Am Weiher

Ein milder Wintertag
An jenes Waldes Enden,
Wo still der Weiher liegt
Und längs den Fichtenwänden
Sich lind Gemurmel wiegt:
Wo in der Sonnenhelle,
So matt und kalt sie ist,
Doch immerfort die Welle
Das Ufer flimmernd küßt:
Da weiß ich, schön zum Malen,
Noch eine schmale Schlucht,
Wo all' die kleinen Strahlen
Sich fangen in der Bucht;
Ein trocken, windstill Eckchen,
Und so an Grüne reich,
Daß auf dem ganzen Fleckchen
Mich kränkt kein dürrer Zweig.
Will ich den Mantel dichte
Nun legen übers Moos,
Mich lehnen an die Fichte,
Und dann auf meinen Schoß
Gezweig' und Kräuter breiten,
So gut ich's finden mag:
Wer will mir's übel deuten,
Spiel' ich den Sommertag?
Will nicht die Grille hallen,
So säuselt doch das Ried;
Sind stumm die Nachtigallen,
So sing' ich selbst ein Lied.
Und hat Natur zum Feste
Nur wenig dargebracht:
Die Lust ist stets die beste,
Die man sich selber macht.

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848)

Her Voice

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,--
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done,
Love's web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,--
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,--you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.

Oscar Wilde

The Song of wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats

from Poemata Minora, Volume II

On the Vanity of Human Ambition

Apollo, chasing Daphne, gain’d his prize
But lo! she turn’d to wood before his eyes.
More modern swains at golden prizes aim,
And ever strive some worldly thing to claim.
Yet ’tis the same as in Apollo’s case,
For, once attain’d, the purest gold seems base.
All that men seek ’s unworthy of the quest,
Yet seek they will, and never pause for rest.
True bliss, methinks, a man can only find
In virtuous life, & cultivated mind.

H. P. Lovecraft

Der beleidigte Pan

Auf der Höhlung
eines erstorbenen Kraters
blies heute Pan,
wie Schusterjungen
auf Schlüsseln pfeifen.
Er pfiff «die Welt» aus,
dies sonderbare,
zweideutige Stück
eines Anonymus,
das Tag für Tag
uns vorgespielt wird
und niemals endet.
Oh pfeife doch minder,
teuerer Waldgott!
Halt Einkehr, Pan!
Wer hieß Dich denn
unter Menschen gehen? ...

Christian Morgenstern

When I have fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats

For whom the Bell Tolls

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill,
as that he knows not it tolls for him;
and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am,
as that they who are about me, and see my state,
may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions;
all that she does belongs to all.
When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me;
for that child is thereby connected to that body which
is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am
a member.
And when she buries a man, that action concerns me:
all mankind is of one author, and is one volume;
when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language;
and every chapter must be so translated;
God employs several translators;
some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness,
some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every
translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered
leaves again for that library where every book shall lie
open to one another.
As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not
upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come,
so this bell calls us all; but how much more me,
who am brought so near the door by this sickness.
There was a contention as far as a suit
(in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation,
were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers
first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring
first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of
this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to
make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be
ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him
that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that
minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.
Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes
off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his
ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove
it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this
world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing
of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but
must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the
misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness
if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath
enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and
ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man
carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none
coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he
travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not
current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our
home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to
death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a
mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his
affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this
consideration of another's danger I take mine own into
contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my
God, who is our only security.

John Donne

A Birthday

Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our firmament
Of supreme silence and unbarred extent,
Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord,
One resurrection, one recurrent chord,
One incarnation, one descending dove,
All these being one, and that one being Love!

You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul
Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll
Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked
That might have graced your garland. I induct
Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song,
Each longing a little, each a little long,
But each aspiring only to express
Your excellence and my unworthiness ---
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same excellence.

So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle:
I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle,
While, as for love, the sun went through the signs,
And not a star but told him how love twines
A wreath for every decanate, degree,
Minute and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.

Let me go back to your last birthday. Then
I was already your one man of men
Appointed to complete you, and fulfil
From everlasting the eternal will.
We lay within the flood of crimson light
In my own balcony that August night,
And conjuring the aright and the averse
Created yet another universe.

We worked together; dance and rite and spell
Arousing heaven and constraining hell.
We lived together; every hour of rest
Was honied from your tiger-lily breast.
We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed
My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid?
I was afraid, afraid to live my love,
Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove,
Afraid of what I know not. I am glad
Of all the shame and wretchedness I had,
Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you,
And also that I cannot live without you.

Then I came back to you; black treasons rear
Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear,
Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges,
The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges,
Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils,
Concerted malice of a million devils; ---
You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon
Went marvellously, majestically on
Full-sailed, while every other braver bark
Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark.

Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight,
While above all, true centre of our world,
True source of light, our great love passion-pearled
Gave all its life and splendour to the sea
Above whose tides stood our stability.

Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan,
Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone.
How far below us all its fury rolled!
How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold!
We lived together: all its malice meant
Nothing but freedom of a continent!

It was the forest and the river that knew
The fact that one and one do not make two.
We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease,
We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees
For twenty miles could tell how lovers played,
And we could count a kiss for every glade.
Worry, starvation, illness and distress?
Each moment was a mine of happiness.

