Beethoven
He cursed the day when he was born;
And deaf and desolate,
Resolved, in bitterness forlorn,
To end his hapless fate.
But as the deeper silence grew—
An exile from the throng,
His yearning spirit voices drew
From inner founts of song;
And he who called unfriendly death
To calm rebellious strife,
Won from his own despair the breath
Of an immortal life.
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Mine and Thine (1904)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Related quotes
The Hamadryad.
Last night I was like one who prayed
Beneath a mystic tree
Whose windless leaves a murmur made,
As if it there might be
A spirit in the sap that laid
Its spell on them and me.
A creature who, invisible,
In sorrow and in mirth,
Through summer's heat or when the chill
Is on the dreaming Earth,
Sings as in sleep divinely still
The secret of its birth.
(And as it sings, possessed, apart
From all things far and near,
The music of its own strange heart
Is all it seems to hear,
As if its ardour made an art
Of its own atmosphere.
Still none who come there hear the song
Until their souls are bowed
Beneath the mystic boughs, among
Whose living leaves a crowd
Of spirit voices, weak and strong,
Sing all that God allowed).
Oh! wondrous was that faery strain,
Too holy to be heard
But by the soul with no profane
Imagination stirr'd —
Like a seer when his heart and brain
Are in the coming word,
And he bows low before the breath
Of that which, as a flame,
All that he is illumineth
And calls him as by name,
When one to him are Life and Death,
One honour and one shame.
Ah! so possessed I heard them sing,
The many voices who
Were the sense of a secret thing
That with the tree-life grew,
As it did from the same seed spring
And a dream-breath from it drew —
The mystic life which God had shut
Within the dark seed's core,
Diverse from all that He had put
In others evermore —
No hint of death behind it, but
Of life that is before!
The tree-life in more lives than this —
Of that it sings for aye —
And as I listened the world's hiss
In silence died away,
And the perfect life for all that is
Like a dream on me lay.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Shelley's Centenary
Within a narrow span of time,
Three princes of the realm of rhyme,
At height of youth or manhood's prime,
From earth took wing,
To join the fellowship sublime
Who, dead, yet sing.
He, first, his earliest wreath who wove
Of laurel grown in Latmian grove,
Conquered by pain and hapless love
Found calmer home,
Roofed by the heaven that glows above
Eternal Rome.
A fierier soul, its own fierce prey,
And cumbered with more mortal clay,
At Missolonghi flamed away,
And left the air
Reverberating to this day
Its loud despair.
Alike remote from Byron's scorn,
And Keats's magic as of morn
Bursting for ever newly-born
On forests old,
Waking a hoary world forlorn
With touch of gold,
Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew
Nourished on air and sun and dew,
Into that Essence whence he drew
His life and lyre
Was fittingly resolved anew
Through wave and fire.
'Twas like his rapid soul! 'Twas meet
That he, who brooked not Time's slow feet,
With passage thus abrupt and fleet
Should hurry hence,
Eager the Great Perhaps to greet
With Why? and Whence?
Impatient of the world's fixed way,
He ne'er could suffer God's delay,
But all the future in a day
Would build divine,
And the whole past in ruins lay,
An emptied shrine.
Vain vision! but the glow, the fire,
The passion of benign desire,
The glorious yearning, lift him higher
Than many a soul
That mounts a million paces nigher
Its meaner goal.
And power is his, if naught besides,
In that thin ether where he rides,
Above the roar of human tides
To ascend afar,
Lost in a storm of light that hides
His dizzy car.
Below, the unhastening world toils on,
And here and there are victories won,
Some dragon slain, some justice done,
While, through the skies,
A meteor rushing on the sun,
He flares and dies.
But, as he cleaves yon ether clear
Notes from the unattempted Sphere
He scatters to the enchanted ear
Of earth's dim throng,
Whose dissonance doth more endear
The showering song.
In other shapes than he forecast
The world is moulded: his fierce blast,--
His wild assault upon the Past,--
These things are vain;
Revolt is transient: what _must_ last
Is that pure strain,
Which seems the wandering voices blent
Of every virgin element,--
A sound from ocean caverns sent,--
An airy call
From the pavilioned firmament
O'erdoming all.
