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: 44

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: 34

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: 32

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: 36

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: 61

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: 31

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: 68

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: 38

Hymn to Proserpine
(After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

                        Vicisti, Galiaee
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove’s, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men’s tears;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea:
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings.
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.
Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world’s desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

Views: 38

Minha terra
by António Correia de Oliveira (1879-1960)

Minha terra, quem me dera
Ser humilde lavrador.
Ter o pão de cada dia, 
Ter a graça do Senhor:
Cavar-te, por minhas mãos,
Com caridade e amor.

Minha terra, quem me dera
Ser um Poeta afamado.
Ter a sina de Camões,
Andar nas naus embarcado:
Mostrar às outras nações
Portugal alevantado.

Minha terra, quem me dera
Poder ver-te d’um sertão;
Ter-te longe dos meus olhos,
Pertinho do coração:
Para amar-te mais, podendo,
Que me parece que não.

Minha terra, quem me dera
Ser um nauta assinalado;
Passar trabalhos no mar,
Ir à guerra, ser soldado:
Dar por ti todo o meu sangue
De Português desgraçado.

Views: 58