Then we grew tired of being country mice,
Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice
There, giving holy berries to the moon,
July's thanksgiving for the joys of June.

And you are gone away --- and how shall I
Make August sing the raptures of July?
And you are gone away --- what evil star
Makes you so competent and popular?
How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's
Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else?
I wish you were like me a man forbid,
Banned, outcast, nice society well rid
Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere
With us? --- my darling, you would now be here!

But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed,
Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed,
Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit
In the mule-mouths that have such need of it,
Until the world there's so much to forgive in
Becomes a little possible to live in.

God alone knows if battle or surrender
Be the true courage; either has its splendour.
But since we chose the first, God aid the right,
And damn me if I fail you in the fight!
God join again the ways that lie apart,
And bless the love of loyal heart to heart!
God keep us every hour in every thought,
And bring the vessel of our love to port!

These are my birthday wishes. Dawn's at hand,
And you're an exile in a lonely land.
But what were magic if it could not give
My thought enough vitality to live?
Do not then dream this night has been a loss!
All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross;
All night I have offered incense at the shrine;
All night you have been unutterably mine,
Miner in the memory of the first wild hour
When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower
From your closed garden, mine in every mood,
In every tense, in every attitude,
In every possibility, still mine
While the sun's pomp and pageant, sign to sign,
Stately proceeded, mine not only so
In the glamour of memory and austral glow
Of ardour, but by image of my brow
Stronger than sense, you are even here and now
Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife,
Mother of my children, mistress of my life!

O wild swan winging through the morning mist!
The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed,
The infinite device our love devised
If by some chance its truth might be surprised,
Are these all past? Are these to come? Believe me,
There is no parting; they can never leave me.
I have built you up into my heart and brain
So fast that we can never part again.
Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms
When all the time I have you in my arms?
Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells
Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles.

But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest
Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest
Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast.

Aleister Crowley (1911)

Four Quartets: Little Gidding

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.



II

Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.



III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them,
indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.



IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.



V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T.S.Eliot

Write it on your heart

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day,
and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a
new day;
begin it well and serenely,
with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - An Excerpt

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom,
no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law,
brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves,
the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword,
are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion,
woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web,
man friendship.
The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen,
frowning fool shall be both thought wise,
that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots;
the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air,
the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow;
nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius;
lift up thy head!
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on,
so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty,
the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish,
so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black,
the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads;
but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or too much.

William Blake

To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode

I.
I come from fields of fractured ice,
Whose wounds are cured by squeezing,
Melting they cool, but in a trice,
Get warm again by freezing.
Here, in the frosty air, the sprays
With fernlike hoar-frost bristle,
There, liquid stars their watery rays
Shoot through the solid crystal.


II.
I come from empyrean fires --
From microscopic spaces,
Where molecules with fierce desires,
Shiver in hot embraces.
The atoms clash, the spectra flash,
Projected on the screen,
The double D, magnesian b,
And Thallium's living green.


III.
We place our eye where these dark rays
Unite in this dark focus,
Right on the source of power we gaze,
Without a screen to cloak us.
Then where the eye was placed at first,
We place a disc of platinum,
It glows, it puckers! will it burst?
How ever shall we flatten him!


IV.
This crystal tube the electric ray
Shows optically clean,
No dust or haze within, but stay!
All has not yet been seen.
What gleams are these of heavenly blue?
What air-drawn form appearing,
What mystic fish, that, ghostlike, through
The empty space is steering?


V.
I light this sympathetic flame,
My faintest wish that answers,
I sing, it sweetly sings the same,
It dances with the dancers.
I shout, I whistle, clap my hands,
And stamp upon the platform,
The flame responds to my commands,
In this form and in that form.


VI.
What means that thrilling, drilling scream,
Protect me! 'tis the siren:
Her heart is fire, her breath is steam,
Her larynx is of iron.
Sun! dart thy beams! in tepid streams,
Rise, viewless exhalations!
And lap me round, that no rude sound
May max my meditations.


VII.
Here let me pause. -- These transient facts,
These fugitive impressions,
Must be transformed by mental acts,
To permanent possessions.
Then summon up your grasp of mind,
Your fancy scientific,
Till sights and sounds with thought combined,
Become of truth prolific.


VIII.
Go to! prepare your mental bricks,
Fetch them from every quarter,
Firm on the sand your basement fix
With best sensation mortar.
The top shall rise to heaven on high --
Or such an elevation,
That the swift whirl with which we fly
Shall conquer gravitation.


James Clerk Maxwell

Illusions

Flow, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation;
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not;
Who seem to die live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon,
They are all vanishing,
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them,
Through treacherous marbles.
Know the stars yonder,
The stars everlasting,
Are fugitive also,
And emulate, vaulted,
The lambent heat lightning
And fire-fly's flight.