And in this world of worldlings, where
Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er
A great emotion shakes the air,
And life flags tame,
And rare is noble impulse, rare
The impassioned aim,
'Tis no mean fortune to have heard
A singer who, if errors blurred
His sight, had yet a spirit stirred
By vast desire,
And ardour fledging the swift word
With plumes of fire.
A creature of impetuous breath,
Our torpor deadlier than death
He knew not; whatsoe'er he saith
Flashes with life:
He spurreth men, he quickeneth
To splendid strife.
And in his gusts of song he brings
Wild odours shaken from strange wings,
And unfamiliar whisperings
From far lips blown,
While all the rapturous heart of things
Throbs through his own,--
His own that from the burning pyre
One who had loved his wind-swept lyre
Out of the sharp teeth of the fire
Unmolten drew,
Beside the sea that in her ire
Smote him and slew.
poem by William Watson
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Spirits Rebellious
I can't do right when all I wanna do is wrong
My conscience sounds alarm like the waning of a Chinese gong
I know about the punishment, I know about the law
My sins cut deeper than the teeth on a saw
My attitude is bad and my nerves are raw
I'm a shotgun snake, I'm a jackal with claws
I was born with a chip on my shoulder on a stormy night
Alright
My spirits rebellious, you tell us everything's okay
No way
Spirits rebellious, we won't do anything you say
It's a hard, hard world with a black corroded heart
There's a livin', breathin' devil trying to tear my soul apart
In a cold, cold grave on a dark, dark night
Eternity is black, I'll never see the light
Never listen to advice, I was never that bright
Couldn't walk away, I was lookin' to fight
I was born with a chip on my shoulder on a stormy night
Alright
My spirits rebellious, you tell us everything's okay
No way
My spirits rebellious, we won't do anything you say
No Way
My spirits rebellious, you tell us everything alright
Tonight
Spirits rebellious, all we gonna hear is lies,lies, lies
Lies...
My spirits rebellious
I can't do right when all I want to do is wrong
My spirits rebellious
I know about the punishment, I know about the law
My spirits rebellious
My sins cut deeper then the teeth on a saw
My spirits rebellious
I'm the teenage curse of the monkey's paw
song performed by by Alice Cooper
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Bereavement
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops to perfection's remembrance a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
Ah, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhle, hapless victim! and Heaven will save
The spirit that hath faded away with the breath.
Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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I Like Your Silence
i like your silence
now
it is not like the
silence we had
before
your silence
now is different
it is
reminiscing
it is
refreshing
it is
sensitive
to my presence
it is
reflective of
who i am
enabling me
to hear my
breath
to see and
feel
my very own soul
i like your silence
now
it is the silence
of the memory
that cannot
be forgotten
it is not death
it is life
it is the blossom
of my sorrow
it is the fruit of
my despair
it is the silence
of my silence
it is the peace
within my
solitude
it has become
the center of
my life
the focus of my
scattering
the finding of
my loss
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Despair Is Darkness
DESPAIR IS DARKNESS
Despair is darkness-
Despair is death inside and death in the world and death in one’s own sad soul-
Despair is no way out -
Despair is the place where one is forever stuck -
Despair is the realization that one has done what one could – and one is not going anywhere else-
Despair is the admission of failure-
Despair is no sign of help anywhere around-
Despair is so much lost-
Despair is one‘s life is over-
Despair is regret-
Despair is the sense that one will never have the time to have another chance -
Despair is ‘it’s finished’-
Despair is no way out-
Despair is going down and more down and more dark and more afraid all the time -
Despair is the scream which hurts and does not stop the hurting -
Despair is the understanding that even Death will not save one -
Despair is that the pain will never end-not even with death.
Despair is no way out again and again and again- without end.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.
Kahlil Gibran in Spirits Rebellious
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Splendour And The Curse Of Song
Methought the unknown God we seek in vain
Grew weary of the evil He had wrought—
The piteous litanies of human pain—
Till here and there some lonely souls He sought
To bear the message of Immortal Thought,
And sent them forth to wander ’midst the throng
Crowned with the splendour and the curse of Song.
But that which still was kindred to the stars
Fought with the flesh and moaned within its cell,
And beat its wings against its prison bars.
