The Rose Of The World
WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Related quotes
Passing Through
I saw jesus on the cross on a hill called calvary
Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?
He said, talk of love not hate, things to do - its getting late.
Ive so little time and Im only passing through.
Passing through, passing through.
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that you saw me passing through.
I saw adam leave the garden with an apple in his hand,
I said now youre out, what are you going to do?
Plant some crops and pray for rain, maybe raise a little cane.
Im an orphan now, and Im only passing through.
Passing through, passing through ...
I was with washington at valley ford, shivering in the snow.
I said, how come the men here suffer like they do?
Men will suffer, men will fight, even die for what is right
Even though they know theyre only passing through
Passing through, passing through ...
I was with franklin roosevelts side on the night before he died.
He said, one world must come out of world war two (ah, the fool)
Yankee, russian, white or tan, he said, a man is still a man.
Were all on one road, and were only passing through.
Passing through, passing through ...
(lets do it one more time)
Passing through, passing through ...
song performed by by Leonard Cohen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes
Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes
FASTEN your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Womanhood.
She feels the world, it touches her
Like a weird thing she needs must know,
While all her fears and fancies stir
As in a death-dream long ago.
She has passed from her youth to this —
A woman grown with misty eyes,
Knowing the world no nunnery is
For the heart stripped of its disguise.
Her feet now pace a thorny path
Where mournful hopes like fiends confer,
And e'en the power her beauty hath
Seems one with what would ruin her.
poem by Robert Crawford
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White Magic
Is it not a wonderful thing to be able to force an astonished plant to bear rare flowers which are foreign to it. . . and to obtain a marvelous result from sap which, left to itself, would have produced corollas without beauty? -VIRGIL.
I stood forlorn and pale,
Pressed by the cold sand, pinched by the thin grass,
Last of my race and frail
Who reigned in beauty once, when beauty was,
Before the rich earth beckoned to the sea,
Took his salt lips to taste,
And spread this gradual waste-
This ruin of lower, this doom of grass and tree.
Each Spring could scarcely lift
My brows from the sand drift
To fill my lips with April as she went,
Or force my weariness
To its sad, summer dress:
On the harsh beach, I heard the grey sea rise,
The ragged grass made ceaseless, dim lament,
And day and night scarce changed the mournful skies.
Foot on the sand, a shadow on the sea!
A face leaned over me.
Across each wasted limb
Passed healingly a warm, great, god-like hand.
I was drawn up to him,
From my frail feet fell the last grains of sand.
Then haste and darkness stooped and made me theirs;
Deep handed me to deep; . . .
I faded then as names fade from men's prayers,--
As a sigh at last made friends with sleep.
But the same hand that bore me from the sea,
Waking me tenderly,
Bound me to a rough stranger of my race,--
Me weary and pale to him, and him to me.
I turned my piteous face
Aside ashamed; I struggled to be free.
I slept, I dreamed, I woke to that embrace! . . .
Sweet tides stole through my veins,
Strange fires and thrills and pains;
To my cold lips the bloom crept back once more
I glowed as a bride glows;
I watched the day with delicate hands restore
My kinship with the rose.
About my throat my hair went like a flame,
My brows were wreathed, in purple I was dressed,
I bore my bride's name,
A great star burned my breast.
No longer bound, I leaned the same sweet way
Towards her lover. Now astonished I
Who was a beggar stand obediently
Beside Cophetua.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Aedh Tells of a Valley Full of Lovers
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
I cried in my dream ‘O women bid the young men lay
‘Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
‘Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
‘Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.’
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Stardust
Ah high flyin highway mist
Tran
-ce-
(s)
-lucent
i
q
u
i
d of
S(s) P(p) A(a) C (c) E(e)
stardusts orange vapor: : : :
...now receding...off...towards some faraway
fiery conquest …
the horizons invisible duel
Roadside window passing reflections
like a double edge sword of silk and flame
over the old corn row country road
Love's unseen aura penetrating
skies stained in the bloodshed's wake
(opaline trails of light)
beauty's opus of endless passing
illuminating over the old orb of
oceanic onus and
triumphant bliss....inner emptiness
passing winds pass through
a passing window of a passing car
full of sweet sorrowful
passing passengers
passing land passing faces
passing through the beautiful
void of imaginary places
one
with
all
such
ness
true
self
beyond
individual
senses
(
(nonexistence
only
consciousness
aware of
it-
-self)
(non-)
material
dream
a
n
d
thought
(Un)
Born
passing through
the solid world of
sperm and womb
Transgressing boundary lines -
Entering a state of absolute
(nothing)
ness
poem by Gregory Allen Uhan
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Monody on the Death of Wendell Phillips
I
One by one they go
Into the unknown dark--
Star-lit brows of the brave,
Voices that drew men's souls.
