A Song to David
Sublime—invention ever young,
Of vast conception, tow'ring tongue
To God th' eternal theme;
Notes from yon exaltations caught,
Unrivall'd royalty of thought
O'er meaner strains supreme.
His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
For all the pangs that rage;
Blest light still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michal of his bloom,
Th' Abishag of his age.
He sang of God—the mighty source
Of all things—the stupendous force
On which all strength depends;
From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, power, and enterprise
Commences, reigns, and ends.
Tell them, I AM, Jehovah said
To Moses; while earth heard in dread,
And, smitten to the heart,
At once above, beneath, around,
All Nature, without voice or sound,
Replied, O LORD, THOU ART.
The world, the clustering spheres, He made;
The glorious light, the soothing shade,
Dale, champaign, grove, and hill;
The multitudinous abyss,
Where Secrecy remains in bliss,
And Wisdom hides her skill.
The pillars of the Lord are seven,
Which stand from earth to topmost heaven;
His Wisdom drew the plan;
His Word accomplish'd the design,
From brightest gem to deepest mine;
From Christ enthroned, to Man.
For Adoration all the ranks
Of Angels yield eternal thanks,
And David in the midst;
With God's good poor, which, last and least
In man's esteem, Thou to Thy feast,
O blessèd Bridegroom, bidd'st!
For Adoration, David's Psalms
Lift up the heart to deeds of alms;
And he, who kneels and chants,
Prevails his passions to control,
Finds meat and medicine to the soul,
Which for translation pants.
For Adoration, in the dome
Of Christ, the sparrows find a home,
And on His olives perch:
The swallow also dwells with thee,
O man of God's humility,
Within his Saviour's church.
Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,
And drops upon the leafy limes;
Sweet Hermon's fragrant air:
Sweet is the lily's silver bell,
And sweet the wakeful tapers' smell
That watch for early prayer.
Sweet the young nurse, with love intense,
Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence;
Sweet, when the lost arrive:
Sweet the musician's ardour beats,
While his vague mind's in quest of sweets,
The choicest flowers to hive.
Strong is the horse upon his speed;
Strong in pursuit the rapid glede,
Which makes at once his game:
Strong the tall ostrich on the ground;
Strong through the turbulent profound
Shoots Xiphias to his aim.
Strong is the lion—like a coal
His eyeball,—like a bastion's mole
His chest against the foes:
Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail;
Strong against tide th' enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.
But stronger still, in earth and air,
And in the sea, the man of prayer,
And far beneath the tide:
And in the seat to faith assign'd,
Where ask is have, where seek is find,
Where knock is open wide.
Precious the penitential tear;
And precious is the sigh sincere,
Acceptable to God:
And precious are the winning flowers,
In gladsome Israel's feast of bowers
Bound on the hallow'd sod.
Glorious the sun in mid career;
Glorious th' assembled fires appear;
Glorious the comet's train:
Glorious the trumpet and alarm;
Glorious the Almighty's stretched-out arm;
Glorious th' enraptured main:
Glorious the northern lights astream;
Glorious the song, when God 's the theme;
Glorious the thunder's roar:
Glorious Hosanna from the den;
Glorious the catholic Amen;
Glorious the martyr's gore:
Glorious—more glorious—is the crown
Of Him that brought salvation down,
By meekness call'd thy Son:
Thou that stupendous truth believed;—
And now the matchless deed 's achieved,
Determined, dared, and done!
poem by Christopher Smart
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A Rondeau of College Rhymes
Our college rhymes,--how light they seem,
Like little ghosts of love's young dream
That led our boyish hearts away
From lectures and from books, to stray
By flowery mead and flowing stream!
There's nothing here, in form or theme,
Of thought sublime or art supreme:
We would not have the critic weigh
Our college rhymes.
Yet if, perchance, a slender beam
Of feeling's glow or fancy's gleam
Still lingers in the lines we lay
At Alma Mater's feet today,
The touch of Nature may redeem
Our college rhymes.
poem by Henry Van Dyke
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Psalm 148 Paraphrased
Universal praise to God.
Loud hallelujahs to the Lord,
From distant worlds where creatures dwell;
Let heav'n begin the solemn word,
And sound it dreadful down to hell.
The Lord, how absolute he reigns!
Let every angel bend the knee;
Sing of his love in heav'nly strains,
And speak how fierce his terrors be.
High on a throne his glories dwell,
An awful throne of shining bliss;
Fly through the world, O sun! and tell
How dark thy beams compared to his.
Awake, ye tempests, and his fame
In sounds of dreadful praise declare;
And the sweet whisper of his name
Fill every gentler breeze of air.
Let clouds, and winds, and waves agree
To join their praise with blazing fire;
Let the firm earth and rolling sea
In this eternal song conspire.
