Au Bal
[Dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers]
A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies
Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims
And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns
Of sorceries, of spells, of necromancies;
And all my spirit shudders; dew bedims
My sight -these girls and their alluring glances!
Their eyes that burn like dawn's lascivious lances
Walking all earth to love -to love! Life skims
The cream of joy. If God could see what man sees,
(Intoxicating Nellies, Mauds and Nances!)
I see Him leave the sapphrine expanses,
The choir serene and the celestial air
To swoon into their sacramental hair!
poem by Aleister Crowley
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Related quotes
At a certain bar
There’s a bevy of beautiful faces,
moving slender limbs
and catching music that entrances
while the lot of them dances.
Liquor flows like water
and lights glitter on the glass
in front of me
and the cup of golden hunters,
bubbles over the brim
and my sight is full
of girls with alluring glances.
There’s something lascivious
in every touch of eye on eye
and movement that they make
and firm and shapely breasts
of different sizes quiver along,
with the intoxicating madness
of the music.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Ballade Of Roulette
This life--one was thinking to-day,
In the midst of a medley of fancies -
Is a game, and the board where we play
Green earth with her poppies and pansies.
Let manque be faded romances,
Be passe remorse and regret;
Hearts dance with the wheel as it dances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette.
The lover will stake as he may
His heart on his Peggies and Nancies;
The girl has her beauty to lay;
The saint has his prayers and his trances;
The poet bets endless expanses
In Dreamland; the scamp has his debt:
How they gaze at the wheel as it glances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette!
The Kaiser will stake his array
Of sabres, of Krupps, and of lances;
An Englishman punts with his pay,
And glory the jeton of France is;
Your artists, or Whistlers or Vances,
Have voices or colours to bet;
Will you moan that its motion askance is -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette?
ENVOY.
The prize that the pleasure enhances?
The prize is--at last to forget
The changes, the chops, and the chances -
The wheel of Dame Fortune's roulette.
poem by Andrew Lang
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My Favourite Things
I love lots of things in life. By many things, I'm cheered.
By the time you've read the following list, you may think I'm a bit weird!
I love watching the penguins at the zoo.
I love the giraffes and the zebras too.
I love the sights and sounds of a carousel.
I love the distinctive toll of the Big Ben bell.
There are many shows I love on TV,
Like Doctor Who, Merlin, Coast and Glee.
I love eating out in Wetherspoons pubs.
I love eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream tubs.
I love to eat a slice of gooey chocolate cake.
I love to drink a thick, frothy milkshake.
I love the bassoon's deep resonant tone.
In summer, I love to eat an ice cream cone.
I love walking by the Thames on a sunny day.
I love cooked breakfasts when I go away.
I love watching swans swimming, gliding past.
I love floating bubbles - it's a shame they don't last!
I love hot chocolate topped with marshmallows and cream.
I love Edinburgh at festival time - have you been?
I love to go and see a theatre show.
I love the sight of freshly fallen snow.
I love seeing seals in their natural habitat.
I love to befriend and pet a cute cat.
I love to sing with a huge choir on the stage
And read a book which is compelling page after page.
I love lasagne and garlic bread.
I love the snuggly warmth of my bed.
I love to listen to music when I'm feeling low.
I love the moon and stars, which in the sky glow.
I love pastel colours of every hue -
Baby pink, lilac, lemon and powder blue.
Maybe if you have a spare while,
You can list the things that make you smile? !
poem by Angela Wybrow
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Bright Eyes Gleam
My days are spent in trances
while all my nightly dreams
no light know where your glances
are absent, their bright gleams
reverse sad circumstances
as sharing's warming streams
link heart to heart. The chance is
enchanting as Life's schemes
respond to Love's advances
in harmony which beams
from both as spark advances
from Earth to Air like steam
ascending as romance is -
like strawberries and cream
or never ending dances
dreams populate as teems
imagination, - stance is
as mirrored damascene, -
sublime state which perchance is
of all life’s joys supreme
that happiness enhances
when eyes cue bright eyes' gleam …
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Responsum to All my days are trances
A las the dream askance is
N or is Life what it seems,
A s swift pass all Time’s chances -
N ow here, now gone, - Man’s schemes
S mile once! Ephemeral glances
WER e spent on empty dreams!
