Rhapsody on a windy night

Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Hymn to Lucifer

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden's imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

Le Possédé

Le soleil s'est couvert d'un crêpe. Comme lui,
Ô Lune de ma vie! emmitoufle-toi d'ombre;
Dors ou fume à ton gré; sois muette, sois sombre,
Et plonge tout entière au gouffre de l'Ennui;

Je t'aime ainsi! Pourtant, si tu veux aujourd'hui,
Comme un astre éclipsé qui sort de la pénombre,
Te pavaner aux lieux que la Folie encombre,
C'est bien! Charmant poignard, jaillis de ton étui!

Allume ta prunelle à la flamme des lustres!
Allume le désir dans les regards des rustres!
Tout de toi m'est plaisir, morbide ou pétulant;

Sois ce que tu voudras, nuit noire, rouge aurore;
II n'est pas une fibre en tout mon corps tremblant
Qui ne crie: Ô mon cher Belzébuth, je t'adore!


Die Sonne bedeckte sich mit einem Crêpe.
Wie sie hüll dich, Mond meines Lebens, ins Dunkel;
Schlafe und rauche, sei düster, verstumme,
Tauch in den Abgrund der Schwermut hinweg.

So liebe ich dich! Doch möchtest du heute,
Verfinsterter Stern, aus dem Halbschatten treten,
Dort schreiten, wo Narren sich drängen und zetern,
Dann gut! Spring, reizender Dolch, aus der Scheide!

Entzünde dein Aug an den flammenden Lüstern!
Die Blicke der Tölpel, sie machen dich lüstern!
Stets machst du mir Freude, ob wild oder krank;

Sei, was du willst: Morgenrot, schwarze Nacht;
Mein ganzer Leib zittert, jede Faser erwacht,
Ruft: Beelzebub, Liebster, ich bete dich an!


Charles Baudelaire

All that is gold does not glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)

The Dry Salvages

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyer of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.


The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.


II

Where is there an end to it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable -
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence -
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination -
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hopes for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not the question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury; is what it always was.


III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant -
Among other things - or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark,
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death" - that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.


IV

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips
Or in the dath throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's
Perpetual angelus.


V

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors -
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint -
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement -
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.


"The Dry Salvages" (Four Quartets) by T.S.Eliot, 1943

Independence

Come to my arms --- is it eve? is it morn?
Is Apollo awake? Is Diana reborn?
Are the streams in full song? Do the woods whisper hush
Is it the nightingale? Is it the thrush?
Is it the smile of the autumn, the blush
Of the spring? Is the world full of peace or alarms?
Come to my arms, M, come to my arms!

Come to my arms, though the hurricane blow.
Thunder and summer, or winter and snow,
It is one to us, one, while our spirits are curled
In the crimson caress: we are fond, we are furled
Like lilies away from the war of the world.
Are there spells beyond ours? Are there alien charms?
Come to my arms, M, come to my arms!

Come to my arms! is it life? is it death?
Is not all immortality born of your breath?
Are not heaven and hell but as handmaids of yours
Who are all that enflames, who are all that allures,
Who are all that destroys, who are all that endures?
I am yours, do I care if it heals me or harms?
Come to my arms, M, come to my arms!

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

Elegy

Extinguished gaiety of years, which sunk in madness,
Presses on me like a hangover restless.
But in my sole, foregoing pine
Becomes through time still stronger, like a wine.
My way is sad. Predicts me toile and woe –
The sea of future in a wrath and row.

But, oh, my friends, I do not want to die;
I want to live for reasoning and trial;
I know, it will come – my satisfaction
Amidst the troubles, grieves and agitation:
Sometimes I’ll sink in harmony again,
Or wet my thought with tears of joy and pain.
And maybe, else, to my nightfall, in darkness
Will love smile farewell with her former brightness.


