classes ::: noun, Place,
children :::
branches ::: province

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object:province
word class:noun
class:Place

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Heart_of_Matter
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_01
Process_and_Reality
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Republic
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
Three_Books_on_Occult_Philosophy
Vishnu_Purana

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.22__-_Dominion_over_different_provinces_of_creation_assigned_to_different_beings

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.04_-_The_Systems_of_Yoga
01.03_-_Sri_Aurobindo_and_his_School
01.03_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Souls_Release
0_1961-09-03
0_1962-07-21
0_1967-07-22
0_1968-06-03
0_1968-07-03
0_1970-07-18
0_1970-08-01
0_1971-05-15
0_1971-06-23
0_1971-12-29b
06.10_-_Fatigue_and_Work
1.00c_-_DIVISION_C_-_THE_ETHERIC_BODY_AND_PRANA
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_Economy
1.01_-_Introduction
1.01_-_Our_Demand_and_Need_from_the_Gita
1.01_-_Tara_the_Divine
1.01_-_The_Ideal_of_the_Karmayogin
1.01_-_To_Watanabe_Sukefusa
1.02_-_BOOK_THE_SECOND
1.02_-_To_Zen_Monks_Kin_and_Koku
1.02_-_What_is_Psycho_therapy?
1.03_-_Sympathetic_Magic
1.03_-_The_Coming_of_the_Subjective_Age
1.03_-_To_Layman_Ishii
1.04_-_GOD_IN_THE_WORLD
1.04_-_Magic_and_Religion
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_To_the_Priest_of_Rytan-ji
1.05_-_CHARITY
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.05_-_The_Belly_of_the_Whale
1.05_-_The_Destiny_of_the_Individual
1.05_-_The_Magical_Control_of_the_Weather
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_Independence_from_the_Physical
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.09_-_Fundamental_Questions_of_Psycho_therapy
11.07_-_The_Labours_of_the_Gods:_The_five_Purifications
1.10_-_Relics_of_Tree_Worship_in_Modern_Europe
11.15_-_Sri_Aurobindo
1.11_-_The_Reason_as_Governor_of_Life
1.12_-_The_Divine_Work
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.13_-_BOOK_THE_THIRTEENTH
1.13_-_Reason_and_Religion
1.14_-_Bibliography
1.14_-_The_Succesion_to_the_Kingdom_in_Ancient_Latium
1.14_-_The_Suprarational_Beauty
1.15_-_The_Suprarational_Good
1.16_-_The_Suprarational_Ultimate_of_Life
1.17_-_Legend_of_Prahlada
1.17_-_The_Burden_of_Royalty
1.19_-_Thought,_or_the_Intellectual_element,_and_Diction_in_Tragedy.
1.22__-_Dominion_over_different_provinces_of_creation_assigned_to_different_beings
1.24_-_The_Advent_and_Progress_of_the_Spiritual_Age
1.24_-_The_Killing_of_the_Divine_King
1.28_-_Supermind,_Mind_and_the_Overmind_Maya
1.28_-_The_Killing_of_the_Tree-Spirit
1.3.5.04_-_The_Evolution_of_Consciousness
1.37_-_Oriential_Religions_in_the_West
1.39_-_The_Ritual_of_Osiris
1.40_-_The_Nature_of_Osiris
1.45_-_The_Corn-Mother_and_the_Corn-Maiden_in_Northern_Europe
1.49_-_Ancient_Deities_of_Vegetation_as_Animals
1.49_-_Thelemic_Morality
1.57_-_Public_Scapegoats
1.62_-_The_Fire-Festivals_of_Europe
1.65_-_Balder_and_the_Mistletoe
1.66_-_Vampires
1.67_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Custom
1914_09_28p
1954-03-24_-_Dreams_and_the_condition_of_the_stomach_-_Tobacco_and_alcohol_-_Nervousness_-_The_centres_and_the_Kundalini_-_Control_of_the_senses
1955-05-25_-_Religion_and_reason_-_true_role_and_field_-_an_obstacle_to_or_minister_of_the_Spirit_-_developing_and_meaning_-_Learning_how_to_live,_the_elite_-_Reason_controls_and_organises_life_-_Nature_is_infrarational
1956-06-06_-_Sign_or_indication_from_books_of_revelation_-_Spiritualised_mind_-_Stages_of_sadhana_-_Reversal_of_consciousness_-_Organisation_around_central_Presence_-_Boredom,_most_common_human_malady
1956-06-13_-_Effects_of_the_Supramental_action_-_Education_and_the_Supermind_-_Right_to_remain_ignorant_-_Concentration_of_mind_-_Reason,_not_supreme_capacity_-_Physical_education_and_studies_-_inner_discipline_-_True_usefulness_of_teachers
1f.lovecraft_-_Out_of_the_Aeons
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Case_of_Charles_Dexter_Ward
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dreams_in_the_Witch_House
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Strange_High_House_in_the_Mist
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Unnamable
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Very_Old_Folk
1.jkhu_-_A_Visit_to_Hattoji_Temple
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_I
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_III
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_IV
1.lb_-_South-Folk_in_Cold_Country
1.pbs_-_Marenghi
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.rb_-_Pippa_Passes_-_Part_III_-_Evening
1.rb_-_Rhyme_for_a_Child_Viewing_a_Naked_Venus_in_a_Painting_of_'The_Judgement_of_Paris'
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Fourth
1.rwe_-_Boston
1.rwe_-_May-Day
1.sfa_-_Exhortation_to_St._Clare_and_Her_Sisters
1.ww_-_Book_Second_[School-Time_Continued]
1.ww_-_Book_Sixth_[Cambridge_and_the_Alps]
1.ww_-_Book_Tenth_{Residence_in_France_continued]
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_V-_Book_Fouth-_Despondency_Corrected
2.02_-_Indra,_Giver_of_Light
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_On_Medicine
2.04_-_Agni,_the_Illumined_Will
2.05_-_The_Cosmic_Illusion;_Mind,_Dream_and_Hallucination
2.06_-_Reality_and_the_Cosmic_Illusion
2.07_-_On_Congress_and_Politics
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.1.4_-_The_Lower_Vital_Being
2.1.5.2_-_Languages
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.17_-_December_1938
2.18_-_January_1939
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.19_-_The_Planes_of_Our_Existence
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness
2.20_-_Nov-Dec_1939
2.20_-_The_Lower_Triple_Purusha
2.21_-_The_Order_of_the_Worlds
2.2.1_-_The_Prusna_Upanishads
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man
2.26_-_Samadhi
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.2.7.01_-_Some_General_Remarks
2.27_-_The_Gnostic_Being
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
2.3.03_-_Integral_Yoga
2.3.08_-_The_Physical_Consciousness
31.01_-_The_Heart_of_Bengal
3.2.3_-_Dreams
3.4.03_-_Materialism
3.4.1_-_The_Subconscient_and_the_Integral_Yoga
3.7.1.01_-_Rebirth
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_Introduction
4.01_-_The_Principle_of_the_Integral_Yoga
4.1.3_-_Imperfections_and_Periods_of_Arrest
4.20_-_The_Intuitive_Mind
4.2.4.11_-_Psychic_Intensity
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
5.01_-_Message
5.04_-_Supermind_and_the_Life_Divine
5.07_-_Mind_of_Light
5.1.01.1_-_The_Book_of_the_Herald
5.4.01_-_Notes_on_Root-Sounds
5.4.02_-_Occult_Powers_or_Siddhis
9.99_-_Glossary
APPENDIX_I_-_Curriculum_of_A._A.
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_III._-_The_external_calamities_of_Rome
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BOOK_IV._-_That_empire_was_given_to_Rome_not_by_the_gods,_but_by_the_One_True_God
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
BOOK_VII._-_Of_the_select_gods_of_the_civil_theology,_and_that_eternal_life_is_not_obtained_by_worshipping_them
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
COSA_-_BOOK_VII
Gorgias
Liber
r1912_01_15
r1912_01_16
r1912_01_27
r1912_12_19
r1913_01_16
r1920_03_08
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Sophist
Symposium_translated_by_B_Jowett
Tablets_of_Baha_u_llah_text
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Book_of_Certitude_-_P2
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_1
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_2
The_Golden_Sentences_of_Democrates
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Poems_of_Cold_Mountain
The_Theologians
The_Waiting

PRIMARY CLASS

Place
SIMILAR TITLES
province

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

province ::: n. --> A country or region, more or less remote from the city of Rome, brought under the Roman government; a conquered country beyond the limits of Italy.
A country or region dependent on a distant authority; a portion of an empire or state, esp. one remote from the capital.
A region of country; a tract; a district.
A region under the supervision or direction of any special person; the district or division of a country, especially an


provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual idea, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is from the basis of this truth that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be Judged.

province ::: sphere or field of activity.


TERMS ANYWHERE

106 Olympic Provinces, Phalec has dominion over

10 ordinary dreams) are usually in the great mass experiences of the vital plane, a world of supraphysical life, full of variety and interest, with many provinces, luminous or obscure, beauti- ful or perilous, often extremely attractive, where we can get much knowledge loo both of our concealed pans of nature and of things happening to us behind the veil and of others which are of concern for the development of our parts of nature. The vital being in us then may get very much attracted to this range of experience, may want to live more in it and less in the outer life.

28 of the 196 Olympian provinces in which Heaven

35 of the 196 Olympian provinces. His day is Friday.

Achaiah is a Roman province. Paul visited the

adelantado ::: n. --> A governor of a province; a commander.

Ajahn Chah BodhiNAna. (1918-1992). A prominent Thai monk who was one of the most influential Thai forest-meditation masters (PHRA PA) of the twentieth century. Born in the village of Baan Gor in the northeastern Thai province of Ubon Ratchathani, he was ordained as a novice at his local temple, where he received his basic education and studied the Buddhist teachings. After several years of training, he returned to lay life to attend to the needs of his parents, but motivated by his religious calling, at the age of twenty, he took higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) as a BHIKsU and continued his studies of PAli scripture. His father's death prompted him to travel to other monasteries in an effort to acquire a deeper understanding of Buddhist teaching and discipline under the guidance of different teachers. During his pilgrimage, he met AJAHN MUN BHuRIDATTA, the premier meditation master of the Thai forest-dwelling (ARANNAVASI) tradition. After that encounter, Ajahn Chah traveled extensively throughout the country, devoting his energies to meditation in forests and charnel grounds (sMAsANA). As his reputation grew, he was invited to establish a monastery near his native village, which became known as Wat Pa Pong after the name of the forest (reputed to be inhabited by ghosts) in which it was located. Ajahn Chah's austere lifestyle, simple method of mindfulness meditation, and straightforward style of teaching attracted a large following of monks and lay supporters, including many foreigners. In 1966, he established Wat Pa Nanachat, a branch monastery specifically for Western and other non-Thai nationals, next to Wat Pa Pong. In 1976, he was invited to England, which led to the establishment of the first branch monastery of Wat Pa Pong there, followed by others in Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Italy. He also visited the United States, where he spoke at retreats at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Ajahn Chah died in 1992, after several years in a coma.

Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta. (1870-1949). Thai monk who revitalized the Thai forest-monk tradition (Thai PHRA PA), and the subject of a celebrated Thai hagiography by Ajahn MahA Boowa NAnasampanno (b. 1913). Born in 1870, in Ban Khambong village in the province of Ubon Ratchathani, Mun was ordained in 1893 at Wat Liab and began studying insight practice (VIPAsYANA) under the guidance of Ajahn Sao Kantasīla (1861-1941). Through developing the meditation on foulness (AsUBHABHAVANA), he eventually had an experience of calmness (sAMATHA), and in order to enhance his practice, he embarked on the life of asceticism (P. DHUTAnGA) as a forest dweller (P. ARANNAVASI) in northeast Thailand and southern Laos. After every rains' retreat (VARsA) was over, he would travel into the forests, staying just close enough to a few small villages in order to perform his alms round (PIndAPATA) each morning. According to the hagiography, after first experiencing the fruition of the state of the nonreturner (ANAGAMIN), he eventually achieved the stage of a worthy one (ARHAT) in Chiang Mai, an experience that he said shook the entire universe and brought a roar of accolades from the heavenly hosts. Ajahn Mun became a widely known and respected meditator and teacher, who was invited to dwell in monasteries throughout much of Thailand. The hagiography compiled by Ajahn MahA Boowa is filled with exuberantly told tales of his meditative visions, prophetic dreams, lectures and instructions, and encounters with other eminent monks, laypeople, and even with deceased arhats and divinities (DEVA) such as sAKRA with his 100,000 strong retinue. Ajahn Mun's many prominent disciples helped revive the Thai forest-monk tradition, especially in the northeast, and defined its austere practices (Thai, THUDONG; P. DHUTAnGA) in their contemporary context.

Alaungpaya. Burmese king (r. 1752-1760) and founder of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885), the last Burmese royal house before the British conquest. He was born the son of the village headman of Mokesoebo in Upper Burma in 1711. Originally named Aungzeyya, he succeeded his father as headman and early on showed charismatic signs of leadership. By this time, the then Burmese empire of Taungoo, which had been founded in 1531, was on the verge of collapse. The Mon of Lower Burma, whose capital was Pegu, rebelled and soon swept northward, eventually capturing the Burmese capital, AVA, and executing its king. When emissaries from the Mon king, Binnya-dala, demanded the allegiance of Mokesoebo, Aungzeyya beheaded them and organized a rebellion to restore Burmese sovereignty. Gathering around him a loyal cohort of local chiefs and soldiers from Ava, he crowned himself king and established Mokesoebo as his first capital, which he renamed Shwebo. A brilliant tactician and masterful propagandist, he assumed the title Alaungpaya, meaning "Future Buddha," and waged war on the Mon as a BODHISATTVA intent on restoring the purity of the Buddha's religion and ushering in a golden age. In 1753, he recaptured Ava and subdued the Shan chieftains on his northern flank. In 1755, he captured the strategic port town of Dagon, which he renamed Yangon (Rangoon), meaning "End of Strife." In 1757, after a protracted siege, he destroyed Pegu, the last stronghold of Mon resistance, executing its king, Binnya-dala, and massacring its population. After consolidating Burmese control over the central provinces, Alaungpaya marched his armies against the Hindu kingdom of Manipur, which had taken advantage of the civil war to pillage Burma's western territories. Having vanquished Manipur, in 1760, he moved against the Thai kingdom of AYUTHAYA in the east in retaliation for fomenting anti-Burmese rebellions along the border. The Burmese seized Moulmein, Tavoy, and Tenasserim, but Alaungpaya was mortally wounded during the siege of Ayuthaya and died during the subsequent Burmese retreat. The empire created by Alaungpaya expanded under his sons and their descendants, eventually bringing it into conflict with the British East India Company.

albanian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Albania, a province of Turkey. ::: n. --> A native of Albania.

Amdo (Tibetan) a mdo. The northeastern-most region of the Tibetan cultural area, roughly equivalent to the northeastern quarter of the present Chinese province of Tsinghai (Qinghai), including the area around the Koko Nor. Tsong-kha-pa was born here, in the locality of Tsong-kha, southeast of the Koko Nor. In the time of the third Dalai Lama the great monastery of Kumbum (Tibetan shu ’bum) was founded at Tsong-kha-pa’s birthplace.

A myes rma chen. (Amnye Machen). A mountain that stands beside a bend in the Yellow River in the Chinese province of Qinghai (which Tibetans call the A mdo region), the seat of the Tibetan mountain god RMA CHEN SPOM RA. This mountain is an important pilgrimage site in northeastern Tibet.

ankokuji. (安國寺). In Japanese, "temples for the pacification of the country." After the Ashikaga shogunate took over control of the capital of Kyoto from the rapidly declining forces of Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339) between the years 1336 and 1337, they sought to heal the scars of civil war by following the suggestions of the ZEN master MUSo SOSEKI and building pagodas and temples in every province of Japan. By constructing these temples, the shogunate also sought to subsume local military centers under the control of the centralized government, just as the monarch Shomu (r. 724-749) had once done with the KOKUBUNJI system. These pagodas were later called rishoto, and the temples were given the name ankokuji in 1344. Many of these temples belonged to the lineages of the GOZAN system, especially that of Muso and ENNI BEN'EN.

aracanese ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Aracan, a province of British Burmah. ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A native or natives of Aracan.

Arathron: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing Saturn, ruler of 49 Olympian Provinces of the universe; his day is Saturday.

archbishop ::: n. --> A chief bishop; a church dignitary of the first class (often called a metropolitan or primate) who superintends the conduct of the suffragan bishops in his province, and also exercises episcopal authority in his own diocese.

archbishopric ::: n. --> The jurisdiction or office of an archbishop; the see or province over which archbishop exercises archiepiscopal authority.

arendator ::: n. --> In some provinces of Russia, one who farms the rents or revenues.

asiarch ::: n. --> One of the chiefs or pontiffs of the Roman province of Asia, who had the superintendence of the public games and religious rites.

  A spiritual truth that is incomprehensible to reason and knowable only through divine revelation. 2. Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding; an enigma. 3. A mysterious character or quality. 4. The skills, lore, practices and secret rites that are peculiar to a particular activity or group and are regarded as the special province of initiates. Mystery, mystery’s, Mystery’s, mysteries, mystery-altar’s. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)

assamese ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Assam, a province of British India, or to its inhabitants. ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A native or natives of Assam.

Baiyun Shouduan. (J. Hakuun Shutan; K. Paegun Sudan 白雲守端) (1025-1072). Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG. Baiyun was a native of Hengyang in present-day Hunan province. After studying with various teachers, Baiyun eventually became a disciple of the Chan master YANGQI FANGHUI (992-1049) and inherited his YANGQI PAI collateral lineage of the Linji school. Baiyun's illustrious career took him to such monasteries as Shengtian Chanyuan in Jiangzhou, Shongsheng Chanyuan in Yuantong, Zhengdao Chanyuan on Mt. Fahua, Ganming Chanyuan on Mt. Longmen, and Haihui Chanyuan on Mt. Baiyun, whence he acquired his toponym. The Yangqi lineage came to dominate the Chan tradition of the Song dynasty largely through the efforts of Baiyun and his disciples. Among Baiyun's disciples, WUZU FAYAN (1024?-1104) is most famous. His teachings can be found in the Baiyun Shouduan yulu, Baiyun Duan heshang guanglu, and Baiyun Duan heshang yuyao.

Bao'ensi. (報恩寺). In Chinese, "Requiting Kindness Monastery"; located in Jiangsu province. Sometime during the first half of the third century, the Sogdian monk KANG SENGHUI brought to the Wu dynasty (222-264) of the Chinese Three Kingdoms period (c. 220-280 CE) a relic (sARĪRA) of the Buddha. The Wu emperor ordered the construction of a monastery called JIANCHUSI (First Built Monastery), where he installed a legendary AsOKA STuPA to enshrine that relic. The monastery went through several renovations and relocations during the successive dynasties that had suzerainty over the region. The establishment of the Ming dynasty's capital in the nearby city of Nanjing helped the monastery regain imperial patronage. In 1412, the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty began repairs on the monastery in commemoration of his wife's death and renamed it Bao'ensi. He also ordered the construction of a new nine-story stupa there, now known as the "Porcelain Pagoda," which was decorated with white bricks, glazed tiles, and murals executed by leading artists of the day.

Baotang Wuzhu. (J. Hoto Muju: K. Podang Muju 保唐無住) (714-774). Chinese monk in the early CHAN school, who is considered the founder of the BAOTANG ZONG during the Tang dynasty. Baotang is the name of the monastery where Wuzhu resided (located in present-day Sichuan province). Wuzhu is said to have attained awakening through the influence of Chen Chuzhang (d.u.), a lay disciple of the monk Hui'an (582-799; a.k.a. Lao'an); Chen was thought to be an incarnation of the prototypical Buddhist layman VIMALAKĪRTI. According to the LIDAI FABAO JI, Wuzhu attended a mass ordination performed by the Korean monk CHoNGJONG MUSANG at Jingzhong monastery in the city of Chengdu. Upon hearing Musang's instructions to practice in the mountains, Wuzhu left for Baiyaishan, where he remained for the next seven years (759-766). He subsequently went to the monastery Konghuisi, until he finally moved to Baotangsi, where he passed away in the summer of 774. Wuzhu was famous for his antinomian teachings that rejected all devotional practices, and is remembered as the founder of the eponymous BAOTANG ZONG. Wuzhu's successor was a lay disciple by the name of Tu Hongjian, deputy commander-in-chief and vice president of the Imperial Chancellery.

Baotang zong. (J. Hotoshu; K. Podang chong 保唐宗). An important school of the early Chinese CHAN tradition, known for its radically antinomian doctrines. The school takes its name from the monastery (Baotangsi) where the school's putative founder, BAOTANG WUZHU, resided. The monastery was located in Jiannan (in modern-day Sichuan province), in the vicinity of the city of Chengdu. Until the recent discovery of the LIDAI FABAO JI at DUNHUANG, information on this school was limited to the pejorative comments found in the writings of the ninth-century CHAN historian GUIFENG ZONGMI. Owing perhaps to the antinomian teachings espoused by its members, the school was short-lived. The school rejected all soteriological practices and devotional activities. No images of the Buddha were enshrined in their monasteries, and they questioned the value of chanting scriptures and performing repentance rituals. Instead, they insisted on "simply sitting in emptiness and quietude" (zhikong xianzuo) and transmitting "no thought" (WUNIAN) in lieu of formal precepts. The Baotang lineage is often traced back to Hui'an (582-709; also known as Lao'an, "Old An," because of his long life), a disciple of the fifth patriarch HONGREN, and to Hui'an's lay disciple Chen Chuzhang (d.u.), through whose influence Baotang Wuzhu is said to have attained awakening. Although the author of the Lidai fabao ji, a disciple of Wuzhu, attempts to associate the Baotang lineage with that of CHoNGJONG MUSANG, the founder of the JINGZHONG ZONG, these schools are now considered to have been two distinct traditions. Like the Jingzhong school, the Baotang zong also seems to have exerted considerable influence on the development of Tibetan Buddhism, especially on the early teachings of RDZOGS CHEN (dzogchen).

beglerbeg ::: n. --> The governor of a province of the Ottoman empire, next in dignity to the grand vizier.

bengal ::: n. --> A province in India, giving its name to various stuffs, animals, etc.
A thin stuff, made of silk and hair, originally brought from Bengal.
Striped gingham, originally brought from Bengal; Bengal stripes.


Bethor: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing Jupiter, ruler of 42 Olympian Provinces of the Universe; his day is Monday.

bey ::: n. --> A governor of a province or district in the Turkish dominions; also, in some places, a prince or nobleman; a beg; as, the bey of Tunis.

Bezeklik. In Uighur, "Place of Paintings"; an archeological site in Central Asia with more than seventy cave temples unique for their Uighur Buddhist wall paintings and inscriptions. Situated near the ruins of the ancient Uighur capital of Gaochang (Kharakhoja) and east of the modern city of TURFAN (in China's Xinjiang province), the Bezeklik caves were in use from roughly the fourth to the twelfth centuries CE. In addition to the extensive Buddhist presence in the caves, scholars have also found evidence of Manichaean Christian influence at the site. Nearby cave complexes include Toyuk and Sangim. In 1905, the German explorer Albert von Le Coq visited the site and removed many of its painted wall murals so that they could be sent back to Europe for study and safekeeping. Ironically, many of the murals von Le Coq removed were destroyed during the Allied bombing of Berlin during World War II. What remains of his collection is now housed in museums in Berlin.

Binglingsi. (J. Heireiji; K. Pyongnyongsa 炳靈寺). In Chinese, "Bright and Numinous Monastery"; site of a Buddhist cave complex, located fifty miles outside Lanzhou, the capital of the present-day Chinese province of Gansu, and accessible only by boat. The complex contains 183 caves with 694 stone and eighty-two clay statues. Binglingsi, along with MAIJISHAN, developed under the patronage of the Qifu rulers of the Western Qin dynasty (385-43). The carving of Buddhist caves at Binglingsi may have started as early as the late fourth century; however, the earliest inscription was found in cave 169 and is dated 420. Two novel features can be found in cave 169. One is the stylistic link of some of its sculptures with the Buddhist art of KHOTAN on the southern SILK ROAD. For example, five seated buddhas in niche 23 inside the cave are attired in their monastic robes and perform the meditation gesture (DHYANAMUDRA), backed by a large aureole. Second, numerous inscriptions identify the sculptures and painted images in this cave, which include AMITABHA Buddha, accompanied by AVALOKITEsVARA (GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA (Dashizi). This triad in niche 6 closely resembles the style of Liangzhou, and thus KUCHA. Among the painted images are the buddhas of the ten directions (see DAsADIs), members of the Qin dynastic house, and the state preceptor (GUOSHI) Tanmobi (Dharmapriya), cotranslator with ZHU FONIAN of the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA. The representations in cave 169 depict the content of then-newly translated scriptures such as the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and the shorter SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA (see also AMITABHASuTRA), which had been translated by KUMARAJĪVA in Chang'an around 400-410. The sculptures and paintings at Binglingsi serve as precedents for the subsequent Northern Wei sculpture found at YUNGANG and LONGMEN.

bka' 'gyur. (kangyur). In Tibetan, "translation of the word [of the Buddha]," one of the two traditional divisions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, along with the BSTAN 'GYUR, the translation of the treatises (sASTRA). The bka' 'gyur comprises those SuTRAs and TANTRAs that were accepted by the tradition as spoken or directly inspired by the Buddha. The collection was redacted, primarily by the fourteenth-century polymath BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB, based upon earlier catalogues, lists, and collections of texts, particularly a major collection at SNAR THANG monastery. The four major editions of the bka' 'gyur presently in circulation (called the Co ne, SNAR THANG, SDE DGE, and Beijing editions after the places they were printed) go back to two earlier branches of the textual tradition, called Them spangs ma and 'Tshal pa in modern scholarship. The first xylographic print of the bka' 'gyur was produced in China in 1410; the Sde dge bka' 'gyur, edited by Si tu Gstug lag chos kyi 'byung gnas (1700-1774) was printed in the Tibetan kingdom of Sde dge (in present-day Sichuan province) in 1733. While the collection is traditionally said to include 108 volumes (an auspicious number), most versions contain somewhat fewer. The Snar thang edition holds ninety-two volumes, divided as follows: thirteen volumes of VINAYA, twenty-one volumes of PRAJNAPARAMITA, six volumes of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, six volumes of the RATNAKutASuTRA, thirty volumes of other sutras, and twenty-two volumes of tantras. The BON tradition formulated its own bka' 'gyur, based on the Buddhist model, in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.

province ::: n. --> A country or region, more or less remote from the city of Rome, brought under the Roman government; a conquered country beyond the limits of Italy.
A country or region dependent on a distant authority; a portion of an empire or state, esp. one remote from the capital.
A region of country; a tract; a district.
A region under the supervision or direction of any special person; the district or division of a country, especially an


provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual idea, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is from the basis of this truth that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be Judged.

province ::: sphere or field of activity.

brabantine ::: a. --> Pertaining to Brabant, an ancient province of the Netherlands.

Budai. (J. Hotei; K. P'odae 布袋) (d. 916). A legendary Chinese monk, whose name literally means "Hemp Sack"; also occasionally referred to as Fenghua Budai, Changtingzi, and Budai heshang. He is said to have hailed from Fenghua county in Ningbo prefecture of Zhejiang province. Budai is often depicted as a short figure with an enormous belly and a staff or walking stick on which he has hung a hemp bag or sack (budai), whence derives his name. Budai wandered from one town to the next begging for food, some of which he saved in his sack. This jolly figure is remembered as a thaumaturge who was particularly famous for accurately predicting the weather. On his deathbed, Budai left the following death verse, which implied he was in fact a manifestation of the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA: "Maitreya, true Maitreya, / His thousands, hundreds, and tens of millions of manifestations, / From time to time appear among his fellow men, / But remain unrecognized by his fellow men." Budai is also associated in China with AnGAJA, the thirteenth of the sixteen ARHATs (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) who serve as protector figures. Angaja had been a snake wrangler before he ordained, so whenever he went into the mountains, he carried a cloth bag with him to catch snakes, which he would release after removing their fangs so they would not injure people. For this reason, he earned the nickname "Cloth-Bag Arhat" (Budai luohan/heshang). In Zhejiang province, many images of Budai were made for worship, and an image of Budai installed in the monastery of MANPUKUJI on Mt. obaku in Japan is still referred to as that of the bodhisattva Maitreya. The local cult hero and thaumaturge Budai was quickly appropriated by the CHAN community as a trickster-like figure, leading to Budai often being as called the "Laughing Buddha." In Japan, Budai is also revered as one of the seven gods of virtue (see SHICHIFUKUJIN). It is Budai who is commonly depicted in all manner of kitschy knickknacks and called the "Fat Buddha." He has never been identified with, and is not to be mistaken for, sAKYAMUNI Buddha.

burgundy ::: n. --> An old province of France (in the eastern central part).
A richly flavored wine, mostly red, made in Burgundy, France.


Byang chub 'od. (Jangchup Ö) (late tenth century). Grandnephew of King YE SHES 'OD who successfully invited the Indian Buddhist monk and scholar ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA to Tibet. During the second half of the tenth century, Ye shes 'od (also known as Song nge) became the king of Mnga' ris (Ngari), now the far western region of Tibet. He sent a number of Tibetans to Kashmir (see KASHMIR-GANDHARA) to study Buddhism, among them the translator RIN CHEN BZANG PO whose return to Tibet in 978 marks the beginning of the later spread of Buddhism (PHYI DAR). (Others date the beginning to the start of the second MuLASARVASTIVADA ordination line, which began at about the same period.) According to a well-known story, Ye shes 'od wanted to invite the foremost Indian Buddhist scholar of the day, Atisa, to Tibet and traveled to the Qarluq (T. gar log) kingdom (probably to KHOTAN in present-day Chinese Xianjiang province), to raise funds. He was captured by the chieftain and held for ransom. Ye shes 'od sent a letter to his nephew Byang chub 'od, saying that rather than use money for a ransom to free him, he should use any money collected for his release to invite Atisa. Ye shes 'od died in captivity, but Byang chub 'od succeeded in convincing Atisa to come to Tibet where he had a great influence, particularly on the earlier followers of the BKA' GDAMS sect. The history of this period becomes more important in later Tibetan history when TSONG KHA PA, the founder of the DGE LUGS sect, described Atisa as the perfect teacher in his seminal work the LAM RIM CHEN MO. In the seventeenth century, when the Dge lugs rose to political power under the fifth DALAI LAMA and his supporters, Byang chub 'od and Atisa were incorporated into a complex founding myth legitimating Dge lugs ascendancy and the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government.

canada ::: n. --> A British province in North America, giving its name to various plants and animals.