When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Behold the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas become solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world,--
Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The Correspondence Principle

that the atoms correspond to the sun and planets
was superstition - the need to see more in stars
than a slow burn-up induced by weight · out

at the gybe-mark dinghies turn about · a swelling
of cold sails on standing waves · scenes

of a sunday with ice-cream vendors and awnings
that flap and fill in the breeze · things stable
i gave up for things steady but still i insisted
on visuality · light came and got in the way

coupling with objects as if only fingers
could touch the porcelain glaze of the sky · summers

here are like that · the room dissolves in the heat
and on the coffee-table the grin of a cheshire cat
settles on the china · what can i do but look

in fullness alone clarity resides, but in the abyss
all truth abides · it was paradox freed me from the role
of fictional observer whom experiment sanctifies
with an extrinsic view · girls stroll

on the promenade below · young their eyes
like pygmalion olives on a plate · their every gesture

an appeal to be mouth and hand · when a smile reaches me
i am only that man on a balcony whose best years
weigh on his waistband · their stares

remind us that we are irreducibly
part of the whole · every attempt to represent
the world lacks something since nothing

can prise us from our pictures · white
napkins next to the cutlery then the afternoon:
it is always an i who says we · light
and matter spectral lines furthest from the nucleus

merge to a single contour that permits
their transfer to the customary frame · the antinomy

of whole sentences · syllables consonants and vowels
suggested comparison with elementary particles · it
was nothing but my intractable insistence

on calculable states · soon it will rain · the gulls
withdraw infinitely engrossed in their circles
till clouds wipe off their chalky lines again
in my language though the noun

submitted to the verb · instead of this imagine
a pencil balancing with its tip on the very next

word · no one can predict to which side it will fall
across these pages · it wasn't with that
these letters were written · signed only with a glyph

(Niels Bohr)

To Ireland in the coming times

Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart begin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured quietude.

Nor may I less be counted one
With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body's laid asleep.
For the elemental creatures go
About my table to and fro,
That hurry from unmeasured mind
To rant and rage in flood and wind;
Yet he who treads in measured ways
May surely barter gaze for gaze.
Man ever journeys on with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.
Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune!

While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;
And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,
And all benighted things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth's consuming ecstasy,
No place for love and dream at all;
For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.

William Butler Yeats (1893)

To one who has been long in city pent

To one who has been long in city pent
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with hearts content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

John Keats (1884)

Get drunk

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

Charles Baudelaire

A Lover's Complaint

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done:
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheaved hat,
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,
And true to bondage would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set;
Like usury, applying wet to wet,
Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet moe letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secrecy.

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear:
Cried 'O false blood, thou register of lies,
What unapproved witness dost thou bear!
Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!'
This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,
Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh--
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew--
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,
And, privileged by age, desires to know
In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promised in the charity of age.

'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied
Love to myself and to no love beside.

'But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit--it was to gain my grace--
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face:
Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged and newly deified.

'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find:
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind,
For on his visage was in little drawn
What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.

'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear
Like unshorn velvet on that termless skin
Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear:
Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.

'His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, untidy though they be.
His rudeness so with his authorized youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

'Well could he ride, and often men would say
'That horse his mettle from his rider takes:
Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop
he makes!'
And controversy hence a question takes,
Whether the horse by him became his deed,
Or he his manage by the well-doing steed.

'But quickly on this side the verdict went:
His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament,
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will:

'That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted,
To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain
In personal duty, following where he haunted:
Consents bewitch'd, ere he desire, have granted;
And dialogued for him what he would say,
Ask'd their own wills, and made their wills obey.

'Many there were that did his picture get,
To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind;
Like fools that in th' imagination set
The goodly objects which abroad they find
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign'd;
And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them
Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them:

'So many have, that never touch'd his hand,
Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.
My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, not in part,
What with his art in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,
Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;
Finding myself in honour so forbid,
With safest distance I mine honour shielded:
Experience for me many bulwarks builded
Of proofs new-bleeding, which remain'd the foil
Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.

'But, ah, who ever shunn'd by precedent
The destined ill she must herself assay?
Or forced examples, 'gainst her own content,
To put the by-past perils in her way?
Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay;
For when we rage, advice is often seen
By blunting us to make our wits more keen.

'Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood,
That we must curb it upon others' proof;
To be forbod the sweets that seem so good,
For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.
O appetite, from judgment stand aloof!
The one a palate hath that needs will taste,
Though Reason weep, and cry, 'It is thy last.'

'For further I could say 'This man's untrue,'
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew,
Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;
Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;
Thought characters and words merely but art,
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

'And long upon these terms I held my city,
Till thus he gan besiege me: 'Gentle maid,
Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,
And be not of my holy vows afraid:
That's to ye sworn to none was ever said;
For feasts of love I have been call'd unto,
Till now did ne'er invite, nor never woo.

''All my offences that abroad you see
Are errors of the blood, none of the mind;
Love made them not: with acture they may be,
Where neither party is nor true nor kind:
They sought their shame that so their shame did find;
And so much less of shame in me remains,
By how much of me their reproach contains.

''Among the many that mine eyes have seen,
Not one whose flame my heart so much as warm'd,
Or my affection put to the smallest teen,
Or any of my leisures ever charm'd:
Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was harm'd;
Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,
And reign'd, commanding in his monarchy.

''Look here, what tributes wounded fancies sent me,
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood;
Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me
Of grief and blushes, aptly understood
In bloodless white and the encrimson'd mood;
Effects of terror and dear modesty,
Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

''And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,
With twisted metal amorously impleach'd,
I have received from many a several fair,
Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd,
With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd,
And deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify
Each stone's dear nature, worth, and quality.

''The diamond,--why, 'twas beautiful and hard,
Whereto his invised properties did tend;
The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;
The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend
With objects manifold: each several stone,
With wit well blazon'd, smiled or made some moan.

''Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,
Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,
Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,
But yield them up where I myself must render,
That is, to you, my origin and ender;
For these, of force, must your oblations be,
Since I their altar, you enpatron me.

''O, then, advance of yours that phraseless hand,
Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;
Take all these similes to your own command,
Hallow'd with sighs that burning lungs did raise;
What me your minister, for you obeys,
Works under you; and to your audit comes
Their distract parcels in combined sums.

''Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,
Or sister sanctified, of holiest note;
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;
For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,
But kept cold distance, and did thence remove,
To spend her living in eternal love.

''But, O my sweet, what labour is't to leave
The thing we have not, mastering what not strives,
Playing the place which did no form receive,
Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves?
She that her fame so to herself contrives,
The scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight,
And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

''O, pardon me, in that my boast is true:
The accident which brought me to her eye
Upon the moment did her force subdue,
And now she would the caged cloister fly:
Religious love put out Religion's eye:
Not to be tempted, would she be immured,
And now, to tempt, all liberty procured.

''How mighty then you are, O, hear me tell!
The broken bosoms that to me belong
Have emptied all their fountains in my well,
And mine I pour your ocean all among:
I strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong,
Must for your victory us all congest,
As compound love to physic your cold breast.

''My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,
Who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace,
Believed her eyes when they to assail begun,
All vows and consecrations giving place:
O most potential love! vow, bond, nor space,
In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,
For thou art all, and all things else are thine.

''When thou impressest, what are precepts worth
Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,
How coldly those impediments stand forth
Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!
Love's arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense,
'gainst shame,
And sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears,
The aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears.

''Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,
Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine;
And supplicant their sighs to you extend,
To leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine,
Lending soft audience to my sweet design,
And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath
That shall prefer and undertake my troth.'

'This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,
Whose sights till then were levell'd on my face;
Each cheek a river running from a fount
With brinish current downward flow'd apace:
O, how the channel to the stream gave grace!
Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses
That flame through water which their hue encloses.

'O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!
But with the inundation of the eyes
What rocky heart to water will not wear?
What breast so cold that is not warmed here?
O cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,
Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

'For, lo, his passion, but an art of craft,
Even there resolved my reason into tears;
There my white stole of chastity I daff'd,
Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;
Appear to him, as he to me appears,
All melting; though our drops this difference bore,
His poison'd me, and mine did him restore.

'In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either's aptness, as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

'That not a heart which in his level came
Could 'scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;
And, veil'd in them, did win whom he would maim:
Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;
When he most burn'd in heart-wish'd luxury,
He preach'd pure maid, and praised cold chastity.

'Thus merely with the garment of a Grace
The naked and concealed fiend he cover'd;
That th' unexperient gave the tempter place,
Which like a cherubin above them hover'd.
Who, young and simple, would not be so lover'd?
Ay me! I fell; and yet do question make
What I should do again for such a sake.

'O, that infected moisture of his eye,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd,
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd,
O, all that borrow'd motion seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
And new pervert a reconciled maid!'


William Shakespeare

A Process in the Weather of the Heart

A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.

Dylan Thomas

Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.


III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

T.S.Eliot

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.


Anonymous submission.

Charles Bukowski

Argument

Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.

Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?

Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other's experience;
how they were
like some hideous calendar
"Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc."

The intimidating sound
of these voices
we must separately find
can and shall be vanquished:
Days and Distance disarrayed again
and gone...

Elizabeth Bishop

An die Wolken

Und immer wieder, wenn ich mich müde gesehen, an der Menschen Gesichtern, so vielen Spiegeln unendlicher Torheit, hob ich das Aug‘ über die Häuser und Bäume empor zu euch, ihr ewigen Gedanken des Himmels.

Und eure Größe und Freiheit erlöste mich immer wieder, und ich dachte mit euch über Länder und Meere hinweg und hing mit euch überm Abgrund Unendlichkeit und zerging zuletzt wie Dunst, wenn ich ohne Maßen den Samen der Sterne fliegen sah über die Acker der unergründlichen Tiefen.


Christian Morgenstern

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.


Emily Dickinson

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

John Keats (1795-1821)

The Tragedy of Hamlet

...
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me then a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.

Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?

That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing like a very drab

The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
...

William Shakespeare

U r f a u s t - Nacht

N A C H T.
In einem hochgewölbten engen gothischen Zimmer.

F a u s t unruhig auf seinem Sessel am Pulten.
Hab nun, ach! die Philosophey,
Medizin und Juristerey
Und leider auch die Theologie
Durchaus studirt mit heisser Müh.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Thor,
Und binn so klug als wie zuvor.
Heisse Docktor und Professor gar
Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr
Herauf, herab und queer und krumm
Meine Schüler an der Nas herum
Und seh, dass wir nichts wissen können:
Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.
Zwar binn ich gescheuter als alle die Laffen
Docktors, Professors, Schreiber und Pfaffen,
Mich plagen keine Skrupel noch Zweifel,
Fürcht mich weder vor Höll noch Teufel.
Dafür ist mir auch all Freud entrissen,
Bild mir nicht ein, was rechts zu wissen,
Bild mir nicht ein, ich könnt was lehren
Die Menschen zu bessern und zu bekehren,
Auch hab ich weder Gut noch Geld
Noch Ehr und Herrlichkeit der Welt:
Es mögt kein Hund so länger leben
Drum hab ich mich der Magie ergeben,
Ob mir durch Geistes Krafft und Mund
Nicht manch Geheimniss werde kund,
Dass ich nicht mehr mit saurem Schweis
Rede von dem, was ich nicht weis,
Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt
Im innersten zusammenhält,
Schau alle Würckungskrafft und Saamen
Und tuh nicht mehr in Worten kramen.

