Sonnet XXV
As in the midst of battle there is room
For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth;
As gossips whisper of a trinket's worth
Spied by the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom;
As in the crevices of Caesar's tomb
The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth
So in this great disaster of our birth
We can be happy, and forget our doom.
For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy
Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth,
And evening gently woos us to employ
Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth;
Till from that summer's trance we wake, to find
Despair before us, vanity behind.
poem by George Santayana
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Related quotes
As in the Midst of Battle there is Room
As in the midst of battle there is room
For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth;
As gossips whisper of a trinket's worth
Spied by the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom;
As in the crevices of Caesar's tomb
The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth:
So in this great disaster of our birth
We can be happy, and forget our doom.
For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy
Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth,
And evening gently woos us to employ
Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth;
Till from that summer's trance we wake, to find
Despair before us, vanity behind.
poem by George Santayana
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As I Lay Me Down
It felt like springtime on this February morning
In a courtyard birds were singing your praise
I'm still recalling things you said to make me feel alright
I carry them with me today now
As I lay me down to sleep as I pray
that you will hold me dear
Though I fall away I whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy
I wonder why
I feel so high although I am not above thy sorrow
heavy-hearted 'till you call my name
And it felt like churchbells
or the whistle of a train on a summer evening
I want power to meet you barefoot
Barely breathing
As I lay me down to sleep as I pray
that you will hold me dear
Though I fall away I whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy
No doubt that
As I lay me down to sleep as I pray
that you will hold me dear
Though I fall away I whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy
Its not too near for me
Like a flower I need the rain
No its not clear to me
Every season has its change
and I will see you when the sun comes out again
As I lay me down to sleep as I pray
that you will hold me dear
Though I fall away I whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy... uhuh yea
As I lay me down to sleep as I pray
that you will hold me dear
Though I fall away I whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy
I wonder why
The sun comes out again
song performed by by Sophie B. Hawkins from Whaler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sweet As the Rose Is
Sweet as the rose is
So should your summer be
A breeze with flickering kiss
For you and for me
Our dreams coming again true
And holding over its love
In everything that's new
Like a cloudless sky above
A day of morning's blessing
New in its daybreak
Without the gloomy stressing
That winter once did wake
Much sweet in greenery leaves
Hours of summer thought
Our longings for new believes
That kindness has taught
What into the stars has gone
With nightly skies in dream
And summer of worth has won
That nowhere sometimes seem
Oh garden of hope is blooming
In stress less ways complying
Each color in bleach resuming
And the morning of wish dyeing
poem by Peter S. Quinn
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Mater Tenebrarum
In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in anguish I lie,
I startle the stillness and gloom with a bitter and strong cry:
0 Love! 0 Beloved long lost! come down from thy Heaven above,
For my heart is wasting and dying in uttermost famine for love!
Come down for a moment! oh, come! Come serious and mild
And pale, as thou wert on this earth, thou adorable Child!
Or come as thou art, with thy sanctitude, triumph and bliss,
For a garment of glory about thee; and give me one kiss,
One tender and pitying look of thy tenderest eyes,
One word of solemn assurance and truth that
the soul with its love never dies!
In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in frenzy I lie,
I cleave through the crushing gloom with a bitter and deadly cry:
Oh! where have they taken my Love from our Eden
of bliss on this earth?
Which now is a frozen waste of sepulchral and horrible dearth?
Have they killed her indeed? Is her soul as her body, which long
Has moldered away in the dust where the foul worms throng?
O'er what abhorrent Lethes, to what remotest star,
Is she rapt away from my pursuit through cycles and systems far?
She is dead, she is utterly dead; for her life would hear and speed
To the wild imploring cry of my heart that cries in its dreadful need.
In the endless nights, on my bed, where sleeplessly brooding I lie,
I burden the heavy gloom with a bitter an weary sigh:
No hope in this worn-out world, no hope beyond the tomb;
No living and loving God, but blind and stony Doom.
Anguish and grief and sin, terror, disease, and despair:
Why throw not off this life, this garment of torture I wear,
And go down to sleep in the grave in everlasting rest?
What keeps me yet in this life., what spark in my frozen breast?
A fire of dread, 'a light of hope, kindled, 0 Love, by thee;
For thy pure and gentle and beautiful soul, it must immortal be.
poem by James Thomson
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Sonnet XX.
The piteous sobs that choke the Virgin's breath
For him, the fair betrothed Youth, who les
Cold in the narrow dwelling, or the cries
With which a Mother wails her Darling's death,
These from our Nature's common impulse spring
Unblamed, unpraised; but o'er the piled earth,
Which hides the sheeted corse of gray-haired Worth,
If droops the soaring Youth with slackened wing;
If he recall in saddest minstrelsy
Each tenderness bestowed, each truth impressed;
Such Grief is Reason, Virtue, Piety!
And from the Almighty Father shall descend
Comforts on his late Evening, whose young breast
Mourns with no transient love the aged friend.
poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Instruction
From heaven descend the drops of dew,
From heaven the gracious showers,
Earth's winter aspect to renew,
And clothe the spring with flowers;
From heaven the beams of morning flow,
That melt the gloom of night;
From heaven the evening breezes blow
Health, fragrance, and delight.
Like genial dew, like fertile showers,
The words of wisdom fall,
Awaken man's unconscious powers,
Like morning beams, they strike the mind,
Its loveliness reveals;
And softly then the evening wind
The wounded spirit heals.
As dew and rain, as light and air,
From heaven instruction came;
The waste of nature to repair,
Kindle a sacred flame;
A flame to purify the earth,
Exalt her sons on high,
And train them for their second birth,
Their birth beyond the sky.
poem by James Montgomery
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A Litany of Lethe
O Lethe, hidden waters never dry,
We, all we weary and heavy-laden, cry,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
--All we have sinnèd, and yet the scars remain.
--And we, all we had sorrow.--And we had pain.
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou that dost flow from Death to Death through Sleep,
Whose waters are the tears of those that weep,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou that dost bring sweet peace to hospitals,
And to the captive openest prison-walls,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou that dost loose the soul from murdered Truth,
And youth from yesterday, and age from youth,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou from lost love remembered sett'st us free
From hopeless love, a lorn eternity;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou from repentance tak'st the sting, from vice
The memory of a forfeit Paradise;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou in our grief dost hide from us no less
The anguish of remembered happiness;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Thou that dost lay alike on all thy spell,
And free the saint from heaven, the wretch from hell,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
Bring, bring soft sleep, and close all eyes for us,
Sleep without dreams, and peace oblivious;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
We, all we weary and heavy-laden, cry,
Too tired to live, and yet too weak to die,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!
poem by Arthur Symons
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Reunited
Let us begin, dear love, where we left off;
Tie up the broken threads of that old dream;
And go on happy as before; and seem
Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.
Let us forget the graves, which lie between
Our parting and our meeting, and the tears
That rusted out the goldwork of the years;
The frosts that fell upon our gardens green.
Let us forget the cold malicious Fate
Who made our loving hearts her idle toys,
And once more revel in the old sweet joys
Of happy love. Nay, it is not too late!
Forget the deep-ploughed furrows in my brow;
Forget the silver gleaming in my hair;
Look only in my eyes! Oh! darling, there
The old love shone no warmer then than now.
Down in the tender depths of thy dear eyes,
I find the lost sweet memory of my youth,
Bright with the holy radiance of thy truth,
And hallowed with the blue of summer skies.
Tie up the broken threads, and let us go,
Like reunited lovers, hand in hand,
Back, and yet onward, to the sunny land
Of our To Be, which was our Long Ago.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The World
By day she woos me, soft, exceeding fair:
But all night as the moon so changeth she;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
By day she woos me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands
In all the naked horror of the truth
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.
Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell
My soul to her, give her my life and youth,
Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Summons
Some day, when the golden glory
Of June is over the earth,
And the birds are singing together
In a wild, mad strain of mirth;
When the skies are as clear and cloudless
As the skies in June can be,
I would like to have the summons
Sent down from God to me.
Some glowing, golden morning
In the heart of the summer time,
As I stand in the perfect vigour
And strength of my youth's glad prime;
When my heart is light and happy,
And the word seems to bright to me,
I would like to dropp from this earth life,
As a green leaf drops from a tree.
I would not wait for the furrows -
For the faded eyes and hair;
But pass out swift and sudden,
Ere I grow heart-sick with care;
I would break some morn in my singing -
Or fall in my springing walk
As a full-blown flower will sometimes
Drop, all a-bloom, from the stalk.
I think the leaf would sooner
Be the first to break away,
Than to hang alone in the orchard
In the bleak November day.
And I think the fate of the flower
That falls in the midst of bloom
Is sweeter than if it lingered
To die in the autumn's gloom.
And so, in my youth's glad morning,
While the summer walks abroad,
I would like to hear the summons,
That must come, sometime, from God.
I would pass from the earth's perfection
To the endless June above:
From the fullness of living and loving,
To the noon of Immortal Love.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Happy Thoughts, Happy Thoughts, Think Happy Thoughts
I have to keep reminding myself to forget you.
Forget you and me.
(Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, think happy thoughts.)