Caoshan Benji. (J. Sozan Honjaku; K. Chosan Ponjok 曹山本寂) (840-901). Chinese CHAN master and reputed cofounder of the CAODONG line of Chan; also known as Danzhang. Caoshan was a native of Quanzhou in present-day Fujian province. After leaving home at age eighteen and fully ordaining at twenty-five, Caoshan visited the Chan master DONGSHAN LIANGJIE and became his disciple. Caoshan was later invited to Mt. Heyu in Fuzhou (present-day Jiangxi province), and there he established his unique style of Chan. He later renamed the mountain Mt. Cao (or Caoshan) after the sixth patriarch HUINENG's own residence of CAOXISHAN. Caoshan's line of Chan came to be known as Caodong, which is derived eponymously from the first Sinograph in both Caoshan and Dongshan's names. One of the most emblematic teachings of the Caodong tradition is that of the "five ranks" (WUWEI), taught by Dongshan and further developed by Caoshan, a form of dialectical analysis that JUEFAN HUIHONG (1071-1128) considered to be the origin of "lettered Chan" (WENZI CHAN). Caoshan was later given the posthumous title Great Master Yunzheng. Although Caoshan had many disciples, his own lineage did not survive into the Song dynasty and the Caodong line was carried on by the lineage of Yunju Daoying (d. 902), a fellow student of Dongshan.

Caoxishan. [alt. Caoqishan] (J. Sokeizan; K. Chogyesan 曹溪山). A sacred mountain in the south of China, located in Shaozhou, present-day Guangdong province, and closely associated with the CHAN ZONG. According to legend, an Indian brAhmana who arrived at the mountain in 502 was so moved by the taste of its spring water that he suggested that a monastery be constructed there. The monastery was built and named Baolinsi, or Bejeweled Forest Monastery. The brAhmana also predicted that a great teacher would one day preach the DHARMA at the monastery and awaken beings as numerous as the trees in the forest. This tale may be attributed to followers of the legendary sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of the Chan school, HUINENG, who purportedly arrived at Baolinsi in 677. Upon his arrival, Huineng is also said to have established separate quarters for meditative practice within the monastery's compounds, which later came to be known as Huoguoyuan or NANHUASI. The mountain's name of Caoxi is sometimes also used as a toponym of Huineng, its most famous inhabitant. Caoxishan (in its Korean pronunciation of Chogyesan) is also an important Buddhist mountain in Korea and is the site of the famous practice monastery of SONGGWANGSA. See also CHOGYE CHONG.

Caoyuan Daosheng. (J. Sogen Dosho; K. Chowon Tosaeng 曹源道生) (d. 1192). A Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG. Caoyuan was a native of Nanjian in present-day Fujian province. He later became a student of the eminent Chan master MI'AN XIANJIE and made a name for himself at the monastery of Ruguosi in Jiangxi province. Caoyuan subsequently resided at such monasteries as Guifengsi and Qianfusi, also in Jiangxi province. Those in his lineage are sometimes specifically referred to as the Caoyuan branch of the Linji lineage. Caoyuan's teachings are found in his Caoyuan heshang yulu and Caoyuan Sheng chanshi yuyao.

cede ::: v. t. --> To yield or surrender; to give up; to resign; as, to cede a fortress, a province, or country, to another nation, by treaty.

champagne ::: n. --> A light wine, of several kinds, originally made in the province of Champagne, in France.

Changlu Zongze. (J. Choro Sosaku; K. Changno Chongsaek 長蘆宗賾) (d.u.; fl. c. late eleventh to early twelfth centuries). Chinese CHAN monk of the YUNMEN ZONG. Little is known about his life, but Changlu is said to have been a native of Yongnian in Luozhou, in present-day Henan province. Changlu also seems to have had a close relation to the disciples of Tianyi Yihuai (993-1064), himself a disciple of the Yunmen Chan master XUEDOU CHONGXUAN. Changlu eventually became a student of Tianyi's disciples Fayun Faxiu (1027-1090) and Changlu Yingfu (d.u.), and later inherited the latter's lineage. Changlu Zongze is most famous for his compilation of the influential text on Chan monastic regulations or "rules of purity" (QINGGUI), the CHANYUAN QINGGUI, during his tenure at the Chan monastery Hongji chanyuan in 1103. When a revised edition of the Chanyuan qinggui was published in 1202, the meditation manual ZUOCHAN YI, probably composed by Changlu or his colleagues, was included. Changlu is also remembered as a PURE LAND adept renowned for his rigorous practice of NIANFO, the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA. He later moved to Changlu in present-day Jiangxi province, whence he acquired his toponym. Changlu was later given the title Chan master Cijue (Compassionate Enlightenment).

Chikchisa. (直指寺). In Korean, "Direct Pointing Monastery"; the eighth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Hwangak in North Kyongsang province. The monastery purports to have been founded in 418 CE by the Koguryo monk Ado (fl. c. 418). There are three different stories about how the monastery got its name. The first version states that the name originated when Ado pointed directly at Mount Hwangak and said, "At that place, a large monastery will be established." The second story says that a monk called Nŭngyo (fl. c. 936) laid out the monastery campus using only his hands and without using any other measuring devices; hence, the monastery was given the name "Direct Measuring" (chikchi). A third story connects the name to the famous line concerning the soteriological approach of the SoN or CHAN school: "direct pointing to the human mind" (K. chikchi insim; C. ZHIZHI RENXIN). With the support of the Koryo king Taejo (r. 918-943), Nŭngyo restored the monastery in 936; major renovations followed in the tenth century and again during the Choson dynasty. In 1595, during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions, all its buildings except the Ch'onbul Chon (Thousand Buddhas Hall), Ch'onwang Mun (Heavenly Kings Gate), and Chaha Mun (Purple-Glow Gate) were burned to the ground. The monastery was rebuilt in a massive construction project that began in 1602 and lasted for seventy years. The monastery enshrines many treasures, including a seated figure of the healing buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU and a hanging picture of a Buddha triad (Samjonbul T'AENGHWA). Two three-story stone pagodas are located in front of the main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) and other three-story pagodas are located in front of the Piro chon (VAIROCANA Hall).

Chinp'yo. (眞表) (fl. c. eighth century). Korean VINAYA master (yulsa) during the Silla dynasty. Chinp'yo was a native of Mangyong county in Wansan province (present-day Chonju). According to legend, Chinp'yo is said to have been a student of a certain dharma master named Sungje (d.u.) of the monastery of KŬMSANSA, and was himself responsible for a major expansion of the monastery that took place between 762 and 766. Sungje, who purportedly studied under the eminent Chinese monk SHANDAO, informed Chinp'yo of his vision of MANJUsRĪ on WUTAISHAN, after which Chinp'yo decided to devote himself to the practice of body-discarding repentance (mangsinch'am) at Pusaŭiam (Inconceivable Hermitage). In 740, after seven nights of ascetic repentance, Chinp'yo had a vision of the BODHISATTVA KsITIGARBHA. Chinp'yo continued his training at the monastery Yongsansa, where he had a vision of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. From Maitreya, Chinp'yo received the divination scripture, ZHANCHA SHANE YEBAO JING, and 189 divination sticks made of sandalwood, two of which were said to have been made of Maitreya's fingers. In 766, he began teaching at Kŭmsansa, where he installed six gilded images of Maitreya in the main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN). King Kyongdok (r. 742-764) later invited Chinp'yo to the palace and received the bodhisattva precepts (K. posal kye, C. PUSA JIE). Chinp'yo had many disciples, among whom Yongsim (d.u.) is most famous.

Chirisan. (智異山). In Korean, "Mountain of the Wise and Extraordinary [Bodhisattva]" (though the term more probably means "round mountain"; see below); a Buddhist sacred mountain and the second highest mountain in Korea (its highest peak is Ch'onwangbong at 5,745 ft./1,915 m.) after Hallasan. Chirisan is located on the southern end of the Paektu taegan, the marchmount that is regarded geographically and spiritually as the geomantic "spine" of the Korean peninsula, and is the widest and highest section of the Sobaeksan subrange. Chiri Mountain stretches across the three southernmost provinces of the Korean peninsula: North Cholla, South Cholla, and South Kyongsang and has been considered a place where the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ is constantly preaching. Because of this association, Buddhists have traditionally interpreted the Chinese characters used to transcribe the mountain's name Chiri as deriving from the -ri in the Sino-Korean transcription of MaNjusrī's name (K. Munsusari) combined with the character chi(-ji) in his epithet "He of Great Wisdom" (Taeji); the near-homophone i ("extraordinary") was ultimately substituted for the character -ri to indicate that MaNjusrī represents himself in various "extraordinary" guises in order to save sentient beings. Recent research by historical linguists has, however, called this Buddhist parsing of the name into question. One of the earliest names found in Korean sources for the mountain is Turyu (lit. "Head Flowing"), which seems to be a transcription using Sinographs of the indigenous Korean word turu (now the adverb "widely" but previously used as an adjective meaning "round"), which in the local dialect changed from turuto turi, tŭri, tiri, to finally chiri. Hence, Chirisan is actually the transcription of an indigenous Korean word meaning "round mountain," referring to the many rounded peaks, punctuated by winding valleys, that dominate the massif. Chirisan's steepest summit is Ch'onwangbong Peak (5,745 ft/1,915 m) in the north, but its principal peaks include Songnisan (3,171 ft./1,057 m) in the south, Nogodan (4,521 ft/1,507 m) in the west, and Panyabong (5,271 ft/1,751 m) in the north central region of the massif. Chirisan has long been considered one of the "three spiritual mountains" (samsinsan) of Korea, along with KŬMGANGSAN and Hallasan, and has been a major center of Buddhist practice on the peninsula. There are currently 350 to 400 monasteries and hermitages on Chirisan, the three largest of which are HWAoMSA, SSANGGYESA, and CHoNŬNSA. Chiri Mountain is now protected as a national park, the first such designation made in Korea.

Ch'onch'aek. (天頙) (1206-?). The fourth patriarch of the Korean White Lotus Society (PAENGNYoN KYoLSA) during the middle of the Koryo dynasty; also known as State Preceptor Chinjong ("True Calmness" or "True Purity," using homophonous Sinographs). Ch'onch'aek was a descendent of a Koryo merit official, who devoted himself to Confucian studies from a young age and passed the civil-service examinations at the age of twenty. At twenty-three, he became a monk under the tutelage of State Preceptor WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1245), the founder of the White Lotus Society (cf. BAILIAN SHE) at Mount Mandok in T'amjin county (present-day Kangjin in South Cholla province), and subsequently assisted his teacher Yose in the Society's campaign. In 1244, Ch'onch'aek traveled to Mimyonsa on Mount Kongdok in Sangju county (present-day Mun'gyong in North Kyongsang province) to open and lead the society there at the request of the renowned magistrate of Sangju, Ch'oe Cha (1188-1260). The Kongdoksan branch of the society was called the East White Lotus; the Mandoksan branch was by contrast called the South White Lotus. In the late 1250s or early 1260s, Ch'onch'aek returned to Mandoksan to become the fourth patriarch of the White Lotus Society. He later retired to Yonghyoram (Dragon Cavity Hermitage) on Mount Tongnyong, south of Mandoksan, where he continued an active correspondence with literati. Indeed, Ch'onch'aek maintained close associations with several of the famous literati of his time and invited them to participate in the activities of the White Lotus Society. Ch'onch'aek's thought reflects the historical realities of Korea during the Mongol invasion. In his letters to civil and military officials, Ch'onch'aek opined that killing the invading Mongol army would be an appropriate act for a BODHISATTVA, because it would stop the invaders from performing evil actions that would lead them to endless suffering in the hells. His Haedongjon hongnok ("Extended Record of the Transmission [of Buddhism] in Korea"), a four-roll collection of miracle tales related to worship of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") , sought to popularize that scripture also in order to help bring peace to the Korean peninsula. Ch'onch'aek's literary talent was so renowned that the famous Choson literatus Chong Yagyong (1762-1836) counted him among the three greatest writers of the Silla and Koryo dynasties. Ch'onch'aek's works, none of which are extant in full, include the Haedongjon hongnok and his literary collection, the Hosan nok ("Record of Lakes and Mountains"). Authorship of the SoNMUN POJANGNOK is attributed to Ch'onch'aek, although this attribution is still in question.

Ch'ongho Hyujong. (清虚休静) (1520-1604). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty; best known to Koreans by his sobriquet Sosan taesa (lit. the Great Master "West Mountain," referring to Mt. Myohyang near present-day P'yongyang in North Korea). Hyujong was a native of Anju in present-day South P'yongan province. After losing his parents at an early age, Hyujong was adopted by the local magistrate of Anju, Yi Sajŭng (d.u.), and educated at the Songgyun'gwan Confucian academy. In 1534, Hyujong failed to attain the chinsa degree and decided instead to become a monk. He was ordained by a certain Sungin (d.u.) on CHIRISAN in 1540, and he later received the full monastic precepts from Hyuong Ilson (1488-1568). Hyujong later became the disciple of the Son master Puyong Yonggwan (1485-1571). In 1552, Hyujong passed the clerical exams (SŬNGKWA) revived by HoŮNG POU, who later appointed Hyujong the prelate (p'ansa) of both the SoN and KYO traditions. Hyujong also succeeded Pou as the abbot of the monastery Pongŭnsa in the capital, but he left his post as prelate and spent the next few years teaching and traveling throughout the country. When the Japanese troops of Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1536/7-1598) invaded Korea in 1592, Hyujong's disciple Kiho Yonggyu (d. 1592) succeeded in retaking the city of Ch'ongju, but died shortly afterward in battle. Hyujong himself was then asked by King Sonjo (r. 1567-1608) to lead an army against the invading forces. His monk militias (ŭisŭnggun) eventually played an important role in fending off the Japanese troops. When the king subsequently gave Hyujong permission to retire, the master left his command in the hands of his disciple SAMYoNG YUJoNG; he died shortly thereafter. Hyujong is said to have had more than one thousand students, among whom Yujong, P'yonyang Ŭn'gi (1581-1644), Soyo T'aenŭng (1562-1649), and Chonggwan Ilson (1533-1608) are best known. Hyujong left a number of writings, including the SoN'GA KWIGAM, which is one of the most widely read works of the Korean Buddhist tradition. Other important works include the Samga kwigam, Son'gyo sok, Son'gyo kyol, and Solson ŭi. In these works, Hyujong attempted to reconcile the teachings of the Son and Kyo traditions of Buddhism, as well as the doctrines of Buddhism and Confucianism.

Chongjung Musang. (C. Jingzhong Wuxiang; J. Joshu Muso 淨衆無相) (680-756, alt. 684-762). Korean-Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; because he was of Korean heritage, he is usually called Musang in the literature, following the Korean pronunciation of his dharma name, or Master Kim (K. Kim hwasang; C. Jin heshang), using his Korean surname. Musang is said to have been the third son of a Silla king and was ordained in Korea at the monastery of Kunnamsa. In 728, he arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) and had an audience with the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756), who appointed him to the monastery of Chandingsi. Musang subsequently traveled to Chu (in present-day Sichuan province) and became a disciple of the monk Chuji (alt. 648-734, 650-732, 669-736), who gave him dharma transmission at the monastery of Dechunsi in Zizhou (present-day Sichuan province). He later resided at the monastery of Jingzhongsi in Chengdu (present-day Sichuan province; later known as WANFOSI), which gave him his toponym Chongjung (C. Jingzhong). Musang became famous for his ascetic practices and meditative prowess. Musang also began conferring a unique set of precepts known as the three propositions (SANJU): "no recollection" (wuji), which was equated with morality (sĪLA); "no thought" (WUNIAN) with concentration (SAMADHI); and "no forgetting" (mowang) with wisdom (PRAJNA). He also taught a practice known as YINSHENG NIANFO, a method of reciting the name of the Buddha by extending the length of the intonation. Musang's prosperous lineage in Sichuan came to be known as the JINGZHONG ZONG line of Chan. Musang seems to have taught or influenced several renowned Chan monks, including HEZE SHENHUI (668-760), BAOTANG WUZHU (714-774), and MAZU DAOYI (707-786); he also played an important role in transmitting Chan to Tibet in the 750s and 760s.

Ch'ont'ae chong. (C. Tiantai zong; J. Tendaishu 天台宗). In Korean, "Altar of Heaven order"; a new order of Korean Buddhism, founded in 1966 by Won'gak Sangwol (1911-1974). Despite the order's name, which evokes that of the Chinese TIANTAI ZONG, the Ch'ont'ae chong is not heavily beholden to traditional Tiantai (K. Ch'ont'ae) doctrine and practice but is a thoroughly modern order, which seeks to respond to contemporary religious and social concerns. The school professes "aeguk Pulgyo" (patriotic Buddhism), which purports to contribute to the development of the nation through personal cultivation and social-welfare activities. Its primary method of spiritual cultivation involves the repetitive recitation of the name of Kwanseŭm posal (AVALOKITEsVARA bodhisattva), based in part on the constant-action SAMADHI (K. sanghaeng sammae; C. changxing sanmei), one of the four kinds of samAdhi attributed to the Chinese TIANTAI monk TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597). The Ch'ont'ae order introduced a few distinctive elements that distinguish it from other Korean Buddhist orders, e.g., (1) all its followers, whether monks, nuns, or lay people, participate together in a one-month retreat each summer and winter, although monks and nuns have an additional fifty-five day retreat period that immediately follows the winter retreat; (2) monks observe the tradition of shaving their heads, while nuns keep their hair in a small chignon in order to distinguish themselves from laywomen. Since its inception, the order has emphasized lay activities: it encourages lay people to involve themselves in administrative affairs, such as temple finance; it founded the Kŭmgang Buddhist seminary, which offers a two-year program to educate lay people on Tiantai and general Buddhist doctrines and a one-year program to train lay propagators of Buddhism (p'ogyosa); finally, the order has also established Kŭmgang University (Geumgang Daehakkyo), which offers a full range of majors in both Buddhism and secular topics. The order is also active in social activities, such as the promotion of social welfare and environmental preservation. Its major temples are the Kuinsa headquarters founded by Sangwol in 1945 in North Ch'ungch'ong province; and Samgwangsa, founded in 1969 in Pusan. The school also has overseas branches in Canada, the United States, Denmark, and Mongolia.

Cieszanow ::: In August 1940 about 1,000 young men from Czestochowa between the ages of 18 and 25 were sent to the forced labor camp in Cieszanow (Lublin Province); almost none survived.

circar ::: n. --> A district, or part of a province. See Sircar.

colony ::: n. --> A company of people transplanted from their mother country to a remote province or country, and remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the parent state; as, the British colonies in America.
The district or country colonized; a settlement.
A company of persons from the same country sojourning in a foreign city or land; as, the American colony in Paris.
A number of animals or plants living or growing together, beyond their usual range.


comprovincial ::: a. --> Belonging to, or associated in, the same province. ::: n. --> One who belongs to the same province.

coquimbite ::: n. --> A mineral consisting principally of sulphate of iron; white copperas; -- so called because found in the province of Coquimbo, Chili.

Cosmology: A branch of philosophy which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. It is to be contrasted with ontology or metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, natural and supernatural, and with the philosophy of nature, which investigates the basic laws, processes and divisions of the objects in nature. It is perhaps impossible to draw or maintain a sharp distinction between these different subjects, and treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contain considerable material on the others. Encyclopedia, section 35), are the contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Most philosophers would add to the foregoing the question of the nature and interrelationship of space and time, and would perhaps exclude the question of the nature of freedom and the origin of evil as outside the province of cosmology. The method of investigation has usually been to accept the principles of science or the results of metaphysics and develop the consequences. The test of a cosmology most often used is perhaps that of exhibiting the degree of accordance it has with respect to both empirical fact and metaphysical truth. The value of a cosmology seems to consist primarily in its capacity to provide an ultimate frame for occurrences in nature, and to offer a demonstration of where the limits of the spatio-temporal world are, and how they might be transcended.

Csoma de Kőros, Alexander. (1784-1842). Early European scholar of Tibet and its Buddhist culture. Csoma de Kőros was born in Transylvania, to a family descended from Magyar nobility. He developed an early interest in the origins of his Hungarian ancestry, which led him to dedicate himself to learning more about the history of the Hungarian language. Through his studies in Arabic, he eventually came to the conclusion that Hungarian had developed in the Tarim Basin of modern Xinjiang province in China, and so in 1819 he set out on foot for Yarkand in Turkestan. He crossed the mountains into Ladakh and reached KASHMIR in 1822. There, he spent a year travelling between Srinagar and Leh (the capital of Ladakh) in the hopes of finding a caravan to join in order to make his way to Yarkand. On one of these journeys, Csoma de Kőros met William Moorcroft, a veterinarian working for the British government. Moorcroft suggested that Csoma de Kőros' research might benefit more from traveling to LHA SA to learn about Tibetan language and literature. Although he never reached Lha sa, Csoma de Kőros spent nine years in monasteries in Ladakh and Zanskar learning Tibetan and studying Tibetan Buddhist texts. He devoted much of his research time to mastering Buddhist terminology. In 1830, he left for Calcutta, where he would live for eleven years. In Calcutta, Csoma de Kőros worked for the British East Indian Company through the Asiatic Society cataloguing Tibetan texts that were sent by BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON (1800-1894). He also published the first Tibetan grammar and dictionary in English, a translation of a ninth-century catalogue of Buddhist terminology, the MAHAVYUTPATTI, and a number of scholarly articles on the Tibetan canon. He died of malaria in Darjeeling (1842) as he continued his search for the ancestral homeland of the Hungarian people. Although Csoma de Kőros was not a Buddhist, he was declared a BODHISATTVA by Taisho University in Tokyo in 1933 and is often described as the "Father of Tibetology."

Daguan Zhenke. (J. Takkan Shinka; K. Talgwan Chin'ga 達觀眞可) (1543-1603). Chinese CHAN master of the Ming dynasty, also known as ZIBO. Daguan was a native of Jugu prefecture in Jiangsu province. He was ordained at age sixteen and is said to have attained awakening after reading the following verse by the layman Zhang Zhuo (d.u.), a disciple of the Chan master SHISHUANG QINGZHU: "Cutting off deluded thoughts increases maladies ever more,/ Heading out toward true suchness is also heresy" (duanji wangxiang zhongzeng bing,/ quxiang zhenru yishi xie). Like his influential contemporaries HANSHAN DEQING and YUNQI ZHUHONG, he was renowned for his advocacy of NIANFO Chan, in which Chan meditative practice was combined with the invocation or recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA. Daguan was known as one of the four great monks of the Ming dynasty along with Hanshan Deqing (1546-1623), Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615), and OUYI ZHIXU (1599-1655). Daguan's teachings are recorded in the Zibo zunzhe quanji and Zibo laoren shiji.

Dahong Bao'en. (J. Daiko Hoon; K. Taehong Poŭn 大洪報恩) (1058-1111). Chinese CHAN master of the CAODONG lineage. Dahong was a native of Liyang in present-day Henan province. Raised in a traditional family, he became an official at an early age, but later abandoned the position, with the court's permission, in order to ordain as a monk. He studied under the Chan master TOUZI YIQING and became his disciple. Dahong was later invited by the prime minister to lecture at the famed monastery of SHAOLINSI. In response to still another request, he moved to Mt. Dahong in Suizhou prefecture (present-day Hubei province), whence he acquired his toponym, and became the first Chan monk to convert a VINAYA monastery into a Chan center, which he named Chongning Baoshou Chanyuan. Dahong also became close friends with the powerful and outspoken statesman ZHANG SHANGYING (1043-1122). Dahong is known to have composed several texts including a history of the Caodong tradition, Caodong zongpai lu, and manuals for conferring the precepts, such as the Shou puti xinjie wen and Luofa shoujie yiwen; none of these texts are extant.

Dahong Shousui. (J. Daiko Shusui; K. Taehong Susu 大洪守遂) (1072-1147). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG lineage. Dahong was a native of Suining in present-day Sichuan province. He was ordained at the age of twenty-seven and became the student of DAHONG BAO'EN of Mt. Dahong and acquired the same toponym. In 1118, the title Great Master Jingyan (Pure and Strict) was bestowed upon him. After the invasion of Jin dynasty troops, Dahong moved south and became the abbot of the monastery Shuinan Chanyuan. Later he moved back to Mt. Dahong where he and his seven hundred disciples devoted themselves to its restoration.

Dahui Zonggao. (J. Daie Soko; K. Taehye Chonggo 大慧宗杲) (1089-1163). Influential Song-dynasty Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; also known as Miaoxi, Yunmen, Tanhui, or more typically just Dahui (J. Daie; K. Taehye). Dahui was a native of Ningguo in Xuanzhou (present-day Anhui province). After studying at LUSHAN and Mt. Dong, Dahui became the student of the Chan master DANTANG WENZHUN; in 1115, aware of his impending death, Dantang encouraged Dahui to continue his studies under YUANWU KEQIN. Before approaching Yuanwu, Dahui visited the Chan master JUEFAN HUIHONG, at which time he also met the powerful statesman and layman ZHANG SHANGYING. In 1124, while Yuanwu was serving under imperial orders as abbot of the monastery of Tianningsi in Dongjing, Dahui became his disciple and later inherited his Linji lineage. At the recommendation of the current grand councilor, Dahui was given the title Fori Dashi (Great Master Buddha Sun). After Yuanwu returned to his home province of Sichuan, Dahui moved to the hermitage of Yunmen'an in Haihun (present-day Jiangxi province) to avoid the invading forces of the Jin dynasty. In 1134, Dahui moved again to the hermitage of Yangyuan in Fujian province, where he launched a harsh critique against the practice of "silent-illumination Chan" (MOZHAO CHAN), championing instead the "investigation of the meditative topic" (KANHUA CHAN) method of meditation. Dahui later served as abbot of the powerful monastery Nengren Chanyuan on Mt. Jing (see WANSHOUSI) and revitalized the teachings of the Chan master LINJI YIXUAN. While a truce with the rival Jin dynasty was being negotiated, Dahui was accused of collaborating with Jin forces, for which he was exiled to Hengzhou in present-day Hunan province. During this period, Dahui composed his magnum opus, ZHENGFAYANZANG. After he was absolved of his alleged crime of treason, Dahui began his residence on Mt. Ayuwang and befriended the CAODONG ZONG Chan master HONGZHI ZHENGJUE, who was the preemiment advocate of the "silent-illumination" technique that Dahui so harshly criticized, suggesting that this professional disagreement did not affect their personal ties. Dahui later returned to his post at Nengren Chanyuan and became the teacher of Emperor Xiaozong (r. 1162-1189), who gave him the title Chan Master Dahui (Great Wisdom). He was also given the posthumous title Chan Master Pujue (Universal Enlightenment), the name typically used in his publications. Dahui's teachings are recorded in his Dahui chanshi yulu, DAHUI PUJUE CHANSHI SHU, and DAHUI PUJUE CHANSHI ZONGMEN WUKU.

Đàm Lựu. (曇榴) (1933-1999). A prominent Vietnamese nun, born on April 8, 1933, in Hà Đông province (in northern Vietnam). At the age of two, she visited Cự Đà Temple with her parents but refused to leave and so spent her childhood there. In 1948, she took novice precepts and was sent to study Buddhism at various temples in North Vietnam. In 1951, she received full ordination as a nun and, in 1952, followed her teacher to South Vietnam when he was appointed abbot of Dược Sư Temple in Gò Váp. After completing her baccalaureate degree, she moved to Phước Hòa Temple in Saigon. In 1964, she earned a scholarship to study social work in West Germany. While in Freiburg, she divided her time between her studies and assisting Vietnamese orphans in Germany. After returning to South Vietnam in 1969, she was appointed director of Lumbini Orphanage in Saigon. In 1977, she escaped from Vietnam and, in 1979, settled in San José, California. In 1991, she founded Đức Vien Temple, which has subsequently served as a site for Buddhist practice and a center for many Vietnamese cultural activities. Until her death in 1999, Đàm Lựu oversaw the training of many young nuns and encouraged them to enroll in colleges and universities in North America, as well as in India and Taiwan. She also gave financial assistance to various Buddhist colleges in Vietnam.

DAnapAla. (C. Shihu; J. Sego; K. Siho 施護) (d.u.; fl. c. 980 CE). In Sanskrit, lit. "Protector of Giving"; one of the last great Indian translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese. A native of OddiyAna in the GANDHARA region of India, he was active in China during the Northern Song dynasty. At the order of the Song Emperor Taizhong (r. 960-997), he was installed in a translation bureau to the west of the imperial monastery of Taiping Xingguosi (in Yuanzhou, present-day Jiangxi province), where he and his team are said to have produced some 111 translations in over 230 rolls. His translations include texts from the PRAJNAPARAMITA, MADHYAMAKA, and tantric traditions, including the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA, SUVARnAPRABHASOTTAMASuTRA, SARVATATHAGATATATTVASAMGRAHA, HEVAJRATANTRA, NAGARJUNA's YUKTIsAstIKA and DHARMADHATUSTAVA, and KAMALAsĪLA's BHAVANAKRAMA, as well as several DHARAnĪ texts.

Daniel (Hebrew) Dāniyyē’l The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament has twelve chapters, the first six a historical narrative, the last six prophetic. According to the former, Daniel flourished about 600 b.c., was taken captive with the other Jews to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, and became a Magus. His skill in interpreting dreams procured him favor and the governorship of the province of Babylon. Later he became the first president of the whole Medo-Persian empire. Scholarship, however, finds difficulties in reconciling biblical data with information from other sources.