Ye flowery plains, proclaim his skill;
Valleys, lie low before his eye;
And let his praise from every hill
Rise tuneful to the neighb'ring sky.
Ye stubborn oaks, and stately pines,
Bend your high branches and adore:
Praise him, ye beasts, in diff'rent strains;
The lamb must bleat, the lion roar.
Birds, ye must make his praise your theme;
Nature demands a song from you;
While the dumb fish that cut the stream
Leap up, and mean his praises too.
Mortals, can you refrain your tongue,
When nature all around you sings?
O for a shout from old and young,
From humble swains and lofty kings!
Wide as his vast dominion lies
Make the Creator's name be known;
Loud as his thunder shout his praise,
And sound it lofty as his throne.
Jehovah! 'tis a glorious word:
O may it dwell on every tongue!
But saints, who best have known the Lord,
Are bound to raise the noblest song.
Speak of the wonders of that love
Which Gabriel plays on every chord:
From all below, and all above,
Loud hallelujahs to the Lord!
poem by Isaac Watts
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They Have Found Each Other
Mute they wander,
Meeting yonder,
In the wondrous Spring new-born,
That though old as Time's first morn,
Brings fresh youth to all the living,
Now held fast, now far retreating,
But through hearts in oneness beating
Ever fullest bloom is giving.
Mute they wander. E'en the eye
Speaks no thought. For from on high
To their souls sweet strains have spoken
From the wide world's harmony,
Born of light, the darkness broken,
In the dawn of things to be.
Power crowned-
Earth around
Like a sun-song rolled the sound.
Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending-
Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending
Speech to thought.
But lo! quick blending,
All things speak! They sound and shimmer,
Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer,
Tint and tone combining, nearer,
Meet as one-with all their thinking
In one beauty, higher, clearer,-
Heaven itself to earth is sinking.
But in this great hour of trysting
Life is opened, its course brightened,
Growth eternal calls, enlisting
Every spirit-power heightened.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Love Sonnet LX
My mind and heart both love you utterly.
And so each thought of mine is doubly yours,
And all my will about your body pours
Scents of my blood and fires that flow from me.
Who has created me, so young, so free,
Eager to-day to close convention’s doors,
To-morrow to return and sweep the floors
With my loose hair in blinding memory?
Dearest, you have, who gave my heart such love,
It sang the marriage of our mingling blood;
Sweeping us on in a supreme control,
To those vast stillnesses that move above;
And in the wonder of its mighty flood
My mind drew God from your eternal soul.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
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Thanksgiving
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives
And conquers if we let it.
There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble.
Farseeing is the soul and wise
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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So Satisfying
The musician struggles with a tune all night
and tries to keep it near.
Sometimes it slips right through the ear.
At times it's gone I fear.
A cursed blankness creates a loss
and in the morn you sigh.
'Should the theme have ended low
or have taken the notes up high?
That tune is gone but the quest goes on
and the music comes alive.
A theme is finally completed
and so you let it survive.
Over and over it plays in the head
and will not be subdued.
To the musician that wrestled with the notes
the completion is just like food.
So satisfying.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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Terrible and sublime thought, that every moment is supreme for some man and woman, every hour the apotheosis of some passion!
quote by William McFee
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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America
NOR force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye
Who north or south, on east or western land,
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God
For God; O ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand
Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand
Heroic utterance—parted, yet a whole,
Far yet unsever’d,—children brave and free
Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare’s soul,
Sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme,
And rich as Chaucer’s speech, and fair as Spenser’s dream.
poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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Praise Of Creation
Creation fires my tongue!
Nature thy anthems raise;
And spread the universal song
Of thy Creator's praise!
Heaven's chief delight was Man
Before Creation's birth--
Ordained with joy to lead the van,
And reign the lord of earth.
When Sin was quite unknown,
And all the woes it brought,
He hailed the morn without a groan
Or one corroding thought.
When each revolving wheel
Assumed its sphere sublime,
Submissive Earth then heard the peal,
And struck the march of time.
The march in Heaven begun,
And splendor filled the skies,
When Wisdom bade the morning Sun
With joy from chaos rise.
The angels heard the tune
Throughout creation ring:
They seized their golden harps as soon
And touched on every string.
When time and space were young,
And music rolled along--
The morning stars together sung,
And Heaven was drown'd in song.
Ye towering eagles soar,
And fan Creation's blaze,
And ye terrific lion's roar,
To your Creator's praise.
Responsive thunders roll,
Loud acclamations sound,
And show your Maker's vast control
O'er all the worlds around.
Stupendous mountains smoke,
And lift your summits high,
To him who all your terrors woke,
Dark'ning the sapphire sky.
Now let my muse descend,
To view the march below--
Ye subterraneous worlds attend
And bid your chorus flow.