You wanted me to promise to never say it again
Those three words
(Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, think happy thoughts)
Which is laughably easy to do right now because
We are so far out of touch I couldn’t reach you if I tried
(Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, think happy thoughts)
So I plod through grey days and inky dark nights
Heavy laden with regret
(Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, think happy thoughts)
Tomorrow I will remind myself to forget you.
Forget you and me.
12-25-07
djlw
poem by Shannon Wright
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A Memory That Lives
The scent of the roses
have filled the room.
They came today
to lessen my gloom.
Why the gloom?
why the doom?
There's a hole in my heart
like a cold stone tomb
filled with pain
ever present
like an empty womb.
I've lost my babe.
She was taken away
and 50 years later
there are roses to say
'Your pain is mine.
I feel it too.
For mine was the seed
placed in you.'
And so on this melancholy day
once every year
the roses are sent by my love,
my dear
to help me remember
her birth, her death
as I inhale the sweetness
with my breath
that I only wish was hers.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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Wake Me Gently
I was scared to death
Afraid to close my eyes
And find that I was gone
Like every other one
Who left before the dawn
I vanished in the air
Am I still there
Wake me gently
If you can Wake me gently
Just touch my hand
Wake me gently
Pull my sleeve
'Cuz where I'm at
Is where I want to leave
And in my sleep
I look so lifeless on this bed
Laid out on satin sheets
This dream's a novel
That I don't dare complete
No happy ending read
I think the hero's dead
Wake me gently
If you can
Wake me gently
Just touch my hand
Wake me gently
Pull my sleeve
'Cuz where I'm at
Is where I want to leave
Me to my slumber
And I'll never come home
Please help me, I'm frightened
Of what's going on
What's going on
And if I can't wake up Will I be all alone
A stranded orphan here
Or will I bump into
Some other wandering soul
And will they talk to me
Somebody, somebody please rescue me
Wake me gently
If you can
Wake me gently
Just touch my hand
Wake me gently
Pull my sleeve
'Cuz where I'm at
Is where I want to leave
I wanna leave
I wanna leave
I wanna wake up
I wanna leave
I don't wanna stay
I wanna leave
I wanna go
I wanna go home
I wanna go home
Just wake me up
I wanna go home
Wake me up please
'Cuz I wanna go home
I wanna go home
Wake me
Wake me
song performed by by Alice Cooper
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Our marriage
So once I have thought how sweet it is to love!
And so I did follow in aught how beguiling is young desire!
And thus I have endured the pleasing pains we prove
When we first approach our love's fire!
And in truth our pains of love were sweeter far
Than all other pleasures were or are.
Our early sighs which were from our love blown
Did but gently heave and calm the heart:
Even the tears we shed together and alone
Cured, like trickling balm, their smart:
As young lovers, when we lost our breath,
we bled away in an easy soothing death.
But now I ask why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago in years and seasons was made,
Still oblige us to each other now,
When passion is lost and love decayed?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
Till our love was loved out in us both;
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure and fun are fled:
It was pleasure first made it an oath.
Yet with time and in years it grow into despise and loath
Yet now I ask not the cause why it turns sullen spring
That so long delays her flowers over our heads to bear;
Why warbling birds forget to sing, and quite are the lake rings
And winter storms invert the year under its gloom we lost our cheer
Roses are gone; and fate provides
To make it spring away where she resides.
And in this world of prison and loath in which we stubbornly stay
Your indifference of a spectator who is idle and aloofly sits
An icon of more a beholding than caring in a cold detached play
Of estranging and abandoning rather than amending my troubled wits
Take for instance the times when I enjoy glad occasions
Or in sad times when I wail and utter my pains and woes
The first kind you encounter with sulphuric retreats of desperation
While on the second you offer no kindness, a total cruelty in shows
Finding no delights in my mirth nor rues in my successes
Mocking me in my laughs, and when I cry
You laugh hardening ever more your remote heart and withdrawn passes
Where are this love and passion that used to dwell in your eye
And nothing in me can move you, nor mirth nor moan
Oh love, what is the process that has turn you into senseless stone!