Alexander Puschkin (1799-1837)

How to Meditate

-lights out-
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
i hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance-Healing
all my sicknesses-erasing all-not
even the shred of a 'I-hope-you' or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
'thinking's just like not thinking-
So I don't have to think
any
more'

Jack Kerouac (1922-1962)

My used ignorance

My used ignorance--in an instant
Was shaken by the demon's hand,
And he combined my poor existence
With his existence to the end.
His evil eyes became my own,
I gain poor treasure of the worlds,
My heart was beating in a tone
With indistinguishable words.
I'd looked at all with look that's clear,
And I was shocked by what I'd seen;
Whether such world could once appear
As great and beautiful to me?
What, a young dreamer, looked you for
In such a world, with utter fervor,
For whom, with all your heart before,
You were not shamed to pray forever?
And I looked at the people, else:
The 'judges' of the lowest level --
So cruel, lofty, biased, base --
The fools that always drift to evil.
Before these ever-frightened hosts,
So vain, and cold, and full of vengeance,
The voice of truth is simply lost,
And helpless -- knowledge of the ages.
You're right, the ever-witty nations,
A call for freedom is asleep!
Herds needn't freedom's innovations,
They have to be just cut and stripped,
Their heritage for generations --
The yoke with joker's bells and whip.

Dumb

Gabriel whispered in mine ear
His archangelic poesie.
How can I write? I only hear
The sobbing murmur of the sea.

Raphael breathed and bade me pass
His rapt evangel to mankind;
I cannot even match, alas!
The ululation of the wind.

The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit
On every poet's holy head;
No mustard-seed of truth or wit
In those curst furrows, quick or dead!

A tithe of what I know would cleanse
The leprosy of earth; and I -
My limits are like other men's.
I must live dumb, and dumb must die!

Aleister Crowley

The Rose and the Cross

Out of the seething cauldron of my woes,
Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung;
Where charmed music gathered from my tongue,
And where I chained strange archipelagoes
Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows
A curious bitumen; where among
The glowing medley moved the tune unsung
Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic Rose.

Its myriad petals of divided light;
Its leaves of the most radiant emerald;
Its heart of fire like rubies. At the sight
I lifted up my heart to God and called:
How shall I pluck this dream of my desire?
And lo! there shaped itself the Cross of Fire!

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

Das trunkene Schiff

Hinab glitt ich die Flüsse, von träger Flut getragen,
da fühlte ich: es zogen die Treidler mich nicht mehr.
Sie waren, von Indianern ans Marterholz geschlagen,
ein Ziel an buntem Pfahle, Gejohle um sich her.

Ich scherte mich den Teufel um Männer und um Frachten;
wars flämisch Korn, wars Wolle, mir war es einerlei.
Vorbei war der Spektakel, den sie am Ufer machten,
hinunter gings die Flüsse, wohin, das stand mir frei.

Derweil die Tide tobte und klatschte an den Dämmen,
flog ich, und es war Winter, wie Kinderhirne stumpf,
dahin. Und wär es möglich, daß jemals Inseln schwämmen,
kein solcher Gischt umbraust' sie, kein ähnlicher Triumph.

Ein leichter Korken, tanzt ich dahin auf steiler Welle:
die erste Meerfahrt haben die Stürme benedeit.
Von solcher Welle heißt es, sie töte und sie fälle -
Die albernen Laternen der Häfen blieben weit!

So süß kann Kindermündern kein grüner Apfel schmecken,
wie mir das Wasser schmeckte, das grün durchs Holz mir drang.
Rein wuschs mich vom Gespeie und von den Blauweinflecken,
fort schleudert es das Steuer, der Draggen barst und sank.

Des Meers Gedicht! Jetzt konnt ich mich frei darin ergehen,
Grünhimmel trank ich, Sterne, taucht ein in milchigen Strahl
und könnt die Wasserleichen zur Tiefe gehen sehen:
ein Treibgut, das versonnen und selig war und fahl.

Die Rhythmen und Delirien, das Blau im rauchigen Schleier,
verfärbt sind sie im Nu hier, versengt sind sie, verzehrt:
so brannte noch kein Branntwein, kein Lied und keine Leier,
wie hier das bittre Rostrot der Liebe brennt und gärt!

Ich weiß, wie Himmel bersten, ich kenn die Dämmerungen,
die Strömung und die Dünung, die Woge, die sich bäumt,
die Früh - verzückt wie Tauben, die sich emporgeschwungen,
und manchmal sah mein Auge, was Menschenauge träumt.

Ich sah die Sonne hängen - mystisch geflecktes Grauen,
und violett, geronnen. Leuchtstreifen, endlos weit,
und sah die Fluten schaufeln und groß die Bühne bauen,
ein Schauspiel sah ich spielen, das alt war wie die Zeit!

Im Traum sah ich die Schneenacht, die grüne, sich erheben:
ein Kuß stieg zu den Augen der Meeres-Au empor.
Ein Kreisen wars von Säften, ein unerhörtes Weben,
und blau und gelb erwachte der singende Phosphor!

