Jenny Kissed Me
by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
Views: 33
Воин Агамемнона
by Nikolay Gumilyov (1886-1921)
Смутную душу мою тяготит
Странный и страшный вопрос:
Можно ли жить, если умер Атрид,
Умер на ложе из роз?
Всё, что нам снилось всегда и везде,
Наше желанье и страх,
Всё отражалось, как в чистой воде,
В этих спокойных очах.
В мышцах жила несказанная мощь,
Нега — в изгибе колен,
Был он прекрасен, как облако, — вождь
Золотоносных Микен.
Что я? Обломок старинных обид
Дротик, упавший в траву.
Умер водитель народов, Атрид, —
Я же, ничтожный, живу.
Манит прозрачность глубоких озёр,
Смотрит с укором заря.
Тягостен, тягостен этот позор —
Жить, потерявши царя!
Views: 64
Great Are the Myths
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Great are the myths …. I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve …. I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors and priests.
Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft …. where you sail I sail,
Yours is the muscle of life or death …. yours is the perfect science …. in you I have absolute faith.
Great is today, and beautiful,
It is good to live in this age …. there never was any better.
Great are the plunges and threes and triumphs and falls of democracy,
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.
Great are yourself and myself,
We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,
What the best and worst did we could do,
What they felt .. do not we feel it in ourselves?
What they wished .. do we not wish the same?
Great is youth, and equally great is old age …. great are the day and night;
Great is wealth and great is poverty …. great is expression and great is silence.
Youth large lusty and loving …. youth full of grace and force and fascination,
Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace and force and fascination?
Day fullblown and splendid …. day of the immense sun, and action and ambition and laughter,
The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.
Wealth with the flush hand and fine clothes and hospitality:
But then the soul’s wealth – which is candor and knowledge and pride and enfolding love:
Who goes for men and women showing poverty richer than wealth?
Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that silence is also expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the coldest may be without words,
That the true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling.
Great is the greatest nation .. the nation of clusters of equal nations.
Great is the earth, and the way it became what it is,
Do you imagine it is stopped at this? …. and the increase abandoned?
Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases.
Great is the quality of truth in man,
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
It is inevitably in the man …. He and it are in love, and never leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum …. it is vital as eyesight,
If there be any soul there is truth …. if there be man or woman there is truth …. If there be physical or moral there is truth,
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth …. if there be things at all upon the earth there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press the whole way toward you,
Sound your voice! I scale mountains or dive in the sea after you.
Great is language …. it is the mightiest of the sciences,
It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth …. and of men and women …. and of all qualities and processes;
It is greater than wealth …. it is greater than buildings or ships or religions or paintings or music.
Great is the English speech …. What speech is so great as the English?
Great is the English brood …. What brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule,
The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and justice and equality that are in the soul rule.
Great is the law …. Great are the old few landmarks of the law …. they are the same in all times and shall not be disturbed.
Great are marriage, commerce, newspapers, books, freetrade, railroads, steamers, international mails and telegraphs and exchanges.
Great is Justice;
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws …. it is in the soul,
It cannot be varied by statutes any more than love or pride or the attraction of gravity can,
It is immutable .. it does not depend on majorities …. majorities or what not come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges …. it is in their souls,
It is well assorted …. they have not studied for nothing ….. the great includes the less,
They rule on the highest grounds …. they oversee all eras and states and administrations.
The perfect judge fears nothing …. he could go front to front before God,
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back …. life and death shall stand back …. heaven and hell shall stand back.
Great is goodness;
I do not know what it is any more than I know what health is …. but I know it is great.
Great is wickedness …. I find I often admire it just as much as I admire goodness:
Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great,
And there is another paradox.
Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,
Great is death …. Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life.
Views: 36
Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
by John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond
The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,
For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.