© Jonathan Robin acrostic parody written 26 June 1996 Parody Responsum to All my days are trances
All my days are trances
And all my days are trances
and all my nightly dreams
are where thy dark eye glances
and where they footstep gleams
by what ethereal dances
in what eternal streams...
Author Unknown
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Dawn Of A New Earth
dawn sways still birds
into golden dawn chorus
paradise heard bird songs
birth born birds of flight
soar on wings of songs
carried upon chorus air
serenades to dreams
to wonder sung solos
dawn bathes our faces
light lit faces seal love
passion dawn sways seas
in warm afterglow love
truly the dawn
sways the seas
seas of infinity
dawn fire moves
model clay bodies
bodies of breathing
thunder distance echoes
over new shores
over new horizons
truly between wake
dreams broke sleep
is interaction of life
an interaction of life
infused into hard world
earth ecosystem harmony
potential world of bliss
love creativity
spinning into infinity
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Winding All My Life About Thee
Winding all my life about thee,
Let me lay my lips on thine;
What is all the world without thee,
Mine --oh mine!
Let me press my heart out on thee,
Grape of life's most fiery vine,
Spilling sacramental on thee
Love's red wine.
Let thy strong eyes yearning o'er me
Draw me with their force divine;
All my soul has gone before me
Clasping thine.
Irresistibly I follow,
As whenever we may run
Runs our shadow, as the swallow
Seeks the sun.
Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
All my spirit to thy sway,
As a star is drowned in splendour
Of the day.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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The Joy of Childhood
Down the dimpled green-sward dancing
Bursts a flaxen-headed bevy,
Bud-lipt boys and girls advancing
Love's irregular little levy.
Rows of liquid eyes in laughter,
How they glimmer, how they quiver!
Sparkling one another after,
Like bright ripples on a river.
Tipsy band of rubious faces,
Flushed with joy's etheral spirit,
Make your mocks and sly grimaces
At Love's self, and do not fear it!
poem by George Darley
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* * *
I walk alone and cry out under the stars.
As one in a desert I hunger for refreshment.
I have need of the coolness of some azure pool.
O, I would anoint my bosom with the clear water!
O, I would immerse myself in the emulous depths!
O, I would drink of ineffable dreams.
You, Beloved, are the silvery lake shimmering in the desert of my youth.
You only can allay the fever of my spirit!
On your lips I should drain the fountain of life.
On your white breast I shall breath the perfume of numberless lilies.
Therein I shall die a thousand deaths and arise reborn in the awful splendor of your love….
* * * * *
Lay your hands,—softer than dove’s wings,—in my hands so I may feel your young life flowing into mine thro’ your finger-tips.
Lay your eyes upon my eyes that I may grow tremulous beneath the flutter of your eyelids.
Lay your heart against my heart that I may hear your love summoning me to forgetfulness.
Lay your tresses about me that I may feel their warm sun streaming thro’ my veins.
Lay your mouth on my mouth until all dissolves in mist about me….
(Is it life? Is it death?)
* * * * *
You are as a million birds that sing unto my heart, O, Beloved.
Thro’ the long nights I hear the chanting of blithe voices.
What divine minstrelsy! what ravishment….
Is this multitudinous melody the rapture of your kiss?
Come to me, press upon my brow the coolness of your young lips that I may hear the thunder of your love in the night….
* * * * *
When will it end, the long vigil….
What dawn will bring you forever unto me, O, my Beloved?
Life is but shadow.
Only you, my Beloved, are more real than shadow.
Beneath your caresses I am as one awakened unto life.
Your finger-tips bear presage of divinity. Your heart-beats are a threnody sublime.
O, Beloved, you are as a white nenuphar lifting its snowy breast on a stream. In your bosom are all the treasures of Elysium. The scent of your skin is like jasmine and honeysuckle.
Why is such loveliness withheld from me, O, Beloved?
