Why did my parents send me to the schools That I with knowledge might enrich my mind? Since the desire to know first made men fools, And did corrupt the root of all mankind.
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene: It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth, Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu: Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth, Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi, From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace: Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name. I may not write it, but I make a cross To show I wait His coming, with the rest, And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine, "And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
Ye old mule that think yourself so fair, Leave off with craft your beauty to repair, For it is true, without any fable, No man setteth more by riding in your saddle. Too much travail so do your train appair. Ye old mule With false savour though you deceive th'air, Whoso taste you shall well perceive your lair Savoureth somewhat of a Kappurs stable. Ye old mule Ye must now serve to market and to fair, All for the burden, for panniers a pair. For since gray hairs been powdered in your sable, The thing ye seek for, you must yourself enable
Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons quelque chose, qui ne nous déplaît pas. ["In the hard times of our best friends we find something that doesn't displease us."] As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature, I believe 'em true: They argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind.
Mountains rise above us like ideas Vague in their superior extent, Part of the range of disillusionment Whose arresting outline disappears Into the circumstantial clouds that look Like footnotes from above. What wisdom said The mind has mountains? Imagination read The history of the world there like a book.
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his wat'ry bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear.
A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
Get up, get up for shame, the Blooming Morne Upon her wings presents the god unshorne. See how Aurora throwes her faire Fresh-quilted colours through the aire: Get up, sweet-Slug-a-bed, and see The Dew-bespangling Herbe and Tree. Each Flower has wept, and bow'd toward the East, Above an houre since; yet you not drest, Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the Birds have Mattens seyd, And sung their thankful Hymnes: 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, When as a thousand Virgins on this day, Spring, sooner than the Lark, to fetch in May.
Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage, A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage. The fable is inverted, and far more A block afflicts, now, than a stork before. Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us; In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus. As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were, Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there, The sea is now; and, as the isles which we Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be. As water did in storms, now pitch runs out; As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout. And all our beauty, and our trim, decays, Like courts removing, or like ended plays. The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply;
Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum [If you have come to know any precept more correct than these, share it with me, brilliant one; if not, use these with me] (Horace, Epistle I.6.67) PART 1
Teucer: . . . in sea-girt Cyprus, where it was decreed by Apollow that I should live, giving the city the name of Salamis in memory of my island home. . . . . . . . . . . Helen: I never went to Troy; it was a phantom. . . . . . . . . . . Servant: What? You mean it was only for a cloud that we struggled so much?
These are the streets where we walked with war and childhood Like our two shadows behind us, or Before us like one shadow. River walks Threaded by park rats, flanked by battleships, Flickering of a grey tail on the bank, Motionless hulls Enormous under a dead grey sky.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
xxiv What is far hence led to the den of making: Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem Digging the Georgics
Vision loads landscape | lauds Idoto Mater Bearing up sacrally so graced with bodies Voids the challenge how far from Igboland great- Stallioned Argos
Vehemencies minus the ripe arraignment Clapper this art taken to heart the fiction What are those harsh cryings astrew the marshes Weep not to hear them
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