The Giant’s Ring
BALLYLESSON, NEAR BELFAST
Whoever is able will pursue the plainly
False immortality of not having lived in vain but leaving some
mark in the world.
Secretly mocking at his own insanity
He labors the same, he knows that no dead man's lip was ever
curled in self-scorn,
And immortality is for the dead.
Jesus and Caesar out of the bricks of man's weakness, Washington
out of the brittle
Bones of man's strength built their memorials,
This nameless chief of a knot of forgotten tribes in the Irish darkness
used faithfuller
Simpler materials: to diadem a hilltop
That sees the long loughs and the Mourne Mountains, with a ring
of enormous embankment, and to build
In the center that great toad of a dolmen
Piled up of ponderous basalt that sheds the centuries like raindrops.
He drove the labor,
And has earmarked already some four millenniums.
His very presence is here, thick-bodied and brutish, a brutal and
senseless will-power.
Immortality? While Homer and Shakespeare are names,
Not of men but verses, and the elder has not lived nor the
younger will not, such treadings of time.
Conclude that secular like Christian immortality's
Too cheap a bargain: the name, the work or the soul: glass beads
are the trade for savages.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Related quotes
The Village Atheist
Ye young debaters over the doctrine
Of the soul's immortality
I who lie here was the village atheist,
Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
Of the infidels.
But through a long sickness
Coughing myself to death
I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
And desire which the Shadow,
Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
Could not extinguish.
Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
And think through the senses only:
Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement;
And only those who strive mightily
Shall possess it.
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.
aphorism by Rabindranath Tagore from Stray Birds (1916), translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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In My Dream, light plays!
Night is the time,
Sleeping in infinite nothing,
becoming nothing in beloved
embrace,
forgetting everything! In the lap of beloved enjoy
dreams,
may some come true,
Some may not,
Observing dreams one sees the
light within,
Randomly light plays in my dream
At the dawn, with gentle breeze,
Dreams melt, innerlight into light
of world,
Never go back to sleep,
If you sleep at dawn,
What will be there at dusk? If dustfree dawn make you sleep,
Failing to Smile and work,
If can't feel lighter in the light of
dawn,
Sure the darkness covering light,
Will make you faint at dusk!
Seeds says seed of immortality
is packed in mortal seed coat!
DNA sings, its immortality
covered in mortality of seed,
Finally Life sings,
Immortality of life is packed in mortal DNA,
and Self whispers, my
immortality is sung by mortal
life!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
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Birth of death
Birth of death
(Stream of consciousness poetry)
This is a well thinking thought
How to control
A robot
Before inventing,
How do you cherish
The success of poetry
Before composing,
This is a well thinking thought
Of the immortality
To give the meaning
The state of being
As the creator
Can not create
The enemy of
Immortality,
Which He Himself is,
Death
Is the success
Of the game plan
Before the game
Was invented
But loophole lies
The immortality
Does not have life.
What's the pleasure
Of being an entity
Of immortality
Without taste
Of life and death!
(He Himself knows)
poem by Abdul Wahab
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Poems On Life
Life is given to us,
we earn it by giving it.
Let the dead have the immortality of fame,
but the living the immortality of love.
Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation into a
harmony with the whole.
Life, like a child, laughs,
shaking its rattle of death as it runs.
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.
quote by Edgar Lee Masters
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some—Work for Immortality
406
Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immediately—
The former—Checks—on Fame—
Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—
A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's—the Mine—
poem by Emily Dickinson
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You Have The Soul Into Your Words
you may have the soul
into your words
you may have the oil
and the canvass and the
shapes and forms
to immortalize
what have you
something
for posterity for your immortality
but what use
is posterity
what use is this immortality?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.
quote by Bill Cosby
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I don't want to achieve immortality by being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.
