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Canto the First

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

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poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Innately, children seem to have little true realistic anxiety. They will run along the brink of water, climb on the window sill, play with sharp objects and with fire, in short, do everything that is bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them, that is wholly the result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the instructive experiences themselves.

classic quote by Sigmund Freud
Added by Lucian Velea
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Of Modern Poetry

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging

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poem by Wallace Stevens
Added by Dan CostinaÅŸ
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The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

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poem by Wallace Stevens
Added by Dan CostinaÅŸ
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what is learned and what
is taught in the double bed
are wholly priceless

haiku by Mario Benedetti from Haikus' Corner (Rincón de Haikus) (1999), translated by Dan Costinaş
Added by Dan CostinaÅŸ
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There was an old man whose despair
Induced him to purchase a hare:
Whereon one fine day,
He rode wholly away,
Which partly assuaged his despair.

limerick by Edward Lear from A Book of Nonsense (1846)
Added by Poetry Lover
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Song of Life

Maiden of the laughing eyes,
Primrose-kirtled, winged, free,
Virgin daughter of the skies—
Joy—whom gods and mortals prize,
Share thy smiles with me!

Yet—lest I, unheeding, borrow
Pleasure that to-day endears
And benumbs the heart to-morrow—
Turn not wholly from me, Sorrow!
Let me share thy tears!

Give me of thy fullness, Life!
Pulse and passion, power, breath,
Vision pure, heroic strife,—
Give me of thy fullness, Life!—
Nor deny me death!

poem by Florence Earle Coates from Mine and Thine (1904)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Nothing natural can be wholly unworthy.

quote by Anna Julia Cooper
Added by Lucian Velea
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There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

quote by Mohandas Gandhi
Added by Lucian Velea
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Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

quote by Sidney Lanier
Added by Lucian Velea
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