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Number 3

number 3

Is never free

Always arriving after

number 1

and afternumber two

number three is theunmentionable

forgotten middle

The child missing at the edge of

the family albumn

A love mistake

on holiday

unplanned

unwanted

number three

wears the old hand me down clothes

Trouser a decade out of date

Jumpers old

shoes smelling of number two's foot odour

Number 3 is like the War

Don't mention the WAR

or number three

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poem by Yvette Smith
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Song of Wink Star

The Song of Wink Star
a happy story for children of all ages
story and text © Raj Arumugam, June 2008

☼ ☼

☼ Preamble

Come…children all, children of all ages…sit close and listen…
Come and listen to this happy story of the stars and of life…
Come children of the universe, children of all nations and of all races, and of all climates and of all kinds of space and dimensions and universes…
Come, dearest children of all beings of the living universe, come and listen to The Song of Wink Star…

Come and listen to this story, this happy story…listen, as the story itself sings to you…

Sit close then, and listen to the story that was not made by any, or written by a poet, or fashioned by grandfathers and grandmothers warming themselves at the fire of burning stars…

O dearest children all, come and listen to the story that lives
of itself, and that glows bright and happy….

Come…children all, children of all ages, come and listen to this happy story, the story so natural and smooth as life, as it sings itself to you….

☼ The Song of Wink Star
a happy story for children of all ages

☼ 1

Night Child, always so light and gentle, slept on a flower.
And every night, before he went to sleep, he would look up at the sky.
He would look at the eastern corner, five o’clock.

And there he would see all the stars in near and distant galaxies that were only visible to the People of Star Eyes.

Night Child was one of the People of Star Eyes. And so he could see the stars. And of all the stars he could see, he loved to watch Wink Star.

Wink Star twinkled and winked and laughed.
Every night Wink Star did that. Winked and laughed.

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poem by Raj Arumugam
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Forsaking My Love

I hate you
I wish to tear you away from me
This tumor that clings to my chest
The thing that makes me ache
That haunts my dreams
And tears at my desires
You have brought me only pain
My untamed heart
That beast that gnaws at my soul
That pitifully whines
Bringing my mind into unwanted pain
Yet how can I blame you
How can I chastise you when I listen intently to your pleas
Why should I punish you for what my eyes feed upon
How can I blame my eyes for falling upon her
She who brings light to the eternal darkness of my soul
She whose eyes bring me to subjection
Whose smile leaves me in awe
How can I blame you when my ears are met with her laughter
How they submerge into her song
How they quiver at her voice
Why should I punish you for inclining my soul
Tempting it with the one sense that has been forsaken by her
How could I look over the thought of the brushing of lips
The touching of hands
The binding of the soul, mind, and body
O you wretched heart
What am I to do with this constant companion
How could I tear you away
When she is the cause of my agony
Or rather
It is the lack of her which brings me sorrow
It is the need for her that leaves my heart in pain
Yet she is not mine
She was never mine
She will never be mine
O my poor heart
How can I make you see reason
When all you do is show me the truth

love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love

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poem by Michael Silver
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Synergy of Love

'Were you honed from poetry? '
I asked your saddened smile.
For it seems to tell a longing tale -
One of words in oratory
That speaks in languid metaphors
From lips of mind in deep despair
And solitude from inner wars
That over time has rendered life so frail.

'Were you carved from doleful prose? '
I sought to ask your gaze,
For a pain lies deep within your eyes -
One of barren territory
Where no fair heart could ever drift
And hope to venture back content
With grateful memories in a gift -
A land of your affectional demise.

'Do I hear a mournful hum? '
I wondered of your cry,
For it sings a song of deep lament -
One of quiet soliloquy
Recited on deserted strands
To waves that have no sense of song
And only wish to fight the sands -
A chant that cites emotional descent.

Do you know your face portrays
The colours of your soul?
It tells me at a single glance
Of how you burned your furnace whole
To stay the fire in our romance.

And see the prismic hues they bore!
I cherished all I ever saw:
Mauve of mystic; browns of rustic;
Reddened tones to match your blush;
Marine of passion, spending out your being,
Leaving you for ashen embers, fleeing
The dying light in hush of night.
And how you lay there empty.

So let me help re-grow the flowers
Once erect in fiery showers!
For now I've seen what love can do
When torn asunder - oh my catastrophic blunder!

