- In rose with petals soft as air
I bind for you the tides and fire-
the death that lives within the flower,
oh gladly, love, for you I bear!
-Kathleen Rain from "Envoi"
- Will his name be Love
And all his talk be crazy?
Or will his name be Death
And his message easy?
-Louis MacNeice from "Prognosis"
- Jackal, we sniff after the survivors of caravans,
We reap bloody crops on war fields.
No meat of any corpse deprives our lean bellies.
Hunger drives us on scented winds.
Stranger, traveler,
peer into our eyes and translate
the horrible barking of ancient dogs
-Jim Morrison
- There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou-thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
-Emily Bronte "Last Lines"
- Would she would make of me a saint,
Or I of her a sinner.
-William Congreve from "Pious Selinda"
- ....But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.
-John Dryden from "Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor"
- Ask me no more where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.
Thomas Carew from "Song"
- In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--raised its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago),
And every gentle air that dallied
In that sweet day,
Upon the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-timed law.
Round about a throne where, sitting,
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace-door,
Through which came, flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling everymore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing
In voices of surpassing beauty
The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn--for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his house of glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travelers, now, within that valley
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly, rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh--but smile no more.
Edgar Allen Poe |
- The Cause of Sorrow is the desire of the One to the
Many, or of the Many to the One. This also is the
Cause of Joy.
But the desire of one to another is all of sorrow; its
birth is hunger, and its death satiety.
The desire of the moth for the star at least saves him
satiety....
...Be thou more greedy than the shark, more full of
yearning than the wind among the pines.
The weary pilgrim struggles on; the satiated pilgrim
stops.
-Aliester Crowley from "The Book of Lies"
- He who bends to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
-William Blake "Eternity"
- Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
-W.B. Yeats from "Easter 1916"
- I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my
arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night
with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning.
-Aleister Crowley "Chinese Music"
- Yes! In the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
Mathew Arnold "To Marguerite"
- Then let wrath remove;
Love will do the deed;
............For with love
Stony hearts will bleed.
-George Herbert "Discipline"
- If the doors of perception were cleansed every
thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all
things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
Jacob Boehme from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
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