O sähst du, voller Mondenschein,
Zum letzten mal auf meine Pein,
Den ich so manche Mitternacht
An diesem Pult heran gewacht!
Dann über Bücher und Papier
Trübseelger Freund, erschienst du mir.
Ach, könnt ich doch auf Berges Höhn
In deinem lieben Lichte gehn,
Um Bergeshöl mit Geistern schweben,
Auf Wiesen in deinem Dämmer weben,
Von allem Wissensqualm entladen,
In deinem Thau gesund mich baden!

Weh! steck ich in dem Kercker noch?
Verfluchtes dumpfes Mauerloch,
Wo selbst das liebe Himmels Licht
Trüb durch gemahlte Scheiben bricht,
Beschränckt von all dem Bücherhauff,
Den Würme nagen, staubbedeckt
Und biss ans hohe Gewölb hinauf
Mit angeraucht Papier besteckt
Mit Gläsern, Büchsen rings bestellt
Mit Instrumenten vollgepropft
Urväter Hausrath drein gestopft:
Das ist deine Welt, das heisst eine Welt!

Und fragst du noch, warum dein Herz
Sich inn in deinem Busen klemmt?
Warum ein unerklärter Schmerz
Dir alle Lebensregung hemmt?
Statt all der lebenden Natur,
Da Gott die Menschen schuf hinein
Umgiebt in Rauch und Moder nur
Dich Tiergeripp und Todtenbein.
Flieh! Auf hinaus ins weite Land!
Und dies geheimnissvolle Buch
Von Nostradamus eigner Hand
Ist dir das nicht Geleit genug?
Erkennest dann der Sterne Lauf,
Und wenn Natur dich unterweist
Dann geht die Seelenkrafft dir auf,
Wie spricht ein Geist zum andern Geist.
Umsonst, dass trocknes Sinnen hier
Die heilgen Zeichen dir erklärt;
Ihr schwebt, ihr Geister, neben mir,
Antwortet mir wenn ihr mich hört!
er schlägt das Buch auf
und erblickt das Zeichen des Makrokosmus.
Ha! welche Wonne fliesst in diesem Blick
Auf einmal mir durch alle meine Sinnen!
Ich fühle iunges heilges Lebensglück,
Fühl neue Glut durch Nerv und Adern rinnen.
War es ein Gott, der diese Zeichen schrieb,
Die all das innre Toben stillen
Das arme Herz mit Freude füllen
Und mit geheimnissvollem Trieb
Die Kräffte der Natur enthüllen?
Binn ich ein Gott? mir wird so licht!
Ich schau in diesen reinen Zügen
Die würckende Natur vor meiner Seele liegen.
Jezt erst erkenn ich, was der Weise spricht:
«Die Geister Welt ist nicht verschlossen,
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt!
Auf! bade, Schüler, unverdrossen
Die irrdsche Brust im Morgenroth!»
er beschaut das Zeichen.
Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern würckt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräffte auf und nieder steigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!
Mit Seegenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen!

Welch Schauspiel! aber ach, ein Schauspiel nur!
Wo fass ich dich, unendliche Natur?
Euch Brüste wo? Ihr Quellen alles Lebens,
An denen Himmel und Erde hängt,
Dahin die welcke Brust sich drängt,
Ihr quellt, ihr tränckt, und schmacht ich so vergebens?
er schlägt unwillig das Buch um
und erblickt das Zeichen des Erdgeistes.
Wie anders würckt dies Zeichen auf mich ein!
Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir näher,
Schon fühl ich meine Kräffte höher,
Schon glüh ich wie vom neuen Wein.
Ich fühle Muth, mich in die Welt zu wagen,
All Erdenweh und all ihr Glück zu tragen,
Mit Stürmen mich herum zu schlagen
Und in des Schiffbruchs Knirschen nicht zu zagen.
Es wölckt sich über mir,
Der Mond verbirgt sein Licht!
Die Lampe schwindet!
Es dampft! Es zucken rothe Stralen
Mir um das Haupt. Es weht
Ein Schauer vom Gewölb herab
Und fasst mich an.
Ich fühls, du schwebst um mich,
Erflehter Geist!
Enthülle dich!
Ha! wies in meinem Herzen reisst!
Zu neuen Gefühlen
All meine Sinne sich erwühlen!
Ich fühle ganz mein Herz dir hingegeben!
Du musst! du musst! Und kostet es mein Leben.
er faßt das Buch und spricht das Zeichen des Geists geheimnissvoll aus. Es zuckt eine röthliche Flamme, der Geist erscheint in der Flamme, in wiederlicher Gestalt.

G e i s t.
Wer ruft mir?

F a u s t abwendend.
Schröckliches Gesicht!

G e i s t.
Du hast mich mächtig angezogen,
An meiner Sphäre lang gesogen,
Und nun -

F a u s t.
Weh! ich ertrag dich nicht!