Dao'an. (J. Doan; K. Toan 道安) (312-385). In Chinese, "Peace of the Way"; monk-exegete and pioneer of Buddhism during the Eastern Jin dynasty. A native of Fuliu in present-day Hebei province, at the age of eleven he became a student of the famous Kuchean monk and thaumaturge FOTUDENG. Fleeing from the invasions of the so-called northern barbarians, Dao'an and his teacher relocated frequently, with Dao'an finally settling down in the prosperous city of Xiangyang in Hubei province, where he taught for fifteen years. Learning of Dao'an's great reputation, the Former Qin ruler Fu Jian (338-385) amassed an army and captured Xiangyang. After the fall of Xiangyang, Fu Jian invited Dao'an to the capital of Chang'an and honored him as his personal teacher. Dao'an later urged Fu Jian to invite the eminent Central Asian monk KUMARAJĪVA to China. In order to determine the authenticity and provenance of the various scriptural translations then being made in China, Dao'an compiled an influential catalogue of scriptures known as the ZONGLI ZHONGJING MULU, which was partially preserved in the CHU SANZANG JIJI. He also composed various prefaces and commentaries, and his exegetical technique of dividing a scripture into three sections (SANFEN KEJING)-"preface" (xufen), "text proper" (zhengzongfen), and "dissemination section" (liutongfen)-is still widely used even today in East Asian scriptural exegesis. In Dao'an's day, the Indian VINAYA recensions had not yet been translated into Chinese, so Dao'an took it upon himself to codify an early set of indigenous monastic regulations known as the Sengni guifan fofa xianzhang (no longer extant) as a guide for Chinese monastic practice. Also traced to Dao'an is the custom of monks and nuns abandoning their secular surnames for the surname SHI (a transcription of the Buddha's clan name sAKYA; J. Shaku; K. Sok; V. Thích), as a mark of their religious ties to the Buddha's lineage. Among his many disciples, LUSHAN HUIYUAN is most famous.

Daochuo. (J. Doshaku; K. Tojak 道綽) (562-645). Chinese monk and putative second patriarch of the JINGTU (pure land) tradition; also known as Chan Master Xihe (West River). Daochuo was a native of Bingzhou in present-day Shanxi province. He left home at an early age and studied the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA. According to legend, in 609, Daochuo is said to have been inspired by TANLUAN's epitaph to continue the latter's efforts to further PURE LAND thought and practice. Daochuo is then said to have devoted himself to the practice of NIANFO, the invocation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA, and the daily recitation of the SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA. Daochuo is perhaps more famous than even Tanluan for advocating the practice of recitation of the Buddha's name (NIANFO) over all other practices. He is also known for using small beans (xiaodou) to keep count of the number of recitations; some believe his habit of using counting beans is the origin of rosaries (JAPAMALA) in China. The influential pure land treatise ANLE JI is attributed to Daochuo.

Daosheng. (J. Dosho; K. Tosaeng 道生) (355-434). Influential Chinese monk during the Eastern Jin dynasty and renowned scholar of the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA; also known as ZHU DAOSHENG. Daosheng was a native of Julu in present-day Hebei province. He became a student of the monk Zhu Fatai (320-387), changing his surname to Zhu in his honor. Daosheng received the full monastic precepts in his nineteenth year and took up residence at the monastery of Longguangsi in Jianye. Later, he moved to LUSHAN, where he studied under the eminent monk LUSHAN HUIYUAN. Daosheng also continued his studies under the famed translator and MADHYAMAKA scholar KUMARAJĪVA, and was later praised as one of KumArajīva's four great disciples. In 409, Daosheng returned to Jianye and made the controversial claim that even incorrigibles (ICCHANTIKA) may eventually attain enlightenment and that buddhahood is attained in an instant of awakening (DUNWU). For these claims, Daosheng was harshly criticized by the community of scholars in Jianye, which prompted Daosheng to return to Lushan once more. His interpretations were eventually corroborated in subsequent Chinese translations of the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA and become emblematic of many important strands of indigenous Chinese Buddhism. Daosheng's teachings are quoted in many of his contemporaries' works and Daosheng himself is known to have composed numerous treatises and commentaries, including the Foxing dangyou lun ("Buddha Nature Perforce Exists"), Fashen wuse lun ("DHARMAKAYA Lacks Form"), Fo wu jingtu lun ("The Buddha has no Pure Land"), and Fahua jing yishu (a commentary on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA).

Daoxin. (J. Doshin; K. Tosin 道信) (580-651). Chan monk and reputed fourth patriarch of the CHAN tradition. Although Daoxin's birthplace is not certain, some sources say he was a native of Qizhou in present-day Hubei province, while others mention Henei in Henan province. Little is known of his early training, but early Chan sources such as the LENGQIE SHIZI JI and CHUAN FABAO JI claim that Daoxin studied under SENGCAN, the putative third patriarch of Chan and supposed successor to BODHIDHARMA and HUIKE, his connection to this dubious figure is tenuous at best, however, and is probably a retrospective creation. The earliest biography of Daoxin, recorded in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Supplementary Biographies of Eminent Monks"), not only does not posit any connection of Daoxin to the preceding three patriarchs but does not even mention their names. The Chuan fabao ji states that Daoxin was fully ordained in 607, after his purported period of study under Sengcan. Daoxin is subsequently known to have resided at the monastery of Dalinsi on LUSHAN in Jiangxi province for ten years. At the invitation of the inhabitants of his native Qizhou, Daoxin moved again to Mt. Shuangfeng in Huangmei (perhaps in 624), where he remained in seclusion for about thirty years. He is therefore sometimes known as Shuangfeng Daoxin. During his residence at Mt. Shuangfeng, Daoxin is claimed to have attracted more than five hundred students, among whom HONGREN, the fifth patriarch of Chan, is most famous. The lineage and teachings attributed to Daoxin and Hongren are typically called the East Mountain Teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) after the easterly peak of Mt. Shuangfeng, where Hongren dwelled. Daoxin was given the posthumous title Chan Master Dayi (Great Physician) by Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) of the Tang dynasty. According to the Lengqie shizi ji, Daoxin composed the Pusajie zuofa ("Method of Conferring the BODHISATTVA Precepts"), which is no longer extant, and the Rudao anxin yaofangbian famen ("Essentials of the Teachings of the Expedient Means of Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind"), which is embedded in the Lengqie shizi ji. This latter text employs the analogy of a mirror from the Banzhou sanmei jing (S. PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHAVASTHITASAMADHISuTRA) to illustrate the insubstantiality of all phenomena, viz., one's sensory experiences are no more substantial than the reflections in a mirror. The text then presents the "single-practice SAMADHI" (YIXING SANMEI) as a practical means of accessing the path leading to NIRVAnA, based on the Wenshushuo bore jing ("Perfection of Wisdom Sutra Spoken by Manjusrī"). Single-practice samAdhi here refers to sitting in meditation, the supreme practice that subsumes all other practices. In single-practice samAdhi, the meditator contemplates every single aspect of one's mental and physical existence until one realizes they are all empty, and "guards that one without deviation" (shouyi buyi).

Daoxuan. (J. Dosen; K. Toson 道宣) (596-667). Chinese VINAYA master and reputed patriarch of the Nanshan vinaya school (NANSHAN LÜ ZONG); also known as Fabian. Daoxuan was a native of Wuxing in present-day Zhejiang province (or, according to another report, Runzhou in Jiangsu province). Daoxuan became a monk at age fifteen and studied monastic discipline under the vinaya master Zhishou. He later moved to ZHONGNANSHAN and established the monastery of Nanquansi. Daoxuan was also a prolific writer. In 626, he composed the Sifen lü shanfan buque xingshi chao, one of the most influential commentaries on the SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya") of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school. The next year, he composed the Sifen lü shi pini yichao and the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, Shijia fangzhi, JI GUJIN FODAO LUNHENG, and other texts in the following years. When the monastery XIMINGSI was established in 658 by Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-683) in the Tang capital of Chang'an, Daoxuan was invited to serve as its abbot. In 664, while at Ximingsi, Daoxuan compiled a comprehensive catalogue of scriptures known as the DA TANG NEIDIAN LU and, in continuation of his earlier Ji gujin fodao lunheng, wrote a collection of essays in defense of Buddhism entitled the GUANG HONGMING JI.

Daozhe Chaoyuan. (J. Dosha Chogen; K. Toja Ch'owon 道者超元) (1630-1698). Chinese CHAN and ZEN master in the LINJI lineage. Daozhe was a native of Xinghua prefecture in present-day Fujian province. He became a student of Gengxin Xingmi (1603-1659), a direct disciple of the Chan master FEIYIN TONGRONG and, after inheriting Gengxin's lineage, became a dharma cousin of the renowned Chan master YINYUAN LONGQI. In 1651, Daozhe traveled to Nagasaki, Japan, where he served as abbot of the monastery Sofukuji for the next five years. During his stay in Japan, a number of important Buddhist figures visited him for instruction, including the monks Dokuan Genko (1630-1698), Kengan Zen'etsu (1618-1690), EGOKU DoMYo, Choon Dokai (1628-1695), and BANKEI YoTAKU. Unlike his compatriot Yinyuan, who continued to reside in Japan, Daozhe returned to China in 1658 and died shortly thereafter. Daozhe played an important role in preparing the ground for Yinyuan's later establishment of the oBAKUSHu in Japan.

Daxiu Zhengnian. (J. Daikyu Shonen; K. Taehyu Chongnyom 大休正念) (1215-1289). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG. A native of Wenzhou in present-day Zhejiang province, Daxiu began his training under the CAODONG master Donggu Miaoguang (d. 1253) of Linyinsi, and later became the disciple of Shiqi Xinyue (d. 1254). In 1269, Daxiu left for Japan, where he received the patronage of the powerful regent Hojo Tokimune (1251-1284). In Kamakura, Daxiu established the monastery Jochiji, which came to be ranked fourth in the Kamakura GOZAN system. Daxiu also served as abbot of the monasteries ZENKoJI, Juhukuji, and KENCHoJI. In 1288, Daxiu became the abbot of ENGAKUJI, but passed away the next year in 1289. He was given the posthumous title Zen Master Butsugen ("Source of the Buddhas"). His teachings can be found in the Daikyu osho goroku.

Dayang Jingxuan. (J. Taiyo Kyogen; K. Taeyang Kyonghyon 大陽警玄) (942-1027). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG. A native of Jiangxia in present-day Hubei province, Dayang was ordained at the monastery of Chongxiaosi in Jinleng by his uncle, who had also become a monk. After traveling throughout China, Dayang visited the Chan master Liangshan Yuanguan (d.u.) in Dingzhou prefecture (present-day Sichuan province) and became his disciple. Later, he became a student of the Caodong monk Huijian (d.u.) and took over his lecture seat on Mt. Dayang, which became his toponym. Before his death, Dayang entrusted his portrait (DINGXIANG), leather shoes, and patched robe to his friend Fushan Fayuan (991-1067) of the LINJI ZONG in hopes of continuing his Caodong lineage and the incumbent annual memorial services to the patriarchs in his line. Fushan in turn transferred these items to his student TOZI YIQING, who embraced Dayang's line and became a Caodong lineage holder. Dayang was bestowed the posthumous title Great Master Ming'an ("Illuminating Peace"). His teachings are recorded in the Dayang Ming'an dashi shibaban miaoyu.

Dazhu Huihai. (J. Daiju Ekai; K. Taeju Hyehae 大珠慧海) (d.u.). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty. Dazhu was a native of Jianzhou in present-day Fujian province, who was tonsured by a certain Daozhi at the monastery Dayunsi in Yuezhou (present-day Zhejiang province). He later studied under the eminent Chan master MAZU DAOYI for six years and inherited his HONGZHOU lineage. Dazhu then returned to Yuezhou where he devoted himself to teaching. Dazhu is most famous for his work the DUNWU RUDAO YAOMEN LUN, one of the definitive accounts in the CHAN ZONG of the notion of "sudden awakening" (DUNWU).

Dazu shike. (大足石刻). In Chinese, "Dazu rock carvings"; a series of Chinese religious sculptures and carvings located on the steep hillsides of Dazu County, in Sichuan province near the city of Chongqing. The Dazu grottoes are considered one of the four greatest troves of rock sculptures in China, along with the LONGMEN grottoes in LUOYANG, the MOGAO Caves in DUNHUANG, and the YUNGANG grottoes in Shanxi province. Listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1999, the Dazu rock carvings consist of seventy-five sites, all under state protection, which contain some fifty thousand statues, along with epigraphs and inscriptions numbering over one hundred thousand inscribed Sinographs. There are five sites that are particularly large and well preserved: Baodingshan (Treasure Peak Mountain), Beishan (North Mountain), Nanshan (South Mountain), Shizhuanshan (Rock-Carving Mountain), and Shimenshan (Stone-Gate Mountain). Among the five major sites, the grottoes on Baodingshan and Nanshan are the largest in scale, the richest in content, and the most refined in artistic skill, although other sites are also noteworthy for their many statues integrating Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. The earliest carvings of the Dazu grottoes were begun in the early seventh century during the Tang dynasty, but the main creative period began in the late ninth century, when Wei Junjing, the prefect of Changzhou, initiated the carvings on Beishan. Even after the collapse of the Tang dynasty, his example continued to be emulated by local gentry, government officials, Buddhist monks and nuns, and ordinary people. From the late Tang dynasty through the reign of the Song Emperor Gaozong (r. 1127-1131), some ten thousand sculptures of Buddhist figures were carved at the site in varied styles. The most famous carving on Beishan is a Song-dynasty statue of GUANYIN (AVALOKITEsVARA). In the twelfth century, during the Song dynasty, a Buddhist monk named Zhao Zhifeng began to work on the sculptures and carvings on Baodingshan, dedicating seventy years of his life to the project. He produced some ten thousand Buddhist statues, as well as many carvings depicting scenes from daily life that bear inscriptions giving religious rules of behavior, teaching people how to engage in correct moral action. Along with EMEISHAN, Baodingshan became one of the most sacred Buddhist sites in Sichuan. Although the Dazu grottoes primarily contain Buddhist statues, they also include Daoist, Confucian, and historical figures, as well as many valuable inscriptions describing people's daily lives, which make the Dazu grottoes unique. The Yungang grottoes, created during the fourth and fifth centuries, represent an early stage of Chinese cave art and were greatly influenced by Indian culture. The Longmen grottoes, begun in the fifth century, represent the middle period of cave art, blending Indian and Chinese characteristics. The Dazu grottoes represent the highest level of grotto art in China and demonstrate breakthroughs in both carving technique and subject matter. They not only provide outstanding evidence of the harmonious synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism in Chinese local religious practice but also mark the completion of the localization process of China's grotto art, reflecting great changes and developments in China's folk religion and rock carvings. The Dazu grottoes are thus remarkable for their high aesthetic quality, their rich diversity of style and subject matter (including both secular and religious topics), and the light that they shed on everyday life in China.

department ::: v. i. --> Act of departing; departure.
A part, portion, or subdivision.
A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like; appointed sphere or walk; province.
Subdivision of business or official duty; especially, one of the principal divisions of executive government; as, the treasury department; the war department; also, in a university, one of the divisions of instruction; as, the medical department; the


Deshan Xuanjian. (J. Tokusan Senkan; K. Toksan Son'gam 德山宣鑑) (780/2-865). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; famous for the fearsome "blows" (bang) through which he expressed his understanding of enlightenment, similar to the terrifying shouts (he) of Chan master LINJI YIXUAN (see BANGHE). A native of Jiannan in present-day Sichuan province, Deshan first studied the scriptures and the VINAYA, and became famous as a teacher of the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"). According to his hagiography, he was determined to defeat the Chan masters of the south with his knowledge of the sutra, but on his way in Lizhou (present-day Hunan province), Deshan was rendered speechless by the following question from an old woman: "The 'Diamond Sutra' says that neither the past mind, present mind, nor future mind can be grasped; so which mind does the elder desire to refresh?" He later became a student of the Chan master Longtan Chongxin (d.u.) and inherited his lineage. After his thirty-year residence at Lizhou, Deshan was forced by Emperor Wuzong's (840-846) persecution of Buddhism (see HUICHANG FANAN) to hide on Mt. Dufu. He was later invited by the governor of Wuleng (present-day Hunan province) to reside on Deshan ("Mount Virtue"), whence he acquired his toponym. Deshan's most famous disciple was XUEFENG YICUN, and their joint lineage leads ultimately to the mature Chan schools of the YUNMEN ZONG and FAYAN ZONG.

Dewa sanzan. (出羽三山). In Japanese, the "three mountains of Dewa"; referring to Mount Haguro, Mount Gassan, and Mount Yudono in what was once known as Dewa province (in modern-day Yamagata prefecture). The region is particularly important in SHUGENDo and has long been a place of pilgrimage; it was visited by BASHo.

Dga' ldan phun tshogs gling. (Ganden Puntsok Ling). A Tibetan monastery located in Gtsang province, founded by TĀRANĀTHA in 1615, who named it Rtag brtan phun tshogs gling. It was also known as JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING. He hired artists from Nepal to decorate it, eventually making it the most lavishly appointed monastery in central Tibet. Under Tāranātha, it became the primary seat of the JO NANG sect. After his death, the monastery was forcibly converted to a DGE LUGS establishment by order of the fifth DALAI LAMA, who opposed the Jo nang and is said to have had a personal animosity against Tāranātha. The monastery was thus renamed Dga' ldan phun tshogs gling and the printing of the Jo nang texts held there was banned; permission to print them was not granted until the late nineteenth century.

dictionary ::: n. --> A book containing the words of a language, arranged alphabetically, with explanations of their meanings; a lexicon; a vocabulary; a wordbook.
Hence, a book containing the words belonging to any system or province of knowledge, arranged alphabetically; as, a dictionary of medicine or of botany; a biographical dictionary.


dominican ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to St. Dominic (Dominic de Guzman), or to the religions communities named from him. ::: n. --> One of an order of mendicant monks founded by Dominic de Guzman, in 1215. A province of the order was established in England in 1221. The first foundation in the United States was made in 1807. The

Donglinsi. (J. Torinji; K. Tongnimsa 東林寺). In Chinese, "Eastern Grove Monastery"; located in the forest on the eastern side of LUSHAN, a Buddhist sacred mountain in Jiangxi province. The monastery was founded between 380 CE and 386 CE by the early advocate of PURE LAND visualization LUSHAN HUIYUAN (334-416 CE) and became an important early center of Buddhism in China, especially of the White Lotus retreat society (BAILIAN SHE). The monastery also hosted such monks as SaMghadeva, who translated important works of ABHIDHARMA and SARVĀSTIVĀDA scholasticism, and BUDDHABHADRA (359-429). Donglinsi continued to be a center of Buddhist activity during subsequent dynasties and its influence reached its zenith during the Tang dynasty, when it attracted both monks and leading literati, such as the renowned Tang poet BO JUYI (772-846 CE).

Dongshan famen. (J. Tozan homon; K. Tongsan pommun 東山法門). In Chinese, lit. "East Mountain Dharma Gate" or "East Mountain Teachings"; one of the principal early CHAN schools, which is associated with the putative fourth and fifth patriarchs of the tradition, DAOXIN (580-651) and HONGREN (602-675). The name of the school is a toponym for the location of Hongren's monastery, at Huangmei in Qizhou (present-day Hubei province). "East Mountain" refers to the easterly of the "twin peaks" of Mount Shuangfeng, where Hongren taught after the death of his master Daoxin, who had taught on the westerly peak; the term "East Mountain Teachings," however, is typically used to refer to the tradition associated with both masters. The designations Dongshan famen and Dongshan jingmen (East Mountain Pure Gate) first appear in the LENGQIE SHIZI JI ("Records of the Masters and Disciples of the Lankā[vatāra]") and were used in the Northern school of Chan (BEI ZONG) by SHENXIU (606?-706) and his successors to refer to the lineage and teachings that they had inherited from Daoxin and Hongren. ¶ Although later Chan lineage texts list Daoxin and Hongren as respectively the fourth and the fifth Chan patriarchs, succeeding BODHIDHARMA, HUIKE, and SENGCAN, the connection of the East Mountain lineage to these predecessors is tenuous at best and probably nonexistent. The earliest biography of Daoxin, recorded in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Supplementary Biographies of Eminent Monks"), not only does not posit any connection between Daoxin and the preceding three patriarchs, but does not even mention their names. This connection is first made explicit in the c. 713 CHUAN FABAO JI ("Annals of the Transmission of the Dharma-Jewel"), one of the earliest Chan "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) lineage texts. Unlike many of the Chan "schools" that were associated with a single charismatic teacher, the "East Mountain Teachings" was unusual in that it had a single, enduring center in Huangmei, which attracted increasing numbers of students. Some five or six names of students who studied with Daoxin survive in the literature, with another twenty-five associated with Hongren. Although Hongren's biography in the Chuan fabao ji certainly exaggerates when it says that eight to nine out of every ten Buddhist practitioners in China studied under Hongren, there is no question that the number of students of the East Mountain Teachings grew significantly over two generations. ¶ The fundamental doctrines and practices of the East Mountain Teachings can be reconstructed on the basis of the two texts: the RUDAO ANXIN YAO FANGBIAN FAMEN ("Essentials of the Teachings of the Expedient Means of Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind") and the XIUXIN YAO LUN ("Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind"), ascribed respectively to Daoxin and Hongren. The Rudao anxin yao fangbian famen, which is included in the Lengqie shizi ji, employs the analogy of a mirror from the Banzhou sanmei jing (S. PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHĀVASTHITASAMĀDHISuTRA) to illustrate the insubstantiality of all phenomena, viz., one's sensory experiences are no more substantial than the reflections in a mirror. The text then presents the "single-practice SAMĀDHI" (YIXING SANMEI) as a practical means of accessing the path leading to NIRVĀnA, based on the Wenshushuo bore jing ("Perfection of Wisdom Sutra Spoken by MANJUsRĪ"). Single-practice samādhi here refers to sitting in meditation, the supreme practice that subsumes all other practices; it is not one samādhi among others, as it is portrayed in the MOHE ZHIGUAN ("Great Calming and Contemplation"). Single-practice samādhi means to contemplate every single aspect of one's mental and physical existence until one realizes they are all empty, just like the reflections in the mirror, and "to guard that one without deviation" (shouyi buyi). The Xiuxin yao lun, which is attributed to Hongren, stresses the importance of "guarding the mind" (SHOUXIN). Here, the relationship between the pure mind and the afflictions (KLEsA) is likened to that between the sun and clouds: the pure mind is obscured by afflictions, just as the sun is covered by layers of clouds, but if one can guard the mind so that it is kept free from false thoughts and delusions, the sun of NIRVĀnA will then appear. The text suggests two specific meditation techniques for realizing this goal: one is continuously to visualize the original, pure mind (viz., the sun) so that it shines without obscuration; the other is to concentrate on one's own deluded thoughts (the clouds) until they disappear. These two techniques purport to "guard the mind" so that delusion can never recur. The East Mountain Teachings laid a firm foundation for the doctrines and practices of later Chan traditions like the Northern school.

Dongshan Liangjie. (J. Tozan Ryokai; K. Tongsan Yanggae 洞山良价) (807-869). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and reputed founder of the CAODONG lineage of Chan; also known as Xinfeng. Dongshan was a native of Yuezhou in present-day Zhejiang province. He left home at an early age and became the student of the Chan master Lingmo (747-818). Having received full monastic precepts from a certain VINAYA master Rui on SONGSHAN, Dongshan visited the Chan masters NANQUAN PUYUAN and GUISHAN LINGYOU and later continued his studies under Yunyan Tancheng (782-841). Dongshan is said to have attained awakening under Yunyan's guidance and eventually inherited his lineage. During the HUICHANG FANAN, Dongshan remained in hiding until the persecution ran its course, eventually reemerging at Xinfeng tong in Jiangxi province. With the support of his followers, Dongshan later established the monastery Guangfusi (later renamed Puli yuan) on Mt. Dong (Dongshan), whence he acquired his toponym. Among his many disciples, Yunju Daoying (d. 902) and CAOSHAN BENJI are most famous. Dongshan was renowned for his poetry and verse compositions and his teaching of the "five ranks" (WUWEI). His teachings are recorded in the Dongshan yulu ("The Record of Dongshan"), but the most famous of his works is the BAOJING SANMEI ("Jeweled-Mirror Samādhi"), a definitive verse on enlightenment and practice from the standpoint of the CAODONGZONG. The Baojing sanmei emphasizes the "original enlightenment" (BENJUE; cf. HONGAKU) of sentient beings and the futility of seeking that enlightenment through conscious thought. Instead, the song urges its audience to allow one's inherently pure, enlightened nature to "silently illuminate" itself through meditation (see MOZHAO CHAN), as the Buddha did under the BODHI TREE.

Dosho. (道昭) (629-700). Japanese monk and reputed founder of the Japanese Hosso (YOGĀCĀRA) school in the seventh century. A native of Kawachi province, Dosho became renowned for his strict adherence to the precepts while he was residing at the monastery of Gangoji. In 653, Dosho made a pilgrimage to China, where he studied under the Chinese monk-translator and Yogācāra scholar XUANZANG. In 660, Dosho returned to Gangoji and devoted the rest of his life to the dissemination of the Yogācāra teachings that he had brought back with him from China.

Dpal yul. (Payul). The Tibetan short name of a monastery in Khams (now part of the Chinese province of Sichuan). The name is an abbreviation of Dpal yul rnam rgyal byang chub chos gling, one of the four main RNYING MA monasteries in eastern Tibet, the others being KAḤ THOG, RDZOGS CHEN, and ZHE CHEN; founded in 1665 by Kun bzang shes rab (1636-1699). The monastery specializes in the GTER MA (treasure text) teachings of KARMA CHAGS MED; members of the monastery follow a set course of preliminary practices and engage in a three-year retreat. The monastery, destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76), has been rebuilt and currently houses about three hundred monks. The eleventh khri 'dzin (throne-holder) Thub bstan legs bshad chos kyi sgra dbyangs, Penor Rin po che (1932-2009), established a new monastery called Rnam grol gling with great success near Bylakuppe in South India; at present it is the largest Rnying ma institution outside Tibet, with perhaps as many as five thousand monks and nuns. The present throne-holder is the fifth Karma sku chen (b. 1970).

Dunhuang. (J. Tonko; K. Tonhwang 敦煌). A northwest Chinese garrison town on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in Central Asia, first established in the Han dynasty and an important stop along the ancient SILK ROAD; still seen written also as Tun-huang, followed the older Wade-Giles transcription. Today an oasis town in China's Gansu province, Dunhuang is often used to refer to the nearby complex of approximately five hunded Buddhist caves, including the MOGAO KU (Peerless Caves) to the southeast of town and the QIANFO DONG (Caves of the Thousand Buddhas) about twenty miles to the west. Excavations to build the caves at the Mogao site began in the late-fourth century CE and continued into the mid-fourteenth century CE. Of the more than one thousand caves that were hewn from the cliff face, roughly half were decorated. Along with the cave sites of LONGMEN and YUNGANG further east and BEZEKLIK and KIZIL to the west, the Mogao grottoes contain some of the most spectacular examples of ancient Buddhist sculpture and wall painting to be found anywhere in the world. Legend has it that in 366 CE a wandering monk named Yuezun had a vision of a thousand golden buddhas at a site along some cliffs bordering a creek and excavated the first cave in the cliffs for his meditation practice. Soon afterward, additional caves were excavated and the first monasteries established to serve the needs of the monks and merchants traveling to and from China along the Silk Road. The caves were largely abandoned in the fourteenth century. In the early twentieth century, Wang Yuanlu (1849-1931), self-appointed guardian of the Dunhuang caves, discovered a large cache of ancient manuscripts and paintings in Cave 17, a side chamber of the larger Cave 16. As rumors of these manuscripts reached Europe, explorer-scholars such as SIR MARC AUREL STEIN and PAUL PELLIOT set out across Central Asia to obtain samples of ancient texts and artwork buried in the ruins of the Taklamakan desert. Inside were hundreds of paintings on silk and tens of thousands of manuscripts dating from the fifth to roughly the eleventh centuries CE, forming what has been described as the world's earliest and largest paper archive. The texts were written in more than a dozen languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Uighur, Khotanese, Tangut, and TOCHARIAN and consisted of paper scrolls, wooden tablets, and one of the world's earliest printed books (868 CE), a copy of the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"). In the seventh-century, a Tibetan garrison was based at Dunhuang, and materials discovered in the library cave also include some of the earliest documents in the Tibetan language. This hidden library cave was apparently sealed in the eleventh century. As a result of the competition between European, American, and Japanese institutions to acquire documents from Dunhuang, the material was dispersed among collections world-wide, making access to all the manuscripts difficult. Many items have still not been properly catalogued or conserved and there are scholarly disputes over what quantity of the materials are modern forgeries. In 1944 the Dunhuang Academy was established to document and study the site and in 1980 the site was opened to the public. In 1987 the Dunhuang caves were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and today are being preserved through the efforts of both Chinese and international groups.

Dushun. (J. Tojun; K. Tusun 杜順) (557-640). Chinese monk thaumaturge, meditator, and exegete who is recognized by tradition as the founder and putative first patriarch of the HUAYAN ZONG of East Asian Buddhism; also known as Fashun. Dushun was a native of Wengzhou in present-day Shaanxi province. He became a monk at the age of seventeen and is said to have studied meditation under a certain Weichen (d.u.) at the monastery of Yinshengsi. Later, he retired to the monastery of Zhixiangsi on ZHONGNANSHAN, where he devoted himself to study of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. The monk ZHIYAN (602-668) is presumed to have studied under Dushun at Zhixiangsi and subsequently came to be recognized as Dushun's formal successor. Some fourteen different works have been ascribed to Dushun at various points in history, but it is now presumed that only two of these can definitively be associated with him: the Huayan yisheng shixuan men ("The Ten Arcane Gates of the One Vehicle of the AvataMsaka"), which was composed by Dushun's successor, Zhiyan, supposedly from his teacher's oral teachings; and the HUAYAN FAJIE GUANMEN, one of the foundational texts of the nascent Huayan school. (Some scholars have proposed that this text may have been excerpted from FAZANG's Fa putixin zhang, and only later attributed to Dushun, but this hypothesis is not widely accepted.) Dushun is also portrayed as an advocate of various Sui- and Tang-dynasty cults associated with MANJUsRĪ and AMITĀBHA that were popular among the laity. Because of the sweeping scope of his religious career, Dushun is sometimes considered to be emblematic of the emerging "new Buddhism" of sixth- and seventh-century China, which sought to remake Buddhism into forms that would be more accessible to an indigenous audience.

elamite ::: n. --> A dweller in Flam (or Susiana), an ancient kingdom of Southwestern Asia, afterwards a province of Persia.

emeer ::: n. --> Same as Emir.
An Arabian military commander, independent chieftain, or ruler of a province; also, an honorary title given to the descendants of Mohammed, in the line of his daughter Fatima; among the Turks, likewise, a title of dignity, given to certain high officials.