quote by William De Morgan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Some—Work for Immortality
406
Some—Work for Immortality—
The Chiefer part, for Time—
He—Compensates—immedia tely—
The former—Checks—on Fame—
Slow Gold—but Everlasting—
The Bullion of Today—
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality—
A Beggar—Here and There—
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight—
One's—Money—One's&m dash;the Mine—
poem by Emily Dickinson
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World Falls
Im coming home with a stone
Strapped onto my back
Im coming home with a burning hope
Turning all my blues to black
Im looking for a sacred hand
To carve into my stone
A ghost of comfort
Angels breath
To keep this life inside my chest
This world falls on me
Hopes of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Now I woke up in the middle of a dream
Scared the world was too much for me
Sejarez said, dont let go
Just plant the seeds and watch them grow
Ive slept in rainy canyon lands
Cold drenched to my skin
I always wake to find a face
To calm these troubled lands
Ah this world falls on me
With dreams of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Now Im running
To the end of the earth
And Im swimming
To the edge of the sea
And Im laughing
Im under a starry sky
This world was meant for me
Dont bury me
Carry me
I wish I was a nomad
An indian or a saint
The edge of death would disappear
Leave me nothing left to taint
I wish I was a nomad
An indian or a saint
Give me walking shoes
Feathered arms
And a key to heavens gate
Ah this world falls on me
Dreams of immortality
Everywhere I turn
All the beauty just keeps shaking me
Im running
(this world falls on me)
To the end of the earth
(with hopes of immortality)
Im swimming
(everywhere I turn)
To the edge of the sea
(the beauty keeps on shaking me)
And Im laughing
(this world falls on me)
Cause Im under a starry sky
(hopes of immortality)
This world was meant for me
(everywhere I turn)
Ive got hopes of immortality
song performed by by Indigo Girls
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Park 'n go
as life lives in a part of profane world, the immortality of
soul, struggle the sting of death, in a boundless, limit of
earthly pleasure
like a crystal dropp of sweat, drain in every veins that
gives, each strength the mighty force to carry the weight
beyond its loads of flesh to reach where the soul sprouted
like Lilies of joy in my immortality of soul
life as we take is but, a journey of happiness, waiting where
the final destination it brings, for every life experienced lives
a memory to hold until, life comes to an end, of where it is just
a park and go as it would tell
make each moment to remember, for anything it would bring
is the one that the heart will live, until in heaven it depart, let
the wisdom of time comes, to see the dawning days that
my soul leaves my human body, for thy eternity cloth me, the
day of immortality where a continuous life of an endless free
all will come to witness, that everything in heaven and on earth
will come to an end, for the endless beginning, is the perfection
of creation that, the supreme Lord of the universe, reveals the
completeness light of eternity
as mankind, come and go, park 'n go, the universe has just leads
us to the right direction of where, the path of salvation await our
soul to live.... a final destination with God
poem by Antonio Liao
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Immortality... Is that a super power?
quote by Mark Wahlberg
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Immortality is to live your life doing good things, and leaving your mark behind.
quote by Brandon Lee
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.
quote by Sylvester Stallone
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Innocence Matter: Restoration Perfection
Innocence is the question?
Innocence is the X factor?
Innocence is life mortality?
Innocence is sinless state immortality?
Innocence is physical perfection?
Innocence is purity soul divinity?
Innocence is state of grace harmony?
Innocence is Trinity creation link eternity?
Innocence is life breath immortality?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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I cannot sufficiently admire the divine tact of thus training the chosen race for centuries in religion before even hinting the shining secret of eternal life. He behaves like the rich lover in a romance who woos the maiden on his own merits, disguised as a poor man, and only when he has won her reveals that he has a throne and palace to offer. For I cannot help thinking that any religion which begins with a thirst for immortality is damned, as a religion, from the outset. Until a certain spiritual level has been reached, the promise of immortality will always operate as a bribe which vitiates the whole religion and infinitely inflames those very self-regards which religion must cut down and uproot.
C.S. Lewis in The Grand Miracle
Submitted by Rebeca Bucur
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Mad world
In a mad world
Light always breeds greater darkness
In a mad world
Only silence speaks the truth
In a mad world
Echoes of benignity and hatred
Travel still
Where there is no rift
Between hope and despair
In a mad world
One dreams of its life
And lives on its dreams
In a mad world
Ghosts in flesh and bones
Seek immortality
While ethereal Gods
Wander in vain
In a mad world
Time has mislaid the hours
In a mad world
Red-tailed hawks sink
In the sky
In a mad world
The moon sometimes
Mourns the days
In a mad world...
In a mad world
Only the mad are sane...
poem by Damabiah 777
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A Song of Derivations
I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through the long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth,
My immortality is there.
I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
Awoke my breath i' the young world's air;
I track the past back everywhere
Through seed and flower and seed and flower.
Or I am like a stream that flows
Full of the cold springs that arose
In morning lands, in distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills
With melting of forgotten snows.
Voices, I have not heard, possessed
My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed
With relics of the far unknown.
And mixed with memories not my own
The sweet streams throng in my breast.
Before this life began to be,
The happy songs that wake in me
Woke long ago and far apart.
Heavily on this little heart
Presses this immortality.
poem by Alice Meynell
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