Views: 31
Symposium
by Xenophanes (c. 570-c. 478 BCE)
νῦν γὰρ δὴ ζάπεδον καθαρὸν καὶ χεῖρες ἁπάντων
καὶ κύλικες: πλεκτοὺς δ᾽ ἀμφιτιθεῖ στεφάνους,
ἄλλος δ᾽ εὐῶδες μύρον ἐν φιάλῃ παρατείνει:
κρητὴρ δ᾽ ἕστηκεν μεστὸς ἐϋφροσύνης:
ἄλλος δ᾽ οἶνος ἑτοῖμος, ὃς οὔποτέ φησι προδώσειν,
μείλιχος ἐν κεράμοις ἄνθεος ὀσδόμενος:
ἐν δὲ μέσοις ἁγνὴν ὀδμὴν λιβανωτὸς ἵησι,
ψυχρὸν δ᾽ ἔστιν ὕδωρ καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ καθαρόν:
πάρκεινται δ᾽ ἄρτοι ξανθοὶ γεραρή τε τράπεζα
τυροῦ καὶ μέλιτος πίονος ἀχθομένη:
βωμὸς δ᾽ ἄνθεσιν ἂν τὸ μέσον πάντη πεπύκασται
μολπὴ δ᾽ ἀμφὶς ἔχει δώματα καὶ θαλίη:
χρὴ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν θεὸν ὑμνεῖν εὔφρονας ἄνδρας
εὐφήμοις μύθοις καὶ καθαροῖσι λόγοις:
σπείσαντας δὲ καὶ εὐξαμένους τὰ δίκαια δύνασθαι
πρήσσειν — ταῦτα γὰρ ὦν ἐστὶ προχειρότερον —
οὐχ ὕβρις πίνειν ὁπόσον κεν ἔχων ἀφίκοιο
οἴκαδ᾽ ἄνευ προπόλου μὴ πάνυ γηραλέος.
ἀνδρῶν δ᾽ αἰνέω τοῦτον, ὃς ἐσθλὰ πιὼν ἀναφαίνῃ,
ὥς οἱ μνημοσύνη καὶ τόνος ἀμφ᾽ ἀρετῆς:
οὔτε μάχας διέπει Τιτήνων οὔτε Γιγάντων,
οὐδέ τι Κενταύρων, πλάσματα τῶν προτέρων,
ἢ στάσιας σφεδανάς: τοῖς οὐδὲν χρηστὸν ἔνεστι:
θεῶν δὲ προμηθείην αἰὲν ἔχειν ἀγαθόν.
Views: 27
Dic Christi Veritas
attributed to Philippe de Grève (c. 1160-1236)
Dic Christi Veritas
dic cara raritas,
dic rara Caritas,
ubi nunc habitas,
aut in valle Visionis,
aut in throno Pharaonis,
aut in alto cum Nerone,
aut in antro cum Timone,
viscella scirpea
cum Moyse plorante,
vel in domo Romulea
cum Bulla fulminante?
Bulla fulminante
sub iudice tonante,
reo appelante,
sententia gravante,
veritas opprimitur,
distrahitur et venditur,
iusticia prostante.
itur et reccuritur
ad Curiam, nec ante
quis quid consequitur,
donec exuitur
ultimo quadrante.
Respondit Caritas;
homo, quid dubitas,
quid me sollicitas?
non sum quod usitas
nec in euro nec in austro,
nec in foro nec in claustro,
nec in bysso nec in cuculla,
nec in bello nec in bulla.
de Iericho sum veniens,
ploro cum sauciato
quem duplex Levi transiens
non astitit grabato.
Views: 31
Song
by John Gay (1685-1782)
O ruddier than the cherry,
O sweeter than the berry,
O Nymph more bright
Than moonshine night,
Like kidlings blithe and merry.
Ripe as the melting cluster,
No lily has such lustre;
Yet hard to tame,
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster.
Views: 56
Oratio ad Patrem
by Hildebert (c. 1055-1133)
Alpha et Ω, magne Deus
Heli, Heli, Deus meus,
Cujus virtus totum posse,
Cujus sensus totum nosse,
Cujus esse summum bonum,
Cujus opus quidquid bonun.
Super cuncta, subter cuncta;
Extra cuncta, intra cuncta.
Intra cuncta, nec inclusus;
Extra cuncta, nec exclusus;
Super cuncta, nec elatus;
Subter cuncta, nec substratus.
Super totus, praesidendo;
Subter totus, sustinendo;
Extra totus, complectendo;
Intra totus es, implendo.
Intra nunquam coarctaris,
Extra nunquam dilataris,
Super nullo sustentaris,
Subter nullo fatigaris.
Mundum movens non moveris,
Locum tenens non teneris,
Tempus mutans non mutaris,
Vaga firmans non vagaris.
Vis externa, vel necesse
Non alternat tuum esse.
Heri nostrum, cras et pridem,
Semper tibi nune et idem.
Tuum, Deus, hodiernum,
Indivisum sempiternum:
In hoc totum praevidisti,
Totum simul perfecisti,
Ad exemplar summae mentis.
Formam praestans elementis.
Views: 27
A White Rose
by John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890)
The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
Views: 59
Dawn
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
Views: 34