"somewhere I have never traveled" by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near


your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose


or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;


nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing


(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

E. E. Cummings

The Hortatory Subjunctive (More Prufrock by T.S.Eliot)

The hortatory subjunctive is what makes a sentence a suggestion and an exhortation, but not a command. In English, we use "Let [subject] [verb]." That is a bizarre construction, but it works for us. One of my favorite poems in the universe starts out with this:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo. 

 

--T.S. Eliot

"It's all I have" by Emily Dickenson

It's all I have to bring to-day
This, and my heart beside
THis, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, -
Someone the sum could tell, -
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

-Emily Dickinson

Monday Quotes

1. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
--Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

2. Nostalgia of any kind isn't a longing for the time, it's a longing for the person you were, the place you held, and the people who were around you. That has changed, but it was going to change anyway. It always does. --Katharine Pilkington

3. The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in slience, but restraint. --Marianne Moore

4. Life is short and the art is long. Experience is fleeting, experiment treacherous, and judgement difficult. --Hippocrates

5. Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians. --Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

"The Girl in the Fireplace" by Jacob Clifton

Rose stares at him as he works, brittle and quiet.

"Are you all right?"

And the Doctor looks up, and says something as incomprehensible, as painful, as ugly, as worthless--and as true, and as beautiful--as he's ever said:

"I'm always all right."


--Jacob Clifton, TWOP

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced, nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley

A Piece of Prufrock

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I Dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
...
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and metickous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At time indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at time, the Fool.

T. S. Eliot

MacBeth Quotes III

1. He has a wisdom that doth guide his valour to act in safety.


2. Naught's bad, all's spent, where our desire is got without content.


3. Things without rememdy should be regard: what's done is done.


4. After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.


5. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

Thursday quotes

1. Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion. --Blythe Holbrook

2. Never exaggerate your faults. Your friends will attend to that. --Robert Edwards

3. If you want to make a dangerous man your friend, let him do you a favor. --Warden Lewis Lawes

4. After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressable is music. --Aldous Huxley

5. Action is eloquence. --William Shakespeare

Tuesday quotes

1. How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you being to understand there is no going back. There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...and take hold. --J.R. Tolkien


2. He who cannot draw on the three thousand years is living from hand to mouth. --Goethe


3. What she wanted from them was sympathy -- because she still felt, or at least feared, that Ivan was a good man and she had lost a prize. But if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it my pride that's wounded?


Maybe. But she still knew, deep in her heart, that this was not true, either. Because if Ivan came back to her, even now, she would go to him. She wouldn't trust him, but she would take him back. Because she really did love him. And love doesn't dissapear just because of the vile unworthiness of the loved one.


She had always thought Ivan was the kind of man who kept a promise.


--Orson Scott Card, in Enchantment


4. Life is a great big canvas. Throw all the paint on it you can. --Danny Kaye


5. Seek the lofty by reading, hearing, and seeing great work at some moment every day. --Thomas Wilder

Monday quotes, again

1. Although we know the end of the maze holds death...I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being - one of many ways - and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming. --Daniel Keyes, in Flowers for Algernon.

2. Music has the poiwer to abolish everything in the outside world except its souns, which go straight to the heart. --Gaston Leoureux

3. Hearts are not had as gifts, but hearts are earned. --W. B. Yeats

4. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted and at two or tree times removed, when we know least about it. --R.W. Emerson

5. Never find fault with the absent. --Alexander Pope

"Razors Pain You" by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.


--Dorothy Parker

"A Learned Man Came To Me Once" by Stephen Crane

A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, -- come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.


Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."

--Stephen Crane

"If I Were" by Kermit the Frog

If I were a poet
I would write a sonnet
It would say "I love you"
Your name would be on it.

If I were a farmer
I'd give you a bunny
If I had a beehive
You would get free honey

If I were a baker
I'd give you a croller
And if I were a painter
Choose your favorite color.

If I had some diamonds
I'd give you a few
Anything to show you
How much I love you.

I guess you know my secret
I am not a poet.
Couldn't write a sonnet
And I think you know it.

I am not a farmer.
Cna't give you a bunny.
I don't have a beehive.
Sorry 'bout the honey.

I am not a baker.
don't know bread from batter.
I am not a painter,
And it doesn't matter.

I don't need a present;
All I have to do
Is look at you to show you
How much I love you.

--Kermit the Frog

"Stop All the Clocks" by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.


Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.


He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.


The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


--W. H. Auden

"A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

--Langston Hughes

"Not waving but drowing" by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

-- Stevie Smith

"Light Years" by Joan Swift

Is light the last thing lost or never lost at all?
There is light so far away it's gone
by the time we see it,
the tail lights on the highway far ahead
that say someone is traveling
this same dark way.
Those blue clumps lost ten billion light-
years ago at the edge of the universe
redshift from ultraviolet to the visible
and are found by the Hubble telescope,
sleek horse pulling through dark
the reeling carriages of space
even as they change into roses,
thunderheads or phantom animals
we never imagined.
What fiery dust was our beginning,
left us a tender earth? far out in the universe
a tomorrow we can't see is singing the last word
of  a song we heard long ago under stars
like blossoms on black water.


--Joan Swift

"I'm so tired" by Portishead

I'm so tired of playing
Plahing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away
Leave it to the other girls to play
For I've been a temptress too long.

--Portishead

"Comment on War" by Langston Hughes

Let us kill off youth
For the sake of truth.
We who are old know what truth is -
Trush is a bundle of viscious lies
Tied together and sterilized -
A war-maker's bait for unwise youth
To kill each other
For the sake of
Truth.

---Langston Hughes