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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374287" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Life</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more <br>Pour the wild music through me -- </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, <br>Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn <br>There came a groping shape of mystery <br>Moving among us, that with random stroke <br>Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, <br>Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, <br>Laughing on Lethe-bank -- and in my throat <br>I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes, <br>The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Such little songs she sang, <br>Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, <br>They trickled from me like a slender spring <br>That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, <br>Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. <br>She sang, and bore me through the April world <br>Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum <br>In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, <br>And breathings of the scarce-articulate air <br>When it makes mouths of grasses -- but when the sky <br>Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, <br>She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath <br>Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart, <br>I shook, and heard the battle. <br>But more oft, <br>Those early days, we moved in charmed woods, <br>Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun, <br>And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph <br>Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed. <br>And once we came to a great stream that bore <br>The stars upon its bosom like a sea, <br>And ships like stars; so to the sea we came. <br>One wild pang through me; then refrained her hand, <br>And whispered: 'Hear -- ' and into my frail flanks, <br>Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured <br>Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We came to cities, and Life piped on me <br>Low calls to dreaming girls, <br>In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold, <br>Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, <br>And made the heavy merchant at his desk <br>Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life <br>Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there <br>Life met a god, who challenged her and said: <br>'Thy pipe against my lyre!' But 'Wait!' she laughed, <br>And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, <br>And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind. <br>We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, <br>With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, <br>And a silence that was louder than the deep; <br>But on the utmost pinnacle Life again <br>Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang, <br>And clamoured 'Play me against a god again!' <br>'Poor Marsyas-mortal -- he shall bleed thee yet,' <br>She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need. <br>But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank <br>With yearnings for new music and new pain. <br>'Another note against another god!' <br>I clamoured; and she answered: 'Bide my time. <br>Of every heart-wound I will make a stop. <br>And drink thy life in music, pang by pang. <br>But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee <br>At dawn beside the river. Take my lips.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">She kissed me like a lover, but I wept, <br>Remembering that high song against the god, <br>And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We came to cavernous foul places, blind <br>With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare <br>Of sinful furnaces -- where hunger toiled, <br>And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, <br>And death fed delicately on young bones. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Now sing!' cried Life, and set her lips to me. <br>'Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar, <br>Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods <br>Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Now sing!' said Life, reissuing to the stars; <br>And wrung a new note from my wounded side. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So came we to clear spaces, and the sea. <br>And now I felt its volume in my heart, <br>And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me <br>The song of the Infinite. 'Now the stars,' she said. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then from the utmost pinnacle again <br>She poured me on the wild sidereal stream, <br>And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept <br>The interstellar spaces like new worlds <br>Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again, <br>Under black skies, under a groping wind, <br>And life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast, <br>Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly <br>A blade of silver severed the black peaks <br>From the black sky, and earth was born again, <br>Breathing and various, under a god's feet. <br>A god! A god! I felt the heart of Life <br>Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again. <br>He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out, <br>But Life warmed to him, warming me with her, <br>And as he neared I felt beneath her hands <br>The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul <br>Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'His name -- his name?' I whispered, but she poured <br>The music faster, and I grew with it, <br>Became a part of it, while Life and I <br>Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song <br>As she from me, one song, one ecstasy, <br>In indistinguishable union blent, <br>Till she became the flute and I the player. <br>And lo! the song I played on her was more <br>Than any she had drawn from me; it held <br>The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea, <br>The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart <br>Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk, <br>Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell -- <br>All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds, <br>When Life first came, a shape of mystery, <br>Moving among us, and with random stroke <br>Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe. <br>All this I wrung from her in that deep hour, <br>While Love stood murmuring: 'Play the god, poor grass!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee <br>Forever, Life, however spent and clogged, <br>And tossed back useless to my native mud! <br>Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion thee <br>New instruments of anguish and delight, <br>Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, <br>Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill <br>With the old subjection, then when Love and I <br>Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance <br>Like a slave-girl to her pipers -- yea, thou yet <br>Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys <br>Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more <br>Pour the wild music through me –</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edith+Wharton">Edith Wharton</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374287" data-title="Life de Edith Wharton" data-description="NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more 
Pour the wild music through me -- 

I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, 
Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn 
There came a groping shape of mystery 
Moving among us, that with random stroke 
S..."></div>
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