Rich is the land, O Death!
Can give you dead like our dead!--
Such as he from whose hand
The magic web of romance
Slipt, and the art was lost!
Such as he who erewhile--
The last of the Titan brood--
With his thunder the Senate shook;
Or he who, beside the Charles,
Untoucht of envy or hate,
Tranced the world with his song;
Or that other, that grey-eyed seer
Who in pastoral Concord ways
With Plato and Hâfiz walked.
II
Not of these was the man
Whose wraith, through the mists of night,
Through the shuddering wintry stars,
Has passed to eternal morn.
Fit were the moan of the sea
And the clashing of cloud on cloud
For the passing of that soul!
Ever he faced the storm!
No weaver of rare romance,
No patient framer of laws,
No maker of wondrous rhyme,
No bookman wrapt in his dream.
His was the voice that rang
In the fight like a bugle-call,
And yet could be tender and low
As when, on a night in June,
The hushed wind sobs in the pines.
His was the eye that flashed
With a sabre's azure gleam,
Pointing to heights unwon!
III
Not for him were these days
Of clerky and sluggish calm--
To the petrel the swooping gale!
Austere he seemed, but the hearts
Of all men beat in his breast;
No fetter but galled his wrist,
No wrong that was not his own.
What if those eloquent lips
Curled with the old-time scorn?
What if in needless hours
His quick hand closed on the hilt?
'T was the smoke from the well-won fields
That clouded the vetran's eyes.
A fighter this to the end.
Ah, if in coming times
Some giant evil arise,
And Honor falter and pale,
His were a name to conjure with!
God send his like again!
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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He Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers
I DREAMED that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
I cried in my dream, O women, bid the young men lay
Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your fair,
Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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If You Believe
Time, of rise and fly, over me, to the sea,
Love is a pride, wait for me, wait for me,
If you believe in me,
I will believe in what will be,
We want the world youve only dreamed of,
Promise of the seasons,
Give us the future please,
Thats all we need of you.
Running in circles,
Desperate we hold to yours and mine,
Using my body,
Closing our hearts and eyes.
Oh no, open the door and let the wind blow,
Take my hand, together we stand in the eye of the hurricane.
If you believe in me
I will believe in what will be,
We want the world youve only dreamed of,
Promise of the seasons,
Give us the future please,
Thats all we need of you.
Every nation, every woman, child and man
Comes on a moment, where they must take a stand,
Oh no, forget what you know, just let the wind blow,
Blown apart, you open your heart, and thats where anything can be.
If you believe in me
I will believe in what will be,
We want the world youve only dreamed of,
Promise of our seasons,
Give us the future please,
Thats all we need of you.
Out of control, out of my mind, at last,
Into my dreams, we sailed away.
If you believe in me
I will believe in what will be,
We want the world youve only dreamed of,
Promise of our seasons,
Give us the future please,
Thats all we need of you.
Oh sing it children
(if you believe in me)
Got to believe
(I will believe in what will be,)
Tell 'em what you want
(we want the world youve only dreamed of,)
World youve only dreamed of
(promise of our seasons,)
(give us the future please, )
(thats all we need of you.)
If you believe in me
I will believe in what will be,
We want the world youve only dreamed of,
Promise of our seasons,
Give us the future please,
Thats all we need of you.
song performed by by Kenny Loggins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Long Years Have Past Since Last I Stood
LONG years have past since last I stood
Alone amid this mountain scene,
Unlike the future which I dreamed,
How like my future it has been!
A cold grey sky o'erhung with clouds,
With showers in every passing shade,
How like the moral atmosphere
Whose gloom my horoscope has made!