G e i s t.
Du flehst erathmend, mich zu schauen,
Meine Stimme zu hören, mein Antlitz zu sehn,
Mich neigt dein mächtig Seelen Flehn:
Da binn ich! Welch erbärmlich Grauen
Fasst Uebermenschen dich! Wo ist der Seele Ruf?
Wo ist die Brust, die eine Welt in sich erschuf,
Und trug, und heegte, und mit Freude Beben
Erschwoll, sich uns, den Geistern, gleich zu heben?
Wo bist du, Faust, des Stimme mir erklang?
Der sich an mich mit allen Kräfften drang?
Du! der, den kaum mein Hauch umwittert,
In allen Lebenstiefen zittert,
Ein furchtsam weggekrümmter Wurm.

F a u s t.
Soll ich dir, Flammenbildung, weichen?
Ich binns, binn Faust, binn deines gleichen!

G e i s t.
In Lebensfluthen, im Tahtensturm
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her!
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben!
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und würcke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.

F a u s t.
Der du die weite Welt umschweiffst,
Geschäfftger Geist, wie nah fühl ich mich dir!

G e i s t.
Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreiffst,
Nicht mir! verschwindet

F a u s t zusammenstürzend.
Nicht dir!
Wem denn?
Ich Ebenbild der Gottheit!
Und nicht einmal dir!
es klopft.
O Todt! ich kenns, das ist mein Famulus.
Nun werd ich tiefer tief zu nichte!
Dass diese Fülle der Gesichte
Der trockne Schwärmer stören muss!

Wagner im Schlafrock und der Nachtmütze, eine Lampe in der Hand. Faust wendet sich unwillig.

W a g n e r.
Verzeiht! ich hört euch deklamiren.
Ihr last gewiss ein Griechisch Trauerspiel.
In dieser Kunst mögt ich was profitiren,
Denn heutzutage würckt das viel.
Ich hab es öffters rühmen hören,
Ein Kommödiant könnt einen Pfarrer lehren.

F a u s t.
Ja, wenn der Pfarrer ein Commödiant ist,
Wie das denn wohl zu Zeiten kommen mag.

W a g n e r.
Ach wenn man in sein Museum gebannt ist
Und sieht die Welt kaum einen Feyertag.
Man weis nicht eigentlich, wie sie zu guten Dingen
Durch Ueberredung hinzubringen.

F a u s t.
Wenn ihrs nicht fühlt, ihr werdets nicht eriagen,
Wenns euch nicht aus der Seele dringt
Und mit urkräfftigem Behagen
Die Herzen aller Hörer zwingt.
Sizt ihr einweil und leimt zusammen,
Braut ein Ragout von andrer Schmaus
Und blast die kümmerlichen Flammen
Aus eurem Aschenhäufgen aus!
Bewundrung von Kindern und Affen,
Wenn euch darnach der Gaumen steht!
Doch werdet ihr nie Herz zu Herzen schaffen,
Wenn es euch nicht von Herzen geht.

W a g n e r.
Allein der Vortrag nüzt dem Redner viel.

F a u s t.
Was Vortrag! der ist gut im Puppenspiel.
Mein Herr Magister, hab er Krafft!
Sey er kein Schellenlauter Tohr!
Und Freundschafft, Liebe, Brüderschafft,
Trägt die sich nicht von selber vor?
Und wenns euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen
Ists nöthig, Worten nachzuiagen?
Und all die Reden, die so blinckend sind,
In denen ihr der Menschheit Schnizzel kräuselt,
Sind unerquicklich wie der Nebelwind,
Der herbstlich durch die dürren Blätter säuselt.

W a g n e r.
Ach Gott, die Kunst ist lang
Und kurz ist unser Leben!
Mir wird bey meinem kritischen Bestreben
Doch offt um Kopf und Busen bang.
Wie schweer sind nicht die Mittel zu erwerben,
Durch die man zu den Quellen steigt,
Und eh man nur den halben Weeg erreicht,
Muss wohl ein armer Teufel sterben.

F a u s t.
Das Pergament ist das der heilge Bronnen,
Woraus ein Trunck den Durst auf ewig stillt?
Erquickung hast du nicht gewonnen,
Wenn sie dir nicht aus eigner Seele quillt.

W a g n e r.
Verzeiht! es ist ein gros Ergözzen,
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versezzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wirs dann zulezt so herrlich weit gebracht.

F a u s t.
O ia, biss an die Sterne weit!
Mein Freund die Zeiten der Vergangenheit
Sind uns ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln.
Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst,
Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist,
In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
Da ists denn warrlich offt ein Jammer!
Man läufft euch bey dem ersten Blick davon:
Ein Kehrichtfass und eine Rumpelkammer,
Und höchstens eine Haupt und Staats Acktion.
Mit trefflichen pragmatischen Maximen,
Wie sie den Puppen wohl im Munde ziemen.

W a g n e r.
Allein die Welt! des Menschen Herz und Geist!
Mögt ieglicher doch was davon erkennen.

F a u s t.
Ja, was man so erkennen heisst!
Wer darf das Kind beym rechten Nahmen nennen?
Die wenigen, die was davon erkannt,
Die Töhrig gnug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten,
Dem Pöbel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbaarten,
Hat man von ie gekreuzigt und verbrannt.
Ich bitt euch, Freund, es ist tief in der Nacht,
Wir müssen diesmal unterbrechen.