How great our mutual grief, our joys how few,
Time have the slow years not brought to view
Your voice once so sweet encouraging and calm
Now can shedder glass and is heard through like drums
It beats to battle; dreadful bells that awaken alarms
Your face, once my phantom, delights of fancy, comes
In front of me to give the battle its utmost climax
Ah, the neighbors and other bold acquaintances
On us they have drown their social acceptances
claiming we have the perfect life in pure marriage
little they know the horses hooked behind the carriage
Would ever such horses and carriage move forward
Sodomy and agony; suffocating oppression I feel so awkward
Shall I long and yearn to be happy again when I am alone
Do the things I want and call the day my own
Stop being dependent, be secure within and can say
Be your worse darling I have lived my day
Ah, be fair or foul, rain or shine
Who cares, my joys in spite fate are mine
No one on earth and nor you over me has power
Free from what has been I will seek my rebirth hour
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Funny How It Fades Away
Those days when our hearts were as big as the sun
Turn around with a smile for everyone
That feelings a memory
Funny how it fades away
You wont see those pale grays returning to blues
The colors will wash out as I shrink in my shoes
And I wont always live and breathe
Watch me as I fade away
We wake in the morning and work all day
We dress up in the evening with nothing to say
Just like a candle burning bright
Burning like forever then it fades away
Who on this planet would ever refuse
The chance of a lifetime to love and lose
When time is of no importance
Have you seen it slip away?
We wake in the morning and work all day
We dress up in the evening with nothing to say
Just like a candle burning bright
Burning like forever then it fades away
We wake in the morning and work all day
We dress up in the evening with nothing to say
Just like a candle burning bright
Burning like forever then it fades away
song performed by by Fastball
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Love In The Summer Hills
Love in the summer hills,
With youth to mock at ills,
And kisses sweet to cheat
Our idle tears away.
What else has Time in store,
Till Life shall close the door?
Still let me sing love's lore,
Come sorrow when it may.
Rain on the weeping hills,
With Death to end our ills,
And only thought unsought
To point our joys' decay.
Oh Life is wounded sore
And Grief's mad waters roar.
Yet will I love once more
To--day as yesterday.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Heavenly Citizenship
I’m no longer of this earth; I have been changed by a spiritual birth,
Although I still walk this sod, I now belong to the Kingdom of God.
A heavenly plane beyond this earth; in a Kingdom of Eternal Worth,
While down here, I am led by God, comforted by His staff and rod.
Although I was born on earth in sin, of Heaven above I am a citizen,
A new citizen of Heaven, eternally, all through the Cross of Calvary.
While I am here He lives within, through The Holy Spirit sent by Him,
Jesus Christ, who came to die for me, to give me New Life eternally.
It’s the Holy Spirit who lives inside, helping this sinner daily to abide,
To abide in my Lord, Jesus Christ, who gave to this sinner a new life.
For, when The Lord was crucified, New Life, I received when He died,
When for me, Jesus paid that price, by becoming for me a Sacrifice.
After Christ had died in my stead, my Lord rose again from the dead,
Leaving empty, the Garden Tomb, and sealing forever, Satan’s doom,
And with Christ being The Living Bread, up to Heaven, He went ahead,
Leaving behind death’s dark gloom, to set up for me an eternal room.
As a member of the human race, my heavenly citizenship is of Grace,
The thought I’d alone never conceive, let alone, something I’d achieve.
But soon I’ll see my Lord’s face, when I’m lifted to my heavenly place,
Friend all this too, you can receive, if in Christ you would just believe.
Riding Changing Pursuit Thoughts
sometimes he rides his thoughts like bicycles
sometimes thoughts like the allure of a whisper
sometimes thoughts like the scent of a candle
sometimes thoughts like the purr of a motorcycle
sometimes thoughts like screaming engine race
sometimes thoughts like thunder lightning flashes
sometimes flash fire thoughts comets igniting the sky
sometimes riding morning breaks punctuates paradise
sometimes morning breaks spread encircle entire earth
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Death And Birth
Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Death and birth.
Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth
Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether
Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?
Ill the rose-red and the sable feather
Blend in one crown's plume, as grief with mirth:
Ill met still are warm and wintry weather,
Death and birth.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Anima Anceps
TILL death have broken
Sweet life’s love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said,
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
With song and saying,
Things flown and fled?
For this we know not—
That fresh springs flow not
And fresh griefs grow not
When men are dead;
When strange years cover
Lover and lover,
And joys are over
And tears are shed.
If one day’s sorrow
Mar the day’s morrow—
If man’s life borrow
And man’s death pay—
If souls once taken,
If lives once shaken,
Arise, awaken,
By night, by day—
Why with strong crying
And years of sighing,
Living and dying,
Fast ye and pray?
For all your weeping,
Waking and sleeping,
Death comes to reaping
And takes away.
Though time rend after
Roof-tree from rafter,
A little laughter
Is much more worth
Than thus to measure
The hour, the treasure,
The pain, the pleasure,
The death, the birth;
Grief, when days alter,
Like joy shall falter;
Song-book and psalter,
Mourning and mirth.
Live like the swallow;
Seek not to follow
Where earth is hollow
Under the earth.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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