I took my lyre and said
I took my lyre and said:
Come now, my heavenly
tortoise shell: become
a speaking instrument
Related quotes
I took my lyre
I took my lyre and said:
Come now, my heavenly
tortoise shell: become
a speaking instrument
Sappho
tr. Barnard
A tortoise
the tortoise is just inadequate
she has been treating
the same way everyone
of another kind
a supercilious front
to shroud weaknesses
broadcasting insouciance
with a hard hard shell
she knows she has a birthright
a hard headed advantage
with its shell signed
with letters from heaven
nobody is allowed even to knock on
it, protected species
here she is behaving in ways
that turn people away
without even knowing why
ten thousand years from now
she would be still in her same state
and behaving the same way
one big curvy hard hard shell
as the world shuttles to a new sphere
poor tortoise! poor tortoise!
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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A Tortoise's World!
Story of a tortoise who hid in his shell
Under the rock in the well
That is where it would dwell
Until one day a frog chased by a snake, did fell
Both, tortoise and frog were friends since they met
They had so much to talk, a lot of fun, you bet
Frog wanted to go home, leave a new friend, not to forget
Frog left, promised, soon it shall return and bring friends to get
Days passed and tortoise was sad and lonely
It rained and rained, and then came the day lovely
Frog came and came Frogs, croaking and singing jolly
Also were there tortoises, fishes and snails, Joy filled the world wholly!
poem by Manjeshwari P MYSORE
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358
you once said
you are unhappy
you live on this hard shell
of a tortoise
and your burden
is such that you cannot
really move freely
as a bird with its wings
you wish the burden
melts into your skin
and it is done
then you say
the skin binds you
and the flesh and bone
are burdens too
you want something
lighter like the feathers
of a free bird
something light and easy
and verily free
and it is done
i am happy to see
you flying in the skies
doing some acrobatics
in space
chirping some melodies
under the trees
diving in the sea
teasing the rivers
and this hovering
on the cows
and today i hear
a different song
a sad song from a bird
by my window
it is you
you want to return
to the hard shell of
the tortoise
you miss the silence
and the privacy
of your hiding
now, you have doubts
what burdens are
what freedom is
and this cannot just
be easily done
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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What You Are Saying
you once said
you are unhappy
you live on this hard shell
of a tortoise
and your burden
is such that you cannot
really move freely
as a bird with its wings
you wish the burden
melts into your skin
and it is done
then you say
the skin binds you
and the flesh and bone
are burdens too
you want something
lighter like the feathers
of a free bird
something light and easy
and verily free
and it is done
i am happy to see
you flying in the skies
doing some acrobatics
in space
chirping some melodies
under the trees
diving in the sea
teasing the rivers
and this hovering
on the cows
and today i hear
a different song
a sad song from a bird
by my window
it is you
you want to return
to the hard shell of
the tortoise
you miss the silence
and the privacy
of your hiding
now, you have doubts
what burdens are
what freedom is
and this cannot just
be easily done
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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An Interesting Ancestry
To some of us, a tortoise lives on land
while turtles only rarely leave the sea.
‘Chelonians' applies to any brand,
so here I'll use this terminology.
Land dwellers share aquatic ancestry
and most of us decided to stay put.
Chelonians agreed to disagree.
A flippered revolution was afoot.
A late Triassic turtle fossil shows
a hard-shelled belly plate and softer back,
presumably to ward off fatal blows
from deeper-dwelling predators' attack.
Did top shell metaphorically ‘dissolve'
when full-shelled forebear sought the sea's embrace?
Or did an unshelled forebear's shell evolve
in oceanic pilgrimage retrace?
Genetic sleuthing points to latter case.
The evidence suggests that once again,
the tortoise forebears left their liquid space
and plodded (swam?) to shore with sigh, 'amen'. *
From sea to shore to sea to shore once more.
You'd surely think a record lies therein.
Yet maybe making not three trips but four
is water loving cousin terrapin.
When next you gaze with love in tortoise eyes
and wonder at his mind's soliloquy,
from languid, longing looks you may surmise,
he's pondering ‘To sea or not to sea'.
poem by Diane Hine
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Tortosise and the Hare: The true story
So you think tortoise
won the race,
not so.
Today the last
of Hare's descendants
passed on.
Oh his death
bed from his
lips came this,
my great, great
so many grandfather
was bribed,
to throw the race,
to the Tortoise
by the way of carrots,
his greatest weakness
you didn't really think
the Tortoise could have
won do you. Then he passed on.
wrote 4-14-07
Tortoise Shell
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.
Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.
Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.
It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.
The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.
Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.
Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.
The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.
So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.
The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.
poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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It's the tortoise's shell, ugly and hard that protects its life long journey on earth.
The Tortoise (Love Poem)
This girl came to my party,
And petted my tortoise,
In nineteen sixty four,
When I was eight, and
No-one noticed, not even me.
She still complains today
That she missed out on
Her jelly and ice-cream,
When she was seven, and
No one noticed, not even me.
I think when ten years later this
Beautiful blonde said yes, she
Would be mine, and is today, this
Tortoise slow was still around, and
No one noticed, not even me.
I tell our children now grown-up,
That I have found a tortoise is
The perfect way to find the girl,
Who will be yours forever, when
You are eight and she is seven.
poem by Ian Beckett
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I Wish I Was A Heavenly Angel
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would watch and protect mankind
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must play in my own kind
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would pray for those in sorrow
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must suffer the torment of borrow
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would worship my god day and night
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must fight for my own right
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would always cling to my sword
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must fight the pain of my fault
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would never no tiredness
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must till the land to grow in abundance
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would weep when man sin
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must pray for my own sin so dire
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would shore endlessly in space
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must check as I walk in pace
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For I would wonder around this world free
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must stand still as a tree
I wish I was a heavenly angel
For my heart shall always be in joy
But I am no heavenly angel
Hence must behave just like a boy
poem by Samuel Donkor
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The developers, if they decide to move a tortoise, have to pay the long-term costs for enhancing the areas that take care of the tortoise, and it gives us the opportunity to manage an area that is going to be protected.
quote by Gale Norton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A broken string of a Cello
The poet TYP (Pseudonym) in the poetfreak who introduced me the greatest cellist Jaquueline Mary du Pre. Merits for him!
Jaqueline Mary du Pre was a British Cellist
One of the great players,
Her career was cut short
By multiple *Scierosis, which forced her to cease
Performing at the age 28, and led to her premature death
At the age of 42.
Death always a dilemma for me?
Just imagine a hard shell tortoise lives for a long
And this poor human beings bring to the guillotine
Within a short period?
Who thinks human being's a guinea pig for their experiments?
Anyway it's not fair indeed and the guise of the Life is ridiculous!
* Abnormal hardening of the body tissue?
Human should get only the soul and live a long like the tortoise!
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Something in me does not rest
Perhaps it is my soul
It is restless It is up to something else
Something more important than what I am doing now
It is wriggling. It is conscious of something.
To come.
It is up for something greater than everyday.
I do not know.
I really do not know. It is not speaking to me.
It is like an egg. It is the shell and transparent
Something alive is wriggling wanting to be born.
I am wanting to be reborn. I am not speaking to myself.
It is delicate. It is perhaps something holy.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Watch The Race
Watch the race
Here is the hare
And the tortoise
It is funny for the hare
And a serious game
For tortoise.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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Be a tortoise
Gratitude and compassion are front legs;
Fortitude and tolerance are hind legs.
With these as limbs, one moves like a tortoise
But with a tough shell made of good will.
He can’t run with hares but can move safe.
08.03.2009
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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She Used To Say That To Me
Lets take a rest
Your kisses take my breath
You are the best
Its never been like this
Chorus:
She used to say that to me
Over and over so sweet
Shell tell you shell never leave
She used to say that to me
It thrills you so
When she whispers soft and low
Please hold me tight
I need your love tonight
Repeat Chorus
Im yours, she sighs
And she means it at the time
But someday shell go
If youre wonderin how I know
She used to say that to me
Over and over so sweet
Shell tell you shell never leave
She used to say that
She used to say that to me
Over and over so sweet
Shell tell you shell never leave
She used to say that to me
She used to say that to me
song performed by by George Strait
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Secret Garden
Shell let you in her house
If you come knockin late at night
Shell let you in her mouth
If the words you say are right
If you pay the price
Shell let you deep inside
But theres a secret garden she hides
Shell let you in her car
To go drivin round
Shell let you into the parts of herself
Thatll bring you down
Shell let you in her heart
If you got a hammer and a vise
But into her secret garden, dont think twice
Youve gone a million miles
How fard you get
To that place where you cant remember
And you cant forget
Shell lead you down a path
Therell be tenderness in the air
Shell let you come just far enough
So you know shes really there
Shell look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
Shes got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away
song performed by by Bruce Springsteen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.
quote by Dan Quayle
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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