But we must realise -
Our flaming want is meant to be!
We are the ocean and the sea;

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poem by Mark R Slaughter
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III. The Other Half-Rome

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

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

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

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

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

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

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

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

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

Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Use your eyes to look up
Use your ears to hear
Walk up to the corner when the coast is clear
And wait
And wait
Until you see the light turn green
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Use your eyes to look up
Use your ears to hear
Walk up to the corner when the coast is clear
And wait
And wait
Until you see the light turn green
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block
Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle
In the middle in the middle in the middle of the block

song performed by They Might Be Giants
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
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Hooray Hooray

=================================================
Boney M - Hooray! Hooray! (It's A Holi-holiday)
=================================================
Diggy di di doo diggy diggy di doo (hi dee hi dee ho)
Diggy di di doo diggy diggy di di (hi dee hi dee ho)
Diggy di di doo diggy diggy di di (hi dee hi dee ho)
Diggy di di doo diggy diggy di doo (hi dee hi dee ho)
Theres place I know where we should go (hi dee hi dee ho)
Wont you take me there, your lady fair (hi dee hi dee ho)
Theres a brook nearby, the grass grows high (hi dee hi dee ho)
Where we both can hide side by side (hi dee hi dee ho)
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
Theres a country fair not far from there (hi dee hi dee ho)
On a carousels the ding-dong bell (hi dee hi dee ho)
On the loop-di-loop well swing and swoop (hi dee hi dee ho)
And what else well do is up to you (hi dee hi dee ho)
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
Well, Im game, fun is the thing Im after
Now lets all live it up today, get set for love and laughter
Well, lets go, time isnt here for wasting
Life is so full of sweet sweet things, Id like to do some tasting
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
On the country side well take a ride (hi dee hi dee ho)
Where the stars all shine and lots of time (hi dee hi dee ho)
Back of your old car we might get far (hi dee hi dee ho)
In the summer breeze we feel at ease (hi dee hi dee ho)
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray, hooray, its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday, its a holi-holiday

song performed by Boney M.
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!

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Hooray! Hooray! Its A Holi-holiday

Digge ding ding ding digge digge ding ding
Hey - di - hey - di - hoh
Digge ding ding ding digge digge ding ding
Hey - di - hey - di - hoh
Theres a place I know where we should go - heydiheydihoh
Won t you take me there your lady fair - heydiheydihoh
Theres a brook near-by the grass grows high - heydiheydihoh
Where we both can hide side by side - heydiheydihoh
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
Theres a country fair not far from there - heydiheydihoh
On a carousel the dingdong bell - heydiheydihoh
On the loop di loop we swing and swoop - heydiheydihoh
And what else well do is up to you - heydiheydihoh
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
Well, Im game
Fun is the thing Im after
Now lets alive it up today
Get set for love and laughter
Well, lets go
Time isnt here for wasting
Life is so full of sweet sweet things
Id like to do some tasting
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday
In the country side we take a ride - heydiheydihoh
Where the stars will shine lots of time - heydiheydihoh
Back of your old car we might get far - heydiheydihoh
In the summerbreeze we feel at ease - heydiheydihoh
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray! hooray! its a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
Its a holi-holiday, its a holi-holiday

song performed by Boney M.
Added by Lucian Velea
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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)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Ninth Book

EVEN thus. I pause to write it out at length,
The letter of the Lady Waldemar.–

'I prayed your cousin Leigh to take you this,
He says he'll do it. After years of love,
Or what is called so,–when a woman frets
And fools upon one string of a man's name,
And fingers it for ever till it breaks,–
He may perhaps do for her such thing,
And she accept it without detriment
Although she should not love him any more
And I, who do not love him, nor love you,
Nor you, Aurora,–choose you shall repent
Your most ungracious letter, and confess,
Constrained by his convictions, (he's convinced)
You've wronged me foully. Are you made so ill,
You woman–to impute such ill to me?
We both had mothers,–lay in their bosom once.
Why, after all, I thank you, Aurora Leigh,
For proving to myself that there are things
I would not do, . . not for my life . . nor him . .
Though something I have somewhat overdone,–
For instance, when I went to see the gods
One morning, on Olympus, with a step
That shook the thunder in a certain cloud,
Committing myself vilely. Could I think,
The Muse I pulled my heart out from my breast
To soften, had herself a sort of heart,
And loved my mortal? He, at least, loved her;
I heard him say so; 'twas my recompence,
When, watching at his bedside fourteen days,
He broke out ever like a flame at whiles
Between the heats of fever . . . 'Is it thou?
'Breathe closer, sweetest mouth!' and when at last
The fever gone, the wasted face extinct
As if it irked him much to know me there,
He said, Twas kind, 'twas good, 'twas womanly,'
(And fifty praises to excuse one love)
'But was the picture safe he had ventured for?'
And then, half wandering . . 'I have loved her well,
Although she could not love me.'–'Say instead,'
I answered, 'that she loves you.'–'Twas my turn
To rave: (I would have married him so changed,
Although the world had jeered me properly
For taking up with Cupid at his worst,
The silver quiver worn off on his hair.)
'No, no,' he murmured, 'no, she loves me not;
'Aurora Leigh does better: bring her book
'And read it softly, Lady Waldemar,
'Until I thank your friendship more for that,