Thus, soaring oft to heights sublime, they fell,
Dragged by the flesh into the gulfs of hell;
Till all their days were as a tumult long
Between the splendour and the curse of Song.
Yet often ’mid the fever of distress
Some singer’s lips would chant so sweet a strain
That storm-tossed souls forgot their weariness,
And comfort crept about the bed of pain,
And men took heart and dreamt of heaven again;
And to the weak came hope and courage strong
Born of the beauty and the balm of Song.
But Life was bitter to the lips that sung;
And heavier on those souls the curse did grow
Who strove to speak to men an unknown tongue,
And mournfully their hearts did weigh and know
The measure of the whole world’s cruel woe,
And wearily they fared Time’s path along
Vexed by the splendour and the curse of Song.
Theirs was the homeless hunger of the heart—
Immortal thought within a mortal breast,
Listless they wandered through the crowded mart,
Who to a careless world had given their best;
And when Death lulled them with his wings to rest
What reeked they where they slumbered calm and strong
Crowned with the splendour of Immortal Song?
poem by George Essex Evans
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My Song
I have no song
But still I sing
I let my voice
Fly on wing
For even though
My heart is bare
I have a song
Yet to spare
The song I sing
It has not one word
But far and wide
It's ever heard
My song is
Universal see
Song of wild
Always free
Sung by many
Sung by one
Sung beneath
A dying sun
Song of joy
Yet song of pain
Song of long nights
In the rain
Song of battles
Song of strife
Song of death
But also life
I'll sing untill
I have no breath
And then I'll sing
My song in death
poem by Anonymous Ghurl
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The Only Voices I hear Are On The Inside
I was born not being able to hear
Born not hearing my mother tell me I'm dear
Born never listening to anyone who spoke to me
Born not enjoying music
Born without the ability to gauge sound, unable to hear the clock tick
But since the day I was born
Since before I could talk, I could scorn
There was one thing I always did hate
And that was the thing deepest inside of me,
The thing for which I cursed fate
Worse than deafness or being unable to see
Since the day I was born I heard voices
Not when loved ones talked, but voices that weren't my choice
To hear, voices that were inside my head
Voices that nobody else heard, but I didn't know if they were lying
Because my hearing has always been dead
I'd hear screeching or dying
When none was there
Those voices they'd tell me what to do and how could I deny them?
They were, they are, and they will be the only ones who care
Because they're the only one that speak to me, I can't find the sin
That I committed to be born like this, to be born broken
I've heard more conversations than any other man
And yet I've never heard man utter a word, through my whole lifespan
The only voices I hear are on the inside
And it's the greatest torment that I hide
They'll just tell me I'm crazy, well in writing
But these voices, they accept me, they sing
These voices they know because they've talked to me
These voices are the only I've ever known the
The first voices I've ever heard
Like a mother, I've never listened to a singing bird
But I've listened to a cacophonous symphony of arguing inside my head
These voices are like the woman I did not choose, but wed
I can't separate myself from them
The only time I hear anything, it's torment to condemn
Me, it's funny that I could never speak to anyone but myself
But I guess I've never, ever, been lonely... not ever.
I
Have
Never
Been
Alone
W ho could save me from myselves?
poem by David Knox
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La Canto Finale
La Canto Finale
(An Ode to Joan Camahalan)
By: Benedict Salvacion
Canto I
I weep before the heaven shuts
perpetual remorse to the twilight of my rest
not even the hands of the sun shall pierce
beyond the wintriness of my lonely grave.
Salvage not the forlorn conferred
in the darkness of my cell I chose to stay
to embrace my sentence foretold by time
til’ the silent cry of the nightingale retires.
How much more poison ought to take?
before my remains denies the pain
the scar of my scarlet rose
that went astray one gloomy day.
Perhaps a thousand painful deaths
shall cease the sorrow that holds my soul
perhaps the echoes of the endless mourn
will break this cage, my eternal chills.
Canto II
Destined to drink the bitterness of life
from the chalice that my hands hath made
in her eyes a question in silence
must I take the potion of our end?
With the stars falling, kissing my cheeks
eyes wide shut I took my fate
not knowing that it will be my last
while she walked afar and bid goodbye
From thereon I lived and dwelled
counting the leaves from the laurel falls
unto the rivers of shameful acts
here in the realm of tortured souls
But will it change my stars from the skies?
if she hears my plead, my thousands of prayer
or will she be cold like a tree in the winter
nor will she play deaf ten folds as her last goodbye?