Emeishan. (C. 峨嵋山/峨眉山). In Chinese, lit. "Delicate Eyebrows Mountain," a mountain located in Sichuan province that is traditionally listed as one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China, along with JIUHUASHAN in Anhui province, PUTUOSHAN in Zhejiang, and WUTAISHAN in Shanxi. The name Emeishan is derived from its two peaks, which face each other and are said to look like the delicate eyebrows of a classic Chinese beauty. The mountain covers more than 58 square miles (150 square kilometers), and its tallest peak, Wanfo Ding (Myriad Buddhas Summit), is 10,167 feet (3,099 meters) high, over 3280 feet (1,000 meters) higher than the other three sacred Buddhist mountains of China. The charming scenery of Emeishan has won it since ancient times the name "the greatest beauty under heaven." The patron BODHISATTVA of Emeishan is SAMANTABHADRA (C. Puxian pusa), who was said to have resided in Emeishan. Because of this connection, most monasteries on Emeishan house a statue of Samantabhadra. Emeishan is of exceptional cultural significance because Chinese tradition assumes it was the place where Buddhism first became established on Chinese territory and whence it spread widely. The first Buddhist monastery in China is said to have been built on Emeishan in the first century CE during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220). There were once more than a hundred monasteries and temples located on the mountain, but only about twenty remain today. These active monasteries include Baoguosi, Wanniansi, Fuhusi, Leiyinsi, Xianfengsi, Qianfosi, Huazangsi on the Golden Summit, and the Xixiangshi (Elephant Washing Pool) hermitage. At the foot of Emeishan, Baoguosi, built between 1573 and 1619 during the Ming dynasty, is the largest surviving monastery, and is the center of Buddhist activity on the mountain. Wanniansi, originally named Puxiansi, is one of the major monasteries and houses an exquisite copper statue of Samantabhadra riding a white elephant; made in 980 CE during the Song dynasty, the image is 24.11 feet (7.35 meters) high. The Jinding (Golden Summit), one of the mountain's main peaks, is 10,095 feet (3,077 meters) high and is the ideal place to view the sunrise, the sea of clouds, and strange atmospheric phenomena called Buddhist lights and sacred lamps. Emeishan is also a well-known nature preserve and is home to more than three thousand species of plants and two thousand species of animals, including groups of monkeys that often appear on the mountain roads. Near Emeishan is the remarkable Great Buddha of Leshan (C. LESHAN DAFO); the world's largest stone statue of MAITREYA, this image is 233 feet (71 meters) high and was carved out of a hillside in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty. In 1996, UNESCO listed Emeishan and the Great Buddha of Leshan as a World Heritage Site.

Enchin. (圓珍) (814-891). Japanese monk affiliated with the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) and reputed founder of the Jimon branch of the school. Enchin was a native of Sanuki in present-day Kagawa and a cousin of the SHINGON master KuKAI. At age fourteen, Enchin became the student of GISHIN, the abbot of ENRYAKUJI, and four years later received the full monastic precepts from him. For the next twelve years, Enchin remained in retreat on HIEIZAN. In 853, Enchin traveled to Fuzhou, China, and stayed at the nearby monastery of Kaiyuansi. There he studied the Sanskrit SIDDHAM script under the Indian TREPItAKA Boredaluo (PrajNātāra?). Enchin later visited Yuezhou and Taizhou (present-day Zhejiang province), where he studied Tiantai doctrine and practice. In 855, Enchin entered the Chinese capital of Chang'an with his fellow Japanese monk Ensai (d. 877), where they are believed to have received the "dharma-transmission ABHIsEKA" (denbo kanjo) from Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery of Qinglongsi, as well as the secret of teachings of the "two realms" (RYoBU) from PrajNācakra (d.u.). Enchin then returned to Mt. Tiantai in Taizhou with the new translations of esoteric scriptures that he acquired in Chang'an. Enchin returned to Japan in 858 and resided at the monastery of Onjoji (see MIIDERA). In 866, Enchin became the fifth head (zasu) of Enryakuji and was given imperial permission to transform Onjoji into the official grounds of "dharma-transmission abhiseka." A schism between the lineages of Enchin and ENNIN over the issue of succession in 993 led to the split between Ennin's Sanmon branch of Hieizan and Enchin's Jimon branch of Onjoji. Enchin was later given the posthumous title Great Master Chisho (Realization of Wisdom).

Ennin. (C. Yuanren 圓仁) (794-864). Japanese monk of the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG), who wrote a classic account of his ninth-century pilgrimage to China. A native of Tochigi prefecture, Ennin lost his father when young, and became a student of the eminent Japanese monk SAICHo at the monastery of ENRYAKUJI on HIEIZAN. Ennin was ordained on Mt. Hiei in 814 and received the full monastic precepts three years later at the precepts platform (kaidan) on the grounds of the monastery of ToDAIJI. In 838, Ennin traveled to China with his companions Engyo (799-852) and Jokyo (d. 866), arriving in Yangzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) at the mouth of the Yangzi River. The next year, he visited the monastery of Kaiyuansi, where he received the teachings and rituals of the various KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) deities from the monk Quanya (d.u.). Ennin also studied the Sanskrit SIDDHAM script while in China. When adverse winds kept him from returning to Japan, he remained behind at the monastery of Fahuayuan on Mt. Chi in Dengzhou (present-day Shandong province). From there, Ennin made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN and studied Tiantai doctrine and practice. In 840, Ennin arrived in the capital of Chang'an, where he studied the kongokai MAndALA under Yuanzheng (d.u.) of the monastery of Daxingshansi. The next year, Ennin also studied the teachings of the TAIZoKAI (garbhadhātu) and *SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA under Yizhen (d.u.) of the monastery of Qinglongsi. In 842, Ennin furthered his studies of the taizokai under Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery of Xuanfasi, siddham under Yuanjian (d.u.) of Da'anguosi, and siddham pronunciation under the Indian ĀCĀRYA Baoyue (d.u.). In 845, Ennin fled from the Huichang persecution of Buddhism (see HUICHANG FANAN) that then raged in Chang'an, and arrived back in Japan in 847. Ennin kept a detailed record of his sojourn in China in his famed diary, the NITTo GUHo JUNREI GYoKI (translated into English as A Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law). In 854, Ennin was appointed the head (zasu) of Enryakuji and three years later was allowed to perform the RYoBU ABHIsEKA for Emperor Buntoku (r. 850-858) in the palace. Ennin promoted the Tendai/Tiantai teachings of the four kinds of SAMĀDHI (sizhong sanmei), which he had brought back to Japan from China. He also made an effort to continue his teacher Saicho's attempt to implement the use of the bodhisattva precepts (see FANWANG JING) in Japan.

eparch ::: n. --> In ancient Greece, the governor or perfect of a province; in modern Greece, the ruler of an eparchy.

eparchy ::: n. --> A province, prefecture, or territory, under the jurisdiction of an eparch or governor; esp., in modern Greece, one of the larger subdivisions of a monarchy or province of the kingdom; in Russia, a diocese or archdiocese.

ethnarch ::: n. --> The governor of a province or people.

exarchate ::: n. --> The office or the province of an exarch.

extraprovincial ::: a. --> Not within of pertaining to the same province or jurisdiction.

eyalet ::: n. --> Formerly, one of the administrative divisions or provinces of the Ottoman Empire; -- now called a vilayet.

Fahua wenju. (J. Hokke mongu; K. Pophwa mun'gu 法華文句). In Chinese, "Words and Phrases of the 'Lotus Sutra'"; a major commentary on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, taught by TIANTAI ZHIYI and put into writing by his disciple Guanding (561-632), in alt. ten or twenty rolls. Along with the MOHE ZHIGUAN and the FAHUA XUANYI, the Fahua wenju is considered one of Zhiyi's three great commentaries. The lectures that formed the basis of the Fahua wenju were delivered by Zhiyi in 587 at the monastery of Jinzhaisi in Jinling (present-day Jiangsu province), and they offered a thorough exegetical analysis of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The Fahua wenju was incorporated in the Song-dynasty Buddhist canon at the recommendation of the Tiantai monk Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032) in 1024. The treatise employs a fourfold exegetical technique (sishi) unique to Zhiyi and his TIANTAI ZONG, viz., exegesis via: (1) causes and conditions, (2) classification of the teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI), (3) fundamentals and traces, and (4) contemplation on the mind. Throughout the Fahua wenju, the interpretations of other teachers, such as DAOSHENG, are critiqued. An influential commentary on the Fahua wenju known as the Fahua wenju ji was prepared by JINGXI ZHANRAN.

Fahua xuanyi. (J. Hokke gengi; K. Pophwa hyonŭi 法華玄義). In Chinese, "Profound Meaning of the 'Lotus Sutra,'" taught by the eminent Chinese monk TIANTAI ZHIYI and put into writing by his disciple Guanding (561-632). Along with the MOHE ZHIGUAN and FAHUA WENJU, the Fahua xuanyi is considered one of Zhiyi's three great commentaries. The lectures that form the basis of the Fahua xuanyi were delivered by Zhiyi in 593, perhaps at the monastery of Yuquansi in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province), and they are concerned with the thorough analysis of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. The treatise is divided into two broader methods of interpretation: general (tongshi) and specific (bieshi). The general interpretation further consists of seven subtypes, such as a listing of the chapters, citations, provenance, and so forth. The specific interpretation consists of five subtypes (see FAHUA WUCHONG XUANYI): the interpretation of the title, determination of its main theme, clarification of its main tenet, discussion of its purpose, and classification of its teachings (panjiao; see JIAOXIANG PANSHI). Nearly two-thirds of the treatise is dedicated to the first two characters in the title of the Chinese translation of the Saddharmapundarīka, "subtle" (miao) and "dharma" (fa).

Famensi. (法門寺). In Chinese, "Dharma-Gate Monastery," located approximately seventy miles outside the city of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) in Shaanxi province, China. Though the exact dates of its construction are unknown, the monastery claims to have been built during the Eastern Han dynasty but more likely dates from the Northern Wei period (386-534). One of only four monasteries in China to house a relic (sARĪRA) of the Buddha, Famensi was particularly renowned for its four finger-bone relics, which were displayed in the Tang-dynasty capital several times during the seventh and eighth centuries. Famensi's renowned thirteen-story, octagonal brick pagoda (STuPA) collapsed in 1981 after a torrential rainfall, and excavations in 1987 revealed three secret stone chambers under the foundations, which had remained unopened since the ninth century. The chambers housed a large number of precious objects, including incense burners (see GANDHAGHAtIKĀ), jewelry, and textile items, as well as 122 gold and silver objects that are exhaustively inventoried in two stone tablets written in 874 and left with the cache. An exquisite, gilded reliquary casket containing a nested series of smaller reliquaries was also discovered in the chamber. One of the purported finger-bone relics of the Buddha was found intact within the innermost reliquary; the other three were located elsewhere in the chambers.

Fayan Wenyi. (J. Hogen Mon'eki; K. Poban Munik 法眼文益) (885-958). Chinese CHAN master and reputed founder of the FAYAN ZONG of Chan. Fayan was a native of Yuhang in present-day Zhejiang province. At the age of six, he was ordained by the monk Quanwei (d.u.) of the monastery Xinding Zhitongyuan and later received the full monastic precepts at the monastery of KAIYUANSI in Yuezhou. Fayan first visited the Chan master Changqing Huiling (854-932); later, while staying at the monastery Dizangyuan on Mt. Shi (present-day Fujian province), he met Luohan Guichen (867-928) and eventually became his disciple. Later, Fayan arrived in Linchuan (present-day Jiangxi province) where he was invited by the steward to serve as abbot of the monastery of Chongshouyuan. Admired by the local ruler, Fayan was again invited as the abbot of the monastery of BAO'ENSI in Jinling (present-day Jiangsu province) and was given the title Chan master Jinghui (Pure Wisdom). Fayan later moved to the monastery of Qingliangyuan in Shengzhou (present-day Jiangsu province), which flourished under his guidance and the support of the ruler of the state of Wuye. He was also given the posthumous title Chan master Dafayan (Great Dharma Eye). Fayan composed the ZONGMEN SHIGUI LUN ("Treatise on the Ten Rules of the Tradition"), which outlines ten defects of Chan practice; the text is also important for being the first to name the so-called five houses (wu jia), viz., schools or lineages, of the mature Chan tradition (see WU JIA QI ZONG).

Fayan zong. (J. Hogenshu; K. Poban chong 法眼宗). In Chinese, the "Dharma Eye School," one of the "five houses" (wu jia; see WU JIA QI ZONG), or distinct schools, that had developed with the mature Chinese CHAN lineage during the late Tang dynasty, c. ninth to tenth centuries CE. Chan genealogical histories (see CHUANDENG LU) speak of a lineage of monks that can be traced back to the eminent Chan master FAYAN WENYI (885-958), who himself inherited the lineage(s) of XUEFENG YICUN (822-908), XUANSHA SHIBEI (835-908), and their student Luohan Guichen (867-928). With the support of the ruler of the state of Wuyue, Fayan and his monastery of Qingliangyuan in Shengzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) flourished. Fayan's prominent students TIANTAI DESHAO (891-972), Baizhang Daoheng (d. 991), Guizong Yirou (d.u.), and Bao'en Fa'an (d.u.) firmly established Fayan's line in the area of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. Chengtian Daoyuan (d.u.), the compiler of the influential genealogical history of Chan known as the JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, also belongs to the Fayan line of Chan through his teacher Tiantai Deshao.The Fayan line's interest in harmonizing the iconoclastic aspects of Chan with the exegetical tradition of HUAYAN and the recitative practices of PURE LAND (see NIANFO) is best exemplified in the Fanyan Chan master YONGMING YANSHOU's magnum opus ZONGJING LU. The works of Fayan masters also exerted much influence in Korean Son Buddhism. Although the Fayan zong did not survive into the Song dynasty as an active lineage, it remained an integral part of the retrospective imagining of the Chan tradition that took place during the Song.

Feilaifeng. (J. Hiraiho; K. Piraebong 飛来峰). In Chinese, "Flying-In Peak," site of Buddhist rock carvings and grottoes, located in front of LINGYINSI in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Feilaifeng houses the most important sculptural works of Tibetan Buddhism found in Han Chinese territory. The name of the peak was inspired by a legend, according to which Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) flew to this location from India. There are more than three hundred carved images still in existence at the site, with eleven from the Five Dynasties period, more than two hundred from the Song dynasty, and around one hundred from the Yuan. The Song-dynasty images were mostly carved during the Xianping era (998-1003) under Emperor Zhenzong. Many of these figures are ARHATs (C. LUOHAN), but some works illustrate special themes, such as XUANZANG's pilgrimage to India or MAITREYA's "Hemp Sack" (BUDAI) form. The gilded, colorfully painted Yuan images are delicately carved and constitute a significant development in the history of Chinese sculpture. Nearly half of these images depict esoteric themes, with buddhas, bodhisattvas, female deities, and dharma protectors (DHARMAPĀLA). The image enshrined in Niche 25 is VAJRADHARA. Also found here are images of MANJUsRĪ, AVALOKITEsVARA, and VAJRASATTVA. The female deity SITĀTAPATLĀ is depicted in Niche 22; she was highly venerated by the Yuan rulers because she was believed to be able to destroy armies and overcome disasters.

Feiyin Tongrong. (J. Hiin Tsuyo; K. Piŭn T'ongyong 費隱通容) (1593-1661). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG, who lived at the end of the Ming dynasty. Feiyin was a native of Min Prefecture in present-day Fujian province. After losing his father at age six and his mother at eleven, Feiyin entered the monastery two years later and became the student of a certain Huishan (d.u.) of Sanbaosi. Feiyin subsequently studied under the renowned Chan masters ZHANRAN YUANDENG, Wuming Huijing, and Wuyi Yuanlai. In 1622, he departed Jiangxi province for Mt. Tiantai, where he continued his studies under MIYUN YUANWU. Feiyin eventually became Miyun's disciple and inherited his lineage. In 1633, Feiyin served as abbot of Wanfusi on Mt. Huangbo. He subsequently resided at such monasteries as Tianningsi and WANSHOUSI in Zhejiang province. His disciple YINYUAN LONGQI edited Feiyin's teachings together in the Feiyin chanshi yulu. Feiyin himself composed several texts including the Chan primer ZUTING QIANCHUI LU and the Chan history Wudeng yantong.

friesic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Friesland, a province in the northern part of the Netherlands. ::: n. --> The language of the Frisians, a Teutonic people formerly occupying a large part of the coast of Holland and Northwestern Germany. The modern dialects of Friesic are spoken chiefly in the

frisian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Friesland, a province of the Netherlands; Friesic. ::: n. --> A native or inhabitant of Friesland; also, the language spoken in Friesland. See Friesic, n.

Fu dashi. (J. Fu daishi; K. Pu taesa 傅大士) (497-569). In Chinese, "Great Layman Fu," his secular name was Xi and he is also known as Shanhui, Conglin, and Dongyang dashi. Fu dashi was a native of Wuzhou in present-day Zhejiang province. At fifteen, he married and had two sons, Pujian and Pucheng. Originally a fisherman, he abandoned his fishing basket after hearing a foreign mendicant teach the dharma and moved to SONGSHAN (Pine Mountain). After attaining awakening beneath a pair of trees, he referred to himself as layman Shanhui (Good Wisdom) of Shuanglin (Paired Trees). While continuing with his severe ascetic practices, Fu and his wife hired out their services as laborers during the day and he taught at night, ultimately claiming that he had come from TUsITA heaven, where the future buddha MAITREYA was currently residing. He is said to have been summoned to teach at court during the reign of the Liang-dynasty emperor Wudi (r. 502-549). In 539, Fu dashi is said to have established the monastery Shuanglinsi at the base of Songshan. His collected discourses, verses, and poetry are preserved in the Shanhui dashi yulu, in four rolls, which also includes his own biography as well as those of four other monks who may have been his associates. Fu is also credited with inventing the revolving bookcase for scriptures, which, like a prayer wheel (cf. MA nI 'KHOR LO), could yield merit (PUnYA) simply by turning it. This invention led to the common practice of installing an image of Fu and his family in monastic libraries. In painting and sculpture, Fu dashi is typically depicted as a tall bearded man wearing a Confucian hat, Buddhist raiments, and Daoist shoes and accompanied by his wife and two sons.

Furong Daokai. (J. Fuyo Dokai; K. Puyong Tohae 芙蓉道楷) (1043-1118). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG, a native of Yizhou in present-day Shandong province. When he was young, Daokai is said to have trained to become a Daoist transcendent (shenxian). He later became a monk at the monastery Shushengyuan (or Shutaisi) in Jingshi, where he studied under a monk named Dexian (d.u.); and, in 1074, he received the full monastic precepts. Daokai later became a disciple of the Chan master TOUZI YIQING at the Chan monastery of Haihui Chansi on Mt. Baiyun in Shuzhou prefecture (present-day Anhui province). In 1082, he established himself on Mt. Xiantong in Yizhou and in 1103 became the second abbot of the influential Chan monastery of Baoshou Chanyuan on Mt. Dahong (present-day Hubei province). A year later he relocated to the Chan monastery of Shifang Jingyin Chanyuan in Dongjing (present-day Henan province) and again to the nearby Tianningsi in 1107. The emperor offered him a purple robe and the title Chan Master Dingzhao (DHYĀNA Illumination), but Daokai declined. Later, a prominent lay follower built a hermitage for him on Furong island (present-day Shandong province), whence he acquired his toponym. The community at Furong quickly grew into a prominent monastery. In 1117, Daokai's hermitage was given the official plaque Huayan Chansi, thereby elevating it to an official "monastery of the ten directions" (SHIFANGCHA). Inheriting his lineage were twenty-nine disciples, of whom the most famous was Danxia Zichun (1064-1117). Furong's teachings are recorded in the Furong Kai chanshi yuyao.

galilean ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Galileo; as, the Galilean telescope. See Telescope.
Of or relating to Galilee. ::: n. --> A native or inhabitant of Galilee, the northern province of Palestine under the Romans.


Ganjin. (C. Jianzhen 鑑眞) (688-763). Chinese VINAYA master and reputed founder of the RISSHu and the monastery of ToSHoDAIJI in Japan; also known as Todai Wajo. Ganjin was a native of Guangling, Yangzhou, in present-day Jiangsu province. He studied TIANTAI thought and practice and the vinaya under the vinaya master Dao'an (654-717). Having returned to Yangzhou from his studies in Chang'an and Luoyang, he led an illustrious career at the monastery of Damingsi as a famous lecturer on the vinaya of the NANSHAN LÜ ZONG, and is credited with the establishment of many monasteries. In 733, two monks from Nara, Eiei (d. 748) and Fusho (d.u.), arrived in China. While studying in Chang'an, they learned of Ganjin and headed for Damingsi in 742 to meet him. The next year, Ganjin made his first attempt to go to Japan. After four more failed attempts, Ganjin was finally able to arrive in Japan in 754. During his earlier attempts, Ganjin had lost his eyesight and Eiei had lost his life. Upon his arrival, he was warmly welcomed by retired Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749) and the Buddhist community in Japan. In the summer of 754, an ordination platform was prepared at the great Nara monastery of ToDAIJI, where Ganjin conferred the precepts on Emperor Shomu and others. A precepts hall was constructed the next year in 755. In 756, Ganjin and RYoBEN (689-773), the abbot of Todaiji, were appointed to senior ecclesiastical positions at court. A year after Empress Koken (r. 749-758) abdicated the throne in 758, a new monastery, named Toritsu Shodaiji (alt. Toshodaiji), was built and granted to Ganjin. In 763, as death neared, Ganjin had a statue of himself made and installed in his quarters at Toshodaiji, which remains to this day.

Gaofeng Yuanmiao. (J. Koho Genmyo; K. Kobong Wonmyo 高峰原妙) (1238-1295). Yuan-dynasty Chinese CHAN monk in the YANGQI PAI of the LINJI ZONG. Gaofeng was a native of Suzhou in present-day Jiangsu province. He was ordained at the age of fourteen and two years later began his studies of TIANTAI thought and practice under Fazhu (d.u.) at the monastery of Miyinsi. He later continued his studies under Chan master WUZHUN SHIFAN's disciples Duanqiao Miaolun (1201-1261) and Xueyan Zuqin (1215-1287). Gaofeng trained in Chan questioning meditation (KANHUA CHAN), and Xueyan Zuqin taught him the necessity of contemplating his meditative topic (HUATOU) not just while awake, but also during dreams, and even in dreamless sleep. (In his own instructions on GONG'AN practice, Gaofeng eventually used the same question Zuqin had asked him: "Do you have mastery of yourself even in dreamless sleep?") In 1266, Gaofeng went into retreat at Longxu in the Tianmu mountains of Linan (in present-day Zhejiang province) for five years, after which he is said to have had a great awakening when the sound of a falling pillow shattered his doubt (YIQING). In 1274, he began his residence at a hermitage on Shuangji peak in Wukang (present-day Zhejiang province), and in 1279 he began teaching at Shiziyan on the west peak of the Tianmu mountains. He subsequently established the monasteries of Shizisi and Dajuesi, where he attracted hundreds of disciples, including the prominent ZHONGFENG MINGBEN (1263-1323). He was given the posthumous title Chan Master Puming Guangji (Universal Radiance and Far-reaching Salvation). Gaofeng is most renowned for his instruction on the "three essentials" (SANYAO) of kanhua Chan practice: the great faculty of faith, great fury, and great doubt. Gaofeng's teachings are recorded in his discourse record, the Gaofeng dashi yulu, and his GAOFENG HESHANG CHANYAO, better known as simply the Chanyao ("Essentials of Chan"; K. Sonyo), which has been a principal text in Korean monastic seminaries since at least the seventeenth century. Gaofeng is also known for his famous gong'an: "Harnessing the moon, the muddy ox enters the sea."

Gau ::: (Ger. Province) A territorial unit administered by the Nazis during WWII . Germany was divided into 42 Gau, and the Nazi official in charge of a Gau was known as a Gauleiter).

Genshin. (源信) (942-1017). Japanese TENDAISHu monk, scholar, and artist, popularly known as ESHIN SoZU (Head Monk of Eshin) because he spent much of his life at the monastery of Eshin at YOKAWA on HIEIZAN. Genshin was born in Yamato province (present-day Nara prefecture), but after losing his father at a young age, he was put in the care of the Tendai center on Mt. Hiei. It is believed that during his teens he formally joined the institution and became a student of the Tendai reformer RYoGEN (912-985). Genshin first gained a name for himself in 974 due to his sterling performance in an important debate at Mt. Hiei. Eventually, Genshin retired to the secluded monastery of Shuryogon'in in Yokawa, where he devoted the rest of his life primarily to scholarship. Genshin wrote on a wide array of Buddhist topics related to both Tendai and PURE LAND practices and is also regarded as the founder of the Eshin school of Tendai, which espoused the notion that everyone is inherently awakened (J. HONGAKU). While it is uncertain if any of his art is extant, Genshin was both a sculptor and painter, and his paintings of the buddha Amida (S. AMITĀBHA) welcoming believers into the PURE LAND, referred to as raigozu, helped to popularize this subject in Japan. The most influential of Genshin's works was the oJo YoSHu ("Collection of Essentials on Going to Rebirth" [in the pure land]), written in 985, one of the first Japanese treatises on the practice of nenbutsu (C. NIANFO) and the soteriological goal of rebirth in the pure land, playing an important role in laying the groundwork for an independent pure land tradition in Japan a century later. The ojo yoshu offers a systematic overview of pure land thought and practice, using extensive passages culled from various scriptures and treatises, especially the writings of the Chinese pure land monks DAOCHUO and SHANDAO. Genshin contends that the practice of nenbutsu is relatively easy for everyone and is appropriate for people during the dharma-ending age (mappo; see MOFA), especially as a deathbed practice. The ojo yoshu was also one of the few texts written in Japan that made its way to China, where it influenced the development of pure land Buddhism on the mainland. Japanese Buddhists have long debated whether Genshin should be primarily viewed as affiliated with either the Tendai or pure land schools. In fact, however, this distinction was not relevant during Genshin's own lifetime, since an independent pure land tradition did not yet exist at that point. Given the Tendai notion that all beings can attain buddhahood through a variety of means, an argument he supports in his Ichijo yoketsu ("Essentials of the One Vehicle"), Genshin asserts that nenbutsu (C. nianfo) practice is the best method for reaching this goal. Pure land practice for Genshin therefore fits under the larger umbrella of Tendai thought. Nonetheless, Genshin's presentation of pure land beliefs and practice offered a foundation for the development of pure land Buddhism in Japan, notably in its influence on HoNEN (1133-1212) and SHINRAN (1173-1263); for this reason, the JoDO SHINSHu school considers Genshin to be the sixth patriarch in its lineage.

germanize ::: v. t. --> To make German, or like what is distinctively German; as, to Germanize a province, a language, a society. ::: v. i. --> To reason or write after the manner of the Germans.

Gishin. (義眞) (781-833). Japanese monk who was the first head (zasu) of the TENDAISHu. At a young age, Gishin became the student of the Japanese monk SAICHo, who dwelled on HIEIZAN. He later went to the monastery of DAIANJI and studied the VINAYA under the Chinese vinaya master GANJIN. Gishin also studied Chinese under Jiken (d.u.) of ToDAIJI. In 804, the novice Gishin followed his teacher Saicho to China where he primarily served as an interpreter for his teacher. That same year, Saicho and Gishin arrived at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai (in present-day Zhejiang province). There, Gishin was ordained, receiving the full monastic precepts. The next year, both Saicho and Gishin received the "perfect teaching" (C. YUANJIAO) BODHISATTVA precepts (engyo bosatsukai) of the FANWANG JING from the reputed seventh patriarch of the TIANTAI tradition Daosui (d.u.) at the monastery of Longxingsi. Before their return to Japan that year, both Saicho and Gishin purportedly received initiation into the "two realms" (RYoBU) of the KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) and TAIZoKAI (garbadhātu) MAndALAs from a certain Shunxiao (d.u.) during their sojourn in Yuezhou (present-day Zhejiang province). After Saicho's death in 823, Gishin was given permission to construct a MAHĀYĀNA precepts platform (daijo kaidan) at his monastery of ENRYAKUJI. In 832, he was appointed the first head (zasu) of the Tendai school on Mt. Hiei.

gozan. (五山). In Japanese, "five mountains"; a medieval Japanese ranking system for officially sponsored ZEN monasteries, which may derive from Chinese institutional precedents. Large and powerful public monasteries in China known as "monasteries of the ten directions" (SHIFANGCHA) came under the control of the Chinese state during the Song dynasty and were designated either as VINAYA or CHAN monasteries. Government administration of these monasteries eventually ceased, but it is widely believed that five major Chan monasteries in Zhejiang province (ranked in the order of WANSHOUSI, Lingyinsi, Jingdesi, Jingci Bao'en Guangxiaosi, and Guanglisi) were selected to be protected and governed by the state, largely through the efforts of the Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO and his disciples. Whether this is indeed the beginning of a "five-mountain ranking system" is unclear, but by the Yuan dynasty the term was clearly in use in China. The implementation of this system in Japan began under the rule of the Kamakura shogun Hojo Sadatoki (1271-1311). Five illustrious RINZAISHu monasteries in Kamakura, including KENCHoJI and ENGAKUJI, were granted gozan status and given a specific rank. A reordering of the gozan ranks occurred when Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339) came to power in 1333. The powerful Zen monasteries in Kyoto, NANZENJI and DAITOKUJI, replaced Kenchoji and Engakuji as the top-ranking monasteries, and the monastery of ToFUKUJI was added to the gozan system. The gozan ranks were changed again several times by the Ashikaga shogunate. By the Muromachi period, some three hundred official monasteries (kanji) were ranked either gozan, jissatsu (ten temples), or shozan (many mountains). The term gozan also came to denote the prosperous lineages of MUSo SOSEKI and ENNI BEN'EN, who populated the gozan monasteries; monks in these lineages were particularly renowned for their artistic and literary talents in classical Chinese and brushstroke art. There seems also to have been a five-mountain convent system (amadera gozan or niji gozan) for Japanese nuns, which paralleled the five-mountain monastery system of the monks, but little is known about it.