W a g n e r.
Ich hätte gern biss morgen früh gewacht,
Um so gelehrt mit euch mich zu besprechen. ab.

F a u s t.
Wie nur dem Kopf nicht alle Hoffnung schwindet,
Der immer fort an schaalem Zeuge klebt,
Mit gierger Hand nach Schäzzen gräbt,
Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwürmer findet!

Mephistopheles im Schlafrock, eine grose Perrücke auf. Student.

S t u d e n t.
Ich binn alhier erst kurze Zeit
Und komme voll Ergebenheit,
Einen Mann zu sprechen und zu kennen,
Den alle wir mit Ehrfurcht nennen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Eure Höflichkeit erfreut mich sehr,
Ihr seht einen Mann wie andre mehr.
Habt ihr euch hier schon umgetahn?

S t u d e n t.
Ich bitt euch, nehmt euch meiner an!
Ich komm mit allem gutem Muth,
Ein leidlich Geld und frischem Blut.
Meine Mutter wollt mich kaum entfernen,
Mögte gern was rechts hier aussen lernen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Da seyd ihr eben recht am Ort.

S t u d e n t.
Aufrichtig! Mögt schon wieder fort!
Sieht all so trocken ringsum aus,
Als säs Heishunger in iedem Haus.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Bitt euch, dran euch nicht weiter kehrt!
Hier alles sich vom Studenten nährt.
Doch erst, wo werdet ihr logiren?
Das ist ein Hauptstück!

S t u d e n t.
Wolltet mich führen!
Binn warrlich ganz ein irres Lamm.
Mögt gern das gute so allzusamm,
Mögt gern das böse mir all vom Leib,
Und Freyheit, auch wohl Zeitvertreib!
Mögt auch dabey studiren tief,
Dass mirs über Kopf und Ohren lief!
O Herr, helft, dass meiner Seel
Am guten Wesen nimmer fehl.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s krazt sich.
Kein Logie habt ihr, wie ihr sagt?

S t u d e n t.
Hab noch nicht mal darnach gefragt.
Mein Wirthshaus nährt mich leidlich gut,
Feines Mägdlein drinn aufwarten tuht.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Behüte Gott, das führt euch weit!
Kaffee und Billard! Weh dem Spiel!
Die Mägdlein, ach, sie geilen viel!
Vertripplistreichelt eure Zeit.
Dagegen sehn wirs leidlich gern,
Dass alle Studiosi nah und fern
Uns wenigstens einmal die Wochen
Kommen untern Absaz gekrochen.
Will einer an unserm Speichel sich lezzen,
Den tuhn wir zu unsrer Rechten sezzen.

S t u d e n t.
Mir wird ganz greulich vorm Gesicht!

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Das schadt der guten Sache nicht.
Dann fördersamst mit dem Logie
Wüsst ich euch wohl nichts bessers hie,
Als geht zu Frau Sprizbierlein morgen:
Weis Studiosos zu versorgen,
Hats Haus von oben bis unten voll
Und versteht weidlich, was sie soll.
Zwar Noes Arche war saubrer gefacht,
Doch ists einmal so hergebracht.
Ihr zahlt, was andre vor euch zahlten,
Die ihren Nahm aufs Scheis Haus mahlten.

S t u d e n t.
Wird mir fast so eng ums Herz herum
Als zu Haus im Collegium.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Euer Logie wär nun bestellt.
Nun euren Tisch für leidlich Geld!

S t u d e n t.
Mich dünckt, das gäb sich alle nach,
Wer erst von Geists Erweitrung sprach!

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Mein Schaz, das wird euch wohl verziehn.
Kennt nicht den Geist der Akademien!
Der Mutter Tisch müsst ihr vergessen,
Klar Wasser, geschiedne Butter fressen,
Statt Hopfen Keim und iung Gemüs
Geniessen mit Danck Brennesseln süs,
Sie tuhn einen Gänse Stulgang treiben,
Aber eben drum nicht bass bekleiben,
Hammel und Kalb kühren ohne End
Als wie unsers Herr Gotts Firmament.
Doch zahlend wird von euch ergänzt,
Was Schwärmerian vor euch geschwänzt.
Müsst euren Beutel wohl versorgen,
Besonders keinem Freunde borgen,
Aber redlich zu allen Maalen
Wirth, Schneider und Professor zahlen.

S t u d e n t.
Hochwürdger Herr, das findet sich.
Aber nun bitt ich: leitet mich!
Mir steht das Feld der Weisheit offen,
Wäre gern so grade zu geloffen,
Aber sieht drinn so bunt und kraus,
Auch seitwärts wüst und trocken aus.
Fern täht sichs mir vor die Sinnen stellen
Als wie ein Tempe voll frischer Quellen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Sagt mir erst, eh ihr weiter geht:
Was wählt ihr für eine Fakultät?