Canto Finale
Indeed, it will shatter the last of me
if then again from her lips, the final farewell
the final strike deeper from the first
the final chapter in the book of my life
But if my fate hath long been written
by the hands of my scarlet rose
then I shall face the final blow
with the bluest sky in the summer day
For no sweeter death that I discern
than my life be seized by madness for love
though in this battle I will lose
at least I’ll die complete and thirst no more
But still in my final breath
I shall whisper to the gods at the heavens
that no harm shall come your way
for thou art my love for eternity, constant as my death.
poem by Julian Salvacion
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Deeper, Dig Deeper
Deeper, dig deeper
Deeper, deeper, dig, dig, deeper, deeper
Get a little closer
You dont have to be afraid
You have to trust your inner pilot
Dont let it drift away
Dig a little deeper
You gotta get it in your soul
Reach out with your spirit
And let your feelings show
Deeper, deeper, dig, dig, deeper, deeper
You cant deny the feeling
That touches you inside
When youre tired and lonely
You dont have to lose your pride.
Take the time to listen
Stay a little while
Got a song to sing for you
Let the music get you higher, higher.
song performed by by Santana
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Love, Dreaming of Death
I dreamt my little boys were dead
And I was sitting wild and lone;
On closed unmoving knees my head
Lay rigid as a stone.
And thus I sat without a tear,
And though I drew life’s painful breath,
All life to me seemed cold and drear,
And comfortless as death:
Sat on the earth as on a bier,
Where loss and ruin lived alone,
Without the comfort of a tear—
Without a passing groan.
And there was stillness everywhere,
Ensphering one wide sense of woe;
The stillness of a world’s despair,
Whose tides had ceased to flow.
Yea, so eternal seemed my grief,
Time moved out, neither slow nor fast,
Nor recked I whether periods brief
Or centuries had passed.
It was as if to marble cold
My loss had petrified the air,
And I was shut within its hold,
Made deathless by despair.
Made deathless in a world of death,
There ever sitting wild and lone,
With all but one pent painful breath
Transmutted into stone.
And more the gorgon horror crushed
With dry petrific pressure in,
Till forth my waking spirit rushed
With agonizing din!
And oh! What joy it was to wake—
To cast that haggard dream away,
And from its stony influence break
Into the living day!
I sought the objects of my care,
And felt, while I embraced the twain,
How much even from a dream’s despair
A father’s love may gain.
When this dream-record long ago
I penned, how little did I deem
That yet a distant coming woe
Was shadowed in its theme.
For ah! Of that beloved twain,
The lips of one, then warm with breath,
I since have kissed unkissed again,
For they were cold in death.
A swift wild death! And when I think
Of all that I have lost thereby,
My heart hath pangs that seem to drink
All Mara’s waters dry;
Yea, pangs that would my life destroy,
Did faith not whisper oft between:
“Peace! Sire of an immortal boy
Beyond this mortal scene.”
poem by Charles Harpur
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The Hapless Army
“A soldier braving disease and death on
the battlefield has a seven times better chance
of life than a new-born baby.”—Secretary of
War, U.S.A.
The Hapless Army from the dark
That lies beyond creation,
All blinded by the solar spark,
And leaderless in lands forlorn,
Come stumbling through the mists of morn;
And foes in close formation,
With taloned fingers dripping red,
Bestrew the sodden world with dead.
The Hapless Army bears no sword;
Fell destiny fulfilling,
It marches where the murder horde,
Amid the fair new urge of life,
With poison stream, and shot, and knife,
Make carnival of killing.
No war above black Hell's abyss
Knows evil grim and foul as this.
In pallid hillocks lie the slain
The callous heaven under;
Like twisted hieroglyphs of pain
They fleck earth to oblivion's brink,
As far as human mind may think,
Accusing God with thunder
Of dreadful silence. Nought it serves—
Fate ever calls the doomed reserves!
Still with Death's own monotony
The innocents are falling,
Like dead leaves in a forest dree;
And still the conscript armies come.
No banners theirs, no beat of drum,
No merry bugles calling!