Great Revolt (66-73 CE) ::: The first of three major rebellions by the Jews of Judea Province against the Roman Empire (the second was the Kitos War in 115–117 AD, the third was Bar Kokhba's revolt, 132–135 CE). It began in the year 66, stemming from Greek and Jewish religious tension. It ended when legions under Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem, looted and burned Herod's Temple (in the year 70) and Jewish strongholds (notably Gamla in 67 and Masada in 73), and enslaved or massacred a large part of the Jewish population. The defeat of the Jewish revolts by the Roman Empire also contributed substantially to the numbers and geography of the Jewish diaspora, as many Jews were scattered or sold into slavery after losing their state.

Guangshengsi. (廣勝寺). In Chinese, "Monastery of Vast Triumph"; located in the Zhaocheng county seat in southern Shanxi province, the monastery's foundation legend traces its history back to 147 CE. The monastery is comprised of two monastic compounds, called the lower (xiasi) and upper (shangsi) Guangsheng monasteries. The upper monastery was rebuilt in 769 CE during the Tang, when the Taizong emperor (r. 762-779 CE) bestowed upon it the current name of Guangsheng or "Vast Triumph." Upper Guangsheng monastery was known for housing both Buddhist relics and two editions of the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING), one dating from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE), the other from the Yuan (1271-1368 CE). Lower Guangsheng monastery was originally an independent monastery. It is unique in that its main shrine hall, which dates from 1319 CE during the Yuan dynasty, was not specifically Buddhist or Daoist but was instead dedicated to a local god-Mingying Wang, the King of Righteous Response. The monastery was later subsumed by its neighbor, Upper Guangsheng monastery, and since the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) has been known as Lower Guangsheng monastery.

Guifeng Zongmi. (J. Keiho Shumitsu; K. Kyubong Chongmil 圭峰宗密) (780-841). Chinese CHAN master and historian; putative fifth patriarch of the HUAYAN tradition and successor in the Heze school of CHAN; best known for positing the fundamental harmony between the scriptural teachings of Buddhism and Chan practice. Zongmi was a native of Xichong in present-day Sichuan province. Although little is known of his early life, Zongmi is said to have received a classical Confucian education. In 804, Zongmi encountered the monk Daoyuan (d.u.), purportedly a fourth-generation lineage holder of the Heze line of Chan (see HEZE SHENHUI), and became his student. During this period, Zongmi also carried on his studies of the YUANJUE JING. In 808, Zongmi received the full monastic precepts from Daoyuan, who then recommended the monk Nanyin Weizhong (d. 821) as a suitable teacher. In 810, Zongmi met the monk Lingfeng (d.u.), a disciple of the Huayan monk CHENGGUAN, at the monastery of Huijuesi. Two years later Zongmi began his studies of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA under CHENGGUAN in Chang'an. In 816, Zongmi began his residence at the monastery of Zhijusi on ZHONGNANSHAN and in 821 he retired to the temple Caotangsi on Gui peak (Guifeng), whence he acquired his toponym. There, Zongmi devoted himself to such works as his influential commentary on the Yuanjue jing, the Yuanjue jing dashu. In 828, Zongmi was invited to the palace and given a purple robe and the title Dade (Great Virtue). During his stay at the capital he met many important statesmen including Pei Xiu (787-860). Zongmi was a prolific writer whose works include commentaries on the AvataMsakasutra, VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, DASHENG QIXIN LUN, MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya"), and others. He also composed a massive, 100-roll history of the Chan school, the Chanyuan zhuquanji ("Collected Writings on the Source of Chan"), only the prolegomenon to which is extant (see CHANYUAN ZHUQUANJI DUXU). Zongmi's writings were extremely influential in the mature Korean SoN school and, especially, in the thought and practice of POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), who drew on Zongmi to advocate an accord between the traditions of Son (C. Chan; meditation) and Kyo (C. JIAO; doctrine). See also LINGZHI; FANZHAO.

Guishan Lingyou. [alt. Weishan Lingyou] (J. Isan Reiyu; K. Wisan Yongu 潙山靈祐) (771-853). Chinese CHAN master and cofounder of the GUIYANG ZONG of the mature Chan tradition. Guishan was a native of Fuzhou prefecture in present-day Fujian province. He was ordained at the age of fifteen and studied SuTRA and VINAYA at Longxingsi in Hangzhou prefecture (present-day Zhejiang province). Later, Guishan became the disciple of the eminent Chan master BAIZHANG HUAIHAI (720-814) of Hongzhou prefecture (present-day Jiangxi province). Along with HUANGBO XIYUN (d. 850?), Guishan became one of Baizhang's most prominent disciples and an emblematic teacher of Tang-dynasty Chan. He later moved to Guishan, whence he acquired his toponym, and taught more than forty close disciples. Among his disciples, the most important is YANGSHAN HUIJI (807-883). The names of the mountains on which Guishan and his student Yangshan resided were used collectively to refer to their prosperous Chan lineage, the Guiyang. He was later bestowed the title Chan master Dayuan (Great and Perfect). His teachings are recorded in the Tanzhou Guishan Lingyou chanshi yulu and GUISHAN JINGCE.

guoshi. (J. kokushi; K. kuksa 國師). In Chinese, "state preceptor," a high ecclesiastical office in East Asian Buddhist religious institutions. The first record of a "state preceptor" in China occurs during the reign of Emperor Wenxian (r. 550-559) of the Northern Qi dynasty, who is said to have appointed the monk Fachang (d.u.) as a guoshi after listening to his disquisition at court on the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. During the Tang dynasty, many renowned monks were appointed as guoshi, including FAZANG (643-712) as the Kangzang guoshi, CHENGGUAN (738-839) as the Qingliang guoshi, and NANYANG HUIZHONG (d. 775) as the Nanyang guoshi. In Japan, the term kokushi was used during the Nara period to refer to the highest ecclesiastical office accredited to each province (koku) by the central government. In Korea, kuksa were appointed from the Silla through early Choson dynasties and the term referred to a senior monk who served as a symbolic religious teacher and adviser to the state. The kuksa system appears to have become firmly established in Korea during the Koryo dynasty, which treated Buddhism as a virtual state religion. The first king of the Koryo dynasty, Wang Kon (T'aejo, r. 918-943), established a system of "royal preceptors" (wangsa) for his own religious edification, in distinction to the "state preceptors" who ministered to the government more broadly. The institution of ecclesiastical examinations (SŬNGKWA) during the reign of the king Kwangjong (r. 949-975) further systematized the appointments of both kuksa and wangsa. The kuksa and wangsa were compared to the parents of sentient beings and were thus placed at a status higher than even the king himself in state ceremonies. A monk could be posthumously appointed as a kuksa, and it was common during the Koryo dynasty for the king to reverentially appoint his wangsa as a kuksa following his spiritual adviser's death. Because Confucian ideologues during the late Koryo criticized the political roles played by kuksa and wangsa as examples of the corruption of Buddhism, the offices were eventually abolished during the reign of the third king of the Confucian-oriented Choson dynasty, T'aejong (r. 1400-1418).

habitant ::: v. t. --> An inhabitant; a dweller.
An inhabitant or resident; -- a name applied to and denoting farmers of French descent or origin in Canada, especially in the Province of Quebec; -- usually in plural.


Haedong kosŭng chon. (海東高僧傳). In Korean, "Lives of Eminent Korean Monks," putatively compiled in 1215 by the monk Kakhun (d.u.), abbot of the monastery of Yongt'ongsa, and the only such indigenous biographical collection of its kind (see GAOSENG ZHUAN) extant in Korea. A copy of the Haedong kosŭng chon was ostensibly discovered by the monk Hoegwang Sason (1862-1933; also known as Yi Hoegwang) amid a pile of old documents housed at a "certain" monastery in North Kyongsang province. A critical edition of this copy was published by Ch'oe Namson (1809-1957) in the magazine Pulgyo ("Buddhism") in 1927; the original document has never been seen again. The published recension of the Haedong kosŭng chon contains only the first two chapters, on yut'ong, or propagators of the religion. The first chapter is largely concerned with the history of the transmission of Buddhism from India to China and Korea. This roll contains the biographies of eight Korean monks and briefly mentions three others. The second roll contains the biographies of ten eminent Silla monks who made pilgrimages to India and China (e.g., WoN'GWANG and ANHAM) and also mentions the activities of eleven other figures; large portions of this roll are derived from the Chinese hagiographical anthology XU GAOSENG ZHUAN. There is also considerable overlap between the Haedong kosŭng chon and Iryon's (1206-1289) supposedly contemporaneous Buddhist history SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms"). These several overlaps in material, as well as issues involving the provenance of the manuscript discovered by Yi Hoegwang, raise concerns about the authenticity of the Haedong kosŭng chon that have yet to be resolved.

Haeinsa. (海印寺). In Korean, "Ocean-Seal Monastery," or "Oceanic-Reflection Monastery"; the twelfth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Kaya Mountain, in Hapch'on, South Kyongsang province. Along with SONGGWANGSA and T'ONGDOSA, Haeinsa is considered to be one of the "three-jewel monasteries" (SAMBO SACH'AL) which represent one of the three jewels of Buddhism (RATNATRAYA); Haeinsa is traditionally designated the "Dharma-Jewel Monastery" (Poppo sach'al) because of its pair of scriptural repositories, which house the woodblocks of the second Koryo-dynasty carving of the Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG; see also DAZANGJING). These paired halls are placed on top of a hill overlooking the main buddha hall in order to accentuate Haeinsa's role as a surrogate for the DHARMA. Haeinsa was established in 802 to celebrate the successful healing of King Aejang's (r. 800-808) queen by the two monks Sunŭng (d.u.) and Yijong (d.u.). The woodblock canon carved in the first half of the thirteenth century was moved to Haeinsa during the reign of King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398). In 1392, King T'aejo also repaired Haeinsa's old pagoda, and King Sejo (r. 1455-1468) later repaired the library halls housing the canon (Changgyonggak). The monastery went through extensive repairs again for three years from 1488 to 1490, but most of its treasures of old (with the fortunate exception of the woodblocks) were lost in a series of fires that broke out in the compounds between the years 1862 and 1874. Most of the buildings that stand today were rebuilt after those conflagrations.

Hagith: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing Venus, ruler of 21 Olympian Provinces of the universe; his day is Friday.

Hakuin Ekaku. (白隱慧鶴) (1685-1768). Japanese ZEN master renowned for revitalizing the RINZAISHu. Hakuin was a native of Hara in Shizuoka Prefecture. In 1699, Hakuin was ordained and received the name Ekaku (Wise Crane) from the monk Tanrei Soden (d. 1701) at the nearby temple of Shoinji. Shortly thereafter, Hakuin was sent by Tanrei to the temple of Daishoji in Numazu to serve the abbot Sokudo Fueki (d. 1712). Hakuin is then said to have lost faith in his Buddhist training and devoted much of his time instead to art. In 1704, Hakuin visited the monk Bao Sochiku (1629-1711) at the temple Zuiunji in Mino province. While studying under Bao, Hakuin is said to have read the CHANGUAN CEJIN by YUNQI ZHUHONG, which inspired him to further meditative training. In 1708, Hakuin is said to have had his first awakening experience upon hearing the ringing of a distant bell. That same year, Hakuin met Doju Sokaku (1679-1730), who urged him to visit the Zen master Dokyo Etan (1642-1721), or Shoju Ronin, at the hermitage of Shojuan in Iiyama. During one of his begging rounds, Hakuin is said to have had another important awakening after an old woman struck him with a broom. Shortly after his departure from Shojuan, Hakuin suffered from an illness, which he cured with the help of a legendary hermit named Hakuyu. Hakuin's famous story of his encounter with Hakuyu was recounted in his YASENKANNA, Orategama, and Itsumadegusa. In 1716, Hakuin returned to Shoinji and devoted much of his time to restoring the monastery, teaching students, and lecturing. Hakuin delivered famous lectures on such texts as the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, BIYAN LU, BAOJING SANMEI, DAHUI PUJUE CHANSHI SHU, and YUANREN LUN, and the recorded sayings (YULU) of LINJI YIXUAN, WUZU FAYAN, and XUTANG ZHIYU. He also composed a number of important texts during this period, such as the Kanzan shi sendai kimon, Kaian kokugo, and SOKKoROKU KAIEN FUSETSU. Prior to his death, Hakuin established the monastery of Ryutakuji in Mishima (present-day Shizuoka prefecture). Hakuin was a strong advocate of "questioning meditation" (J. kanna Zen; C. KANHUA CHAN), which focused on the role of doubt in contemplating the koan (GONG'AN). Hakuin proposed that the sense of doubt was the catalyst for an initial SATORI (awakening; C. WU), which had then to be enhanced through further koan study in order to mature the experience. The contemporary Rinzai training system involving systematic study of many different koans is attributed to Hakuin, as is the famous koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (see SEKISHU KoAN). Hakuin was a prolific writer who left many other works as well, including the Dokugo shingyo, Oniazami, Yabukoji, Hebiichigo, Keiso dokuzui, Yaemugura, and Zazen wasan. Hakuin also produced many prominent disciples, including ToREI ENJI, Suio Genro (1716-1789), and GASAN JITo. The contemporary Japanese Rinzai school of Zen traces its lineage and teachings back to Hakuin and his disciples.

Hanshan Deqing. (J. Kanzan Tokusei; K. Kamsan Tokch'ong 憨山德清) (1546-1623). In Chinese, "Crazy Mountain, Virtuous Clarity"; Ming-dynasty Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG; also known as Chengyin. Hanshan was a native of Quanjiao in Jinling (present-day Nanjing in Jiangsu province). He entered the monastery at age eleven and was ordained at the age of eighteen. Hanshan then studied under the monks Yungu Fahui (d.u.) and Fangguang (d.u.) of Mt. Funiu and later retired to WUTAISHAN. In 1581, Hanshan organized an "unrestricted assembly" (WUZHE DAHUI) led by five hundred worthies (DADE) on Mt. Wutai. In 1587, Hanshan received the patronage of the empress dowager, who constructed on his behalf the monastery Haiyinsi in Qingzhou (present-day Shandong province) and granted the monastery a copy of the Buddhist canon. Hanshan, however, lost favor with Emperor Shenzong (r. 1572-1620) and was sent to prison in Leizhou (present-day Guangdong province). In 1597, Hanshan reestablished himself on CAOXISHAN, where he devoted most of his time to restoring the meditation hall, conferring precepts, lecturing on scriptures, and restructuring the monastic regulations. In 1616, he established the Chan monastery of Fayunsi on LUSHAN's Wuru Peak. In 1622, Hanshan returned to Mt. Caoxi and passed away the next year. Hanshan was particularly famous for his cultivation of Chan questioning meditation (KANHUA CHAN) and recollection of the Buddha's name (NIANFO). Along with YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615), DAGUAN ZHENKE (a.k.a. Zibo) (1542-1603), and OUYI ZHIXU (1599-1655), Hanshan was known as one of the four great monks of the Ming dynasty. Hanshan was later given the posthumous title Chan master Hongjue (Universal Enlightenment). His teachings are recorded in the Hanshan dashi mengyou quanji.

Hanshan. (J. Kanzan; K. Hansan 寒山) (d.u.; fl. mid-eighth century). In Chinese, "Cold Mountain"; sobriquet of a legendary Tang dynasty poet and iconoclast of near-mythic status within Chinese Buddhism. The HANSHAN SHI, one of the best-loved collection of poems in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, is attributed to this obscure figure. Hanshan (Cold Mountain) is primarily known as a hermit who dwelled on Mt. Tiantai, in present-day Zhejiang province. References to Hanshan are scattered throughout the discourse records (YULU) of various Chan masters and biographies of eminent monks (GAOSENG ZHUAN). Hanshan also became a favored object in brushstroke art (BOKUSEKI), in which he is often depicted together with SHIDE and FENGGAN. Together, these three iconoclasts are known as the "three recluses of Guoqing [monastery]."

Hanshan shi. (J. Kanzan shi; K. Hansan si 寒山詩). In Chinese, "Cold Mountain's Poems," attributed to the legendary Chinese iconoclast HANSHAN (Cold Mountain); also known as Hanshan shiji. Sometime between 766 and 779, Hanshan is presumed to have retired to Mt. Tiantai (in present-day Zhejiang province), where he composed his famous poetry. The poems of the legendary monks FENGGAN and SHIDE are also included at the end of Hanshan's poetry collection. During the Song dynasty, the Hanshan shi was also known as the Sanyin ji ("Collection of the Three Recluses"). The Hanshan shi was widely read for its sharp satire of his times and its otherworldliness. The earliest edition was published in 1189 at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai.

Helin Xuansu. (J. Kakurin Genso; K. Hangnim Hyonso 鶴林玄素) (668-752). Chinese CHAN master in the NIUTOU ZONG, also known as Daoqing or Masu (from his secular surname Ma). Helin was ordained at the monastery of Changshousi in present-day Jiangsu province, but later in his life moved to Youqisi, where he became a disciple of the fifth-generation Niutou successor Zhiwei (646-722). At another monk's request, Helin moved once again to the monastery of Helinsi on Mt. Huanghe in Yunzhou prefecture, whence he acquired his toponym. He died without any symptoms of illness in 752 at the age of eighty-four. He was subsequently given the posthumous title Chan master Dalü (Great Discipline). He claims among his disciples Jingshan Daoqin (714-792) and FAHAI, whom the Dunhuang edition of the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch") states is the compiler of the text.

Heze Shenhui. (J. Kataku Jinne; K. Hat'aek Sinhoe 荷澤神會) (684-758). Chinese CHAN master and reputed main disciple of the sixth patriarch HUINENG; his collateral branch of Huineng's lineage is sometimes referred to as the Heze school. Shenhui was a native of Xiangyang in present-day Hubei province. He became a monk under the master Haoyuan (d.u.) of the monastery of Kuochangsi in his hometown of Xiangyang. In 704, Shenhui received the full monastic precepts in Chang'an, and extant sources provide differing stories of Shenhui's whereabouts thereafter. He is said to have become a student of SHENXIU and later visited MT. CAOXI where he studied under Huineng until the master's death in 713. After several years of traveling, Shenhui settled down in 720 at the monastery of Longxingsi in Nanyang (present-day Henan province). In 732, during an "unrestricted assembly" (WUZHE DAHUI) held at the monastery Dayunsi in Huatai, Shenhui engaged a monk by the name of Chongyuan (d.u.) and publicly criticized the so-called Bei zong (Northern school) of Shenxiu's disciples PUJI and XIANGMO ZANG as being a mere collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage that upheld a gradualist soteriological teaching. Shenhui also argued that his teacher Huineng had received the orthodox transmission of Bodhidharma's lineage and his "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO). In 745, Shenhui is said to have moved to the monastery of Hezesi in Luoyang, whence he acquired his toponym. He was cast out of Luoyang by a powerful Northern school follower in 753. Obeying an imperial edict, Shenhui relocated to the monastery of Kaiyuansi in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province) and assisted the government financially by performing mass ordinations after the economic havoc wrought by the An Lushan rebellion in 755. He was later given the posthumous title Great Master Zhenzong (Authentic Tradition). Shenhui also plays a minor, yet important, role in the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"). A treatise entitled the XIANZONGJI, preserved as part of the JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, is attributed to Shenhui. Several other treatises attributed to Shenhui were also discovered at DUNHUANG. Shenhui's approach to Chan practice was extremely influential in GUIFENG ZONGMI's attempts to reconcile different strands of Chan, and even doctrine, later in the Tang dynasty; through Zongmi, Shenhui's teachings also became a critical component of the Korean Son master POJO CHINUL's accounts of Chan soteriology and meditation.

Honen. (法然) (1133-1212). Japanese monk regarded as the founder of the JoDOSHu, or PURE LAND school. Honen was a native of Mimasaka province. After his father's violent death, Honen was entrusted to his uncle, a monk at the nearby monastery of Bodaiji. Honen later headed for HIEIZAN in 1147 to received ordination. He began his studies under the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) monks Genko (d.u.) and Koen (d. 1169), but the corruption he perceived within the Tendai community at ENRYAKUJI led Honen to seek teachings elsewhere. In 1150, he visited the master Eiku (d. 1179), a disciple of the monk RYoNIN, in Kurodani on Mt. Hiei, where he remained for the next twenty years. Under Eiku's guidance, Honen studied GENSHIN's influential treatise, the oJo YoSHu and became a specialist in the practice of nenbutsu ("recollecting the Buddha's name"; see C. NIANFO). Honen is also said to have devoted himself exclusively to the practice of invoking the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (a type of nenbutsu) after perusing the Chinese monk SHANDAO's influential commentary on the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the Guan Wuliangshou jing shu. In 1175, Honen left Mt. Hiei and established himself in the district of Higashiyama Yoshimizu in the capital Kyoto. His fame grew after his participation in the ohara discussion of 1186, which explored how pure land beliefs and practices could help overcome human suffering. Honen soon attracted many followers, including such prominent figures as the regent Kujo Kanezane (1149-1207). In 1198, Honen compiled his influential treatise, SENCHAKUSHu. Due perhaps to his growing influence and his purported rejection of the Tendai teachings of original enlightenment (HONGAKU), the monks of Enryakuji began attacking Honen, banning his practice of nenbutsu in 1204. The monks of the Nara monastery of KoFUKUJI also petitioned the retired emperor Gotoba (r. 1183-1198) to ban the practice in 1205. A scandal involving two of Honen's disciples led to his exile to Shikoku in 1207 and the execution of four of his disciples. He was later pardoned and returned to Kyoto in 1211. Due to illness, he died the next year in what is now known as the Seishido in the monastery of Chion'in. Honen preached that, in the current degeneration age of the dharma (J. mappo; C. MOFA), the exclusive practice of nenbutsu was the only way through which salvation could be achieved. Due in part to Honen's advocacy, nenbutsu eventually became one of the predominant practices of Japanese Buddhism. Honen's preeminent disciple was SHINRAN (1173-1262), who further radicalized pure land practice by insisting that salvation was only possible through the grace of Amitābha, rather than through continuous nenbutsu practice.

Hongren. (J. Konin/Gunin; K. Hongin 弘忍) (601-674). Chinese Chan master and the reputed fifth patriarch of the Chan zong. Hongren was a native of Huangmei in Qizhou (present-day Hubei province). Little is known of his early life, but he eventually became the disciple of the fourth patriarch DAOXIN. After Daoxin's death in 651, Hongren succeeded his teacher and moved to Mt. Fengmao (also known as Dongshan or East Mountain), the east peak of Mt. Shuangfeng (Twin Peaks) in Huangmei. Hongren's teachings thus came to be known as the "East Mountain teachings" (DONGSHAN FAMEN), although that term is later applied also to the lineage and teachings of both Daoxin and Hongren. After his move to Mt. Fengmao, disciples began to flock to study under Hongren. Although Hongren's biography in the CHUAN FABAO JI certainly exaggerates when it says that eight to nine out of every ten Buddhist practitioners in China studied under him, there is no question that the number of students of the East Mountain teachings grew significantly over two generations. The twenty-five named disciples of Hongren include such prominent figures as SHENXIU, Zhishen (609-702), Lao'an (d. 708), Faru (638-689), Xuanze (d.u.), and HUINENG, the man who would eventually be recognized by the mature Chan tradition as the sixth, and last, patriarch. The legendary account of Hongren's mind-to-mind transmission (YIXIN CHUANXIN) of the DHARMA to Huineng can be found in the LIUZU TAN JING. Later, Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) bestowed upon Hongren the title Chan master Daman (Great Abundance). The influential treatise XIUXIN YAO LUN ("Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind") is attributed to Hongren; it stresses the importance of "guarding the mind" (SHOUXIN). In that text, the relationship between the pure mind and the afflictions (KLEsA) is likened to that between the sun and the clouds: the pure mind is obscured by afflictions just as the sun is covered by layers of clouds; but if one can guard the mind so that it is kept free from false thoughts and delusions, the sun of NIRVĀnA will then appear. The text suggests two specific meditation techniques for realizing this goal: one is continuously to visualize the original, pure mind (viz., the sun) so that it shines without obscuration; the other is to concentrate on one's own deluded thoughts (the clouds) until they disappear. These two techniques purport to "guard the mind" so that delusion can never recur.

Hongzhi Zhengjue. (J. Wanshi Shogaku; K. Koengji Chonggak 宏智正覺) (1091-1157). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG. Hongzhi was a native of Xizhou in present-day Shanxi province, and later came to be known as the "Old Buddha of Xizhou." At age ten, he entered the monastery of Jingmingsi under the monk Benzong (d.u.) and four years later received the full monastic precepts from Zhiqiong (d.u.) at Ciyunsi. Hongzhi then set out to visit various teachers throughout the country and first studied under the Chan master Kumu Facheng (1071-1128). Hongzhi eventually became a student of the Chan master Danxia Zichun (1064-1117) and inherited his Caodong lineage. In 1124, Hongzhi became the abbot of Puzhaosi in Sizhou (present-day Anhui province). After holding posts at various other monasteries, Hongzhi was finally invited to Mt. Tiantong (in present-day Zhejiang province) in 1129 and spent the next three decades restoring his monastery at that mountain site. The great SAMGHA hall (SENGTANG) that he constructed there is said to have housed more than twelve hundred monks. Hongzhi is thus often referred to as the reviver of Mt. Tiantong. Hongzhi is best known within the Chan tradition for teaching a style of meditation he called "silent-illumination chan" (MOZHAO CHAN). Hongzhi also maintained a lengthy and close relationship with his friend and rival, the eminent LINJI ZONG master DAHUI ZONGGAO, who was a virulent critic of mozhao Chan. Hongzhi composed the MOZHAO MING and his teachings can be found in the Hongzhi Jue chanshi yuyao, Hongzhi Jue chanshi yulu, and Hongzhi guanglu. Hongzhi's famous verse commentaries on a hundred "old cases" (see GONG'AN) can be found in the CONGRONG LU. Emperor Gaozong subsequently bestowed upon him the title Chan master Hongzhi (Expansive Wisdom).

Hongzhou zong. (J. Koshushu; K. Hongju chong 洪州宗). The Hongzhou school of Chinese CHAN derives its name from the Hongzhou region in Jiangxi province, where the Chan master MAZU DAOYI developed his unique style of Chan pedagogy. The name was first used by the Chan historian GUIFENG ZONGMI to refer primarily to those who traced their lineage back to Mazu and his immediate disciples. According to traditional accounts of their teachings, Chan masters in the Hongzhou line regarded all activities of everyday life as the very functioning of the buddha-nature (FOXING) itself. Since everything in the conditioned realm, therefore, was presumed to be a manifestation of the buddha-nature, Hongzhou adepts were said to claim that all actions, whether right or wrong, good or evil, and so forth, were equally the functioning of the enlightened mind. Zongmi criticized this view as promoting a dangerous antinomianism in Chan, which fostered unrestrained conduct (see WU'AI XING). Normative portrayals in Chan literature of iconoclastic masters striking their students, shouting, and pinching their students' noses derive from stereotypes fostered within the Hongzhou school. Largely through the efforts of Mazu's prominent disciples BAIZHANG HUAIHAI and NANQUAN PUYUAN, the Hongzhou line came to be the dominant Chan lineage in medieval China and eventually evolved into the GUIYANG ZONG and LINJI ZONG of the mature Chan tradition. The Hongzhou lineage was also extremely influential in Silla and Koryo-period Korea as well, where eight of the nine sites associated with the Korean Nine Mountains Son school (KUSAN SoNMUN) were founded during the ninth century by teachers who studied in China with Hongzhou masters.

Hsi-tsang (Chinese) [from hsi west + tsang (cf Tibet tsan) a central province of Tibet whose most important city is Shigatse] Blavatsky spells Si-dzang. The name for Tibet “mentioned in the MSS. of the sacred library of the province of Fo-Kien [Fu-chien], as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages before Buddha” (SD 1:271n).

Huangbo Xiyun. (J. obaku Kiun; K. Hwangbyok Hŭiun 黄檗希運) (d. 850). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty. Huangbo was a native of Min in present-day Fujian province. Little is known of his early life, but he eventually became a monk on Mt. Huangbo in Fuzhou (present-day Fuzhou province). Huangbo later became the disciple of the eminent Chan master BAIZHANG HUAIHAI, a first-generation successor to MAZU DAOYI. After he left Baizhang's side, Huangbo became the abbot of the monastery of Da'ansi where he trained many students. At the invitation of the powerful minister of state Pei Xiu (787-860), Huangbo left for Zhongling (present-day Jiangxi province) and began to reside on a local mountain that he renamed Mt. Huangbo, whence he acquired his toponym. During this period, Huangbo acquired many more disciples and established himself as a major Chan master. In 842, Huangbo relocated to the monastery of Longxingsi and again to Kaiyuansi in Wanling (present-day Anhui province) in 848. His most famous disciple is LINJI YIXUAN (d. 867) whose lineage became the dominant Chan school in China, the eponymous LINJI ZONG. Huangbo's teachings focus on the notion of the "one mind" (YIXIN) that vivifies all things, including enlightened buddhas and unenlightened sentient beings. Chan practice therefore involves simply bringing an end to all discriminative thought so that the one mind will be made manifest. Pei Xiu compiled his notes of Huangbo's lectures, which he titled the CHUANXIN FAYAO. Huangbo received the posthumous title Chan master Duanji (Eradicating Limits).

Huanglong Huinan. (J. oryo/oryu Enan; K. Hwangnyong Hyenam 龍慧南) (1002-1069). Song-dynasty Chan monk who is regarded as the founder of the HUANGLONG PAI collateral lineage of the LINJI ZONG. He ordained as a monk at the age of eleven, eventually becoming a disciple of Shishuang Chuyuan (986-1039), a sixth-generation successor in the Linji school. He spent much of his life teaching at Mt. Huanglong in Xiushui county of Jiangxi province, whence he acquired his toponym. Huanglong was famous for employing three crucial questions to challenge his students and encourage their cultivation; these are known as "Huanglong's Three Checkpoints" (Huanglong sanguan): What conditioned your birth (viz., why were you born)? Why are my hands like the Buddha's? Why are my feet like a donkey's? His Huanglong lineage lasted for about one hundred fifty years, before being reabsorbed into the rival YANGQI PAI.

