Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.
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Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings.
Poetry
One spot of green, watered by hidden streams,
Makes summer in the desert where it gleams;
And mortals, gazing on thy heavenly face,
Forget the woes of earth, and share thy dreams!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The evils of mortals are manifold; nowhere is trouble of the same wing seen.
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
quote by La Rochefoucauld
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Wood-Nymph
-After a picture by Burne Jones-
The green leaves, ah, the green leaves cover me:
Would I might lose this unloved human life
And share the happy being of the leaves!
For lo, they live and grow and drink the sun
And sip the nectar of the heavenly showers
And have no sorrow with it; but they grow
Happily, and Pan at even blesses them.
While I, alas me hapless, I am joined
Part to their life, and all in longing to them;
Part to the gods, the bright gods whom I see
Flash through the woods at even or morn, and make
The beautiful familiar trees seem strange;
And part to mortals and their little life.
Green leaves that cover me, to you I mourn,
My sisters, my more happy sisters, ye
Rustle, rustle in the summer air,
With happy cries of birds among your boughs:
Be happy, though I am not happy. Nay,
I am not all unhappy, evermore.
One while a bird sings on the topmost bough
And my heart sings, forgetting life and death
And sorrow: so forgetting I were blest,
And bliss the gods deny me. When they walk
The forest before sundawn--Artemis,
Girt for the chase and followed by her hounds,
Queen Herê or another, ere the dawn,
Or Aphrodite with the rosy dawn--
I may not speak my longings, but they pass,
Pass unregardful to their happy heaven.
They see me not--not me, akin to Gods!
These tears are vain.--When mortals pass at eve,
Treading a delicate path between the trees,
Pale mortal men and women, with their loves--
It pains me that I see them, for I know
I am not as they are, and cannot share
The little love that fills their little life--
Vain, vain; and they too pass and see me not.
Ah me, dear leaves, forsaken of gods and men,
And sad because I cannot live their life,
Will you not love me whom none others love?
Will you not teach me how to live your life,
My sisters, my more happy sisters?--live
In peace and quietness and still content,
And freshen and fade and freshen and have no care
And have no longing, full of peace to live,
Forgetting thus for ever life and death
And Gods and men and sorrow and delight.
poem by Arthur Symons
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Song of Life
Maiden of the laughing eyes,
Primrose-kirtled, winged, free,
Virgin daughter of the skies—
Joy—whom gods and mortals prize,
Share thy smiles with me!
Yet—lest I, unheeding, borrow
Pleasure that to-day endears
And benumbs the heart to-morrow—
Turn not wholly from me, Sorrow!
Let me share thy tears!
Give me of thy fullness, Life!
Pulse and passion, power, breath,
Vision pure, heroic strife,—
Give me of thy fullness, Life!—
Nor deny me death!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Mine and Thine (1904)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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My friends, whoever has had experience of evils knows how whenever a flood of ills comes upon mortals, a man fears everything; but whenever a divine force cheers on our voyage, then we believe that the same fate will always blow fair.
Love Is A Thing Of The Gods
Mortals and immortals-
What separates them?
They share jealousy,
But the ultimate prize is love,
Hate is a mortal thing
And love a thing of the gods,
Love makes us immortal,
While hate kills us slowly.
poem by Isunge Mwangase
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I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
Euripides in Medea (-431)
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A brief tribute to George Seferis, poet
When the gods allot
a time, a place, to those so mortal
mortals whom they love to test,
is it a greater gift they give to poets,
to live in a land of honeybees
and sun and sea and heroes sung, a land
assured, content, of gods and marble,
temples, amphitheatres, history,
or in that land in times of tragedy,
starvation, misery, division,
internal war and conquered servitude?
Ultimate, the irony – how can the gods
think up such things? – to be
ambassador, to represent a land
from which to have been exiled half a life;
exiled from within and exiled from without.
The love the gods bestow (the Chorus cries)
is terrifying; strange; to be hard learned.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Gods
Gods of the white man,
Gods of the black man,
Gods of the almond shade
all of these Gods
have done one thing,
made the people afraid.
Gods of the red man,
Gods of the brown man
Gods of the yellow hue,
all of these Gods
have done the same
divided them into
Separate people
who've been led to believe
their God is the holy one
to save their souls
and pardon them
and deliver them
from earthly sin.
How can there be
so many Gods?
Isn't there only one?
One for every single soul
born unto this earth.
He's every color that there is
since the world's begun.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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God is one, greatest of gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought.
quote by Xenophanes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Time is the inventor
.
Time, you are the greatest inventor.
You have invented evils
For every remedy I have found.
Evils demand remedies
And remedies fetch evils.
Time, you are my counter inventer.
30.07.2006
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Life is a sea of misery
In a rain-shadow region I was born.
Fate pulled my life apart to be torn.
The mighty gods from the mountains around
blessed me to breeze through the woes of life!
I writhed in pain and agony,
with a series of deaths in our family.
I didn’t understand,
where I was destined to.
You blessed me to breeze through the woes of life!
I swam in the ocean of misery
and roamed in the jungles with her memory.
I didn’t curse my fate
and have no one to hate.
You blessed me to breeze through the woes of life!
----------- 4.1.2012
poem by Rajendran Muthiah
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Being Honest With Myself
being honest with myself
i realize that i am
the cause of my own problems.
that by my choices i am
where i am today.
and that the man
in the mirror
is both my
best friend and
my worst enemy.
blaming no one else.
blaming no other causes.
i take responsibility
for who i am,
for where i am,
and for where i am going!
if there's gonna be any changes,
i have to make them!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
quote by Thomas Jefferson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Old Gods.
O ye gods, if you could tell us
What ye are — if banned or blest —
Ye that reigned of old in Hellas!
Ye that ruled the radiant West!
Old-born gods! The Past still flashes
In the eyes of Greece and Rome;
Ye are not mere dust and ashes
Urned for all the years to come.
Ye that ruled in heavenly places,
And the faith of mortals won!
Gods created by old races
Perished from beneath the sun;
Born of faith, and with it blended,
Ye shall yet the world inspire
Till the last breath has ascended
From the latest altar fire.
All the hopes and invocations
Breathed by lips of heroes dead,
All the genius of the nations
Who the march of Freedom led —
Though your temples broke and fell as
Dusty fanes of little worth —
These will keep you, gods of Hellas!
Still alive upon the earth.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Shades and shadows
Ignorance must exist.
Immorality must live.
So are evils and Saturn.
So are shadows of virtues.
They are shades of gods.
08.07.2004
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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The opposition has moved from a blaming the victim to blaming the victim's advocate's statistics. Irrespective of what the numbers are, it's far too many.
quote by Patricia Ireland
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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