Mad ally in the Slayers' train,
Man slaps and sorrows for the slain!
poem by Edward George Dyson
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Song #4.
They have been here and had this light
Who in their graves are lying,
And e'en the youngest life to-night
Is gradually dying.
Our birth's a kind of death we have
When we upon time waken,
A step still nearer to the grave
With every breath is taken.
We are doomed being born, as 'twere
Decay within us breeding,
Or e'en as time did groan and bear
But death's immortal seeding;
For we are made of stuff that goes
So easy to decaying,
'Tis at the best the spirit's clothes
In which it goes a-Maying.
poem by Robert Crawford
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After Long Silence
Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.
poem by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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The Singer
Nay! sing no more thy wild delusive strain
(I heard them say, while I my song pursued),
'Tis but the rage of thy delirious brain
(I heard them say, yet still my song renewed):
Nay! sing no more with reckless, idle breath
Of man immortal and of life to come,
For one brief moment scan the face of death,
Then be thy foolish song for ever dumb;
Behold the dusty ash that once was fire,
And mark the summer leaf in autumn fall,
Watch thou the wavering breath of man expire,
And know that Death hath lordship over all
(I heard them say with many a scornful word,
Yet still sang on as one who nothing heard).
poem by William Gay
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Music: An Ode
WAS it light that spake from the darkness,
or music that shone from the word,
When the night was enkindled with sound
of the sun or the first-born bird?
Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage
of seasons that fall and rise,
Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh,
and blinded with light that dies,
Lived not surely till music spake,
and the spirit of life was heard.
Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,
Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man,
and the thrall was free.
Slave of nature and serf of time,
the bondman of life and death,
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed
but forlorn and reluctant breath,
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer,
and communed aloud with the sea.
Morning spake, and he heard:
and the passionate silent noon
Kept for him not silence:
and soft from the mounting moon
Fell the sound of her splendour,
heard as dawn's in the breathless night,
Not of men but of birds whose note
bade man's soul quicken and leap to light:
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness
of earth were as chords in tune.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Life's Garden
We all grow up in this Garden called Life,
There are many inner and outer strifes,
In the silence, in the silence,
In this beautiful Garden called Life!
There are weeds and pests in this Garden called Life,
They are know as ignorance, greed, and vice.
In the silence, in the silence,
In this beautiful Garden called Life.
Every garden needs sunshine and rain,
In this garden you will find joy and pain.
In this silence, in the silence,
In this beautiful Garden called Life!
Plant sparsely, your harvest will be a pittance,
Plant bountifully, your harvest will be munificence,
In this silence, in the silence,
In this beautiful Garden called Life!
Did you plant deeds of joy, love and peace?
Or did you drop seeds of hatred, conflict, and gloom?
The world will know by the plants' bloom.
In the silence, in the silence,
In this beautiful Garden called Life!
poem by Anna B. Kurzweil
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No Need For The Lord
Men who think they have it all, are still affected by Adam’s fall,
Those men you see everywhere, living their life without a care.
They see no need for The Lord, who in their life goes ignored.
Unlike men, like you and me, they have no thought on eternity.
They say all that is ahead for us, is death and a return to dust.
They all believe this life will end, but that afterlife is all pretend.
If dust is the last place we go, why does Truth annoy them so?
If there is no afterlife at all, why do unbelievers hem and haw?
They say all have the same fate, as all bodies just disintegrate,
Hopelessly dealing with daily strife, only having this present life.
Saying all things start and end; but not so with Christ my friend,
Jesus Christ is eternal friend; like Him man’s being has no end.
Death may be an earthy fate, but all men have an eternal state,
For some it’s death some it’s life; it all depends on Jesus Christ.
If you believe He rose again, you my friend, can be born-again,
Born into God’s eternal family, to live with Jesus Christ eternally.
If you do not believe this is true, eternal darkness will greet you,
When you step into eternal death, upon your last earthly breath.
I simply do not understand why, some unbelievers balk and cry,
Ignoring all of the written history, about the only King of Eternity.
Nobody forces them to believe, as they choose to be deceived.
I simply will remain in The Truth, as they continue their reproof.
Is it all simply Satan’s spite, as he is wrong and Christ is right?
Friend one day they all will see, when they’re cast into eternity.
(Copyright ©05/2006)