Zarathustra’s Rundgesang
by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
O Mensch! Gib acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
“Ich schlief, ich schlief—,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:—
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh—,
Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit—,
—will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!”
Views: 44
Scots What Hae
by Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie.
Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;
See the front of battle lour;
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor’s knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha’s sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s King and Law,
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or free-man fa’?
Let him follow me!
By oppression’s woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us do, or die!
Views: 26
Infant Eyes
by Ernest Myers (1844-1921)
Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,
Heart of my being’s heart,
Strange visitant, yet very son;
All this, and more, thou art.
In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother’s face
Transfiguring my own.
That grave but all untroubled gaze,
So rapt yet never dim,
Seems following o’er their starry ways
The wings of cherubim.
Two worlds man hardly may descry,
(For manhood clouds them o’er),
Commingled to mine inward eye
Are shadowed forth once more:
That lost world, whither man’s regret
With fictive fancy turns;
That world to come, where brighter yet
The star of promise burns.
Time and his weary offspring Care
Fade in that gaze away;
One moment mystically fair
Lives on, one timeless day.
Views: 44
La Mort
by Anatole France (1844-1924)
Si la vierge vers toi jette sous les ramures
Le rire par sa mère à ses lèvres appris;
Si, tiède dans son corps dont elle sait le prix,
Le désir a gonflé ses formes demi-mûres;
Le soir, dans la forêt pleine de frais murmures,
Si, méditant d’unir vos chairs et vos esprits,
Vous mêlez, de sang jeune et de baisers fleuris,
Vos lèvres, en jouant, teintes du suc des mûres;
Si le besoin d’aimer vous caresse et vous mord,
Amants, c’est que déjà plane sur vous la Mort:
Son aiguillon fait seul d’un couple un dieu qui crée.
Le sein d’un immortel ne saurait s’embraser.
Louez, vierges, amants, louez la Mort sacrée,
Puisque vous lui devez l’ivresse du baiser.
Views: 309
Place des Invalides
by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
Écoute Dieu ronronne dans son beau ciel vide
Rouet d’Omphale Les Nations
Une remise triomphale de décorations
Place des Invalides
Dôme d’or
Le bilan se dépêche, carde un nuage
Les cocardes tricolores
Nasse la tour Eiffel pendue
Elle attrape en silence
Toutes les dépêches du monde
Views: 30
Of a Wild White Bird
by Louise Mack (1870-1935)
To soar as a wild white bird,
With a song unbound and fetterless!
With a gush of song in the throat,
Loosened and loud and letterless,
And the wind its only accompaniment.
To sing and soar and look down
On a world one leaves when one tires of it:
With a glancing wing for a sail,
Dashing, when one desires of it,
Through the spray of the great sea-wilderness.
Or sweeping with mighty curves
From land to sky, and to land again:
To cast off Time, and to stay
Where one’s will alone lays hand on one:
Not to own or owe in the universe.
Sudden and swift some day
Meet Death, and know no fear of Him,
But close the eyes and have done.
. . . When a wild bird dies none hear of him.
He has sung and ceased, and is happiest.
Views: 49
Patriotism (from The Lay of the Last Minstrel)
by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
Views: 51
“That Love is all there is”
by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.
Views: 34
When the Frost is on the Punkin
by James Whitcomb Riley(1849-1916)
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and the gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’; of the guineys and the cluckin’ of the hens
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O it’s then the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
They’s somethin kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here —
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock —
When the frost is on the punkin and fodder’s in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries — kindo’ lonesome—like, but still
A preachin’ sermons to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below — the clover overhead! —
O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!
I don’t know how to tell it — but if sich a thing could be
As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me —
I’d want to ’commodate ’em — all the whole-indurin’ flock —
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
Views: 30
Crossing the Bar
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
Views: 27