Vesti

jelkica7 · Moderator foruma

----------- Napisano: 09 Nov 2009 3:09 ---------

Fears and Scruples

Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;
Present, he would find me at his side.

Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.

“Some day” proving—no day! Here’s the puzzle.
Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He’s so busied! If I could but muzzle
People’s foolish mouths that give me pain!

“Letters?” (hear them!) “You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts! How they shake the head
O’er these characters, your friend’s inditing—
Call them forgery from A to Z!

“Actions? Where’s your certain proof” (they bother)
“He, of all you find so great and good,
He, he only, claims this, that, the other
Action—claimed by men, a multitude?”

I can simply wish I might refute you,
Wish my friend would,—by a word, a wink,—
Bid me stop that foolish mouth,—you brute you!
He keeps absent,—why, I cannot think.

Never mind! Though foolishness may flout me,
One thing’s sure enough: ’tis neither frost,
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
Thanks for truth—though falsehood, gained—though lost.

All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream’s sake! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought “The gladlier
Lives my friend because I love him still!”

Ah, but there’s a menace some one utters!
“What and if your friend at home play tricks
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters?
Mean your eyes should pierce through solid bricks?

“What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy?
Lay on you the blame that bricks—conceal?
Say ‘At least I saw who did not see me,
Does see now, and presently shall feel’?”

“Why, that makes your friend a monster!” say you:
“Had his house no window? At first nod,
Would you not have hailed him?” Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happened to be—God?

Robert Browning, 1876

----------- Dopuna: 15 Nov 2009 18:05 ---------

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, 1867

----------- Dopuna: 16 Nov 2009 18:41 ---------

The Pearl

I Know the wayes of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the presse, and make it runne;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, like a good huswife, spunne
In laws and policie; what the starres conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;
Both th’ old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and historie:
All these stand open, or I have the keyes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Honour, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesie and wit:
In vies of favours whether partie gains,
When glorie swells the heart, and moldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe’re it goes:
How many drammes of spirit there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot bloud and brains;
What mirth and musick mean; what love and wit
Have done these twentie hundred yeares, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuffe is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Then he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.

I know all these, and have them in my hand:
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I flie to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through these labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But thy silk twist let down from heav’n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climbe to thee.

George Herbert, 1633.