I thought if yet my weary feet
Could rove my native hills again,
A world of feeling would revive,
Sweet feelings wasted, worn in vain.
My early hopes, my early joys,
I dreamed those valleys would restore;
I asked for childhood to return,
For childhood, which returns no more.
Surely the scene itself is changed!
There did not always rest as now
That shadow in the valley's depth,
That gloom upon the mountain-brow.
Wild flowers within the chasms dwelt
Like treasures in stone fairy hold,
And morning o'er the mountains shed
Her kindling world of vapoury gold.
Another season of the year
Is now upon the earth and me;
Another spring will light these hills—
No other spring mine own may be:
I must retune my unstrung harp,
I must awake the sleeping tomb,
I must recall the loved and lost,
Ere spring again for me could bloom.
I've wandered, but it was in vain,
In many a far and foreign clime,
Absence is not forgetfulness,
And distance cannot vanquish time.
One face was ever in my sight,
One voice was ever on my ear,
From all earth's loveliness I turned
To wish, Ah that the dead were here!
Oh! weary wandering to no home,
Oh! weary wandering alone,
I turned to childhood's once glad scenes
And found life's last illusion flown.
Ah! those who left their childhood's scenes
For after-years of toil and pain,
Who but bring back the breaking heart
Should never seek those scenes again.
poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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The Last Judgment
With beating heart and lagging feet,
Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat.
All bring hither the fruits of toil,
Measures of wheat and measures of oil;
Gold and jewels and precious wine;
No hands bare like these hands of mine.
The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams:
Lord, I can bring you only dreams.
In days of spring, when my blood ran high,
I lay in the grass and looked at the sky,
And dreamed that my love lay by my side--
My love was false, and then she died.
All the heat of the summer through,
I dreamed she lived, that her heart was true
Throughout the hours of the day I slept,
But woke in the night, at times, and wept.
The nights and days, they went and came,
I lay in shadow and dreamed of fame;
And heard men passing the lonely place,
Who marked me not and my hidden face.
My strength waxed faint, my hair grew grey;
Nothing but dreams by night and day.
Some men sicken, with wine and food;
I starved on dreams, and found them good.
* * * * * * *
This is the tale I have to tell--
Show the fellow the way to hell.
I Dreamed.
I dreamed a dream and in that dream,
I dreamed that I had dreamed a dream,
Of hope and fairytales come true,
I dreamed a dream and thought of truth,
I dreamed a dream of life and love,
Of fate and angels and God above,
I dreamed a dream of good wishes and friends,
I dreamed a dream I dreaded to end,
But then I woke into my dream,
I dreamed I woke in a world obscene,
I dreamed a dream of violence and hate,
And once again I dreamed of fate,
I dreamed a dream of terror and fear,
I dreamed that each word went unheard,
And so children never spoke a word,
I dreamed a dream of demons and beasts,
I dreamed a dream that ended at last,
I woke in my bed and wondered if,
I dreamed a dream of dreams or if,
I dreamed a dream of truth that night,
And if so I wondered which was truth,
And which was merely a dream.
poem by Emma Wright
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Genocide
Mercenary batalions
Are poised to strike us down
Terminations conquest
Upon us now full grown
Save me, my hearts open wide
Help me, no question of pride
Save me, my people have died
Total genocide
Devastation hungers
She waits to leap to earth
Imminent liquidation
Before the grand rebirth
Save me, my hearts open wide
Help me, no question of pride
Save me, my people have died
Total genocide
Sin after sin I have endured
Yet the wounds I bear are the wounds of love
Frantic mindless zombies
Grab at fleeting time
Lost in cold perplexion
Waiting for the sign
Generations tremble
Clinging face to face
Helpless situation
To end the perfect race
Flashing senseless sabers
Cut us to the ground
Eager for the life blood
Of all who can be found
Save me, my hearts open wide
Help me, no question of pride
Save me, my people have died
Total genocide
Slice to the left, slice to the right
None to retaliate, none will fight
Chopping at the hearts, snuffing out the lives
This race departs, no one will survive
Heads to the feet, feet to the air
Souls in the soil, heavy in despair
End of all ends, body into dust
To greet death friends, extinction is a must
song performed by by Judas Priest
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Kore
Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves,
And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms,
And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves.
Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms,
Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist,
And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist.
With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams;
There was no sound amid the sacred boughs.
Nor any mournful music in her streams:
Only I saw the shadow on her brows,
Only I knew her for the yearly slain,
And wept, and weep until she come again.
poem by Frederic Manning
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Bethesda
A Sequel
I saw again the spirits on a day,
Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;
Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,
Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,
Tied-up and bandaged, weary, sore and spent,
The maimed and halt, diseased and impotent.
For a great angel came, ’twas said, and stirred
The pool at certain seasons, and the word
Was, with this people of the sick, that they
Who in the waters here their limbs should lay
Before the motion on the surface ceased
Should of their torment straightway be released.
So with shrunk bodies and with heads down-dropt,
Stretched on the steps, and at the pillars propt,
Watching by day and listening through the night,
They filled the place, a miserable sight.
And I beheld that on the stony floor
He too, that spoke of duty once before,
No otherwise than others here to-day,
Foredone and sick and sadly muttering lay.
‘I know not, I will do what is it I would say?
What was that word which once sufficed alone for all,
Which now I seek in vain, and never can recall?’
And then, as weary of in vain renewing
His question, thus his mournful thought pursuing,
‘I know not, I must do as other men are doing.’
But what the waters of that pool might be,
Of Lethe were they, or Philosophy;
And whether he, long waiting, did attain
Deliverance from the burden of his pain
There with the rest; or whether, yet before,
Some more diviner stranger passed the door
With his small company into that sad place,
And, breathing hope into the sick man’s face,
Bade him take up his bed, and rise and go,
What the end were, and whether it were so,
Further than this I saw not, neither know.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Withering Of The Boughs
I CRIED when the moon was mutmuring to the birds:
'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.'
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
I know of the leafy paths that the witches take
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;
I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind
Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool
On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round
Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.
A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound
Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind
With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;
I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Night (II)
I know a little Druid wood
Where I would slumber if I could
And have the murmuring of the stream
To mingle with a midnight dream,
And have the holy hazel trees
To play above me in the breeze,
And smell the thorny eglantine;
For there the white owls all night long
In the scented gloom divine
Hear the wild, strange, tuneless song
Of faerie voices, thin and high
As the bat’s unearthly cry,
And the measure of their shoon
Dancing, dancing, under the moon,
Until, amid the pale of dawn
The wandering stars begin to swoon. . . .
Ah, leave the world and come away!
The windy folk are in the glade,
And men have seen their revels, laid
In secret on some flowery lawn
Underneath the beechen covers,
Kings of old, I’ve heard them say,
Here have found them faerie lovers
That charmed them out of life and kissed
Their lips with cold lips unafraid,
And such a spell around them made
That they have passed beyond the mist
And found the Country-under-wave. . . .
Kings of old, whom none could save!
poem by Clive Staples Lewis
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A lonely tree
At a road where the road off
where lonesome is the road
at mid of no where
A lonely tree is standing there
waitin no one but the dust
dust of the passing time
tarnish the colour of this tree
this lonely tree to gray
praying in this lonely place
for the passing van
A gray lonely van
for the lonely bird
staying for a while
when the nights come
and days go
the lonely tree; praying there
when the war rage and peace,
walkin shy
the lonely tree praying for the peace
no one is waitin there
but the lonely tree is waitin
the morning sun
waitin the rain in may
waitin winds from the north
waitin when no one is waitin there
and this lonely tree
gave a name for this nameless place
the land of the lonely tree.
poem by Sallam Yassin
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We Lovely Children Of God
This valley is ours
This world is ours
This sky is ours
This moment is ours
This heavenly age is ours
Beauty of word, that's we
Love of world, that's we
Worth of world, that's we
Future of world, that's we
We're pure and true souls
We're love of dad
We're love of mom
We're love of all
We're glistening stars
We heal your souls
We smile like flowers
We are free like air
We're pure like dew
We're egoless and true
We're children of God
Would you give a gift?
Leave the world like it
We may pass the bequest
So our children, too say
This world is ours
poem by S.D. Tiwari
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