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February 29, 2008
Hymn To The Night
I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!
I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.
I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night
Like some old poet's rhymes.
From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,--
From those deep cisterns flows.
O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.
Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night!
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Posted by ali at 10:01 PM | TrackBack
Footsteps of Angels
When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!
They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!
And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.
With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.
And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.
Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.
Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Posted by ali at 9:32 PM | TrackBack
February 27, 2008
O death, where is thy sting?
Faith, only the faith that looks to the Creator and that He inspires, radiates from itself the supreme and decisive truths condemning what is and what is not. Reality is transfigured. The heavens glorify the Lord. The prophets and apostles cry in ecstasy, "O death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?" And all announce: "Eye hath not seen, non ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."
--Lev Shestov
Posted by ali at 10:38 PM | TrackBack
February 25, 2008
the ideal artist
Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is directed.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful
Posted by ali at 7:10 PM | TrackBack
February 16, 2008
delight alone!
In the surging swell
Where joys abound,
In perfumed wavelets'
Trembling sound,
In the world's soft breathing
Whisp'ring round -
To drown thus - sink down thus
- all thought gone - delight alone!
--Last lines of Wagner's Tristan
Posted by ali at 8:17 PM | TrackBack
February 13, 2008
دایره قسمت
در دایره قسمت ما نقطه تسلیمیم
لطف آن چه تو اندیشی حکم آن چه تو فرمایی
Posted by ali at 11:47 AM | TrackBack
February 11, 2008
the wanderer
I come down from the mountains
The valley dims, the sea roars.
I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy.
And my sighs always ask "where?"
The sun seems so cold to me here,
The flowers faded, the life old,
And what they say has an empty sound;
I am a stranger everywhere.
Where are you, my dear land?
Sought and brought to mind, yet never known,
That land, so hopefully green,
That land where my roses bloom.
Where my friends wander
Where my dead ones rise from the dead.
That land where they speak my language,
Oh land, where are you?
I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,
And my sighs always ask "where?"
In a ghostly breath it calls back to me,
"There, where you are not, there is your happiness."
--George Philip Schmidt
Posted by ali at 11:34 PM | TrackBack
February 10, 2008
be always a passer-by
Be in this world as if you are a traveler, a passer-by, with your cloths and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passer-by, for this is not home.
--Prophet Muhammad
Posted by ali at 11:53 PM | TrackBack
justice
In truth, no one has a greater claim to our veneration than he who possesses the drive to and strength for justice. For the highest and rarest virtues are united and concealed in justice as in an unfathomable ocean that receives streams and rivers from all sides and takes them into itself. The hand of the just man who is empowered to judge no longer trembles when it holds the scales; he sets weight upon weight with inexorable disregard for himself, his eye is unclouded as it sees the scales rise and fall, his voice is neither harsh nor tearful when he pronounces the verdict.
--Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life
Posted by ali at 11:49 PM | TrackBack
reward of suffering
The reward of suffering is experience.
--Aeschylus
Posted by ali at 11:46 PM | TrackBack
truly wise thoughts
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
--Goethe
Posted by ali at 11:22 PM | TrackBack
religion as madness
Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.
--Wittgenstein
Posted by ali at 11:19 PM | TrackBack
a face
look at a face - what is important is its expression - not its color, size, ect.
--Wittgenstein
Posted by ali at 11:16 PM | TrackBack
the learn’d astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
--Walt Whitmann
Posted by ali at 11:05 PM | TrackBack
February 5, 2008
a priest of truth
Here is an invigorating thought, one which elevates the soul and which each of us who is worthy of his vocation can have: "Within my special area the culture of my age and of future ages is entrusted to me. My labors will help determine the course of future generations and the history of the nations still to come. I am called to testify to the truth. My life and destiny do not matter at all, but infinitely much depends upon the results of my life. I am a priest of truth. I am in its pay, and thus I have committed my self to do, to risk, and to suffer anything for its sake. If I should be pursued and hated for the truth's sake, or if I should die in its service, what more would I have done than what I simply had to do?"
--Fichte
Posted by ali at 11:55 PM | TrackBack
the Beautiful
I have found a definition of the Beautiful, of my own conception of the Beautiful. It is something intense and sad, something a little vague, leaving scope for conjecture. I am ready, if you will, to apply my ideas to a sentient object, to that object, for example, which Society finds the most interesting of all, a woman's face. A beautiful and seductive head, a woman's head, I mean, makes one dream, but in a confused fashion, at once of pleasure and of sadness; conveys an idea of melancholy, of lassitude, even of satiety-a contradictory impression, of an ardor, that is to say, and a desire for life together with a bitterness which flows back upon them as if from a sense of deprivation and hopelessness. Mystery and regret are also characteristics of the Beautiful.
--Charles Baudelaire
Posted by ali at 11:52 PM | TrackBack
man will prevail
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
--William Faulkner
Posted by ali at 11:34 PM | TrackBack
February 3, 2008
dirge
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there!
--William Shakespeare
Posted by ali at 1:25 AM | TrackBack
the passionate pilgrim
VII
Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;
Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;
Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle;
Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty:
A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her,
None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.
Her lips to mine how often hath she joined,
Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing!
How many tales to please me hath she coined,
Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing!
Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,
Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.
She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth;
She burn'd out love, as soon as straw outburneth;
She framed the love, and yet she foil'd the framing;
She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.
Was this a lover, or a lecher whether?
Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.
--William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim