Life
What know we of the dead, who say these things,
Or of the life in death below the mould--
What of the mystic laws that rule the old
Grey realms beyond our poor imaginings
Where death is life? The bird with spray-wet wings
Knows more of what the deeps beneath him hold.
Let be! Warm hearts shall never wax a-cold,
But burn in roses through eternal springs;
For all the vanished fruit and flower of Time
Are flower and fruit in worlds we cannot see,
And all we see is as a shadow-mime
Of things unseen, and Time that comes to flee
Is but the broken echo of a rhyme
In God's great epic of Eternity.
poem by Victor James Daley
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Related quotes
Genesis
In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;
Yea, before any world had any light,
Or anything called God or man drew breath,
Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night
Moved, and brought forth the strength of life and death.
And the sad shapeless horror increate
That was all things and one thing, without fruit,
Limit, or law; where love was none, nor hate,
Where no leaf came to blossom from no root;
The very darkness that time knew not of,
Nor God laid hand on, nor was man found there,
Ceased, and was cloven in several shapes; above
Light, and night under, and fire, earth, water, and air.
Sunbeams and starbeams, and all coloured things,
All forms and all similitudes began;
And death, the shadow cast by life's wide wings,
And God, the shade cast by the soul of man.
Then between shadow and substance, night and light,
Then between birth and death, and deeds and days,
The illimitable embrace and the amorous fight
That of itself begets, bears, rears, and slays,
The immortal war of mortal things that is
Labour and life and growth and good and ill,
The mild antiphonies that melt and kiss,
The violent symphonies that meet and kill,
All nature of all things began to be.
But chiefliest in the spirit (beast or man,
Planet of heaven or blossom of earth or sea)
The divine contraries of life began.
For the great labour of growth, being many, is one;
One thing the white death and the ruddy birth;
The invisible air and the all-beholden sun,
And barren water and many-childed earth.
And these things are made manifest in men
From the beginning forth unto this day:
Time writes and life records them, and again
Death seals them lest the record pass away.
For if death were not, then should growth not be,
Change, nor the life of good nor evil things;
Nor were there night at all nor light to see,
Nor water of sweet nor water of bitter springs.
For in each man and each year that is born
Are sown the twin seeds of the strong twin powers;
The white seed of the fruitful helpful morn,
The black seed of the barren hurtful hours.
And he that of the black seed eateth fruit,
To him the savour as honey shall be sweet;
And he in whom the white seed hath struck root,
He shall have sorrow and trouble and tears for meat.
And him whose lips the sweet fruit hath made red
In the end men loathe and make his name a rod;
And him whose mouth on the unsweet fruit hath fed
In the end men follow and know for very God.
And of these twain, the black seed and the white,
All things come forth, endured of men and done;
And still the day is great with child of night,
And still the black night labours with the sun.
And each man and each year that lives on earth
Turns hither or thither, and hence or thence is fed;
And as a man before was from his birth,
So shall a man be after among the dead.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Life Or Death?
Every day we live, we always face death
We get closer to it, every time we take a breath
Life is special but death brings peace
Life brings reality and things you believe
Death is hard for everyone around
Death is quiet, no more bad sounds
Life is also hard, all the things we go through
Life can never be easy, no matter what you do
Death is sad, for those who cry
Death is meaningful, for those who die
Life is a work of art, it's nice to look
Life is full of teachings, like an open book
Death is the new life, might as well be dead
Death is a lot more, for what's up ahead
Life brings new things, always something new
Life brings surprises, something out the blue
Death is scary, nothing we want to see
Death is negative, a place we don't want to be
Life is full of love, with the ones close to you
Life is full of money, for those who sue
Death is empty, nothing compared to this
Death is a lot of things, too long of a list
But life is everything; don't wait till there's nothing left
Death can wait, so don't waste your last breath
So just pick your choice, which one? Life or death?
poem by Triauna Hall
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Today... 'Eternal Life
Eternal Life. Death has no hold on You
for a sinless life You lived Faithful and True.
When time shall cease and worlds no longer be
You shall live on throughout eternity.
This Life has appeared and was seen by men.
The Son of God has come and has given
understanding to know the One Who is true
for He Who was with the Father is You.
I have been to Your cross and seen You there
and cried out to You in my great despair.
'Forgive me Lord, I don't know what to do, '
you heard me cry as I confessed to You.
'It is finished, ' You cried upon the tree
as Your earthly life You gave up for me.
You exchanged my life for an endless one
and Eternal Life in me has begun.
Reaching out to me in great love You bear
my awful sins upon Your shoulders there.
Such healing I received at Calvary
and there Eternal Life began for me.
Death has been swallowed up in victory
no longer the grave has a hold on me.
Though once hell held captive and domineered
no longer its portals are to be feared.
No more shall life be three score years and ten
or limits placed upon the years of men.
For Christ came to this earth that blesséd day
and died to take the sting of death away.
Oh how can I thank You for Your mercy.
Nobody else has shown such love to me.
Please help me Lord her on this earth to show
by my life the debt of love that I owe.
(see also the additional information below in the Poet's box)
Night.
The wings of Evening, spread like phantom sails
Athwart the waning west,
Now as the last thin streak of crimson fails,
Seem as with sleep possessed.
Now hope is changed to memory, and time
Becomes eternity,
As thought were chaunting to a runic rhyme
In some old mystery.
The shadows deepen, and the Night's weird stir
Seems like a spirit still
To tremble in the silence, as with her
Death walked invisible.
The heart can ken, e'en like an echo dead,
The eerie things they say
Who have come from a coast where none may tread
Within the dream of Day.
Night and her paramour — the last of things
That touch the soul with fear,
As that which deems that it is deathless clings
To its own shadow here.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Life, Love and Friendship
Life is a tree
Friendship is flower
Love is fruit
You can smell the flower
But you can taste the fruit
A Loving Partner
We found each other under
evening's orange horizon.
Hearts pulled by moon and
Swept up in the wave of time.
If ever a woman is happy in her man...
I'm she who delights in calming your needs!
Sweet spring springs pretty flowers.
Solstice winter shares its gloom, yet
our love remain in bloom, its beauty
kept by summer's warm sun
Your words in 'your killing love'
are like flower heads in spring;
temperature slowly rising like morning's sun.
King cobra, I offer you love instead of cream
and commands you to rise up close to
my heart planting kisses on my lips.
Take my life; death is mine.
You chose this hanging fruit
blemishs and all my time.
Here! take this ripen berry
that's barely attached to
the vine.
I exhaled toxic air
to inhale pure love.
bear with me in weakness
that I can stand up to my age.
Dear this fruit is ripened and
falling humbly at your feet!
Dear, bear with me in weakness
That I can stand up to my age.
poem by Almedia Knight Oliver
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God's Rest.
I saw God in a dream go by,
As if He trod the phantom air
Within a hushed eternity,
Dead worlds around Him everywhere.
No sign of life — and God asleep!
All things absorbed in Him at last;
Nothing for Him to care for, keep,
Since thought from everything had passed.
A mystic vision on its way
His image filled the awful gloom,
As if His work were o'er for aye —
Himself His own creation's tomb!
As if, when sleep fell on Him, all
Sensation with a tremor ceased,
As all things felt the weird recall,
And the gigantic strain released.
The worlds stayed still without a breath,
Entranced within the phantom air,
Since God had done with life and death
And ta'en Himself from everywhere.
This was His Sabbath. In the past
'Tis said He rested for a day;
But this was a sleep that would last,
Since He had done with all for aye.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Leda
Do you remember, Leda?
There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such things have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of these flowers?
I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss
My withered hands are curled on pain
That were so wide once, after bliss.
And gold is springing in my hair
As my thought spring and flower with it,
Though I sit hid in my grey hair,
Without love or the pain of it.
Yet, oh my Swan, if love have wings,
As the gods tell us, you were love
Who took and broke me with those wings.
I, weak, and being far gone in love
Let blushless things be breathed and done-
Things flowered out now in bitter fruit
That once done are no more undone
Than last year's frost and last year's fruit.
For what has come of love and me
Who knew the first joy that loving is?
Where has love led and beckoned me
But to the end where nothing is?
I have seen my blood beat out again
Red in the hands of all my line,
My sin has swelled and flowered again
Corrupt and fierce through Sparta's line.
