feel so good?
Do you feel alright? do you feel so good? do you feel so good?
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? tell me now, tell me now,
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? tell me now, tell me now,
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? everybody do you feel so good?
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? everybody do you feel so good?
You know I feel alright, you know you make me want to shout shimmy,
You know I feel alright, you know you make me want to shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy, oh yeah you gonna shout shimmy,
Oh yeah you gonna shout a little bit soft, shout a little bit quieter,
Oh yeah you gonna shout a little bit soft, shout a little bit quieter,
Shout a little bit soft, come on soft, shout a little bit soft,
Shout a little bit soft, come on soft, shout a little bit soft,
A little bit soft, cool down, cool down, come on, cool it down,
A little bit soft, cool down, cool down, come on, cool it down,
I feel so good, I feel alright, drum on, drum on, drum on drummer,
I feel so good, I feel alright, drum on, drum on, drum on drummer,
Everybody everybody everybody clap your hands, come on clap your hands,
Everybody everybody everybody clap your hands, come on clap your hands,
Clap your hands, a little bit harder, a little bit louder,
Clap your hands, a little bit harder, a little bit louder,
A little bit harder, a little bit louder, a little bit louder,
A little bit harder, a little bit louder, a little bit louder,
Come on and shout, everybody, come on and shout, come on and shout baby,
Come on and shout, everybody, come on and shout, come on and shout baby,
Come on and shout baby, do you feel alright? do I feel so good?
Come on and shout baby, do you feel alright? do I feel so good?
Do you feel alright? do I feel so good? call a doctor, call a doctor,
Do you feel alright? do I feel so good? call a doctor, call a doctor,
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? do you feel alright?
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright? do you feel alright?
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright?
Do you feel alright? do you feel alright?
You know I feel so good Im gonna shout and shimmy all night,
You know I feel so good Im gonna shout and shimmy all night,

[...] Read more

song performed by Who
Added by Lucian Velea
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Give Your Heart To The Hawks

1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,

That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass

Under the old trees with rosy fruit.

In the morning Fayne Fraser gathered the sound ones into a

basket,

The bruised ones into a pan. One place they lay so thickly
She knelt to reach them.

Her husband's brother passing
Along the broken fence of the stubble-field,
His quick brown eyes took in one moving glance
A little gopher-snake at his feet flowing through the stubble
To gain the fence, and Fayne crouched after apples
With her mop of red hair like a glowing coal
Against the shadow in the garden. The small shapely reptile
Flowed into a thicket of dead thistle-stalks
Around a fence-post, but its tail was not hidden.
The young man drew it all out, and as the coil
Whipped over his wrist, smiled at it; he stepped carefully
Across the sag of the wire. When Fayne looked up
His hand was hidden; she looked over her shoulder
And twitched her sunburnt lips from small white teeth
To answer the spark of malice in his eyes, but turned
To the apples, intent again. Michael looked down
At her white neck, rarely touched by the sun,
But now the cinnabar-colored hair fell off from it;
And her shoulders in the light-blue shirt, and long legs like a boy's
Bare-ankled in blue-jean trousers, the country wear;
He stooped quietly and slipped the small cool snake
Up the blue-denim leg. Fayne screamed and writhed,
Clutching her thigh. 'Michael, you beast.' She stood up
And stroked her leg, with little sharp cries, the slender invader
Fell down her ankle.

Fayne snatched for it and missed;

Michael stood by rejoicing, his rather small

Finely cut features in a dance of delight;

Fayne with one sweep flung at his face

All the bruised and half-spoiled apples in the pan,

[...] Read more

poem by Robinson Jeffers
Added by Poetry Lover
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Senseless

Go ahead, get captivated
Will you ever give your secrets away?
My mind says its gonna drive me senseless
But its only tunnel vision
Its only state of mind
Its alright
Its alright to make the move
Its alright
Get there, stay there
Babe its alright
Its alright to feel the mood
Its alright
So good, so fine
Babe its alright
There has to be
Some kind of harmony
To keep the maddening
Silence away
So hang on, well be moving on
cause its only your confusion
Thats keeping us behind
Its alright
Its alright to make the move
Its alright
Get there, stay there
Babe its alright
Its alright to feel the mood
Its alright
So good, so fine
Babe its alright
Its alright
Its alright to make the move
Its alright
Get there, stay there
Babe its alright
Its alright to feel the mood
Its alright
So good, so fine
Babe its alright
Got there, babe better stop there
Inhibitions slipping away
Stay there, got a lot that we can share
I found out the secret
Was only state of mind
Its alright
Its alright to make the move
Its alright
Get there, stay there
Babe its alright
Its alright to feel the mood

[...] Read more

song performed by Erasure
Added by Lucian Velea
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Its Alright

Mummy! mummy! mummy!
Uh-hmm?
Mummy!
Uh-hmm?
Mummy! you have to wake up!
Yes, yes, I know...
Ma, you have to wake up!
I know...
Sometimes its such a drag,
I dont feel like getting up in the morning.
Then something happens, it clicks in my head,
I feel like crying,
But I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Sometimes, Im so afraid, (Im so, Im so scared)
I dont feel like facing the world.
Then something happens, it clicks in my head,
I feel like crying,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
I guess Im not the only one, (not the only one in misery)
There many of us around.
So when youre feeling down, (down)
Hold your heart and say, its gonna be alright.
Hold your heart and itll be alright.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Yes, yes, yes, its gonna be, its gonna be alright,
Its gonna be alright, yes.
I guess Im not the only one, (not the only one in history)
There many of us in history.
So when youre feeling down, (down)
Hold your heart and say, its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
Were gonna make it, alright.
(its alright, its alright, its alright, alright)
(its alright, its alright, its alright, alright).

song performed by Yoko Ono
Added by Lucian Velea
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Its Alright

Mummy! mummy! mummy!
Uh-hmm?
Mummy!
Uh-hmm?
Mummy! you have to wake up!
Yes, yes, I know...
Ma, you have to wake up!
I know...
Sometimes its such a drag,
I dont feel like getting up in the morning.
Then something happens, it clicks in my head,
I feel like crying,
But I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Sometimes, Im so afraid, (Im so, Im so scared)
I dont feel like facing the world.
Then something happens, it clicks in my head,
I feel like crying,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
I guess Im not the only one, (not the only one in misery)
There many of us around.
So when youre feeling down, (down)
Hold your heart and say, its gonna be alright.
Hold your heart and itll be alright.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Yes, yes, yes, its gonna be, its gonna be alright,
Its gonna be alright, yes.
I guess Im not the only one, (not the only one in history)
There many of us in history.
So when youre feeling down, (down)
Hold your heart and say, its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
I know its gonna be alright.
Its alright, its alright, its alright,
Were gonna make it, alright.
(its alright, its alright, its alright, alright)
(its alright, its alright, its alright, alright).

song performed by Yoko Ono
Added by Lucian Velea
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VII. Pompilia

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

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

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

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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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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III. The Other Half-Rome

Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,
And—with best smile of all reserved for him—
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!

There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit—justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was.
Then the priests followed properly,—a soul
To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk

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

I
Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain:
The best of mothers and of educations
In Juan's case were but employ'd in vain,
Since, in a way that's rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.

II
Had he but been placed at a public school,
In the third form, or even in the fourth,
His daily task had kept his fancy cool,
At least, had he been nurtured in the north;
Spain may prove an exception to the rule,
But then exceptions always prove its worth -—
A lad of sixteen causing a divorce
Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.

III
I can't say that it puzzles me at all,
If all things be consider'd: first, there was
His lady-mother, mathematical,
A—never mind; his tutor, an old ass;
A pretty woman (that's quite natural,
Or else the thing had hardly come to pass);
A husband rather old, not much in unity
With his young wife—a time, and opportunity.

IV
Well—well, the world must turn upon its axis,
And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us,
The priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name.