When can I look upon you and say: “Beloved! all this beauty is mine forever.”
When will it end, the long vigil….
* * * * *
O, miracle of love!
You whom I adore unto delirium,
Your arms are white lilies upon my bosom.
Stars encircle me when your lips lean down to mine. There is the sound of many waters falling. There is the murmur of a million nightingales,—and the flash of brilliant lightning.
Caress celestial!
Moon-path of my dreams!
O, miracle of Love—my divinity and my crucifixion….
* * * * *
When the young moon silvers the sky, the earth is ours,
We shall go into the forest and wander in the shadow of the pines.
I shall cover you with leaves, and we shall lie on the soft moss entwined like sisters.
And all the while I will know that the fragrance of your skin is sweeter to me than the perfumes of a million roses….
* * * * *
Let me enfold you in my hair.
Let me wind you as in a golden skein.
Give me the curve of your throat, milky white and rose, that I may place about it the glossy fillets of my hair.
Don it as a shining mantilla….
Let my hair shower about you until you are radiant with perfume;
Let it ripple over you like the wind on summer wheat.
Then give me your lips that we may stand united beneath the downpour of its sunlight.
Let us be intermingled as two trees that have bent one single root….
* * * * *
It rains, Beloved….
The dripping of the rain is like the cool kisses of your mouth….
I faint beneath the rapture of your lips.
Be no longer tender.
Cover me with frenzied kisses,—even as I would drench my body in the cruel torrents of the rain.
Envelop me from throat to ankle in delirium intolerable….
* * * * *
To love you like the midnight storm!
To take you swooning unto death as the wind sweeps the waves in tempest!
To transport you unto delirium!
To hear the wild beating of your veins; to feel flame shuddering your blood and to agonize you with my ardor.
To crush you as a flower upon my breast,
To bear you away to some secret valley where I would love you unto insensibility….
* * * * *
If I think of you, I quiver from head to foot.
If I think of you tears flood my eyes.
If I pass you my heart quickens to suffocation and the blood seems to leave my body.
If I look into your eyes a sudden fire burns in my veins.
If I touch you I am as one possessed with madness; my arms tremble and my limbs totter beneath me.
To love you is to suffer the pangs of an intolerable agony.
* * * * *
I see you coming toward me….
Silently you take me in your arms.
Our lips meet and our eyes close.
I feel the shuddering of your breast and the beating of your throat against mine.
We are enveloped in darkness.
We know nothing but the thunder of our veins….
We are swept out into a sea of infinite oblivion.
poem by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff from The Book of Love (1917)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Blind Sight
I look but don’t see the real world in front of me.
Moments waste away with the details of my day.
Do I have enough? How can I get more stuff?
Can I have another win or fit in one more sin?
When I look I can’t see
What’s important to me.
I worship things and seek pleasure.
I can’t see what I should treasure.
Then a blind man told me, he lost his sight so he could see.
He sees why he conquered grief since his life is all too brief.
He sees that everlasting love is true language from above.
He sees that darkness is for sleeping, not sorrow and weeping.
His spirit senses kindness and thanks to his blindness,
He knows that with vision of heart and mind,
It’s only his eyes that will be blind.
poem by Gregory Huyette
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Uschi
The red piano,
The white piano,
The black piano,
The blue piano,
Should i have a candle light diner with you my love?
Bubbles,
There goes the red wine of love on this issue;
But your love and kind words means a lot to me.
Uschi my love,
Come to the valley of Hebron to care for me;
For the sun, the moon and the eleven stars do wait for us.
Uschi my sweet one,
You have a single vision on my love but i do have a bifocal on you;
For this dream of mine will be yours forever in the taking.
My love is like the dawn of a new day to you,
Your love is like the dawn of a new era to me,
And this muse of love is now dawn to us;
So come to the valley of Hebron to care for me my sweet one.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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To Sophia (Miss Stacey)
I.
Thou art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer--
Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances
As the life within them dances.
II.
Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness
With soft clear fire,--the winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.
III.
If, whatever face thou paintest
In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest
When it hears thy harp’s wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.