Ich folgt und folgt der Horde von wildgewordnen Kühen:
der See, die Klippen stürmte, folgt ich auf ihrem Ritt.
Vergessen wart ihr, Füße der leuchtenden Marien:
hier keuchten Meeresmäuler - sie schloß kein Heiligentritt!

Wißt ihr, ich lief auf Land auf, wie ihrs nicht schaut im Traume:
Des Menschenpanthers Augen - den Blumen beigesellt!
Ich sah im weitgespannten, im Regenbogenzaume
flutgrün die Herden ziehen am Grund der Meereswelt.

Ich sah, wie's in den Sümpfen, den Riesenreusen, gärte,
darin den Leviathan, verwesend zwischen Tang.
Und Wasserstürze sah ich, wo sich die Stille mehrte,
und schaute, wie die Ferne zur Tiefe niedersank!

Sah Gletscher, Silbersonnen, Gluthimmel, Perlmuttfluten,
den braunen Golf, wo greulich ein Wrack beim andern steht,
und sah die Riesenschlange, ein Fraß der Wanzenbruten,
vom Krüppelbaume fallen, von schwarzem Duft umweht!

Wo seid ihr. Kinderaugen, zu schaun die Herrlichkeiten?
Das Schuppengold der Welle, den Goldfisch, der da singt!
- Dies schaumumblühte Driften, dies Zwischeen-Blumen-Gleiten!
Der Wind, der Wind unsäglich, der meine Fahrt beschwingt!

Und litt ich Pein, der Pole und Wendekreise müde,
so schluchzt' es in den Wassern, ich schlingerte dahin,
mit gelbem Saugnapf tauchte empor die Schattenblüte -
ein Weib, so blieb ich liegen, ein Weib auf Weibesknien.

Gewölle und Gezanke hab ich an Bord genommen,
ich war das Vogel-Eiland - blond äugte, was da flog.
Ich trieb mit loser Spante, ich schwamm und ward durchschwommen:
ein Leichnam um den andern, der rücklings schlafwärts zog.

Und ich - verstrickt, verloren im Haar geheimer Buchten,
hinauf ins Vogellose geworfen vom Orkan:
sie fahren nicht, die Klipper, die Koggen, die mich suchten,
des wassertrunknen Rumpfes nimmt sich kein Schlepptau an.

Frei war ich und ich rauchte, von Nebelblau bestiegen,
ich stieß durch Feuerhimmel, ich stieß sie alle ein,
und was den Dichtern mundet, das fühlt ich auf mir liegen:
es waren Sonnenflechten, es war azurner Schleim.

Ich - mondgefleckt, elektrisch: die tollgewordne Planke!
Seepferdchen kam in Scharen und war mein schwarzer Troß.
Ihr Himmel blau und tiefblau, ich sah euch alle wanken,
ich sah, wie euch der Juli durch Glutentrichter goß!

Der Behemoth, der Mahlstrom durchstöhnte jene Breiten,
ich spürte beider Brunstlaut - ein Schauder ging durch mich,
ich schwamm und schwamm durch blaue, durch Regungslosigkeiten -
Europa, deine Wehren, die alten misse ich!

Und ich sah Inselsterne, sah Archipele ragen,
darüber Fieberhimmel - das Tor der Wanderschaft!
- Hats dich dorthin, ins Nächtige und Nächttigste verschlagen,
du goldnes Vogeltausend, du künftige, du Kraft?

Doch wahr, genug des Weinens! Der Morgen muß enttäuschen.
Ob Nacht-, ob Taggestirne, keins, das nicht bitter war:
ich schwoll von herber Liebe, erstarrt in Liebesräuschen -
O du mein Kiel, zersplittre! Und über mir sei, Meer!

Und gab es in Europa ein Wasser, das mich lockte,
so wärs ein schwarzer Tümpel, kalt, in der Dämmernis,
an dem dann eins der Kinder, voll Traurigkeiten, hockte
und Boote, falterschwache, und Schiffchen segeln ließ'.

Wen du umschmiegt hast, Woge, um den ist es geschehen,
der zieht nicht hinter Frachtern und Baumwollträgern her!
Nie komm ich da vorüber, wo sich die Fahnen blähen,
und wo die Brücken glotzen, da schwimm ich nimmermehr!


Arthur Rimbaud (1854 - 1891)

A Dream within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)