V
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz -—
A pretty town, I recollect it well -—
'T is there the mart of the colonial trade is
(Or was, before Peru learn'd to rebel),
And such sweet girls—I mean, such graceful ladies,
Their very walk would make your bosom swell;
I can't describe it, though so much it strike,
Nor liken it—I never saw the like:

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poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
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Any Way You Want It

Any way you want it, you can call me any day, hey, hey, hey
Any way you want it, you will always hear me say, hey, hey, hey
Its alright (its alright), its alright (its alright)
Its alright (its alright), its alright
So any way you want it, thats the way it will be
You dont want money, you dont want a diamond ring, hey, hey, hey
You say you want my lovin more than any other thing, hey, hey, hey
Its alright (its alright), its alright (its alright)
Its alright (its alright), its alright
So any way you want it, thats the way it will be
Any way, any way you want it, thats alright by me
Any way, any way you want it, thats the way it will be
Any way you want it, you can call me any day, hey, hey, hey
Any way you want it, you will always hear me say, hey, hey, hey
Its alright (its alright), its alright (its alright)
Its alright (its alright), its alright
So any way you want it, thats the way it will be
Any way, any way you want it, thats alright by me
Any way, any way you want it, thats the way it will be
Any way you want it, you can call me any day, hey, hey, hey
Any day you want it, you will always hear me say, hey, hey, hey
Its alright (its alright), its alright (its alright)
Its alright (its alright), its alright
So any way you want it, thats the way it will be
Thats the way it will be
Thats the way it will be

song performed by Kiss
Added by Lucian Velea
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IV. Tertium Quid

True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently

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

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

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

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

THE English have a scornful insular way
Of calling the French light. The levity
Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;
For say a foolish thing but oft enough,
(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,–
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By re-iteration chiefly) the same thing
Shall pass at least for absolutely wise,
And not with fools exclusively. And so,
We say the French are light, as if we said
The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk:
Say rather, cats are milked, and milch cows mew,
For what is lightness but inconsequence,
Vague fluctuation 'twixt effect and cause,
Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light,
That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye
Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself
To a wafer on the white speck on a wall
A hundred paces off? Even so direct,
So sternly undivertible of aim,
Is this French people.
All idealists
Too absolute and earnest, with them all
The idea of a knife cuts real flesh;
And still, devouring the safe interval
Which Nature placed between the thought and act,
They threaten conflagration to the world
And rush with most unscrupulous logic on
Impossible practice. Set your orators
To blow upon them with loud windy mouths
Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,
Which drive our burley brutal English mobs
Like so much chaff, whichever way they blow,–
This light French people will not thus be driven.
They turn indeed; but then they turn upon
Some central pivot of their thought and choice,
And veer out by the force of holding fast.
–That's hard to understand, for Englishmen
Unused to abstract questions, and untrained
To trace the involutions, valve by valve,
In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth,
And mark what subtly fine integument
Divides opposed compartments. Freedom's self
Comes concrete to us, to be understood,
Fixed in a feudal form incarnately
To suit our ways of thought and reverence,
The special form, with us, being still the thing.
With us, I say, though I'm of Italy
My mother's birth and grave, by father's grave
And memory; let it be,–a poet's heart

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

Baby once I thought I knew
Everything I needed to know about you
Your sweet whisper, your tender touch
I didnt really know that much
Jokes on me, its gonna be okay
If I can just get through this lonesome day
Lonesome day
Hells brewing, dark suns on the rise
This storm will blow through, by and by
House is on fire, vipers in the grass
Little revenge and this too shall pass
This too shall pass, darling
Yeah Im gonna pray
Right now, all I gots this lonesome day
Lonesome day
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright
Better ask questions before you shoot
Deceit and betrayals a bitter fruit
Its hard to swallow come time to pay
That taste on your tongue dont easily slip away
Thy kingdom come, Im gonna find my way
Yeah, through this lonesome day
Lonesome day
Lonesome day
Lonesome day
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Its alright, its alright, its alright, yeah
Lonesome day
Lonesome day
Lonesome day

song performed by Bruce Springsteen
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Venus and Adonis

'Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.'

To the right honorable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield.
Right honorable.

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.

Your honour's in all duty.

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.
'Thrice-fairer than myself,' thus she began,
'The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are;
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
'Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:
Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,
And being set, I'll smother thee with kisses;
'And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
Making them red and pale with fresh variety,
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty:
A summer's day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.'
With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth's sovereign salve to do a goddess good:
Being so enraged, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse.
Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.
The studded bridle on a ragged bough
Nimbly she fastens:--O, how quick is love!--
The steed is stalled up, and even now
To tie the rider she begins to prove:

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poem by William Shakespeare
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