S t u d e n t.
Soll zwar ein Mediziner werden,
Doch wünscht ich rings von aller Erden,
Von allem Himmel und all Natur,
So viel mein Geist vermögt zu fassen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Ihr seyd da auf der rechten Spur,
Doch müsst ihr euch nicht zerstreuen lassen.
Mein theurer Freund, ich rath euch drum
Zuerst Kollegium Logikum.
Da wird der Geist euch wohl dressirt,
In Spansche Stiefeln eingeschnürt,
Dass er bedächtger so fort an
Hinschleiche die Gedancken Bahn
Und nicht etwa die Kreuz und Queer
Irrlichtelire den Weeg daher.
Dann lehret man euch manchen Tag,
Dass, was ihr sonst auf Einen Schlag
Getrieben, wie Essen und Trincken frey,
Eins! Zwey! Drey! dazu nöthig sey.
Zwar ists mit der Gedancken Fabrick
Wie mit einem Weber Meisterstück,
Wo Ein Tritt tausend Fäden regt,
Die Schifflein rüber hinüber schiessen,
Die Fäden ungesehen fliessen,
Ein Schlag tausend Verbindungen schlägt.
Der Philosoph der tritt herein
Und beweist euch, es müsst so seyn:
Das erst wär so, das zweyte so
Und drum das dritt und vierte so,
Und wenn das erst und zweyt nicht wär,
Das dritt und viert wär nimmermehr.
Das preisen die Schüler aller Orten,
Sind aber keine Weber worden.
Wer will was lebigs erkennen und beschreiben,
Muss erst den Geist herauser treiben,
Dann hat er die Theil in seiner Hand,
Fehlt leider nur das geistlich Band.
Encheiresin naturae nennts die Chimie!
Bohrt sich selbst einen Esel und weis nicht wie.

S t u d e n t.
Kann euch nicht eben ganz verstehen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Das wird nächstens schon besser gehen,
Wenn ihr lernt alles reduziren
Und gehörig klassifiziren.

S t u d e n t.
Mir wird von allem dem so dumm,
Als ging mir ein Mühlrad im Kopf herum.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Nachher vor allen andern Sachen
Müsst ihr euch an die Metaphisick machen!
Da seht, dass ihr tiefsinnig fasst,
Was in des Menschen Hirn nicht passt!
Für was drein geht und nicht drein geht,
Ein prächtig Wort zu Diensten steht.
Doch vorerst dieses halbe Jahr
Nehmt euch der besten Ordnung wahr!
Fünf Stunden nehmt ihr ieden Tag,
Seyd drinne mit dem Glockenschlag,
Habt euch zu Hause wohl preparirt,
Paragraphos wohl einstudirt.
Damit ihr nachher besser seht,
Dass er nichts sagt, als was im Buche steht.
Doch euch des Schreibens ia befleisst,
Als dicktiert euch der heilig Geist!

S t u d e n t.
Verzeiht! ich halt euch auf mit vielen Fragen,
Allein ich muss euch noch bemühn:
Wollt ihr mir von der Medizin
Nicht auch ein kräfftig Wörtgen sagen?
Drey Jahr ist eine kurze Zeit,
Und, Gott! das Feld ist gar zu weit.
Wenn man ein' Fingerzeig nur hat,
Lässt sichs schon ehe weiter fühlen.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s vor sich.
Binn des Professor Tons nun satt,
Will wieder einmal den Teufel spielen.
laut
Der Geist der Medizin ist leicht zu fassen:
Ihr durchstudirt die gros und kleine Welt,
Um es am Ende gehn zu lassen
Wies Gott gefällt.
Vergebens, dass ihr ringsum wissenschafftlich schweifft,
Ein ieder lernt nur, was er lernen kann;
Doch der den Augenblick ergreifft,
Das ist der rechte Mann.
Ihr seyd noch ziemlich wohl gebaut,
An Kühnheit wirds euch auch nicht fehlen,
Und wenn ihr euch nur selbst vertraut,
Vertrauen euch die andern Seelen.
Besonders lernt die Weiber führen:
Es ist ihr ewig Weh und Ach,
So tausendfach,
Aus Einem Punckte zu kuriren,
Und wenn ihr halbweeg ehrbaar tuht,
Dann habt ihr sie all unterm Hut.
Ein Titel muss sie erst vertraulich machen,
Dass eure Kunst viel Künste übersteigt,
Zum Willkomm tappt ihr dann nach allen Siebensachen,
Um die ein andrer viele Jahre streicht,
Versteht das Pülslein wohl zu drücken
Und fasset sie mit feurig schlauen Blicken,
Wohl um die schlancke Hüfte frey,
Zu sehn, wie fest geschnürt sie sey.

S t u d e n t.
Das sieht schon besser aus als die Philosophie!

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

S t u d e n t.
Ich schwör euch zu: mir ists als wie ein Traum!
Dürft ich euch wohl ein andermal beschweeren,
Von eurer Weisheit auf den Grund zu hören.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Was ich vermag soll gern geschehn.

S t u d e n t.
Ich kann ohnmöglich wieder gehn,
Ich muss euch noch mein Stammbuch überreichen:
Gönn eure Gunst mir dieses Zeichen!

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Sehr wohl. er schreibt und giebts.

S t u d e n t liest.
Eritis sicut Deus scientes bonum et malum.
machts ehrbietig zu und empfielt sich.

M e p h i s t o p h e l e s.
Folg nur dem alten Spruch von meiner Muhme der Schlange,
Dir wird gewiss einmal bey deiner Gottähnlichkeit bange.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774