Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
quote by Blaise Pascal
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
quote by Blaise Pascal
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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How Tuneful Is The Voice Of Sea
How tuneful is the voice of sea,
What true accord in ocean's murmur,
And in the reed's light, rhythmic tremour
What tender musicality!
In nature all is harmony,
A consonance fore'er agreed on,
And 'tis alone our phantom freedom
That is disturbingly off-key.
Whence comes this breach? How to explain
Why with the sea its song sonorous
The soul declines to sing in chorus?
Why does the thinking reed complain?
poem by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
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Primal
Krew Boylan, Ch'aska Cuba de Reed, Santiago Cuba de Reed, Lindsay Farris, Rebekah Foord
by Josh Reed from Primal (2009)
Submitted by Film Fan
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I Was Born Close To Nature
By my old home far north of here the babbling rill did flow
I was born close to Nature but of Nature little i do know
On the hedgerows of the old fields the birds welcomed the Spring
One can only look on Nature as a most amazing thing
The dark moorhen chicks from the reed bed to the river pool swim out
But their mum she calls to tell them if she sense danger about
And back into the reed bed they swim and from sight disappear
Though yet their little cheepings the passer by can hear
I was born close to Nature going back six decades ago
Near the rill from the high ground that to the river flow
Through Claraghatlea towards Liscreagh from the fields of Claramore
Far north of here as the crow fly from this far southern shore
And my wonderment of Nature it only seems to grow
And the more i learn about her the less of her i know i know.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Sufi
A broken reed. No longer
its feet in earth, its stalk in water;
what will become of it?
Taken by grace; cut; shaped
into new name, new form;
breathed into it, the breath of life;
the breath, heard by a song
unmanifest, that waits to be born
from cause to mind to sound:
how can this sound be described,
the joy of broken reed now flute?
Now the reed can sing; speaks
of how it cried its loss;
yearned to find itself again;
knowing in its heart
that wholeness waits, somewhere, for ever;
now it sings for joy, so purely that
no ears, no heart, can resist its call;
nevermore to part the reed, the flute, the song.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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When I am asleep and crumbling in the tomb
When I am asleep and crumbling in the tomb, should you come
to visit me, I will come forth with speed.
You are for me the blast of the trumpet and the resurrection,
so what shall I do? Dead or living, wherever you are, there am I.
Without your lip I am a frozen and silent reed; what melodies
I play the moment you breathe on my reed!
Your wretched reed has become accustomed to your sugar lip;
remember wretched me, for I am seeking you.
When I do not find the moon of your countenance, I bind up
my head [veil myself in your mourning]; when I do not find your
sweet lip, gnaw my own hand.
A Musical Instrument
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, --
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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N. Y.
My City, my beloved, my white! Ah, slender,
Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me!
Now do I know that I am mad,
For here are a million people surly with traffic;
This is no maid.
Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one.
My City, my beloved,
Thou art a maid with no breasts,
Thou art slender as a silver reed.
Listen to me, attend me!
And I will breathe into thee a soul,
And thou shalt live for ever.
poem by Ezra Pound
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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.
"I am not hungry for berries.
I am not hungry for bread.
But hungry hungry for a house
Where at night a man in bed
"May never hear the plaster
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.
"Where never wife and children need
Go blinking through the gloom.
Where every room of many rooms
Will be full of room.
"Oh my home may have its east or west
Or north or south behind it.
All I know is I shall know it,
And fight for it when I find it."
The agent's steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!
Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.
A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye
That squeezed into a slit.
But the Rudolph Reeds and children three
Were too joyous to notice it.
For were they not firm in a home of their own
With windows everywhere
And a beautiful banistered stair
And a front yard for flowers and a back for grass?
The first night, a rock, big as two fists.
The second, a rock big as three.
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.
(Though oaken as man could be.)
The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.
Then up did rise our Roodoplh Reed
And pressed the hand of his wife,
And went to the door with a thirty-four
And a beastly butcher knife.
He ran like a mad thing into the night
And the words in his mouth were stinking.
By the time he had hurt his first white man
He was no longer thinking.
By the time he had hurt his fourth white man
Rudolph Reed was dead.
His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.
"Nigger--" his neighbors said.
Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.
poem by Gwendolyn Brooks
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Confused
pondering thoughts o many occasion
i spend my days with this yearning obsession
i've been thinking and i cant stop
mindfucked by my own thought
If there's one thing for which I admire you, it's your original discovery of the Ten Commandments.
quote by Thomas Reed
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I'm not joking around when I've said occasionally, trying to learn how to play a D chord properly has been a very big thing for me.
The Song Of Pan
Mad with love and laden
With immortal pain,
Pan pursued a maiden--
Pan, the god--in vain.
For when Pan had nearly
Touched her, wild to plead,
She was gone--and clearly
In her place a reed!
Long the god, unwitting,
Through the valley strayed;
Then at last, submitting,
Cut the reed, and made,
Deftly fashioned, seven
Pipes, and poured his pain
Unto earth and heaven
In a piercing strain.
So with god and poet;
Beauty lures them on,
Flies, and ere they know it
Like a wraith is gone.
Then they seek to borrow
Pleasure still from wrong,
And with smiling sorrow
Turn it to a song.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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If you just stop and think, baby, honey, love is a funny thing. Whatever you put in, that's what you expect to gain.
quote by Jimmy Reed
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Trainwreck
hey pretty i girl got something to tell you
i have a few lies worth listening to
i know weve been around this nature trail
been thinking about if you can tell
just what im getting ready to tell
i love you girl and that never stops
and id spend my life
giving every kiss i got
but i cant promise what i cant control
and looking at me well i dont know
cant stop a trainwreck from happening
i sweat a slip and a fall
might as well stepped on in
ill always look at my reflection
and instead of seeing the man that you see
all i see is him
all i see is me
i cant stop a trainwreck yes that is true
so once your in and say i do
try and understand what you hopped into
Successful innovators recognize that discovery of great ideas come from looking at the same thing as everyone else and observing something different.
Reed Markham in Effective Speechwriting
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To say that a thing has never yet been done among men is to erect a barrier stronger than reason, stronger than discussion.
quote by Thomas Reed
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Music is the most powerful thing on this earth, and it's hard to be angry when you are listening to music.
quote by Jerry Reed
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Syrinx
Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed,
Though now she's turned into a reed;
From that dear reed Pan's pipe does come,
A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it as the pipe of Pan:
Cross-gartered swains and dairy girls,
With faces smug and round as pearls,
When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play,
With dancing wear out night and day;
The bagpipe's drone his hum lays by,
When Pan sounds up his minstrelsy;
His minstrelsy! O base! this quill,
Which at my mouth with wind I fill,
Puts me in mind, though her I miss,
That still my Syrinx' lips I kiss.
To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration.
quote by Steve Lacy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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