Huanglong pai. (J. oryoha/oryuha; K. Hwangnyong p'a 龍派). In Chinese, "Huanglong school"; collateral lineage of the CHAN school's LINJI ZONG, one of the five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the Chan during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1126). The school's name comes from the toponym of its founder, HUANGLONG HUINAN (1002-1069), who taught at Mt. Huanglong in present-day Jiangxi province; Huinan was a disciple of Shishuang Chuyuan (986-1039), himself a sixth-generation successor in the Linji school. The Huanglong school was especially known for "lettered Chan" (WENZI CHAN), a style of Chan that valorized belle lettres, and especially poetry, in Chan practice. Many of the most influential monks in the Huanglong school exemplified a period when Chan entered the mainstream of Chinese intellectual life: their practice of Chan was framed and conceptualized in terms that drew from their wide learning and profound erudition, tendencies that helped make Chan writings particularly appealing to wider Chinese literati culture. JUEFAN HUIHONG (1071-1128), for example, decried the bibliophobic tendencies in Chan that were epitomized in the aphorism that Chan "does not establish words and letters" (BULI WENZI) and advocated that Chan insights were in fact made manifest in both Buddhist sutras and the uniquely Chan genres of discourse records (YULU), lineage histories (see CHUANDENG LU), and public-case anthologies (GONG'AN). Huanglong and YUNMEN ZONG masters made important contributions to the development of the Song Chan literary styles of songgu ([attaching] verses to ancient [cases]) and niangu (raising [and analyzing] ancient [cases]). Because of their pronounced literary tendencies, many Huanglong monks became close associates of such Song literati-officials as Su Shi (1036-1101), Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), and ZHANG SHANGYING (1043-1122). After the founder's death, discord appeared within the Huanglong lineage: the second-generation master Baofeng Kewen (1025-1102) and his disciple Juefan Huihong criticized the practices of another second-generation master Donglin Changzong (1025-1091) and his disciples as clinging to silence and simply waiting for enlightenment; this view may have influenced the subsequent criticism of the CAODONG ZONG by DAHUI ZONGGAO (1089-1163), who trained for a time with the Huanglong master Zhantang Wenjun (1061-1115). The Huanglong pai was the first school of Chan to be introduced to Japan: by MYoAN EISAI (1141-1215), who studied with the eighth-generation Huanglong teacher Xu'an Huaichang (d.u.). The Huanglong pai did not survive as a separate lineage in either country long after the twelfth century, as its rival YANGQI PAI came to prominence; it was eventually reabsorbed into the Yangqi lineage.

Huiguo. (J. Keika; K. Hyegwa 惠果) (746-805). Tang-dynasty Chinese monk, reputed seventh patriarch of esoteric Buddhism (J. MIKKYo), and a master especially of the KONGoKAI and TAIZoKAI transmissions. Huiguo was a native of Shaanxi province. He became a monk at an early age and went to the monastery of Qinglongsi in the Chinese capital of Chang'an, where he became a student of the master (ĀCĀRYA) AMOGHAVAJRA's disciple Tanchen (d.u.). In 765, Huiguo received the full monastic precepts, after which he is said to have received the teachings on the VAJRAsEKHARASuTRA from Amoghavajra himself. Two years later, Huiguo is also said to have received instructions on the taizokai and the SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA from the obscure Korean monk Hyonch'o (d.u.), a purported disciple of ācārya sUBHAKARASIMHA. In 789, Huiguo won the support of Emperor Dezong (r. 779-805) by successfully praying for rain. Huiguo's renown was such that he received disciples from Korea, Japan, and even Java. In 805, Huiguo purportedly gave instructions on the kongokai and taizokai to the eminent Japanese pilgrim KuKAI during the three months prior to the master's death, and eventually performed the consecration ritual (ABHIsEKA) for his student. Kukai thus claimed that Huiguo was the Chinese progenitor of the Japanese SHINGONSHu. That same year, Huiguo passed away at his residence in the Eastern Pagoda cloister at Qinglongsi.

Huike. (J. Eka; K. Hyega 慧可) (c. 487-593). "Wise Prospect"; putative second patriarch of the CHAN ZONG. Huike (a.k.a. Sengke) was a native of Hulao (alt. Wulao) near Luoyang in present-day Henan province. When he was young, Huike is said to have mastered the Confucian classics and Daoist scriptures in addition to the Buddhist SuTRAs. He was later ordained by a certain Baojing (d.u.) on Mt. Xiang near Longmen, and received the full monastic precepts at Yongmusi. In 520, he is said to have made his famous visit to the monastery of SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN, where he became the disciple of the Indian monk and founder of Chan, BODHIDHARMA. According to legend, Huike is said to have convinced the Indian master to accept him as a disciple by cutting off his left arm as a sign of his sincerity. (His biography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN tells us instead that he lost his arm to robbers.) Once Bodhidharma finally relented, Huike asked him to pacify his mind. Bodhidharma told him in response to bring him his mind, but Huike replied that he has searched everywhere for his mind but has not been able to find it anywhere. "Well, then," said Bodhidharma, in a widely quoted response, "I've pacified it for you." This brief encounter prompted Huike's awakening experience. Later, Huike taught at the capital Ye (present-day Henan province), where he is said to have amassed a large following. In 550, Huike ostensibly transmitted Bodhidharma's DHARMA to the obscure monk SENGCAN (the putative third patriarch of Chan) and later went into hiding during Emperor Wu's (r. 560-578) persecution of Buddhism (574-578).

Huineng. (J. Eno; K. Hyenŭng 慧能) (638-713). Chinese Chan master and reputed sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of the CHAN ZONG. While little is known of the historical figure, the legendary Huineng of the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch") is an ubiquitous figure in Chan literature. According to his hagiography, Huineng was born in Xinzhou (present-day Guangdong province). As a youth, he cared for his poor mother by gathering and selling firewood. One day at the market he heard someone reciting the famous VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") and immediately decided to enter the monastery. Huineng subsequently visited HONGREN, the fifth Chan patriarch, on East Mountain in Qizhou (present-day Hubei province). After spending eight years in the threshing room, the illiterate Huineng heard a monk reciting a verse that had just been posted on a wall of the monastery, a verse written secretly by Hongren's senior disciple, SHENXIU: "The body is the BODHI TREE, / The mind is like a bright mirror's stand. / Be always diligent in polishing it, / Do not let any dust alight." Immediately recognizing that the writer's understanding was deficient, Huineng in response composed a verse reply, which he asked a colleague to write down for him: "BODHI fundamentally has no tree, / The bright mirror also has no stand. / Fundamentally there is not a single thing, / Where could any dust alight?" After reading the verse the next day, Hongren secretly called Huineng to his room in the middle of the night and recited a line from the "Diamond Sutra," which prompted in Huineng a great awakening. Hongren then secretly transmitted the robe and bowl of Chan's founder and first patriarch, BODHIDHARMA, to Huineng, making him the sixth (and ultimately last) patriarch of the Chan school; but he ordered his successor to go into hiding, lest he be harmed by followers of Shenxiu. Huineng then fled south. In 677, he received the full monastic precepts from the dharma master Yinzong (d.u.) at the monastery of Faxingsi in Nanhai (present-day Guangdong province). The next year, Huineng relocated to the monastery of Baolinsi on CAOXISHAN, the mountain that remains forever associated with him, where he attracted many students and followers. In 815, Emperor Xianzong (r. 805-820) bestowed upon him the posthumous title Chan master Dajian (Great Speculum). The monks QINGYUAN XINGSI, NANYUE HUAIRANG, HEZE SHENHUI, and YONGJIA XUANJUE are said to have been Huineng's preeminent disciples. Huineng is claimed to have been the founder of the so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) of Chan, and to have instructed his students in the "sudden teachings" (DUNJIAO), the explication of which prompted much of the Chan school's subsequent soteriological developments and intrasectarian polemics. Although we have little historical evidence about either Huineng the person or his immediate disciples, all the various strands of the mature Chan tradition retrospectively trace their pedigrees back to him, making the legend of the sixth patriarch one of the most influential in the development of the Chan school.

Huyèn Quang. (玄光) (1254-1334). Third patriarch of the TRÚC LM school of the Vietnamese THIỀN (C. Chan) tradition; his personal name was Lý Đạo Tái and he was a native of Giang Hạ (present-day Hà Bắc province). After passing the civil-service examination and serving as a scholar-official, he left home to become a monk in 1305, when he was already fifty-one years old. He first studied under Chan master Bão Phác of Lẽ Vĩnh monastery and then became a follower of Tràn Nhan Tông and, after the latter's death, of Pháp Loa, who was thirty years his junior. After a short stint as abbot of Van Yen monastery on Mount Yen Tử, he moved to Côn Sơn monastery. Huyèn Quang was already seventy-seven years old when he succeeded Pháp Loa as the third patriarch of the Trúc Lam school in 1331 but seems never to have had the ambition to lead the Buddhist order. He died at Côn Sơn in 1334. Huyèn Quang was a talented poet, who left behind more than twenty poems, most of which deal with the beauty of the natural world.

Huyin Daoji. (J. Koin Dosai; K. Hoŭn Toje 湖隱道濟) (1150-1209). Chinese monk and thaumaturge who is associated with the YANGQI PAI of the LINJI ZONG of CHAN school; he is most commonly known in Chinese as JIGONG (Sire Ji) and sometimes as Jidian (Crazy Ji). A popular subject in vernacular Chinese fiction and plays, it has become difficult to separate the historical Jigong from the legend. Jigong is said to have been a native of Linhai in present-day Zhejiang province. He later visited the Chan master Xiatang Huiyuan (1103-1176), received the full monastic precepts at his monastery of Lingyinsi (present-day Jiangsu province), and became his disciple. After he left Xiatang's side, Jigong is said to have led the life of an itinerant holy man. During this period, Jigong's antinomian behavior, most notably his drinking and meat eating, along with his accomplishments as a trickster and wonderworker, became the subject of popular folklore. His unconventional behavior seems to have led to his ostracism from the SAMGHA. Jigong later moved to the monastery of Jingcisi, where he died in 1209. His teachings are recorded in the Jidian chanshi yulu (first printed in 1569).

Hwansong Chian. (喚醒志安) (1664-1729). Korean monk from the mid-Choson dynasty. Hwansong Chian was a disciple of Woltam Solche (1632-1704) and of Moun Chinon (1622-1703), at the time was the most respected Hwaom (HUAYAN) scholar in the kingdom. At Chinon's request, Hwansong Chian began to lecture on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA in Chinon's place. Chinon eventually entrusted his disciples to Chian, and Chian thus acquired a name for himself as a Hwaom master. In 1725, he held a grand Hwaom lecture and attracted more than fourteen hundred listeners. Given the suspicion Buddhist activities engendered during this time of the religion's persecution, the government was deeply concerned about the potentially seditious impact of his lectures and consequently had him arrested and imprisoned. Chian was released after it was eventually revealed that he was falsely accused. Subsequently, a high Confucian official from Cholla province petitioned for his arrest, and he was sent into exile on Cheju island, where he died seven days later on July 7, 1729. His writings include the Sonmun ojong kangyo and the Hwansong chip.

hyrcan ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Hyrcania, an ancient country or province of Asia, southeast of the Caspian (which was also called the Hyrcanian) Sea.

imwotko. (C. shi shenme; J. kore ikan; K. /si simma 是甚麼). In vernacular Korean (and specifically the dialect of Kyongsang province), "What is this?"; the foundational contemplative question (K. hwadu; C. HUATOU) used within the Korean SoN (C. CHAN) tradition. This hwadu was taught by both KYoNGHo SoNGU (1849-1912) and YONGSoNG CHINJONG (1864-1940) as part of their attempts to revive Korean kanhwa Son (C. KANHUA CHAN) practice at the turn of the twentieth century. Imwotko is a dialectical contraction of the standard vernacular Korean phrase "Igosi muosin ko" ("What is this?"), which is the translation of the classical Chinese question "What is this?" (C. SHI SHENME; K. si simma) that was frequently raised by teachers in the Chinese Chan tradition. For example, the sixth patriarch HUINENG (638-713) is said to have asked, "There is this one thing that supports the heavens above and opens the earth below. It is as bright as the sun and moon and as dark as a lacquer barrel. It is constantly inside all my activities. What is that thing?" And MAZU DAOYI (709-788) asked, "It is not mind, not buddha, not a thing. So, what is it?" Imwotko differs from the enigmatic expressions of the enlightenment experience that appear in many of the Son exchanges between master and disciple; it is instead presumed to ask the fundamental question about what existence itself means, such as what is my original face (K. pollae myonmok; C. BENLAI MIANMU). By asking this most basic of existential questions, imwotko is thought to generate the sensation of doubt (K. ŭijong; C. YIJING) more readily than might the standard Son GONG'AN and is often thus the first hwadu given to beginning meditators, and especially laypersons, in Korean Son training. But because the doubt generated by imwotko may not be as intense and sustained as that generated by the standard kongan, monks and nuns will typically shift from imwotko to one of those cases as their meditation progresses.

indict ::: v. t. --> To write; to compose; to dictate; to indite.
To appoint publicly or by authority; to proclaim or announce.
To charge with a crime, in due form of law, by the finding or presentment of a grand jury; to find an indictment against; as, to indict a man for arson. It is the peculiar province of a grand jury to indict, as it is of a house of representatives to impeach.


In the Ideen and in later works, Husserl applied the epithet "transcendental" to consciousness as it is aside from its (valid and necessary) self-apperception as in a world. At the same time, he restricted the term "psychic" to subjectivity (personal subjects, their streams of consciousness, etc.) in its status as worldly, animal, human subjectivity. The contrast between transcendental subjectivity and worldly being is fundamental to Husserl's mature concept of pure phenomenology and to his concept of a universal phenomenological philosophy. In the Ideen, this pure phenomenology, defined as the eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity, was contrasted with psychology, defined as the empirical science of actual subjectivity in the world. Two antitheses are involved, however eidetic versus factual, and transcendental versus psychic. Rightly, they yield a four-fold classification, which Husserl subsequently made explicit, in his Formale und Transzendentale Logik (1929), Nachwort zu meinen Ideen (1930), and Meditations Cartesiennes (1931). In these works, he spoke of psychology as including all knowledge of worldly subjectivity while, within this science, he distinguished an empirical or matter-of-fact pure psychology and an eidetic pure psychology. The former is "pure" only in the way phenomenology, as explicitly conceived in the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, is pure: actual psychic subjectivity is abstracted as its exclusive theme, objects intended in the investigated psychic processes are taken only as the latter's noematic-intentional objects. Such an abstractive and self-restraining attitude, Husserl believed, is necessary, if one is to isohte the psychic in its purity and yet preserve it in its full intentionality. The instituting and maintaining of such an attitude is called "psychological epoche"; its effect on the objects of psychic consciousness is called "psychological reduction." As empiricism, this pure psychology describes the experienced typical structures of psychic processes and of the typical noematic objects belonging inseparably to the latter by virtue of their intrinsic intentionality. Description of typical personalities and of their habitually intended worlds also lies within its province. Having acquired empirical knowledge of the purely psychic, one may relax one's psychological epoche and inquire into the extrapsychic circumstances under which, e.g., psychic processes of a particulai type actually occur in the world. Thus an empirical pure intentional psychology would become part of a concrete empirical science of actual psychophysical organisms.

'Jam dbyangs bzhad pa'i rdo rje Ngag dbang brtson 'grus. (Jamyang Shepe Dorje Ngawang Tsondrü) (1648-1722). The originator, and first in the line of 'JAM DBYANGS BZHAD PA SPRUL SKU (incarnations) that are the head lamas of BLA BRANG BKRA SHIS DKYIL monastery in A mdo, northeastern Tibet, now part of Gansu province in northwest China. He arrived in LHA SA in 1668 and entered Sgo mang grwa tshang (monastic college) of 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery. He received both his sRĀMAnERA and BHIKsU ordinations from the fifth DALAI LAMA. In 1676, he entered the tantric college of RGYUD SMAD. A prolific writer, his collected works (gsung 'bum) in fifteen volumes include commentaries on the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA and VAJRABHAIRAVATANTRA, and long and detailed commentaries on ABHIDHARMA, PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, VINAYA, and a range of issues in MADHYAMAKA and YOGĀCĀRA philosophy; these works replaced those of Gung ru Chos kyi 'byung gnas as the authoritative standard works (yig cha) studied in the Sgo mang college of 'Bras spungs monastery, and in the network of provincial monasteries associated with it. Among his most famous works is his doxography of the Indian philosophical schools, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, known as Grub mtha' chen mo. In the political turmoil that followed the death of the fifth DALAI LAMA in 1682 and the rule of SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO in his name, 'Jam dbyangs bzhad pa was appointed abbot of Sgo mang in 1700. However, he came into conflict with the Sde srid over the latter's attempt to force a change in the monastic curriculum at 'Bras spungs, stepping down from the abbacy. He developed a friendship with Lha bzang Khan, the military ruler of central Tibet, accepting from him the hermitage of Pha bong kha located above SE RA monastery. He apparently sought to pacify the strained relations between the Sde srid and the Lha bzang Khan, but after the execution of the Sde srid by Mongolian forces in 1705, he left central Tibet for A mdo in 1709 where he founded Bla brang bkra shis dkyil. It grew into a huge monastery and a center of scholarship in its own right. The monastery attracted many Mongolian students and its influence was instrumental in consolidating the power of the DGE LUGS sect and the new DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government over the A mdo regions.

'Jam dbyangs bzhad pa. (Jamyang Shepa). The name of a line of SPRUL SKU (incarnations) that are the head lamas of BLA BRANG BKRA SHIS DKYIL monastery in A mdo in northeastern Tibet, now part of the Chinese province of Gansu. The first, 'JAM DBYANGS BZHAD PA'I RDO RJE NGAG DBANG BRTSON 'GRUS, founded Bla brang; the second, Dkon mchog 'jig med dbang po (Konchok Jigme Wangpo, 1728-1791), was a prolific scholar and writer. There have been a total of six incarnations.

jieshe. (J. kessha; K. kyolsa 結社). In Chinese, "retreat society"; a generic designation for various religious reform movements that were especially popular during Song-dynasty China and Koryo-dynasty Korea. These fraternal societies had their antecedents in the AMITĀBHA society of LUSHAN HUIYUAN (334-416) during the Eastern Jin dynasty and were widespread by the ninth century. By the Song dynasty, such communities were pervasive throughout China, especially in the south. These societies were typically involved in TIANTAI, HUAYAN, and PURE LAND practice, though some were dedicated to the worship of a specific BODHISATTVA, such as SAMANTABHADRA. These societies were typically founded outside the ecclesiastical establishment and, by encouraging both lay and ordained adepts to train together, they fostered some measure of religious egalitarianism within East Asian Buddhism. The jieshe movement was especially influential in Koryo-dynasty Korea, where some fourteen separate kyolsa sites are mentioned in the Koryosa ("History of Koryo"), from Kangwon province in the north to South Cholla province in the south. The best known is the CHoNGHYE KYoLSA (Samādhi and PrajNā Society) initiated in 1180 by POJO CHINUL (1158-1210) and formally established in 1188, which was dedicated to SoN (Chan) cultivation. In 1197, the community had grown so large that it was relocated to Kilsangsa on Mt. Songgwang, the site of the major present-day monastery of SONGGWANGSA. The residents of the society are said to have gathered together to recite sutras, train in meditation, and engage in group work activity. Chinul's first composition, the Kwon su Chonghye kyolsa mun ("Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samādhi and PrajNā Society"), written in 1290, provided the rationale behind the establishment of the community and critiqued pure land adepts who claim that buddhahood cannot be achieved in the present lifetime. Chinul was joined at his community by the Ch'ont'ae (TIANTAI) adept WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1240), who subsequently founded the Paengnyon kyolsa (White Lotus Society) in 1211 at Mandoksan in the far southwest of the peninsula, which was engaged in Ch'ont'ae practice.

Jingxi Zhanran. (J. Keikei Tannen; K. Hyonggye Tamyon 荊溪湛然) (711-782). Chinese monk who is the putative ninth patriarch of the TIANTAI ZONG; also known as Great Master Miaole (Sublime Bliss) and Dharma Master Jizhu (Lord of Exegesis). Zhanran was a native of Jingqi in present-day Jiangsu province. At age nineteen, Zhanran became a student of the monk Xuanlang (673-754), who had revitalized the community on Mt. Tiantai. After Xuanlang's death, Zhanran continued his efforts to unify the disparate regional centers of Tiantai learning under the school's banner; for his efforts, Zhanran is remembered as one of the great revitalizers of the Tiantai tradition. A gifted exegete who composed numerous commentaries on the treatises of TIANTAI ZHIYI, Zhanran established Zhiyi's MOHE ZHIGUAN, FAHUA XUANYI, and FAHUA WENJU as the three central texts of the Tiantai exegetical tradition. His commentary on the Mohe zhiguan, the MOHE ZHIGUAN FUXING ZHUANHONG JUE, is the first work to correlate ZHIGUAN (calmness and insight) practice as outlined by Zhiyi with the teachings of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the central scripture of the Tiantai tradition. In his JINGANG PI ("Adamantine Scalpel"), Zhanran argued in favor of the controversial proposition that insentient beings also possess the buddha-nature (FOXING). Zhanran's interpretation of Tiantai doctrine and the distinction he drew between his own tradition and the rival schools of the HUAYAN ZONG and CHAN ZONG set the stage for the internal Tiantai debates during the Song dynasty between its on-mountain (shanjia) and off-mountain (shanwai) branches (see SHANJIA SHANWAI). Zhanran lectured at various monasteries throughout the country and was later invited by emperors Xuanzong (r. 712-756), Suzong (r. 756-762), and Daizong (r. 762-779) to lecture at court, before retiring to the monastery Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai.

Jingying Huiyuan. (J. Joyo Eon; K. Chongyong Hyewon 浄影慧遠) (523-592). Chinese monk and putative DI LUN exegete during the Sui dynasty. Huiyuan was a native of DUNHUANG. At an early age, he entered the monastery of Guxiangusi in Zezhou (present-day Shanxi province) where he was ordained by the monk Sengsi (d.u.). Huiyuan later studied various scriptures under the VINAYA master Lizhan (d.u.) in Ye, the capital of the Eastern Wei dynasty. In his nineteenth year, Huiyuan received the full monastic precepts from Fashang (495-580), ecclesiastical head of the SAMGHA at the time, and became his disciple. Huiyuan also began his training in the DHARMAGUPTAKA "Four-Part Vinaya" (SIFEN LÜ) under the vinaya master Dayin (d.u.). After he completed his studies, Huiyuan moved back to Zezhou and began his residence at the monastery Qinghuasi. In 577, Emperor Wu (r. 560-578) of Northern Zhou began a systematic persecution of Buddhism, and in response, Huiyuan is said to have engaged the emperor in debate; a transcript of the debate, in which Huiyuan defends Buddhism against criticisms of its foreign origins and its neglect of filial piety, is still extant. As the persecution continued, Huiyuan retreated to Mt. Xi in Jijun (present-day Henan province). Shortly after the rise of the Sui dynasty, Huiyuan was summoned by Emperor Wen (r. 581-604) to serve as overseer of the saMgha (shamendu) in Luozhou (present-day Henan). He subsequently spent his time undoing the damage of the earlier persecution. Huiyuan was later asked by Emperor Wen to reside at the monastery of Daxingshansi in the capital. The emperor also built Huiyuan a new monastery named Jingyingsi, which is often used as his toponym to distinguish him from LUSHAN HUIYUAN. Jingying Huiyuan was a prolific writer who composed numerous commentaries on such texts as the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, SHIDI JING LUN (VASUBANDHU's commentary on the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA), DASHENG QIXIN LUN, and others. Among his works, the DASHENG YI ZHANG ("Compendium of the Purport of Mahāyāna"), a comprehensive encyclopedia of Mahāyāna doctrine, is perhaps the most influential and is extensively cited by traditional exegetes throughout East Asia. Jingying Huiyuan also plays a crucial role in the development of early PURE LAND doctrine in East Asia. His commentary on the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the earliest extant treatise on this major pure land scripture, is critical in raising the profile of the Guan jing in East Asian Buddhism. His commentary to this text profoundly influenced Korean commentaries on the pure land scriptures during the Silla dynasty, which in turn were crucial in the the evolution of Japanese pure land thought during the Nara and Heian periods. Jingying Huiyuan's concept of the "dependent origination of the TATHĀGATAGARBHA" (rulaizang yuanqi)-in which tathāgatagarbha is viewed as the "essence" (TI) of both NIRVĀnA and SAMSĀRA, which are its "functioning" (YONG)-is later adapted and popularized by the third HUAYAN patriarch, FAZANG, and is an important precursor of later Huayan reconceptualizations of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA; see FAJIE YUANQI).

Jingzhong zong. (J. Joshushu; K. Chongjung chong 淨衆宗). A branch of the early CHAN ZONG that flourished at the monastery Jingzhongsi in Chengdu (present-day Sichuan province). The history of the Jingzhong line is documented in the LIDAI FABAO JI. According to this text, the Jingzhong line is derived from the Chan master Zhishen (609-702), a disciple of the fifth patriarch HONGREN. Zhishen is also said to have received the purple robe of the Chan founder BODHIDHARMA from Empress Dowager WU ZETIAN, which was ostensibly transmitted to Zhishen's disciple Chuji (648-734/650-732/669-736) and then to CHoNGJUNG MUSANG (C. Jingzhong Wuxiang) and BAOTANG WUZHU. The Lidai fabao ji, authored by a disciple of Wuzhu, claims that the Jingzhong lineage is eventually absorbed into the BAOTANG ZONG, though the two seem in fact to have been distinct lineages. The eminent Chan masters MAZU DAOYI and GUIFENG ZONGMI are also known to have once studied under teachers of the Jingzhong line of Chan. The school is most closely associated with the so-called three propositions (sanju), a unique set of Chan precepts that were equated with the traditional roster of the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ): "no recollection" (wuyi), which was equated with morality (sĪLA); "no thought" (WUNIAN) with concentration (SAMĀDHI); and "no forgetting" (mowang) with wisdom (PRAJNĀ). These three propositions are associated most closely with Musang, but other texts attribute them instead to Musang's putative successor, Wuzhu. The portrayal in the literature of the teachings of the Jingzhong school divides along the fault line of these two great teachers, with Musang's Chan adaptation of mainstream Buddhist teachings contrasting markedly with Wuzhu's more radical, even antinomian approach, deriving from HEZE SHENHUI. The Jingzhong masters are also said to have had some influence in Tibet (see BSAM YAS DEBATE), including on the development of MAHĀYOGA and RDZOGS CHEN.

Jiuhuashan. (九華山). In Chinese, "Nine Florate Mountain"; located in southeastern China, in Qingyang county, Anhui province. Jiuhuashan is one of the four Buddhist sacred mountains of China, along with PUTUOSHAN in Zhejiang, EMEISHAN in Sichuan, and WUTAISHAN in Shanxi. Each mountain is said to be the residence of a specific BODHISATTVA, with Jiuhuashan considered the holy mountain of KsITIGARBHA (DIZANG PUSA), a revered bodhisattva in China, who is regarded as the redeemer of the denizens of the hells (NĀRAKA). Jiuhuashan, the major mountain center in southeastern China, covers more than sixty square miles (one hundred square kilometers) and is famous for its spectacular peaks, perilous cliffs, huge boulders, ancient caves, and myriads of springs, streams, waterfalls, ancient pines, and bamboo forests. Jiuhuashan was originally known as Jiuzifeng (lit. Nine Children Mountain) because its nine major peaks had the shape of children; it was renamed Jiuhuashan after a description of the mountain in a poem by Li Bo (701-762 CE), the renowned Tang-dynasty poet. Jiuhuashan is said to have been the residence of a Korean monk named CHIJANG (C. Dizang; S. Ksitigarbha), also known as KIM KYOGAK (628-726). Chijang was a scion of the royal family of the Silla dynasty, who ended up spending some seventy-five years meditating at Jiuhuashan. He is said to have survived by eating only rice that had been cooked together with white soil (perhaps lime or gypsum) dug from between the rocks. The laity were so moved by his asceticism that they built the monastery of Huachengsi for him. When Chijang passed away, his body did not decay and people came to believe that he was the manifestation of his namesake, Ksitigarbha. A shrine hall named Dizang dian was built on the site where he died, which could only be reached by pulling oneself by rope up eighty-one precarious stone steps. Because of this connection to Chijang, by at least the Ming dynasty, Jiuhuashan was considered the sacred site of Ksitigarbha. Jiuhuashan at one time housed more than three hundred monasteries and four thousand monks. The grand scale of its monastic architecture and the large numbers of pilgrims it attracted throughout the year led to its recognition as a Buddhist sacred mountain.

Jizang. (J. Kichizo; K. Kilchang 吉藏) (549-623). In Chinese, "Storehouse of Auspiciousness"; Chinese Buddhist monk of originally Parthian descent and exegete within the SAN LUN ZONG, the Chinese counterpart of the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian thought. At a young age, he is said to have met the Indian translator PARAMĀRTHA, who gave him his dharma name. Jizang is also known to have frequented the lectures of the monk Falang (507-581) with his father, who was also ordained monk. Jizang eventually was ordained by Falang, under whom he studied the so-called Three Treatises (SAN LUN), the foundational texts of the Chinese counterpart of the Madhyamaka school: namely, the Zhong lun (MuLAMADHYAMAKĀRIKĀ), BAI LUN (*sATAsĀSTRA), and SHI'ERMEN LUN (*Dvādasamukhasāstra). At the age of twenty-one, Jizang received the full monastic precepts. After Falang's death in 581, Jizang moved to the monastery of Jiaxiangsi in Huiji (present-day Zhejiang province). There, he devoted himself to lecturing and writing and is said to have attracted more than a thousand students. In 598, Jizang wrote a letter to TIANTAI ZHIYI, inviting him to lecture on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. In 606, Emperor Yang (r. 604-617) constructed four major centers of Buddhism around the country and assigned Jizang to one in Yangzhou (present-day Jiangsu province). During this period, Jizang composed his influential overview of the doctrines of the Three Treatises school, entitled the SAN LUN XUANYI. Jizang's efforts to promote the study of the three treatises earned him the name "reviver of the San lun tradition." Jizang was a prolific writer who composed numerous commentaries on the three treatises, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, etc., as well as an overview of Mahāyāna doctrine, entitled the Dasheng xuan lun.