[...] Read more

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

I can never get my mind off her,
I wonder if she'd mind if i'd,
make her my own,
and never let her go,
hug her tight,
treat her right,
act all polite,
take her on a date,
make sure i'm never late,
kiss her on her lips,
talk about our kids,
Make her feel like princess,
living in a castle,
hope that is not too much hassle,
But i am so blessed,
hope i can be the best,
hold you tight,
have your BR3A$t,
on my chest,
pass the test,
NOW YOUR MINE!

sorry for word spamming: (

love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love

poem by Jordan Moore
Added by Poetry Lover
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Holiday

Key: G
(w/m by Jimmy Buffett)
The weather channel girl with her perfect weather curl
Is talkin' cold, cold, cold.
You can't get out of bed, you can't remember what you've said,
You're feelin' old, old, old.
Is it a fever or depression, anger or obsession,
What's the remedy?
We're not talkin' rocket science, the answer to your question's
Very plain to see.
Chorus: You need a Holiday, (you need a holiday) take a Holiday (take a
holiday).
Find a far-off wonderland where you might regain
Command of your life today.
Take a Holiday, (take a holiday) you need a Holiday (you need a holiday).
Grab a pack and hit the trail, take a sail
And wind up in some moonlit bay.
2nd Ver: You're caught up in the Internet,
You think it's such a great asset, but you're wrong, wrong, wrong.
And all that fiber optic gear
Still cannot take away the fear like an island song.
Disregard confession, stop tryin' to make impressions
On your corporate climb.
It might come as quite a shock but you can't really own that rock,
It's just a waste of time (state of mind).
Chorus: So take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Find a place to find yourself, take your life down off that shelf,
Quit actin' so blase.
Take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Grab a pack and hit the trail, take a sail
And wind up in some moonlit bay.
Trombone Instrumental (C / Cm6 / G / D-2 / E-2 / Am / D-2 / D+ 2 / G / G7 )
Steel Drum Instr (C / Cm6 / G / D-2 / E-2 / Am / D-2 / D+ 2 / G / -notes
B-Bb-A-Ab-G)
3rd Ver: Well it's only up to you, no one else can tell you to
Go out and have some fun.
Though if you want to stay alive, evade the big nose dive,
Be a ko-mee-dee-yun.
Chorus: And take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Find a far-off wonderland where you might regain
Command of your life today.
Take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Grab a pack and hit the trail, take a sail
And wind up in some moonlit bay.
Chorus: So take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Find a place to find yourself, take your life down off that shelf,
Quit actin' so blase.
Take a Holiday. You need a Holiday.
Grab a pack and hit the trail, take a sail
And wind up in some moonlit bay.

[...] Read more

song performed by Jimmy Buffett
Added by Lucian Velea
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First Book

OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,–
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

I, writing thus, am still what men call young;
I have not so far left the coasts of life
To travel inland, that I cannot hear
That murmur of the outer Infinite
Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep
When wondered at for smiling; not so far,
But still I catch my mother at her post
Beside the nursery-door, with finger up,
'Hush, hush–here's too much noise!' while her sweet eyes
Leap forward, taking part against her word
In the child's riot. Still I sit and feel
My father's slow hand, when she had left us both,
Stroke out my childish curls across his knee;
And hear Assunta's daily jest (she knew
He liked it better than a better jest)
Inquire how many golden scudi went
To make such ringlets. O my father's hand,
Stroke the poor hair down, stroke it heavily,–
Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee!
I'm still too young, too young to sit alone.

I write. My mother was a Florentine,
Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me
When scarcely I was four years old; my life,
A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp
Which went out therefore. She was weak and frail;
She could not bear the joy of giving life–
The mother's rapture slew her. If her kiss
Had left a longer weight upon my lips,
It might have steadied the uneasy breath,
And reconciled and fraternised my soul
With the new order. As it was, indeed,
I felt a mother-want about the world,
And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb
Left out at night, in shutting up the fold,–
As restless as a nest-deserted bird
Grown chill through something being away, though what
It knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born
To make my father sadder, and myself
Not overjoyous, truly. Women know
The way to rear up children, (to be just,)