IV.
As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken,
As the birds at thunder’s warning,
As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit
Is my heart when thine is near it.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Of All Life's States Supreme
Each days spent's play in trances to teach all nightly dreams
no light know where fair glances are absent, rarest gleams
unite free-flights bright streams, reverse sad circumstances,
enchanting spell Life's schemes, link heart to heart. True chance is
response to Love's advances in harmony which beams
from twinned souls sparked advances from Earth to airy streams.
As strawberries and cream, Time's whipped, unzipped romance is
personnified dream themes luck plucks, unending dances.
Affection's fairest stance is love's joyous damascene,
sublime state which perchance is of all life's states supreme.
Eyes glued to bright eyes team here as happiness enhances
surprise cued through shared theme that distance, Time, surpasses.
Romance sheds frontiers, years, tears, hope scope finds
translates to seventh heaven's sublime signs.
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Naming
Unfolding the lust, do not ask
for the olden love. The crowd
has hijacked the halo of spotted survivor.
A fish swims in your eyes.
Trembling like a love song,
while pulling the bucket out of
a well of tears, why did not
you stay beside me?
Life has left me on the cliff.
Burn, burn my love,
for the sake of the sea, for the
bloody rocks who would not hold the hurricane.
A pain of you hangs
on my door. My limbs are dying.
Cannot move the stars,
cannot climb the black moon.
poem by Satish Verma
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Hymns To The Silence
Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
When Im away from you, when Im away from you
Well I feel, yeah, well I feel so sad and blue
Well I feel, well I feel so sad and blue
Oh my dear, oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
When Im away from you, I just have to sing, my hymns
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love its a long, long journey
Long, long journey, journey back home
Back home to you, feel you by my side
Long journey, journey, journey
Yeah in the midnight, in the midnight, I burn the candle
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
And I keep on, 'cause I cant sleep at night
Until the daylight comes through
And I just, and I just, have to sing
Sing my hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
My hymns to the silence
I wanna go out in the countryside
Oh sit by the clear, cool, crystal water
Get my spirit, way back to the feeling
Deep in my soul, I wanna feel
Oh so close to the one, close to the one
Close to the one, close to the one
And thats why, I keep on singing baby
My hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh my hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh hymns to the silence, oh hymns to the silence
Oh hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh my dear, my dear sweet love
Can you feel the silence? can you feel the silence?
Can you feel the silence? can you feel the silence?
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence.
song performed by by Van Morrison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Spirit Of Wine
The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my glass, and I listened
With love to his odorous music,
His flushed and magnificent song.
- 'I am health, I am heart, I am life!
For I give for the asking
The fire of my father, the Sun,
And the strength of my mother, the Earth.
Inspiration in essence,
I am wisdom and wit to the wise,
His visible muse to the poet,
The soul of desire to the lover,
The genius of laughter to all.
'Come, lean on me, ye that are weary!
Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting!
Haste, ye that lag by the way!
I am Pride, the consoler;
Valour and Hope are my henchmen;
I am the Angel of Rest.
'I am life, I am wealth, I am fame:
For I captain an army
Of shining and generous dreams;
And mine, too, all mine, are the keys
Of that secret spiritual shrine,
Where, his work-a-day soul put by,
Shut in with his saint of saints -
With his radiant and conquering self -
Man worships, and talks, and is glad.
'Come, sit with me, ye that are lovely,
Ye that are paid with disdain,
Ye that are chained and would soar!
I am beauty and love;
I am friendship, the comforter;
I am that which forgives and forgets.' -
The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my heart, and I triumphed
In the savour and scent of his music,
His magnetic and mastering song.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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103 ~ Dances With The Moon
'At night the moon became
a woman's face.
I met the Spirit of Music.'
-Jim Morrison from Wilderness
Come my love, 'tis a glorious evening!
The moon is full, there's a million gleamings.
Let's get ourselves to an open field and lie,
kiss and wander through the bright-black sky.
Come spirits fill our breath with rose reeds.
Leave us here to soak in splendor of moon beams.
