Related quotes: While I complain of being...

While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.

quote by Claude Levi-Strauss
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Related quotes

It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more.

quote by C.L.R. James
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

quote by John Burroughs
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A moment passed

A moment passed
that I'll never get back
a glimpse into something I knew
a glimpse into something
I felt to be real

A song, a lyric
an image
taking me in to something deep
inside of a dream
or a fantasy or a partial memory

a moment that reminded me
that I'm alive
a theme song to my life
then it was quiet again

poem by Sara Winters
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I May Have Years To Go

I MAY HAVE YEARS TO GO

I may have years to go-
Many many years
In which I will continue to fail
In the same way
I have failed
In the many more years before.

The truth is
God could give me hundreds of years more
I would still be capable
Only of being myself -

Blessed are those given the gift of greatness by God
And long-troubled those who would be given it
And are not.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Crooked Stick

First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust?
Second Traveller: A crooked stick.
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic?
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle?
First Traveller: No, a trick.
Second Traveller:It's worthless, leave it where it lies.
First Traveller: Wait; count ten;
Rub a little dust upon your eyes;
Now, look again.
Second Traveller: Well, and what the devil is it, then?
First Traveller: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherds know.
Second Traveller: Someone's loss!
First Traveller: Bend it, and you make of it a bow.
Break it, a cross.
Second Traveller: But it's all grown over with moss!

poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
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I do a vocal warm-up on stage. I like an empty theater. Alone on stage, before anyone's there, I take a few quiet moments to erase the regular world and get into one. I figure out what my first moment is about. I can't prepare for the whole play; that sort of charts itself out. If you start in the right place, nine times out of ten you'll end in the right place. It's just clearing the space for that moment to happen.

quote by Željko Ivanek
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Hundred Years From Now

(words & music by flatt - scruggs)
Well a hundred years from now I wont be crying
A hundred years from now I wont be blue
My heart will have to forget that we ever met
But I wont care a hundred years from now
Ill never forget sweetheart the night you told me
That you could live without my love somehow
Thats all in the past I knew it wouldnt last
But I wont care a hundred years from now

song performed by by Elvis Presley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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For Far Too Many Days, Months and Years

The only point that you can make...
That can be proven,
Is a disappearance made.
And you can save any excuses,
You would like to waste time to make...
To use on someone else.

Any shallow steps you wish to correct,
That had in the past been done...
Have been placed.
And if you did not know what you were doing then...
Today will not make the difference.
For far too many days, months and years,
With my tears flowing for hours...
You have accused me for not understanding.

Well...
Today I do!
And it is clear you and I are through.
I'm not here to rehash and trash the past.
That 'fact' does not need another re-enactment.
Backward movements I'm not taking.
And that merry-go-round has stopped.
You're the only one wishing to ride it!

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Last Man for friend J.T.Early

I am alone, last of my race
The reign of man is nearly done
I wonder who will take our place.
I am the last and only one.

WE had our chance but failed the test.
Our foolish pride ensured we would
Because we thought that we knew best
instead of living as we should.

We chose instead belligerence
and Might is Right became our creed.
Despite the mounting evidence
that we wrong we paid no heed.

We flouted Mother Nature’s rules
Took much more than our rightful share
A race of self destructive fools
for others rights we did not care.

It had to come it was bound to.
She’d reached the end of her patience
and knew exactly what to do.
So she unleashed a pestilence.

Against which man had no defence.
The doctors failed although they tried
they simply lacked the competence.
Each passing day more people died.

I am alone last of my race
and I too soon must leave the stage.
I wonder who will take our place
to usher in a brand new age.

23-May-08
http: blog.myspace.com/poetic piers

poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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I Go To The Past And Regret It

i go to the past
barefoot i tread upon its
sands

it is cool
funny

really funny
it is very simple
and spontaneous like
a smile

i regret
it was too short

very much like
a glimpse
of you

and what i see is only
a shadow

a moment more like a
kiss

which has nothing to boast
but its
goodbye

yes, it was shallow but it
was really
fun........

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Silent Ship

the souls are in haste impressed with another time and with an other place
even the shore is sooty with the colorful smoke may be on face
in vain trying to explore and examine the other world and the fear from it
when the day has come to weigh anchor from our time more and more
a ship launches to unknown to obscurity from this parting harbour

the past and the future are loaded with the same thoughts
the same sadness..the same hesitation deteriorate them day by day on
what a holy magic is this..though there are so many passengers board one
this ship silently advances like nobody in it on the sea..waving
neither a handkerchief or a hand is waved when that ship is launching

past doomed to day..some worried with this parting
some screaming...some complaining of the ocean
their sadness longs for the shivering of meeting again
the ones behind..left on the quay are so worried with this voyage high
they look at the gloomy horizon for days with dampening eye

each bloody sunset adds a day to the gone passengers' lacking
this never ends..and drags itself to a hope of a new meeting again
while this is he situation with the first impact of sadness of parting
the beloveds and the lovers on the quay wait in vain
they still do not know that the loved ones gone will never return

this is the breeze of a night whose color is not known
it is the last moment of the soul in the body
listen silent bosoms...this is neither the last ship like this launching
nor for a life in agony ending the last mourning

they..who open their hands to sky on soil and on ground
pray for and complain of this reality....and of this miracle voyage
despairing is useless..listen to what the poet kEMAL says for this
''MOST OF THE PASSENGERS WHO HAD GONE
MUST HAVE BEEN EACH HAPPY WITH THE PLACE THEY HAD GONE
THOUGH SO MANY YEARS HAVE PASSED
FROM THEIR JOURNEY RETURN NONE

Yahya Kemal BEYATLI...Ali TURK KESKIN
Translatı on Metin SAHİ N

poem by Metin Sahin
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Ode On The Death Of A Lady, Who Lived One Hundred Years, And Died On Her Birthday, 1728

Ancient dame, how wide and vast
To a race like ours appears,
Rounded to an orb at last,
All thy multitude of years!

We, the herd of human kind,
Frailer and of feebler powers;
We, to narrow bounds confined,
Soon exhaust the sum of ours.

Death’s delicious banquet—we
Perish even from the womb,
Swifter than a shadow flee,
Nourish’d but to feed the tomb.

Seeds of merciless disease
Lurk in all that we enjoy;
Some that waste us by degrees,
Some that suddenly destroy.

And, if life o’erleap the bourn
Common to the sons of men,
What remains, but that we mourn,
Dream, and dote, and drivel then?

Fast as moons can wax and wane
Sorrow comes; and, while we groan,
Pant with anguish, and complain,
Half our years are fled and gone.

If a few (to few ‘tis given),
Lingering on this earthly stage,
Creep and halt with steps uneven
To the period of an age,

Wherefore live they, but to see
Cunning, arrogance, and force,
Sights lamented much by thee,
Holding their accustom’d course?

Oft was seen, in ages past,
All that we with wonder view;
Often shall be to the last;
Earth produces nothing new.

Thee we gratulate, content
Should propitious Heaven design
Life for us as calmly spent,
Though but half the length of thine.

poem by by unknown author, translated by William Cowper
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