Ye vast volcanoes yell,
Whence fiery cliffs are hurled;
And all ye liquid oceans swell
Beneath the solid world.
Ye cataracts combine,
Nor let the pæan cease--
The universal concert join,
Thou dismal precipice.
But halt my feeble tongue,
My weary muse delays:
But, oh my soul, still float along
Upon the flood of praise!
poem by George Moses Horton
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Prospects
We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
Is all the green of that enameled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime
Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall arrive on time.
No guidebook tells you if you'll have to climb
Or swim. However foolish we may seem,
We have set out from here for the sublime
And must get past the scene of an old crime
Before we falter and run out of steam,
Riddled by doubt that we'll arrive on time.
Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
poem by Anthony Evan Hecht
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The poets well
The poet dips his bucket of thought
Into the well of invading darkness,
Thirsting a spark of eternal light
He drinks from his own reflection
But the consumption is just a taste
Of that void of inspiration
Where the fires ease and waste
Before his true conception.
poem by Mark Heathcote
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In other words, what is supposedly found is an invention whose inventor is unaware of his act of invention, who considers it as something that exists independently of him; the invention then becomes the basis of his world view and actions.
quote by Paul Watzlawick
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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An Idyll
You stay for a while beside me with your beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare;
Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun,
Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!
In the space of a broken castle I found you on a day
When the call of the new-come cuckoo went with me all the way,
You stood by un-mortised stones that were rough and black with age,
The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's broken cage!
And we went down together by paths your childhood knew,
Remote you went beside me like the spirit of the dew,
Hard were the hedgerows still, sloe-bloom was their scanty dower,
You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom that scarce is flower!
And now you stay beside me with your beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare,
Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun,
Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The Big Royalty Check
Im waiting
For my royalty check to come,
And it still hasnt come yet.
Its about a year
Over due.
I guess its coming
From the big royalty check in the sky.
I waited and the mailman
Never dropped it in my letterbox.
Oh, oh-oh, oh...
I guess its a big royalty check in the sky.
Oooh baby.
But you cant
Beat the tax man
And me
All at once.
song performed by by Van Morrison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Supreme Name
The supreme name of He taught us the story of our life,
Eternal life is everlasting and surprising to the senses.
Someone asked if the living God is a supreme God,
And the answer was as usual, your God is One,
Incomparable and Absolute.
His supreme name never humoured anybody
Other than the Devil, the one who damned himself.
May water flow from the fountains of destruction
And let the mountain light be desisted for this
The Last Day.
The trumpet kept each soul intact but submerged,
This ringing excited the soul into resurrection,
The spirits of the dead were now the living,
Yet again the dead have lived,
They are with the Supreme God.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Aurobindo 167 Savitri Book 11
' A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy's skies'
Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight.'
'God's everlasting day surrounded her, '
'Infinity's finite fronts she lived in, new
For ever to an everliving sight.'
'Twilight and mist were exiles from that air,
Night was impossible to such radiant heavens.'
A life divine winning over Death to deathless...
'Of all the beauty and the marvel here,
Of all Time's intricate variety
Eternity was the substance and the source; '
A Truth only to be felt and realised...
'Thought's wings climbed up towards heaven's vast repose
Lost in blue deeps of immortality.
A changed earth-nature felt the breath of peace.'
'All thrilled with the immanence of one divine.'
'Ecstatic voices smote at hearing's chords,
Each movement found a music all its own;
'Songs thrilled of birds upon unfading boughs
The colours of whose plumage had been caught
From the rainbow of imagination's wings.
Immortal fragrance packed the quivering breeze.'
Oh, what a wonderful spec with word-beauty..
'She saw all Nature marvellous without fault.'
'The mighty signs of which earth fears the stress,
Trembling because she cannot understand,
And must keep obscure in forms strange and sublime,
Were here the first lexicon of an infinite mind
Translating the language of eternal bliss.'
'The heart was a torch lit from infinity'....
............My consciousness this moment,
O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights
Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation
My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine
May thereso, let Savitri in my self arise
Aroused thereso be knowledge and fortune
(An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Eleven: The Book of Everlasting Day
Canto One: The Eternal Day: The Soul's Choice
and the Supreme Consummation
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's)
poem by Indira Renganathan
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Key To What?
diddles on flight
on freedom
was a chosen theme
in early 2011 theme May
titles are an easy guide
to what theme would say
key to the theme
key to the dream
key to the imagery
poem by Terence George Craddock
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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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Scene From The Future's Web
Gorilla, man, have played their innings out,
Freeway turned to grass without a doubt
Spider, which waited long, will reign supreme.
Sirens silent, mankind just dust done dream
Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall all spiders scout
winging hummers, shawl fly caught, spun scheme
singing drummers' sprawl, spry sought fun theme!
(2 March 2012)
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
quote by Frederic Chopin
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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