Kashmir-Gandhāra. [alt. Kāsmīra-Gandhāra]. A district in northwest India corresponding to modern Kashmir. According to Pāli tradition, this area was the destination of one of the nine Buddhist missions dispatched from Pātaliputta (S. PĀtALIPUTRA) to adjacent lands (paccantadesa) by the elder MOGGALIPUTTATISSA; this mission is said to have occurred during the reign of the Mauryan king AsOKA, following the third Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, THIRD) in the third century BCE. The elder Majjhantika (S. MADHYĀNTIKA) was said to have been in charge of the mission to this region. The third council at Pātaliputta and the nine Buddhist missions are known only in Pāli sources and are first recorded in the fifth century CE DĪPAVAMSA. Burmese chroniclers instead identify Kashmir-Gandhāra with the kingdom of Nanchao in what is the modern Chinese province of Yunnan. See also GANDHĀRA.

Kha ba dkar po. (Kawagarbo). A famous mountain on the Tibetan plateau and the toponym of the deity embodied there; currently located in the Chinese province of Yunnan on the border with the Tibet Autonomous Region, close to Bde chen (Diqin). It is one of the eight famous mountains and mountain ranges, including Mount KAILĀSA in western Tibet and Dag pa shel ri (the Crystal Mountain) in the TSA RI, on the borders of eastern Nepal on the pilgrimage circuit (see GNAS SKOR BA). The mountain (22,113 ft) is an important site for a two-week pilgrimage circuit.

Khotan. (C. Yutian; J. Uten; K. Ujon 于闐). Indo-European oasis kingdom at the southern edge of the Taklamakhan Desert in Central Asia, along the northern slope of the Kunlun Mountains, which served as a major center of Buddhism in Central Asia and an important conduit for the transmission of Buddhism from India to China. Buddhist sources claim that Khotan was colonized first by Indians, when Kunāla, the eldest son of King AsOKA, is said to have left the northwest Indian city of TAKsAsILĀ (Taxila) for Khotan in the third century BCE. From at least the third through the tenth centuries CE, Khotan was a major Buddhist and trade center along the southern SILK ROAD through Central Asia, where MAHĀYANA traditions associated with northwestern Indian Buddhism predominated. Indeed, through about the tenth century CE, Khotan was essentially a bastion of Indian urban culture in the Tarim Basin, which used GĀNDHĀRĪ PRAKRIT (in the KHAROstHĪ script) in much of its written communications until the relatively late rise in the use of indigenous vernacular Khotanese (probably sometime after the sixth century CE). The Khotanese language, which no longer survives, belonged to the Middle Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, and fragments of Buddhist texts translated into Khotanese were discovered by SIR MARC AUREL STEIN (1862-1943) during his excavations in the region. Already by the third century CE, Chinese monks were traveling to Khotan to learn Buddhist doctrine and acquire Buddhist scriptures, and Khotanese scholars and monks were making their way to China to transmit and translate Buddhist texts (including such important Mahāyāna scriptures as the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, which was brought from Khotan early in the fifth century). The pilgrimage reports of FAXIAN and XUANZANG attest that Khotan was the home of at least four major monasteries and several smaller ones, with several tens of thousands of monks in residence. The Chinese occupied Khotan during both the first and seventh centuries CE, but throughout the first millennium they maintained close economic and cultural ties with the kingdom. By the eighth century, the continued incursions of Arabs, Turks, and Mongols inexorably led to the demise of Buddhism in the region and the people's conversion to Islam; Khotan was finally converted to Islam in 1004. Since the mid-eighteenth century, during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), Khotan has been under the political control of China and currently is located in the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang province. See also KUCHA.

Khuông Viẹt. (匡越) (933-1011). Prominent Vietnamese monk and royal advisor, a native of Thửờng Lạc (nowadays Thanh Hóa Province, in northern Vietnam). His personal name was Ngô Chan Lưu. According to the THIỀN UYỂN T̤P ANH, he was a descendent of Ngô Thuận Đé. As a young man, he studied Confucianism but later turned to Buddhism, receiving full ordination from CHAN Master Van Phong. Khuông Việt was widely read in the Buddhist scriptures and diligently investigated the teachings of Chan. When he was in his forties, his fame reached the royal court, and King Đinh Tien Hoàng (r. 968-979), the founder of the Đinh dynasty (968-980), summoned him to the capital city and honored him with the rank General Supervisor of Monks. The king also granted him the sobriquet Khuông Việt Thái Sư (Great Master Who Brings Order to Việt). King Le Đại Hành (r. 980-1005), the founder of the former Le dynasty (980-1009), invited him to participate in all military, administrative, and diplomatic affairs, and he was often appointed to receive Chinese envoys. Khuông Việt was particularly famed for his exchange of couplets and poems with the Song-dynasty envoy Li Jue, who reported favorably on Vietnam to the Song-dynasty Emperor.

Kihwa. (己和) (1376-1433). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty, also known as Hamho Tŭkt'ong and Mujun. Kihwa was a native of Ch'ungju in present-day North Ch'ungch'ong province. The son of a diplomat, Kihwa entered the Songgyun'gwan academy and received a traditional Confucian education, although even there he already showed strong interests in Buddhism. In 1396, after the death of a close friend, Kihwa decided to become a monk, eventually becoming a disciple of the eminent Son master MUHAK CHACH'O (1327-1405) at the monastery of Hoeamsa. After studying kanhwa Son (see KANHUA CHAN) under Chach'o, Kihwa is said to have attained his first awakening at a small hut near his teacher's monastery. Kihwa devoted the next few years to teaching and lecturing at various monasteries around the Korean peninsula. In 1412, Kihwa began a three-year retreat at a small hermitage named Hamhodang near the monastery of Yonbongsa on Mt. Chamo in P'yongsan. In 1420, he made a pilgrimage to Mt. Odae, and the following year he was invited to the royal monastery of Taejaoch'al. In 1424, King Sejong (r. 1419-1450) forcibly consolidated the different schools of Korean Buddhism into the two branches of Son (CHAN; Meditation) and KYO (Doctrine), reduced the number of officially recognized monasteries, and limited the number of monks allowed to ordain. Perhaps in reaction to this increasing persecution of Buddhism, Kihwa left the royal monastery that same year. In response to the growing criticisms of Buddhism by the Confucian scholars at court, Kihwa composed his HYoNJoNG NON. Kihwa also composed influential commentaries on the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") and the YUANJUE JING ("Perfect Enlightenment Sutra"). In 1431, he began restorations on a monastery known as Pongamsa on Mt. Hŭiyang in Yongnam and died at the monastery two years later in 1433.

kingdom ::: 1. A territory, state, people, or community ruled or reigned over by a king or queen. 2. Fig. The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God; the realm of this sovereignty. 3. A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant or supreme. 4. Anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control. 5. A realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 6. Rarely, in reference to the realm and rule of evil forces. kingdom"s, kingdoms.

Kizil. [alt. Qizil]. A complex of some 230 Buddhist caves from the ancient Central Asian kingdom of KUCHA, located about seventy kilometers northwest of the present-day city of Kucha on the bank of the Muzat River in Baicheng County, in the Uighur Autonomous Region of China's Xinjiang province. The Kizil caves represent some of the highest cultural achievements of the ancient Indo-European petty kingdom of Kucha, an important oasis along the northern SILK ROAD connecting China to the bastions of Buddhist culture in the greater Indian cultural sphere. Construction at the site perhaps began as early as the third century CE and lasted for some five hundred years, until the region succumbed in the ninth century to Islamic control. Given the importance of the Kucha region in the development and transmission of Buddhism along the ancient Silk Road, scholars believe that the DUNHUANG murals were influenced by the art of Kizil. Although no statuary remains at the Kizil site, many wall paintings are preserved depicting events from the life of the Buddha; indeed, Kizil is second only to the Mogao caves of Dunhuang in the number of wall paintings it contains. The layout of many of the intact caves includes a central pillar, forming both a front chamber and a rear chamber, which often contains a PARINIRVĀnA scene. The first modern studies of the site were conducted in the early twentieth century by the German explorers Alfred Grünwedel and Alfred von Le Coq. The nearby site of Kumtura contains over a hundred caves, forty of which contain painted murals or inscriptions. Other cave sites near Kucha include Subashi, Kizilgaha, and Simsim.

kokubunji. (國分寺). In Japanese, lit. "nationally distributed monasteries"; a network of centrally controlled provincial monasteries established during the Nara and Heian periods in Japan. During the reign of Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749), he ordered that monasteries be established in every province of Japan, which would each have seven-story pagodas enshrining copies of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). In 741, these provincial monasteries were organized into a national network as a means of bringing local power centers under the control of a centralized state government. The nunneries or convents that were also established as part of this same strategy were known as kokubunniji. The first headquarters of this kokubunji system was DAIANJI, which was based on the capital of Nara; the headquarters later moved to the major Kegon (HUAYAN) monastery of ToDAIJI, which was constructed at Shomu's behest. By the time of Shomu's death in 756, there were at least twenty of these provincial monasteries already established.

Kounsa. (孤雲寺). In Korean, "Solitary Cloud Monastery"; the sixteenth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Tŭngun in North Kyongsang province. The monastery was founded in 681 by great Hwaom (C. HUAYAN) master ŬISANG (625-702), during the reign of the Silla king Sinmun (r. 681-692). The original Chinese characters for Kounsa meant "High Cloud Monastery," but during the Unified Silla period, the monastery adopted the homophonous name "Solitary Cloud," after the pen name of the famous literatus Ch'oe Ch'iwon (b. 857). During the reign of King Hon'gang (r. 875-886), a famous stone image of BHAIsAJYAGURU was enshrined at the monastery. During the Koryo dynasty, the monk Ch'onhae (fl. c. 1018) is said to have seen a Kwanŭm (AVALOKITEsVARA) statue in a dream; later, he found an identical image on Mount Taehŭng in Songdo and enshrined it in the Kŭngnak chon at Kounsa. The monastery was rebuilt and repaired several times during the Choson period. The large-scale rebuilding project that began in 1695 and continued through the eighteenth century helped raise the monastery's overall status within the ecclesia. Kounsa suffered severe damage from fires that broke out in 1803 and 1835, but the monastery was soon reconstructed. During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), Kounsa became one of thirty-one head monasteries (ponsa) and managed fifty-four branch monasteries (MALSA).

Ksitigarbha. (T. Sa yi snying po; C. Dizang; J. Jizo; K. Chijang 地藏). In Sanskrit, lit. "Earth Store," an important BODHISATTVA who has the power to rescue beings who have the misfortune to be reborn in the hells. Although Ksitigarbha is known in all Mahāyāna countries through his inclusion in the widely known grouping of eight great bodhisattvas (MAHOPAPUTRA; AstAMAHOPAPUTRA), he was apparently not the object of individual cultic worship in India or Tibet. It was in East Asian Buddhism that Ksitigarbha came into his own and became widely worshipped. In China, the cult of Ksitigarbha (C. Dizang) gained popularity by at least the fifth century, with the translation of the Dasheng daji Dizang shilun jing ("Mahāyāna Mahāsannipāta Sutra on Ksitigarbha and the Ten Wheels"), first in the Northern Liang dynasty and subsequently again by XUANZANG in 651 CE. The eponymous KsITIGARBHASuTRA, translated at the end of the seventh century, specifically relates the bodhisattva's vow to rescue all beings in the six realms of existence before he would attain buddhahood himself and tells the well-known prior-birth story of the bodhisattva as a young woman, whose filial piety after the death of her heretical mother saved her mother from rebirth in the AVĪCI hell. It was his ability to rescue deceased family members from horrific rebirths that became Dizang's dominant characteristic in China, where he took on the role of the Lord of Hell, opposite the Jade Emperor of native Chinese cosmology. This role may possibly have resulted from Dizang's portrayal as the Lord of Hell in the apocryphal (see APOCRYPHA) Foshuo Dizang pusa faxin yinlu shiwang jing and reflects Buddhist accommodations to the medieval Chinese interest in the afterlife. This specialization in servicing the denizens of hell seems also to have evolved alongside the emergence of Dizang's portrayal as a monk, whom the Chinese presume to reside on the Buddhist sacred mountain of JIUHUASHAN in Anhui province. (See also CHIJANG; KIM KYUGAK.) Ksitigarbha is easily recognizable in Chinese iconography because he is the only bodhisattva who wears the simple raiments of a monk and has a shaved head rather than an ornate headdress. In Japan, where Ksitigarbha is known as Jizo, the bodhisattva has taken on a different significance. Introduced to Japan during the Heian period, Jizo became immensely popular as a protector of children, patron of travelers, and guardian of community thresholds. Jizo is typically depicted as a monk carrying a staff in his left hand and a chaplet or rosary in his right. The boundaries of a village beyond which children should not wander were often marked by a stone statue of Jizo. Japanese fisherman also looked to Jizo for protection; statues of the bodhisattva erected by early Japanese immigrants to Hawaii are still found today at many popular shoreline fishing and swimming sites in the Hawaiian Islands. In modern Japan, Jizo continues to be regarded as the special protector of children, including the stillborn and aborted. In memory of these children, and as a means of requesting Jizo's protection of them, statues of Jizo are often dressed in a bib (usually red in color), sometimes wearing a knit cap or bonnet, with toys placed nearby (see MIZUKO KUYo). Tibetan iconography typically has Ksitigarbha seated on a lotus flower, holding a CINTĀMAnI in his right hand and displaying the VARADAMUDRĀ with his left.

Kucha. (S. *Kucīna; C. Qiuzi; J. Kiji; K. Kuja 龜茲). Indo-European oasis kingdom at the northern edge of the Taklamakhan Desert, which served as a major center of Buddhism in Central Asia and an important conduit for the transmission of Buddhism from India to China; the name probably corresponds to *Kucīna in Sanskrit. Indian Buddhism began to be transmitted into the Kuchean region by the beginning of the Common Era; and starting at least by the fourth century CE, Kucha had emerged as a major Buddhist and trade center along the northern SILK ROAD through Central Asia. Both mainstream and MAHĀYĀNA traditions are said to have coexisted side by side in Kucha, although the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG, who visited Kucha in 630, says that SARVĀSTIVĀDA scholasticism predominated. Xuanzang also reports that there were over one hundred monasteries in Kucha, with some five thousand monks in residence. The indigenous Kuchean language, which no longer survives, belongs to Tocharian B, one of the two dialects of TOCHARIAN, the easternmost branch of the western Indo-European language family. In the fourth and fifth centuries CE, many Kuchean monks and scholars began to make their way to China to transmit Buddhist texts, including the preeminent translator of Buddhist materials into Chinese, KUMĀRAJĪVA. To the west of Kucha are the KIZIL caves, a complex of some 230 Buddhist caves that represent some of the highest cultural achievements of Central Asian Buddhism. Construction at the site perhaps began as early as the third century CE and lasted for some five hundred years, until Kucha came under Muslim control in the ninth century. Since the mid-eighteenth century, during the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1912), Kucha has been under the political control of China, and the present-day city of Kucha is located along the banks of the Muzat River in Baicheng County, in the Uighur Autonomous Region of China's Xinjiang province. In East Asia, monks from Kucha were given the ethnikon BO, the Chinese transcription of the surname of the reigning family of Kucha. See also KHOTAN.

Kukai. (空海) (774-835). In Japanese, "Sea of Emptiness"; monk who is considered the founder of the tradition, often referred to as the SHINGONSHu, Tomitsu, or simply MIKKYo. He is often known by his posthumous title KoBo DAISHI, or "Great Master Who Spread the Dharma," which was granted to him by Emperor Daigo in 921. A native of Sanuki province on the island of Shikoku, Kukai came from a prominent local family. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to Nara, where he studied the Chinese classics and was preparing to become a government official. However, he seems to have grown disillusioned with this life. At the age of twenty, Kukai was ordained, perhaps by the priest Gonso, and the following year he took the full precepts at ToDAIJI. He is claimed to have experienced an awakening while performing the Kokuzo gumonjiho, a ritual dedicated to the mantra of the BODHISATTVA ĀKĀsAGARBHA. While studying Buddhist texts on his own, Kukai is said to have encountered the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA and, unable to find a master who could teach him to read its MANTRAs, decided to travel to China to learn from masters there. In 804, he was selected as a member of a delegation to China that set sail in four ships; SAICHo was aboard another of the ships. Kukai eventually traveled to the Tang capital of Chang'an, where he studied tantric MIJIAO Buddhist rituals and theory under HUIGUO and Sanskrit under the Indian monk PRAJNA. Under the direction of his Chinese master, Kukai was initiated into the two realm (ryobu) MAndALA lineages of YIXING, sUBHAKARASIMHA, VAJRABODHI, and AMOGHAVAJRA. In 806, Kukai returned to Japan; records of the texts and implements he brought with him are preserved in the Shorai mokuroku. Little is known about his activities until 809, when he moved to Mt. Takao by imperial request. Kukai described his new teachings as mikkyo, or "secret teachings," VAJRAYĀNA (J. kongojo), and MANTRAYĀNA (J. shingonjo). At the core of Kukai's doctrinal and ritual program was the belief that all acts of body, speech, and mind are rooted in, and expressions of, the cosmic buddha MAHĀVAIROCANA (see VAIROCANA), as the DHARMAKĀYA. Kukai argued that the dharmakāya itself teaches through the artistic and ritual forms that he brought to Japan. Once his teachings gained some renown, Kukai conducted several ABHIsEKA ceremonies, including one for the TENDAI patriarch SAICHo and his disciples. However, Kukai and Saicho's relationship soured when Kukai refused to transmit the highest level of initiation to Saicho. In 816, Emperor Saga granted Kukai rights to KoYASAN, to serve as a training center for his Shingon mikkyo tradition. In early 823, Kukai was granted the temple of ToJI in Kyoto, which became a second center for the Shingon tradition. In the summer of 825, Kukai built a lecture hall at Toji, and in 827 he was promoted to senior assistant high priest in the Bureau of Clergy. In 829, he built an abhiseka platform at Todaiji. In early 834, he received permission to establish a Shingon chapel within the imperial palace, where he constructed a mandala altar. Kukai passed into eternal SAMĀDHI (J. nyujo) in 835 on Mt. Koya, and it is said that he remains in his mausoleum in meditation waiting for the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA to appear. Kukai authored a number of important texts, including the BENKENMITSU NIKYoRON, a treatise outlining the inherent differences of kengyo (revealed) and mikkyo (inner) teachings; Sokushin jobutsugi, a treatise on the doctrine of attainment of buddhahood in "this very body" (J. SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); Unjigi, a text describing the contemplation of Sanskrit syllables (S. BĪJA, J. shuji); Shojijissogi, a text outlining Kukai's theory of language in which all sounds and letters are themselves full embodiments of the dharmakāya's teachings; and his magnum opus, the HIMITSU MANDARA JuJuSHINRON, in which Kukai makes his case for recognizing Shingon mikkyo as the pinnacle of Buddhist wisdom. Kukai was an accomplished calligrapher, poet, engineer, and sculptor and is also said to have invented kana, the Japanese syllabary.

Kŭmgangsan. (C. Jingangshan; J. Kongosan; 金剛山). In Korean, "Diamond (S. VAJRA) Mountains," Buddhist sacred mountains and important Korean pilgrimage site. The mountains are located in Kangwon Province, North Korea, on the east coast of the Korean peninsula in the middle of the Paektu Taegan, the mountain range that is regarded geographically and spiritually as the geomantic "spine" of the Korean peninsula. The mountains are known for their spectacular natural beauty, and its hundreds of individual peaks have been frequent subjects of both literati and folk painting. During the Silla dynasty, Kŭmgangsan began to be conceived as a Buddhist sacred site. "Diamond Mountains," also known by its indigenous name Hyollye, is listed in the Samguk sagi ("History of the Three Kingdoms") and SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms") as one of the three mountains (samsan) and five peaks (o'ak) that were the objects of cultic worship during the Silla period; scholars, however, generally agree that this refers to another mountain closer to the Silla capital of KYoNGJU rather than what are now known as the Diamond Mountains. The current Diamond Mountains have had several names over the course of history, including Pongnae, P'ungak, Kaegol, Yolban, Kidal, Chunghyangsong, and Sangak, with "Kŭmgang" (S. VAJRA) becoming its accepted name around the fourteenth century. The name "Diamond Mountains" appears in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA as the place in the middle of the sea where the BODHISATTVA DHARMODGATA (K. Popki posal) resides, preaching the dharma to his congregation of bodhisattvas. The Huayan exegete CHENGGUAN (738-839), in his massive HUAYAN JING SHU, explicitly connects the AvataMsakasutra's mention of the Diamond Mountains to Korea (which he calls Haedong, using its traditional name). The AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ also says that the Dharmodgata (K. Tammugal; J. Donmuketsu; C. Tanwujian) preaches the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ at GANDHAVATĪ (K. Chunghyangsong; C. Zhongxiangcheng; J. Shukojo, "City of Multitudinous Fragrances"), one of the alternate names of the Diamond Mountains and now the name of one of its individual peaks. According to the Koryo-period Kŭmgang Yujomsa sajok ki by Minji (1248-1326), on a visit to the Diamond Mountains made by ŬISANG (625-702), the vaunt-courier of the Hwaom (C. Huayan) school in Korea, Dharmodgata appeared to him and told him that Kŭmgangsan was the place in Korea where even people who do not practice could become liberated, whereas only religious virtuosi would be able to get enlightened on the Korean Odaesan (cf. C. WUTAISHAN). For all these reasons, Popki Posal is considered to be the patron bodhisattva of Kŭmgangsan. Starting in the late-Koryo dynasty, the Diamond Mountains became a popular pilgrimage site for Korean Buddhists. Before the devastation of the Korean War (1950-1953), it is said that there were some 108 monasteries located on Kŭmgangsan, including four primary ones: P'YOHUNSA, CHANGANSA, SIN'GYESA, and Mahayonsa. Mahayonsa, "Great Vehicle Monastery," was built by Ŭisang in 676 beneath Dharmodgata Peak (Popkibong) and was considered one of the ten great Hwaom monasteries (Hwaom siptae sach'al) of the Silla dynasty. Currently, the only active monasteries are P'yohunsa and its affiliated branch monasteries, a few remaining buildings of Mahayonsa, and Sin'gyesa, which was rebuilt starting in 2004 as a joint venture of the South Korean CHOGYE CHONG and the North Korean Buddhist Federation. In the late twentieth century, the Diamond Mountains were developed into a major tourist site, with funding provided by South Korean corporate investors, although access has been held hostage to the volatile politics of the Korean peninsula. ¶ In Japan, Diamond Mountains (KONGoSAN) is an alternate name for KATSURAGISAN in Nara, the principal residence of EN NO OZUNU (b. 634), the putative founder of the SHUGENDo school of Japanese esoterism, because he was considered to be a manifestation of the bodhisattva Dharmodgata.

Kŭmsansa. (金山寺). In Korean, "Gold Mountain Monastery," the seventeenth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE order of Korean Buddhism; located on Moak Mountain near Kimje in North Cholla province. The monastery was founded in 600 CE and grew quickly. The Silla monk CHINP'YO (fl. c. 800), one of the early figures associated with the transmission of the monastic regulations (VINAYA) to Korea, was responsible for a major expansion of the monastery that took place between 762 and 766. Chinp'yo dedicated the monastery to the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA and built a three-story main shrine hall, or TAEUNG CHoN, which is dominated by the golden 39-ft. high statue of Maitreya, standing in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRĀ) between two attendants who are both 29-ft. high. The south wall of the hall is decorated with a T'AENGHWA painting of Maitreya conferring the monastic rules (vinaya) on Chinp'yo. The monastery was expanded again in 1079 by the Koryo YOGĀCĀRA monk Hyedok Sohyon (1038-1096), who added several additional hermitages and sanctuaries; a STuPA reputed to enshrine his sARĪRA is located on the monastery grounds. In 1596, the Japanese burned the monastery, whose monks had organized a 1,500-man force to resist the Hideyoshi invasion force. The oldest buildings currently on the site date to 1635, when the monastery was reconstructed under the leadership of the monk Sumun (d.u.). The scriptural repository (Taejang chon) at Kŭmsansa was built in 1652 but moved to its current site in 1922; inside can be found images of sĀKYAMUNI and the two ARHATs MAHĀKĀsYAPA and ĀNANDA. The wooden building is quite ornate and is one of the best-preserved examples of its type from the Choson period. There are various other items of note on the monastery campus, including a hexagonal stone pagoda made from slate capped by granite, another five-story pagoda, and a stone bell resembling those at T'ONGDOSA and Silluksa. Carvings on the bell date it to the Koryo dynasty and depict buddhas, dharma protectors (DHARMAPĀLA), and lotus flowers (PADMA).

Lanxi Daolong. (J. Rankei Doryu; K. Nan'gye Toryung 蘭溪道隆) (1213-1278). Chinese CHAN monk in the Mi'an collateral branch of the LINJI ZONG. Lanxi was a native of Fujiang in present-day Sichuan province. At a young age, he became a monk at the nearby monastery of Dacisi in Chengdu and later visited the Chan masters WUZHUN SHIFAN (1178-1249) and Chijue Daochong (1169-1250). Lanxi eventually became the disciple of Wuming Huixing (1162-1237), who in turn was a disciple of the eminent Chan master Songyuan Chongyue (1132-1202). In 1246, Lanxi departed for Japan, eventually arriving in Hakata (present-day Kyushu) with his disciple Yiweng Shaoren (1217-1281). At the invitation of the powerful regent Hojo Tokiyori (1227-1263), Lanxi served as abbot of the monastery Jorakuji in Kamakura. In 1253, Tokiyori completed the construction of a large Zen monastery named KENCHoJI in Kamakura and appointed Lanxi its founding abbot (kaisan; C. KAISHAN). Lanxi soon had a large following at Kenchoji where he trained students in the new SAMGHA hall (C. SENGTANG) according to the Chan monastic regulations (C. QINGGUI) that he brought from China. In 1265, he received a decree to take up residence at the powerful monastery of KENNINJI in Kyoto, but after three years in Kyoto, he returned to Kenchoji. Lanxi also became the founding abbot of the temple of Zenkoji in Kamakura. Retired emperor Kameyama (r. 1259-1274) bestowed upon him the title Zen Master Daikaku (Great Enlightenment); Lanxi's lineage in Japan thus came to be known as the Daikaku branch of the Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition (RINZAISHu).

legate ::: n. --> An ambassador or envoy.
An ecclesiastic representing the pope and invested with the authority of the Holy See.
An official assistant given to a general or to the governor of a province.
Under the emperors, a governor sent to a province.


letts ::: n. pl. --> An Indo-European people, allied to the Lithuanians and Old Prussians, and inhabiting a part of the Baltic provinces of Russia.

Lha sa. In Tibetan, "place of the gods"; capital city of Tibet and location of some of the country's most important Buddhist institutions. According to traditional histories, the Tibetan king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO moved his capital from the Yar klungs Valley to its current location when he founded the original edifice underlying the PO TA LA Palace in 637, a structure completed in its present form only during the seventeenth century under the direction of the fifth DALAI LAMA, NGA DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, and his regent. At about the same time, Srong bstan sgam po began work on the central JO KHANG temple. As goats were used as work animals during the construction, the area became known as Ra sa (lit. "place of the goats"). Following the temple's consecration in 647, it is said that the city's name was then changed to Lha sa ("place of the gods"). These two structures, together with the RA MO CHE temple, form the core of Lha sa's religious and sacred architecture. Over the centuries, many other institutions were added, including the medical college of Lcags po ri (Chakpori), the Dalai Lama's summer palace at the NOR BU GLING KHA, and numerous small monasteries, temples, and shrines. Around the city's periphery, a number of important monasteries were established, including the three great DGE LUGS monasteries of DGA' LDAN, 'BRAS SPUNGS, and SE RA (known collectively as the GDAN SA GSUM, or "three seats"), as well as GNAS CHUNG monastery, the seat of Tibet's state oracle. A series of three ritual circumambulation routes around the city's sacred centers developed: (1) the nang bskor (nangkor, "inner circuit"), skirting the Jo khang temple's inner sanctum; (2) the BAR BSKOR (barkor, "middle circuit"), circling the outer walls of the Jo khang and its neighboring buildings; and (3) the gling bskor (lingkor, "sanctuary circuit") circumnavigating the entire city, including the Po ta la Palace and Lcag po ri. Lha sa has long been considered the spiritual center of Tibet, and chief pilgrimage destination. Some devotees would travel the immense distance from their homeland to Lha sa while performing full-length prostrations, literally covering the ground with their bodies the entire way. Although the far eastern and western provinces of Tibet traditionally maintained a large degree of regional independence, after the seventeenth century Tibet's central government, the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG, operated from Lha sa in the Po ta la Palace.

Liẽu Quán. (了觀) (1667-1742). Vietnamese monk who is considered the second patriarch of a branch of the Linji school (LINJI ZONG) of CHAN, which was brought to Vietnam by the Chinese Chan Master Nguyen Thieều (Yuanshao). He was born in Phú Yen Province (Central Vietnam), and his personal name was Le Thiẹt Diẹu. When he was six years old, his father sent him at his request to Hội Tôn Monastery to study under the Venerable Té Vien, a Chinese monk. After his teacher passed away, he went to Bảo Quốc Monastery in Hué to study under another Chinese monk, the Venerable Giác Phong. In 1695, he went to Hué to receive novice ordination under the Chinese Chan Master Thạch Liem and received full ordination in 1697 from another Chinese monk, the Venerable Từ Lam. In 1702, he traveled to Đông Sơn Monastery to receive instructions on the practice of Chan from the Chinese monk Tử Dung, an eminent Buddhist teacher of the time, and received the "mind seal" of the Chan transmission from him in 1708. In 1735, Liẽu Quán returned to Hué and until 1735 presided over numerous precept ceremonies. He was invited to the royal court several times, but he declined each invitation. Liẽu Quán founded the Thièn Tôn (Chan School) Monastery in Hué and was traditionally considered to be the thirty-fifth generation successor in the Linji lineage. Liẽu Quán was particularly credited with reforming some of the Chinese Linji Chan rituals and practices, making them more palatable to Vietnamese Buddhists.

