Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
-- by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Tag Archives: Poetry
Clouds
Clouds
Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.
-- by Rupert Brooke
a reflection …
When your heart opens a new window,
there is nothing to gain by hiding
your eyes from the light.
Desert Rose
Desert Rose
I don't know why I drove down that road
but it sure turned my life around,
And I'm darn glad no one else could see
What it was that I had found.
But out there in the desert
where hardly nothing grows
surviving through the loneliness
there stood a little rose.
I looked upon it with tenderness
as I touched it with Love
I knew it was special
because I felt it from above
Now I often think of that road
and the day it came into my life
The Love I gave has caused a change
For the Rose has become my wife.
- By Timothy A. Cook
I love suprises …
As cynical as I am it’s lovely to be suprised. A close friend of mine thought that I might be faltering or struggling with some decisions I needed to make. I don’t see her very often she lives on another continent these days, yet she still finds time to keep in touch and to remind me when I’m “being an ass“.
I was pleasantly suprised when I got home and found she had sent me some poems and quotes that she thought might help me regain my perspective on a few things …I’m familiar with most of them yet I have to admit I laughed out loud reading some of them, and also felt slightly wounded reading others … I want to share a few here for no reason other than that they are inspiring … several are by Ville Valo, who before today I was completely unfamiliar with …
"Every day is a goal in itself."
- Ville Valo
"Love is madness, you can't put it in doses,
it either surges over or under."
- Ville Valo
"Silence is more like a spiritual thing: A moment
when your heart can be at peace. Love is silence.
The same silence is in reading. When you're doing
something that demands concentration, all the
noise in the background vanishes."
- Ville Valo
"Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered
from the anguish of loneliness."
- Dag Hammarskjold
"One can be instructed in society, one is inspired
only in solitude.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"This quest. This need to solve life's mysteries.
In the end, what does it matter when the human
heart can only find meaning in the smallest of
moments? They're here. Among us. In the shadows.
In the light. Everywhere. Do they even know yet?"
- Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), Heroes
"Choose a job that you love and you will never
have to work a day in your life"
- Confucious
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is
what dies within us while we live."
- Norman Cousins
"The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life,
the clearer we should see through it."
- Niccolo Machiavelli
"The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we
are loved"
- Victor Hugo
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away."
- Anonymous
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments
of his life when he resigns momentarily from the
herd and thinks for himself."
- Archibald Macleish
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the
road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
- Buddha
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment."
- Buddha
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives
mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who,
instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen
rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm
and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a
moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an
hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our
powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
- Henri Nouwen
"Riches are not from abundance of worldly goods, but from
a contented mind."
- Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)
"It is always important to know when something reaches
its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters,
it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave
in the past those moments in life that are over."
- Paulo Coelho
I’ve only posted up a handful of the ones she sent, and certainly haven’t transcribed the comments she put next to them, which were quite impressive but also made me feel like I was back at school being chided :p .
To the friend who sent me this ( she-who-must-not-be-named but is really called Rachel ), I owe you one! Thank you … I think I know what to do now … 😉
Khayyam’s Quatrain: an Interpretation
The original:
This Universal wheel, this merry-go-round
In our imagination we have found
The sun a flame, in the Cosmic lantern bound
We are mere ghosts, revolving, the flame surround.
-- Omar Khayyam
An interpretation by Shahriar Shahriari:
In our imagination, the Cosmic Wheel
Will cause us pain and cause us heal
We find our source give life and steal
We are phantoms that think and feel.
-- Shahriar Shahriari
… both are beautiful, and inspired.
Ae Fond Kiss, and then We Sever
Ae Fond Kiss, and then We Sever
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.
I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met -or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
by Robert Burns
Mirage
Mirage
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped
For a dream's sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti
The definition of Love
The Definition of Love
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us and the distant poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planishpere.
As lines so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
by Andrew Marvell
Gently as she goes …
…lips, ripe as the berries in June Red the rose, red the rose Skin, pale as the light of the moon Gently as she goes Eyes, blue as the sea and the sky Water flows, water flows Heart, burning like fire in the night Gently as she goes…