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Victories Of Love. Book I

I
From Frederick Graham

Mother, I smile at your alarms!
I own, indeed, my Cousin's charms,
But, like all nursery maladies,
Love is not badly taken twice.
Have you forgotten Charlotte Hayes,
My playmate in the pleasant days
At Knatchley, and her sister, Anne,
The twins, so made on the same plan,
That one wore blue, the other white,
To mark them to their father's sight;
And how, at Knatchley harvesting,
You bade me kiss her in the ring,
Like Anne and all the others? You,
That never of my sickness knew,
Will laugh, yet had I the disease,
And gravely, if the signs are these:

As, ere the Spring has any power,
The almond branch all turns to flower,
Though not a leaf is out, so she
The bloom of life provoked in me;
And, hard till then and selfish, I
Was thenceforth nought but sanctity
And service: life was mere delight
In being wholly good and right,
As she was; just, without a slur;
Honouring myself no less than her;
Obeying, in the loneliest place,
Ev'n to the slightest gesture, grace
Assured that one so fair, so true,
He only served that was so too.
For me, hence weak towards the weak,
No more the unnested blackbird's shriek
Startled the light-leaved wood; on high
Wander'd the gadding butterfly,
Unscared by my flung cap; the bee,
Rifling the hollyhock in glee,
Was no more trapp'd with his own flower,
And for his honey slain. Her power,
From great things even to the grass
Through which the unfenced footways pass,
Was law, and that which keeps the law,
Cherubic gaiety and awe;
Day was her doing, and the lark
Had reason for his song; the dark
In anagram innumerous spelt
Her name with stars that throbb'd and felt;

[...] Read more

poem by Coventry Patmore
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Song Of Being A Child

When the child was a child
It walked with arms hanging
Wanted the stream to be a river and the river a torrent
And this puddle, the sea
When the child was a child, it didnt know
It was a child
Everything for it was filled with life and all life was one
Saw the horizon without trying to reach it
Couldnt rush itself and think on command
Was often terribly bored
And couldnt wait
Passed up greeting the moments
And prayed only with its lips
When the child was a child
It didnt have an opinion about a thing
Had no habits
Often sat crossed-legged, took off running
Had a cow lick in its hair
And didnt put on a face when photographed
When the child was a child
It was the time of the following questions
Why am I me and why not you
Why am I here and why not there
Why did time begin and where does space end
Isnt what I see and hear and smell
Just the appearance of the world in front of the world
Isnt life under the sun just a dream
Does evil actually exist in people
Who really are evil
Why cant it be that I who am
Wasnt before I was
And that sometime i, the i, I am
No longer will be the i, I am
When the child was a child
It gagged on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding
And on steamed cauliflower
And now eats all of it and not just because it has to
When the child was a child
It woke up once in a strange bed
And now time and time again
Many people seem beautiful to it
And now not so many and now only if its lucky
It had a precise picture of paradise
And now can only vaguely conceive of it at best
It couldnt imagine nothingness
And today shudders in the face of it
Go for the ball
Which today rolls between its legs
With its Im here it came
Into the house which now is empty

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song performed by Van Morrison
Added by Lucian Velea
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Testify

Come a little closer it's a feeling that I can't deny
I was weak, but I never thought I'd speak about the darker side
Is that a ten? I could repent on the side of the road
But, I kept on going yeah I headed for another load
I get up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground in the middle of the night
Oh, I testify
I was laid upon the grave by a preacher's hand I cannot lie
And, I forsake many vows I made to be with you tonight
Could you be the salvation cause I never felt like this before
And, could you lend me your hand because I'm falling back on the floor
I get up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground in the middle of the night
Oh, I testify
On a road outside of nowhere, in the middle of the night
Well I guess I hit rock bottom and the dawn was not in sight
And a Tempest made of fire, onset the sky aglow
And a sweet young thing called out my name
And this is how it goes, she says...
Choir:
"Go boy, can you hear them?
Are you falling through the cracks in your eyes?"
"Go boy, can you hear them?
Are you falling through the cracks in your eyes?"
"Go boy, can you hear them?
Are you falling through the cracks in your eyes?"
Meatloaf: And I got down on my knees
Choir :"Go boy, can you hear them?
Are you falling through the cracks in your eyes?"
"Go boy, can you hear them?
Are you falling through the cracks in your eyes?"
Meatloaf (over the top of the choirs last two repititions):
I get up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground and I'm falling back down
Up from the ground and I testify
I get up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground and I'm falling back down
Up from the ground and I testify
Meatloaf & Choir:
Up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground and I'm falling back down
Up from the ground and I testify
Up from the ground in the middle of the morning
Up from the ground in the middle of the evening
Up from the ground and I'm falling back down

[...] Read more

song performed by Meat Loaf
Added by Lucian Velea
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