Bred through me-bred through delicate hands
And wandering eyes and wanton lips,
Sighing after strange flesh as sighed these lips,
Straying after new sin as strayed these hands.
Mother of Helen! She whose breasts
To new desires unshaped the world;
Above Troy's summit towered these breasts
Helen who wantoned with the world!
Helen is dead (she had love enough
To mock at doom and laugh at shrine)
And Clytemnestra, quiet enough
To-night beneath Apollo's shrine.
And I am left, the source, the spring
Of all their madness. They are dead
While I still sit here, the old spring
That fouled them flows above the dead.
But I have paid. I have borne enough.
I am very old in love and woe.
For all souls these things are enough-
Who have known love are the friends of woe.
There those who love, and who escape,
There are those who love and do not die.
I loved, and there was no escape,
Long since I died and daily die.
And death alone makes hate and love
Friends with each other and with sleep . . .
All's quiet here that once was love,
This that is left belongs to sleep.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Death Married Death To Death
Death looks at the flower, and it screams,
I am wet, moist and beautiful, look at me.
Why do I stand here alone, come and beat me,
I will wait, I will wait you must come over here to speak.
Death hovers, smiling, winking and always talking,
and by you walking, knowing that, this time is yours
there is no rest, that death must ignore you as well.
Any thing that you touch will also never die, neglected.
Death is love, love is death, why are you both, here.
Death is your pet pink pig, two flying pearls,
slapping against deaths face.
Death is a dry cracked nipple, asleep, holding on until
the flesh falls off and the milk is yellow and dry..
Death is a bullet fixed, never moving, and why does the
world move you through it always with impertinence to show..
Death is a mysterious voice, so disturbing and your quite,
coming aligns along the border, sounding alarms to no one,
while you walk across the street knowing you never look
at death as it comes over to you while you talk to some
one else never paying attention and embarrassed death
again leaves you to rest over some other you know.
Death is reaching in your casket and squeezing dry cotton,
and holding it's nose while he wipes your face from above.
Death is a woman, who is happy, thinking the world is
spinning into her fruit cake while death drinks coffee.
Death to all men who think they can save the woman
by marring death and eating her tuna fish sandwich.
Death fingered you, and you loved it, now you finger me,
leaving a bee exposed on your flower, that decays..saying,
Death's own flower it's always sweet and poignant and..
Death is always waiting for you to open and smell them.......
Death is more than the lilies and roses, it crawls out of one,
and comes out of the other and covers the worm with lilacs.
poem by Is It Poetry
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Reminiscence
I STAND in old Earth's presence; over all
The warm, pervading sunshine seems to print
Life and the Present; and there is no glint
Of white bones from the Past's decaying pall;
When, lo! some subtle scent holds me in thrall;
Or an uncertain, evanescent tint,
That of a fuller summer seems to hint,
Wakes long-imprisoned yearnings that recall
Half-memories of strange unthought-of things,
That seem were once a vital part of me—
Unmeasured, mystic, vague imaginings!
And all Life's presence and the sunshine flee,
The listless æons of my life I see,
And in my face the dead Past flaps its wings.
poem by Arthur Henry Adams
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Valentines Day
She was the color of tv
Her mouth curled under like a metal snake
Although holy wood was sad
Theyd remember this as valentines day
Flies are waiting
In the shadow of the valley of death
In the shadow of the valley of death
Slit our wrists and send us to heaven
The first flower after the flood
I saw that pregnant girl today
She didnt know that it was dead inside
Even though it was alive
Some of us are really born to die
Flies are waiting
In the shadow of the valley of death
In the shadow of the valley of death
Slit our wrists and send us to heaven
The first flower after the flood
In the shadow of the valley of death
In the shadow of the valley of death
song performed by by Marilyn Manson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Year Is Revived In New Blossoms
The year is revived in new blossoms
with a golden sun in the cobalt sky,
in my life only Your principles bloom;
bright flowers are preparing to carry fruit.
Days are hot, full of promises stretching forward
to a time of fruitfulness, of full maturity,
when suddenly nature works secretively,
when love in my life comes to expression;
the loveliness of flower upon flower is astounding.