In Night's tender arms let us be wrapped,
me and my love, because my love
materials me affection in earthly stuff.
step in...slide into some light shoes
hold on...rest your hand on my balloon
launching...lifting off for better views
soon we...we'll be dancing on the moon
my love...my one true love,
she sings o'er the dunes
velvet...a velvet blanket
she dances with the moon
dances with the moon
Oh! my love, I'll never love one
more than she, the Night.
She holds me forever
in her celestial-glow eyes,
but she hides so far away,
this untouchable She,
so don't worry, for I'll love you,
as long as moon beams soak me.
you sing...into the soft winds
hold on...keep in mind always this tune
launching...lifting off for never-ends
then we...we'll be dancing on the moon
my love...my one true love,
she sings o'er the dunes
velvet...a velvet blanket
she dances with the moon
dances with the moon
my love...my one true love,
she sings on sad tunes
she know's...know I'll never
fill her moon's shoes
when she...awakes her Spirit
she dances with the moon
dances with the moon
poem by Stan Pelfrey
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Ode To Wine
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.
My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.
But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.
poem by Pablo Neruda
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Spirit Of A New World
Maurice white, david foster, brian fairweather & martin page
We wake from a dream looking through
Different eyes
Some other space and time
Where love survives all the changes
Time takes you and I into another life
Burn in our hearts of fire
A new design, we are changing
Let the spirit of a new world
Keep our love alive
In the spirit of a new world
Were in overdrive
Believe all that we feel
Living a future dream
Open our eyes to see technology
Our direction
Let the spirit of a new world
Keep our love alive
In the spirit of a new world
Were in overdrive
Step into the dance
We step into the dance of life
Ride the rhythm take a chance
We can make the spirit rise
Reach out theres a new world we created
Break out, hear your heart shout
You can make it
song performed by by Earth Wind And Fire
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Satia te Sanguine
IF YOU loved me ever so little,
I could bear the bonds that gall,
I could dream the bonds were brittle;
You do not love me at all.
O beautiful lips, O bosom
More white than the moon’s and warm,
A sterile, a ruinous blossom
Is blown your way in a storm.
As the lost white feverish limbs
Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
In foam where the sea-weed swims,
Swam loose for the streams to lift,
My heart swims blind in a sea
That stuns me; swims to and fro,
And gathers to windward and lee
Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
A broken, an emptied boat,
Sea saps it, winds blow apart,
Sick and adrift and afloat,
The barren waif of a heart.
Where, when the gods would be cruel,
Do they go for a torture? where
Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?
Ah, not in the flesh, not there!
The racks of earth and the rods
Are weak as foam on the sands;
In the heart is the prey for gods,
Who crucify hearts, not hands.
Mere pangs corrode and consume,
Dead when life dies in the brain;
In the infinite spirit is room
For the pulse of an infinite pain.
I wish you were dead, my dear;
I would give you, had I to give,
Some death too bitter to fear;
It is better to die than live.
I wish you were stricken of thunder
And burnt with a bright flame through,
Consumed and cloven in sunder,
I dead at your feet like you.
If I could but know after all,
I might cease to hunger and ache,
Though your heart were ever so small,
If it were not a stone or a snake.
You are crueller, you that we love,
Than hatred, hunger, or death;
You have eyes and breasts like a dove,
And you kill men’s hearts with a breath.
As plague in a poisonous city
Insults and exults on her dead,
So you, when pallid for pity
Comes love, and fawns to be fed.
As a tame beast writhes and wheedles,
He fawns to be fed with wiles;
You carve him a cross of needles,
And whet them sharp as your smiles.
He is patient of thorn and whip,
He is dumb under axe or dart;
You suck with a sleepy red lip
The wet red wounds in his heart.
You thrill as his pulses dwindle,
You brighten and warm as he bleeds,
With insatiable eyes that kindle
And insatiable mouth that feeds.
Your hands nailed love to the tree,
You stript him, scourged him with rods,
And drowned him deep in the sea
That hides the dead and their gods.
And for all this, die will he not;
There is no man sees him but I;
You came and went and forgot;
I hope he will some day die.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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