When the loveliness of flower upon flower astounds,
there are birds everywhere singing of joy,
the year spins around from winter to summer
when Your blessings pierce the darkness,
life becomes more full of love and perfect
without any type of strange hindrance
when You create living things to Your image
when new life sprouts out after the pruning,
the year is revived in new blossoms.
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Complaint of Lisa
There is no woman living who draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.
There is not one upon life's weariest way
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;
While in the sun's sight I make moan all day,
And all night on my sleepless maiden bed.
Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,
That thou or he would take me to the dead.
And know not what thing evil I have done
That life should lay such heavy hand on me.
Alas! Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?
What honor shalt thou have to quench my breath,
Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed:
I am the least flower in thy flowery way,
But till my time be come that I be dead,
Let me live out my flower-time in the sun,
Though my leaves shut before the sunflower.
O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower!
Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me,
That live down here in shade, out of the sun,
Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death?
Shall he that feeds his heart full of the day
Care to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath?
Because she loves him, shall my lord love her
Who is as a worm in my lord's kingly way?
I shall not see him or know him alive or dead;
But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee
That in brief while my brief life-days be done,
And the worm quickly make my marriage-bed.
For underground there is no sleepless bed.
But here since I beheld my sunflower
These eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day
His sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun.
Wherefore, if anywhere be any death,
I fain would find and fold him fast to me,
That I may sleep with the world's eldest dead,
With her that died seven centuries since, and her
That went last night down the night-wandering way.
For this is sleep indeed, when labor is done,
Without love, without dreams, and without breath,
And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.
Ah! but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?
Wilt thou not be as now about my bed
There underground as here before the sun?
Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,
Thy moving vision without form or breath?
I read long since the bitter tale of her
Who read the tale of Launcelot on a day,
And died, and had no quiet after death,
But was moved ever along a weary way,
Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me,
O my king, O my lordly sunflower,
Would God to me, too, such a thing were done!
But if such sweet and bitter things be done,
Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.
For in that living world without a sun
Thy vision will lay hold upon me dead,
And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.
Yet if being wroth, God had such pity on her,
Who was a sinner and foolish in her day,
That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,
Why should he not in some wise pity me?
So if I sleep not in my soft strait bed,
I may look up and see my sunflower
As he the sun, in some divine strange way.
O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way
This sore sweet evil unto us was done.
For on a holy and a heavy day
I was arisen out of my still small bed
To see the knights tilt, and one said to me
"The king;" and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath;
And if the girl spake more, I heard her not,
For only I saw what I shall see when dead,
A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,
That shone against the sunlight like the sun,
And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,
The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.
Howbeit I shall not die an evil death
Who have loved in such a sad and sinless way,
That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.
So when mine eyes are shut against the sun,
O my soul's sun, O the world's sunflower,
Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead.
And dying I pray with all my low last breath
That thy whole life may be as was that day,
That feast-day that made trothplight death and me,
Giving the world light of thy great deeds done;
And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,
That God be good as God hath been to her.
That all things goodly and glad remain with her,
All things that make glad life and goodly death;
That as a bee sucks from a sunflower
Honey, when summer draws delighted breath,
Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way,
And love make life a fruitful marriage-bed
Where day may bring forth fruits of joy to day
And night to night till days and nights be dead.
And as she gives light of her love to thee,
Give thou to her the old glory of days long done;
And either give some heat of light to me,
To warm me where I sleep without the sun.
O sunflower make drunken with the sun,
O knight whose lady's heart draws thine to her,
Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.
There is a weed lives out of the sun's way,
Hid from the heat deep in the meadow's bed,
That swoons and whitens at the wind's least breath,
A flower star-shaped, that all a summer day
Will gaze her soul out on the sunflower
For very love till twilight finds her dead.
But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,
Knows not when all her loving life is done;
And so much knows my lord the king of me.
Ay, all day long he has no eye for me;
With golden eye following the golden sun
From rose-colored to purple-pillowed bed,
From birthplace to the flame-lit place of death,
From eastern end to western of his way,
So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,
So the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee,
The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,
Trod under foot if any pass by her,
Pale, without color of summer or summer breath
In the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done
No work but love, and die before the day.
But thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day,
Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me.
Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun
Shall drop its golden seed in the world's way,
That all men thereof nourished shall praise thee
For grain and flower and fruit of works well done;
Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,
Bring forth such growth of the world's garden-bed
As like the sun shall outlive age and death.
And yet I would thine heart had heed of her
Who loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.
Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.
Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;
From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,
To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's death
Down the sun's way after the flying sun,
For love of her that gave thee wings and breath
Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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The Moon Shines In My Body
The moon shines in my body,
but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me,
and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me;
but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the 'I' and the 'Mine',
his works are as naught:
When all love of the 'I' and the 'Mine' is dead,
then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit:
when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer,
but it seeks it not within itself:
it wanders in quest of grass.
There's A Moon Inside My Body
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass.
Fractions and Frictions of Eternity
Life desires love
Love hires life
Love inspires life
Life expires love
Life recreates love
Love creates life
Love impresses life
Life expresses love
Life tires love
Love fires life
So what?
Why so many lives lost for love?
Was there any love lost for life?
There was a Savior who lost His for love
Yeah, even a pure love for his people
But a phony one who wants to save all
For his love of power and glory came
And declared a great war in heaven
An eternal war of good and evil
The casualties were and are so great
And the loyalties firm to retaliate
Each time a man made his choice
Whether in plain or on sea's noise
These seemingly antonyms of old
With enmity from ancient foretold
One could receive a life eternal
While the other death infernal
One may use things to love people
The other use people to love things
But few can use both things and men
To feed their endless obsessions' den
Does this mean that man's choice a day
Will determine his eternal pathway?
Absolutely! Towards his own destiny
To cradle his life and love in continuity
With its fractions and frictions of eternity!
poem by Edgar Andrade Baguio
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The Heritage
Cry out on Time that he may take away
Your cold philosophies that give no hint
Of spirit-quickened flesh; fall down and pray
That Death come never with a face of flint:
Death is our heritage; with Life we share
The sunlight that must own his darkening hour:
Within his very presence yet we dare
To gather gladness like a fading flower.
For even as this, our joy not long may live
Perfect; and most in change the heart can trace
The miracle of life and human things:
All we have held to destiny we give;
Dawn glimmers on the soul-forsaken face;
Not we, but others, hear the bird that sings.
poem by Siegfried Sassoon
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Valentine's Day
She was the color of TV
her mouth curled under like a metal snake
although Holy Wood was sad
they'd remember this as Valentine's day
flies are waiting
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
slit our wrists and send us to heaven
the first flower after the flood
I saw that pregnant girl today
she didn't know that it was dead inside
even though it was alive
some of us are really born to die
flies are waiting
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
slit our wrists and send us to heaven
the first flower after the flood
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
song performed by by Marilyn Manson from Holy Wood (In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death)
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Breath of Death
Death is not death-
It is life without breath.
Life on earth is life that is blind-
Blinded by stress and the curse of time…
True life is life that remains untied,
Pure life is life that has honor and pride.
The cold breathe of death actually guilds-
It guilds to a place where darkness subsides…
Passed the shadow a secluded warmth is seen,
Benevolence and compassion becomes pristine.
Yes, this death is death indeed
A death of pain and an unheard plead.
However death is not death-
Only life without breath.
poem by Brad Lomeli
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Invocation
Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,
Formless and void the dead earth rolled;
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind
To the great lights which o'er it shined;
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,--
A dumb despair, a wandering death.
To that dark, weltering horror came
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,--
A breath of life electrical,
Awakening and transforming all,
Till beat and thrilled in every part
The pulses of a living heart.
Then knew their bounds the land and sea;
Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;
From flower to moth, from beast to man,
The quick creative impulse ran;
And earth, with life from thee renewed,
Was in thy holy eyesight good.
As lost and void, as dark and cold
And formless as that earth of old;
A wandering waste of storm and night,
Midst spheres of song and realms of light;
A blot upon thy holy sky,
Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I.
O Thou who movest on the deep
Of spirits, wake my own from sleep
Its darkness melt, its coldness warm,
The lost restore, the ill transform,
That flower and fruit henceforth may be
Its grateful offering, worthy Thee.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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