Lingyinsi. (靈隱寺). In Chinese, "Numinous Seclusion Monastery"; located in Zhejiang province northwest of Hangzhou. In 326 CE, an Indian monk with the Chinese name Huili (d.u.) is supposed to have come to Hangzhou, where he was awestruck by the sight of Feilai Feng (lit. "Peak that Flew Hither") and built a monastery there that he named Lingyin. The monastery is the largest of several that are located in the Wulin Mountains, which also features a large number of grottoes and religious rock carvings. The monastery was destroyed in 771 CE during the Tang dynasty and later rebuilt. In 1007 CE, during the Song dynasty, it was renamed Lingyin Chan Monastery but was subsequently destroyed as the result of war and rebuilt again. In 1359, during the Ming dynasty, it was given its present name of Lingyinsi.

Linji Yixuan. (J. Rinzai Gigen; K. Imje Ŭihyon 臨濟義玄) (d. 867). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and putative founder of the eponymous LINJI ZONG. Linji was a native of Nanhua in present-day Shandong province. He is said to have begun his career as a monk by training in Buddhist doctrine and VINAYA, but he abandoned this scholastic path and headed south to study under the Chan master HUANGBO XIYUN (d. 850). Linji is also known to have visited Gao'an Dayu (d.u.) with whom he discussed the teachings of Huangbo. Having received certification of his attainment (see YINKE) from Huangbo, Linji returned north to Zhenzhou (in present-day Hebei province) and resided in a small hermitage near the Hutuo River that he named Linji'an, whence derives his toponym. There, with the help of the monk Puhua (d. 861), Linji was able to attract a large following. Linji is most famous for his witty replies and iconoclastic style of teaching. Like the Chan master DESHANM XUANJIAN's "blows" (bang), Linji was particularly famous for his "shouts" (he) in response to students' questions (see BANGHE). He was posthumously given the title Chan Master Huizhao (Illumination of Wisdom). The thriving descendents of Linji came to be known collectively as the Linji zong. Linji's teachings are recorded in his discourse record (YULU), the LINJI LU.

lisbon ::: n. --> A sweet, light-colored species of wine, produced in the province of Estremadura, and so called as being shipped from Lisbon, in Portugal.

Liuzu tan jing. (J. Rokuso dangyo; K. Yukcho tan kyong 六祖壇經). In Chinese, "Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch," the written transcription of the sermons of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713); the composition is attributed to the monk FAHAI; also known as the Nan zong dunjiao zuishang dasheng mohe bore boluomi jing, Liuzu dashi fabao tan jing, Fabao tan jing, or simply Tan jing ("Platform Sutra"). The Liuzu tan jing is one of the most influential texts of the CHAN tradition. The text is ostensibly a record of the lectures delivered by the reputed sixth patriarch Huineng at the monastery of Dafansi in Shaozhou (present-day Guangdong province). The lectures contain the famous story of Huineng's verse competition with his rival SHENXIU, which wins Huineng the Chan patriarchy (see ZUSHI), in which Huineng distinguished his own "sudden teachings" (DUNJIAO) of a so-called Southern school (NAN ZONG) of Chan from the "gradual teachings" (jianjiao) of Shenxiu's Northern school (BEI ZONG). As Huineng defines the term later in this sermon, the "sudden teaching" involves an approach to Buddhist training that is free from all dualistic forms of practice (see ADVAYA) and that correspondingly rejects any and all expedient means (UPĀYA) of realizing truth. This sudden teaching comes to be considered emblematic of the so-called Southern school (Nan zong) of Chan, which retrospectively comes to be considered the mainstream of the Chan tradition. The teachings of the text also focus on the unity of concentration (SAMĀDHI) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ), in which concentration is conceived to be the essence (TI) of wisdom and wisdom the functioning (YONG) of concentration; "no-thought" (WUNIAN), which the text defines as "not to think even when involved in thought"; seeing one's own nature (JIANXING); and the conferral of the formless precepts (WUXIANG JIE). Indeed, the "platform" in the title refers to the ordination platform (jietan; cf. SĪMĀ) where Huineng conferred these formless precepts. Although the Liuzu tan jing has been traditionally heralded as the central scripture of the Nan zong, and certainly is beholden to the teachings of the Southern-school champion HEZE SHENHUI, the text seems to have been influenced as well by the teachings of both the Northern and Oxhead schools (NIUTOU ZONG). Within the Chan tradition, a Yuan-dynasty edition of the Liuzu tan jing, which included an important preface by FORI QISONG, was most widely disseminated. SIR MARC AUREL STEIN's rediscovery in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache of a previously unknown, and quite different, recension of the text, dating to the mid-ninth century, did much to launch the modern scholarly reappraisal of the received history of the Chan school. See also DUNWU.

Longmen. (龍門). In Chinese, lit. "Dragon Gate," an important Buddhist cave site located 7.5 miles south of the ancient Chinese capital of Luoyang in China's Henan province. Spanning over half a mile along a cliff above the Yi River, the Longmen grottoes contain some of the most spectacular examples of stone sculpture in China, together with the MOGAO KU near DUNHUANG, the YUNGANG grottoes at Datong, and the Dazu caves (DAZU SHIKE) outside the city of Chongqing. The first grotto at Longmen was excavated in 495 CE when the Northern Wei capital was moved from Datong to Luoyang. Construction at the site continued until the site was abandoned in 755 because of civil strife and reflects a period of intense Buddhist activity in China that lasted through the Tang and Northern Song dynasties. A total of 2,345 grottoes were excavated and carved, which include more than one hundred thousand Buddhist images, some three thousand inscribed tablets, and over forty pagodas. Although largely an imperial site, some of the individual caves and niches were commissioned by the local Buddhist laity. Fengxiansi, the largest of the Longmen grottoes, dates to the Tang dynasty. When that chapel was first constructed, a roof is thought to have enclosed the entire cliff face. Today, the roof no longer remains and the sculptures stand unprotected in the open air. In 2000, the Longmen grottoes were placed on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. See also BINGLINGSI.

Lushan Huiyuan. (J. Rozan Eon; K. Yosan Hyewon 盧山慧遠) (334-416). Chinese monk during the Six Dynasties period, who was an important early advocate of PURE LAND cultic practices. Huiyuan was a native of Yanmen in present-day Shanxi province. In 345, he is said to have visited the prosperous cities of Xuchang and Luoyang, where he immersed himself in the study of traditional Confucian and Daoist scriptures. In 354, Huiyuan met the translator and exegete DAO'AN on Mt. Heng (present-day Hebei province), where he was ordained, and became his student. Huiyuan seems to have primarily studied PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ thought under Dao'an. In 381, Huiyuan headed south for LUSHAN, a mountain widely known as the abode of Daoist perfected and an ideal site for self-cultivation. There, he established the monastery DONGLINSI (Eastern Grove Monastery), which soon became the center of Buddhist activity in the south. Huiyuan is also known to have attracted a large lay following, consisting largely of educated members of the local gentry. He also began corresponding with the eminent monk KUMĀRAJĪVA to clarify certain issues (e.g., the nature of the DHARMAKĀYA) in MAHĀYĀNA doctrine. These correspondences were later edited together as the DASHENG DAYI ZHANG. In 402, together with 123 other monks and laymen, Huiyuan is said to have contemplated on an image of the buddha AMITĀBHA in order to seek rebirth in his pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ. This gathering is known as the beginning of the White Lotus Society (BAILIAN SHE). He should be distinguished from the commentator JINGYING HUIYUAN.

Lushan. (J. Rozan; K. Yosan 廬山). A Chinese sacred mountain located near Poyang Lake in present-day Jiangxi province. Lushan, or Cottage Mountain, is a scenic place that was long frequented by Daoist practitioners and known as the abode of Daoist perfected. AN SHIGAO, the early Parthian translator of Chinese Buddhist texts, is also said to have resided on the mountain during the Eastern Han dynasty. At the end of the fourth century CE, the Chinese monk DAO'AN is known to have established the monastery Xilinsi (Western Grove Monastery) on the mountain. A decade or so later, his famed disciple LUSHAN HUIYUAN also came to the mountain and established the influential monastery DONGLINSI (Eastern Grove Monastery). On a peak named the "PRAJNĀ Terrace," Huiyuan enshrined an image of the buddha AMITĀBHA for worship and contemplation. Together with 123 colleagues, Huiyuan established the White Lotus Society (BAILIAN SHE), which was dedicated to Amitābha worship. Due especially to Huiyuan's influence, Lushan emerged as an important site for the cult of Amitābha and his PURE LAND (see SUKHĀVATĪ). During the Song dynasty, Lushan became the home of the CHAN master HUANGLONG HUINAN (1002-1069) and his disciples in the HUANGLONG PAI of the LINJI ZONG. In 1147, Donglin Changcong (1025-1091), one of Huanglong's chief disciples and recipient of the imperial purple robe, was appointed by the court to assume to abbotship of Donglinsi, which had been officially recognized as a public Chan cloister (chanyuan) in 1079. During his visit to Lushan, the renowned poet Su Shi (1037-1101) is said to have attained awakening under Changcong's guidance. In 1616, the Chan master HANSHAN DEQING established the monastery Fayunsi on Lushan's Wuru peak. Lushan continues to serve today as an important pilgrimage site for Chinese Buddhists.

Magoksa. (麻谷寺). In Korean, "Hemp Valley Monastery"; the sixth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on T'aehwasan (Exalted Splendor Mountain) outside the city of Kongju in South Ch'ungch'ong province. The origins of the monastery and its name are obscure. One record claims that Magoksa was established by the Silla VINAYA master CHAJANG (fl. c. 590-658) in 643; because so many people attended Chajang's dharma lecture at the monastery's founding, the audience was said to have been "as dense as hemp stalks," so the Sinograph for "hemp" (ma) was given to the name of the monastery. This claim is, however, suspect since the monastery is located in what was then the territory of Silla's rival Paekche. A second theory is that the monastery was founded in 845 by Muju Muyom (799-888), founder of the Songjusan school of the Nine Mountains school of Son (KUSAN SoNMUN). When Muyom returned to Silla in 845 from his training in China, he is said to have named the monastery after his Chinese CHAN teacher Magu Baoche (K. Magok Poch'ol; b. 720?). Finally, it is also said that the monastery's name simply derives from the fact that hemp was grown in the valley before the monastery's establishment. In 1172, during the Koryo dynasty, Magoksa was significantly expanded in scope by POJO CHINUL (1158-1210) and his disciple Suu (d.u.), who turned it into a major monastery in the region. Following the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of 1592-1598, the monastery sat destroyed for some sixty years until several of its shrine halls were reconstructed by Kakch'ong (d.u.) in 1651 and the monastery returned to prominence. The Taegwang pojon (Basilica of Great Brightness) is Magoksa's central sanctuary and enshrines an image of the buddha VAIROCANA; the building was reconstructed in 1172 by Pojo Chinul and again in 1651. In front of the basilica is a juniper tree planted by the independence fighter Kim Ku (1876-1949), who later lived at the monastery as a monk. Magoksa's main buddha hall (taeung pojon; see TAEUNG CHoN) enshrines a sĀKYAMUNI Buddha statue that is flanked by AMITĀBHA and BHAIsAJYAGURU, and the calligraphy hanging outside this hall is reported to be that of Kim Saeng (711-790/791), one of Silla's most famous calligraphers. One of Magoksa's unique structures is its five-story, Koryo-era stone pagoda, which is built upon a two-story-high stone base; its bronze cap suggests Tibetan influences that may have entered Korea via the Mongol Yuan dynasty. It is one of only three STuPAs of similar style known to exist worldwide. The Yongsan chon (Vulture Peak Hall) is decorated with paintings of the eight stereotypical episodes in the life of the Buddha (p'alsang; see C. BAXIANG); it is also called the Ch'onbul chon, or Thousand Buddhas Hall, for the many buddha statues enshrined around the inside perimeter of the hall. The building, which was reconstructed by Kakch'ong in 1651, is today's Magoksa's oldest extant building, with a plaque that may display the calligraphy of King Sejo (r. 1455-1468).

Maijishan. (J. Bakusekizan; K. Maekchoksan 麥積山). In Chinese, "Haystack Mountain"; a cave monastery site located southeast of Tianshui in the northwest Chinese province of Gansu, located on a hill some 466 feet (142 meters) high. Situated on the edge of the Qinling Mountains, Maijishan was once an important stop along the ancient SILK ROAD. Based on an inscription dated to 407 CE in cave no. 76, construction of the Maijishan cave sites is presumed to have been initiated by the Yao Xin family (396-416) during the Later Qin dynasty and to have continued for centuries. Close to two hundred caves have been preserved, which include more than seven thousand terracotta sculptures and countless painted murals. Many of the caves and wooden structures at the site have been damaged or destroyed due to natural disasters. While the paintings at the site are heavily damaged, the sculptures are well preserved and feature smooth modeling and flat planes devoid of naturalism. The dignified facial expressions with foreign features (e.g., round, open eyes and pronounced noses) are similar to those of the BINGLINGSI images. The arrangement of cave no. 78 consists of three large seated buddhas, which probably represent the buddhas of the past, present, and future. Two small niches at the rear wall feature the pensive bodhisattva MAITREYA and SIDDHĀRTHA in the pensive pose (see MAITREYĀSANA).The two standing bodhisattvas in cave no. 74 are characterized by their smooth bodies and scarves that elegantly frame their bodies; these features, along with the three-disk crown, derive from the Silk Road cave site of KIZIL. The cave temple sites of Binglingsi and Maijishan reflect the artistic synthesis of different Central Asian styles, which heavily influenced the development of the later Northern Wei artistic styles at LONGMEN and YUNGANG. Both sites also display a range of iconographies derived from sutras that were newly translated during the Liang and Qin dynasties, whose rulers used Buddhism to enhance their political prestige.

malaga ::: n. --> A city and a province of Spain, on the Mediterranean. Hence, Malaga grapes, Malaga raisins, Malaga wines.

mandala ::: circle, a "book" of the Rg-veda; [a district or province of a large kingdom].

Man'gong Wolmyon. (滿空月面) (1871-1946). In Korean, "Replete in Emptiness, Moon-Face"; the cognomen and ordination name of an important SoN (C. Chan) monk of the late Choson and Japanese colonial periods. Man'gong was born in T'aein county, North Cholla province, and became a novice monk in 1884. After enlightenment experiences in 1895 and 1901, he became in 1904 a dharma heir of KYoNGHo SoNGU (1849-1912), the preeminent Son master of his generation who was renowned for his efforts to revitalize Korean Son practice. Like Kyongho, Man'gong was also a well-known iconoclast, who practiced an "unconstrained practice" (K. muae haeng; C. WU'AI XING) that was not bound by the customary restrictions of monastic discipline. After 1905, Man'gong often resided at SUDoKSA on Mt. Toksung in South Ch'ungch'ong province, and he and his lineage are closely associated with that monastery. Man'gong also collaborated with such contemporary Buddhist leaders as HAN YONGUN (1879-1944) and Soktu Pot'aek (1882-1954) in attempting to rejuvenate Korean Buddhist practice. Man'gong established the Sonhagwon (Cloister for Son Learning) in 1921 in order to promote Korean Son meditation training. Man'gong emphasized training in "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN), using the meditative topic (K. hwadu; C. HUATOU) "no" (K. mu; C. WU; see WU GONG'AN; GOUZI WU FOXING). Man'gong was also publicly critical of the Japanese colonial government. There is a well-known anecdote that, at a conference of abbots from the thirty-one Korean head monasteries (PONSA) in 1937, he chided the Japanese governor-general by telling him that only Korean Buddhists would be able to save him once he had fallen into hell for destroying their tradition. In his later years, Man'gong retreated to the hermitage of Chonwolsa, near Sudoksa on Mt. Toksung. Man'gong had several renowned disciples who constitute the Toksung transmission lineage, including the monks Kobong (1890-1961), Ch'unsong (1891-1977), and Pyokch'o (1899-1986), and the nuns KIM IRYoP (1896-1971) and Pophŭi (1887-1975); Sungsan Haengwon (1927-2004), a major propagator of the Korean Son tradition in the West, was Man'gong's dharma successor through Kobong.

MaNjusrī. (T. 'Jam dpal; C. Wenshushili; J. Monjushiri; K. Munsusari 文殊師利). In Sanskrit, "Gentle Glory," also known as MANJUGHOsA, "Gentle Voice"; one of the two most important BODHISATTVAs in MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism (along with AVALOKITEsVARA). MaNjusrī seems to derive from a celestial musician (GANDHARVA) named PaNcasikha (Five Peaks), who dwelled on a five-peaked mountain (see WUTAISHAN), whence his toponym. MaNjusrī is the bodhisattva of wisdom and sometimes is said to be the embodiment of all the wisdom of all the buddhas. MaNjusrī, Avalokitesvara, and VAJRAPĀnI are together known as the "protectors of the three families" (TRIKULANĀTHA), representing wisdom, compassion, and power, respectively. Among his many epithets, the most common is KUMĀRABHuTA, "Ever Youthful." Among MaNjusrī's many forms, the most famous shows him seated in the lotus posture (PADMĀSANA), dressed in the raiments of a prince, his right hand holding a flaming sword above his head, his left hand holding the stem of a lotus that blossoms over his left shoulder, a volume of the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ atop the lotus. MaNjusrī plays a major role in many of the most renowned Mahāyāna sutras. MaNjusrī first comes to prominence in the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, which probably dates no later than the first century CE, where only MaNjusrī has the courage to visit and debate with the wise layman VIMALAKĪRTI and eventually becomes the interlocutor for Vimalakīrti's exposition of the dharma. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, only MaNjusrī understands that the Buddha is about to preach the "Lotus Sutra." In the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, it is MaNjusrī who sends SUDHANA out on his pilgrimage. In the Ajātasatrukaukṛtyavinodana, it is revealed that MaNjusrī inspired sĀKYAMUNI to set out on the bodhisattva path many eons ago, and that he had played this same role for all the buddhas of the past; indeed, the text tells us that MaNjusrī, in his guise as an ever-youthful prince, is the father of all the buddhas. He is equally important in tantric texts, including those in which his name figures in the title, such as the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA and the MANJUsRĪNĀMASAMGĪTI. The bull-headed deity YAMĀNTAKA is said to be the wrathful form of MaNjusrī. Buddhabhadra's early fifth-century translation of the AvataMsakasutra is the first text that seemed to connect MaNjusrī with Wutaishan (Five-Terrace Mountain) in China's Shaanxi province. Wutaishan became an important place of pilgrimage in East Asia beginning at least by the Northern Wei dynasty (424-532), and eventually drew monks in search of a vision of MaNjusrī from across the Asian continent, including Korea, Japan, India, and Tibet. The Svayambhupurāna of Nepal recounts that MaNjusrī came from China to worship the STuPA located in the middle of a great lake. So that humans would be able worship the stupa, he took his sword and cut a great gorge at the southern edge of the lake, draining the water and creating the Kathmandu Valley. As the bodhisattva of wisdom, MaNjusrī is propiated by those who wish to increase their knowledge and learning. It is considered efficacious to recite his mantra "oM arapacana dhīḥ" (see ARAPACANA); Arapacana is an alternate name for MaNjusrī.

Manpukuji. (萬福寺). In Japanese, "Myriad Blessings Monastery"; located in Uji, outside Kyoto, Japan. Currently, Manpukuji is the headquarters (honzan) of the oBAKUSHu of the ZEN tradition. The monastery was founded by the émigré CHAN (Zen) master YINYUAN LONGXI with the support of the shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna (1639-1680). Construction began in 1661 and the dharma hall was completed the next year with the help of the grand counselor Sakai Tadakatsu (1587-1662). In 1664, Yinyuan left his head disciple MU'AN XINGTAO in charge and retired to his hermitage at Manpukuji. Mu'an thus became the second abbot of Manpukuji and oversaw the construction of the buddha hall, the bell tower, the patriarchs' hall, and so forth. For several generations, émigré Chinese monks dominated the abbacy of Manpukuji. The construction of Manpukuji was modeled after Yinyuan's old monastery of Wanfusi (which is pronounced Manpukuji in Japanese) in Fuzhou (present-day Fujian province). The major icons were also prepared by émigré Chinese artists and, along with the famous portrait of Yinyuan, are now considered important cultural artifacts. Mu'an's disciple Tetsugen Doko (1630-1682) led a project to carve a complete set of xylographs of the Ming dynasty edition of the Buddhist canon, which is now housed at Manpukuji; this edition, commonly called the obaku canon, is one of the few complete xylographic canons still extant in East Asia (cf. the second carving of the Korean Buddhist canon, KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG).

Mathura (Sanskrit) Mathurā The birthplace of Krishna, situated in the province of Agra on the right bank of the Yamuna River.

matriarchs, rulers of a province in Heaven re¬

Matsuo Basho. (松尾芭蕉) (1644-1694). A renowned Japanese Buddhist author of the Edo period. Although famous in the West especially for his haiku poetry, Basho is also known for his renga, or linked verse, prose works, literary criticism, diaries, and travelogues, which also contain many famous poems. His most celebrated work is his travel diary, a work in mixed prose and verse entitled Oku no Hosomichi ("Narrow Road to the Deep North"), published posthumously in 1702. He was born in Iga Province (present-day Mie prefecture) to a family of the samurai class, but abandoned that life in favor of living as a Buddhist monk, much like the Heian period (794-1185) SHINGONSHu monk SAIGYo (1118-1190), with whom he is often compared. Basho received instruction from the RINZAISHu master Butcho (1643-1715), and his work is commonly regarded as conveying a ZEN aesthetic, as in the famous haiku poem he wrote at his moment of awakening: "A timeless pond, the frog jumps, a splash of water" (J. furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto).

Mazu Daoyi. (J. Baso Doitsu; K. Majo Toil 馬祖道一) (709-788). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and retrospective patriarch of the HONGZHOU ZONG of the broader Chan tradition. Mazu was a native of Hanzhou in present-day Sichuan province. At an early age, he became a student of the Chan master Chuji (alt. 648-734, 650-732, 669-736) of Zizhou (also in present-day Sichuan province) and received the full monastic precepts later from the VINAYA master Yuan (d.u.) at nearby Yuzhou. Mazu is said to have later visited the sixth patriarch HUINENG's disciple NANYUE HUAIRANG (677-744), under whom he attained awakening. According to the famous story, which is frequently recited in Chan literature, Mazu was awakened when his teacher Nanyue likened Mazu's sitting in meditation to the act of polishing of a roof tile: just as a roof tile cannot be polished to make a mirror, sitting meditation, says Nanyue, cannot lead to buddhahood. In his thirties, Mazu began teaching at various monasteries in the southern regions of Fujian and Jiangxi province. In 769, he began his residence at the monastery of Kaiyuansi (also known as Youqingsi) in Zhongling (in present-day Jiangsu province) and attracted many students. Emperor Xianzong (r. 805-820) later gave him the posthumous title Chan Master Daji (Great Serenity). His teachings are recorded in the Mazu Daoyi chanshi guanglu. Mazu developed the idea of "original enlightenment" (BENJUE) from the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna") in a radical direction. He asserted that "everyday mind is the way" (pingchangxin shi dao) and that "mind itself is the Buddha" (zixin shi fo), arguing that sentient beings have never in fact been deluded but have always been awakened buddhas. Although Mazu did not intend to advocate maintaining a deluded state of mind but wanted instead to recognize the value of the ordinary life as the ground of enlightenment, his emphasis on the inseparable relationship of enlightenment and ignorance drew severe criticisms, especially from GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), who believed that Mazu's teachings fostered antinomianism for suggesting that practice was not necessary in order to awaken.

Menzan Zuiho. (面山瑞方) (1683-1769). Japanese reformer of the SoToSHu of ZEN during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867), who is largely responsible for establishing DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253) as the font of orthodoxy for the Soto school and, during the modern and contemporary periods, as an innovative religious thinker. Born in Higo province in the Kumamoto region, Menzan studied with MANZAN DoHAKU (1636-1715) and later Sonno Soeki (1649-1705). At a thousand-day retreat Menzan led following Sonno's death, Menzan read texts by Dogen that had been neglected for centuries and subsequently used them as the scriptural authority from which he forged an entirely new vision of the Sotoshu; he then deployed this revisioning of Dogen to justify a reformation of long-held practices within the school. Menzan was a prolific author, with over a hundred works attributed to him, sixty-five of which have been published in modern Soto school collections; these works include everything from detailed philological commentaries to extended discussions of monastic rules and regulations. He remains best known for his Shobogenzo shotenroku, an eleven-roll encyclopedic commentary to Dogen's magnum opus, the SHoBoGENZo.

metalogical ::: a. --> Beyond the scope or province of logic.

metempirical ::: a. --> Related, or belonging, to the objects of knowledge within the province of metempirics.

metropolitan ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the capital or principal city of a country; as, metropolitan luxury.
Of, pertaining to, or designating, a metropolitan or the presiding bishop of a country or province, his office, or his dignity; as, metropolitan authority. ::: n.


Mindon Min. (r. 1853-1878). Tenth king of the Konbaung dynasty and penultimate Burmese king to rule Burma (Myanmar) before the imposition of complete British rule. His reign is known for its reforms and cultural renaissance. He usurped the throne from his brother Pagan Min (r. 1846-1853), during whose reign Great Britain declared war on Burma for a second time in 1852. Upon becoming king, Mindon Min sued for peace and was compelled to surrender Burma's remaining coastal provinces to Britain in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. In 1857 he built a new capital, MANDALAY, and sought to make it into a center for Buddhist learning. In 1871, he summoned scholar-monks from throughout the country to convene a Buddhist council for the purpose of revising the Pāli TIPItAKA and its commentaries. By Burmese reckoning, this conclave was the fifth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIFTH). The revised texts were inscribed on stone tablets and erected in the Kuthodaw Pagoda compound at the base of Mandalay Hill, where they can still be seen today. In the secular sphere, Mindon promoted a number of reforms. He assessed a land tax and fixed the salaries for government officials. He standardized the country's weights and measures, built roads and a telegraph system, and was the first Burmese king to issue coinage. In 1872, he sent his chief minister, Kinwun Mingyi U Gaung, to London, Paris, and Rome to secure recognition of his kingdom as an independent country. Despite his efforts to revitalize his country culturally and politically, contemporary records indicate that many within the Burmese sangha (S. SAMGHA) regarded British conquest of the Burmese kingdom as inevitable and imminent. Fundamentalist reform factions arose within the Burmese order that resisted the directives of the king's monastic council and organized themselves into independent self-governing congregations (see GAING). After the British destruction of the Burmese monarchy in 1885, these reformed congregations were to play an important role in shaping Burmese monastic culture in the twentieth century.

mistral ::: n. --> A violent and cold northwest wind experienced in the Mediterranean provinces of France, etc.

Miyun Yuanwu. (J. Mitsuun Engo; K. Mirun Wono 密雲圓悟) (1566-1642). Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG; also known as Tiantong. Miyun was a native of Changzhou prefecture in present-day Jiangsu province. He is said to have decided to become a monk after reading the LIUZU TAN JING and was formally ordained by Huanyou Zhengzhuan (1549-1614) at the age of twenty-eight. In 1602, Miyun followed Huanyou to the monastery of Longchiyuan in Changzhou and served as its prior (JIANYUAN). In 1611, Miyun received Huanyou's robes and bowls as a mark of transmission. Three years later, Miyun succeeded Huanyou's seat at Longchiyuan. In 1623, Miyun moved to the monastery Tongxuansi on TIANTAISHAN and again to Guanghuisi in Fuzhou prefecture (Zhejing province) a year later. In 1630, Miyun restored the monastery Wanfusi on Mt. Huangbo. He subsequently served as abbots of the monasteries Guanglisi on Mt. Yuwang, Jingdesi on Mt. Tiantong, and Dabao'ensi in Jinleng. His teachings are recorded in the Miyun chanshi yulu.

Modern Period. In the 17th century the move towards scientific materialism was tempered by a general reliance on Christian or liberal theism (Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Toland, Hartley, Priestley, Boyle, Newton). The principle of gravitation was regarded by Newton, Boyle, and others, as an indication of the incompleteness of the mechanistic and materialistic account of the World, and as a direct proof of the existence of God. For Newton Space was the "divine sensorium". The road to pure modern idealism was laid by the epistemological idealism (epistemological subjectivism) of Campanella and Descartes. The theoretical basis of Descartes' system was God, upon whose moral perfection reliance must be placed ("God will not deceive us") to insure the reality of the physical world. Spinoza's impersonalistic pantheism is idealistic to the extent that space or extension (with modes of Body and Motion) is merely one of the infinity of attributes of Being. Leibniz founded pure modern idealism by his doctrine of the immateriality and self-active character of metaphysical individual substances (monads, souls), whose source and ground is God. Locke, a theist, gave chief impetus to the modern theory of the purely subjective character of ideas. The founder of pure objective idealism in Europe was Berkeley, who shares with Leibniz the creation of European immaterialism. According to him perception is due to the direct action of God on finite persons or souls. Nature consists of (a) the totality of percepts and their order, (b) the activity and thought of God. Hume later an implicit Naturalist, earlier subscribed ambiguously to pure idealistic phenomenalism or scepticism. Kant's epistemological, logical idealism (Transcendental or Critical Idealism) inspired the systems of pure speculative idealism of the 19th century. Knowledge, he held, is essentially logical and relational, a product of the synthetic activity of the logical self-consciousness. He also taught the ideality of space and time. Theism, logically undemonstrable, remains the choice of pure speculative reason, although beyond the province of science. It is also a practical implication of the moral life. In the Critique of Judgment Kant, marshalled facts from natural beauty and the apparent teleological character of the physical and biological world, to leave a stronger hint in favor of the theistic hypothesis. His suggestion thit reality, as well as Mind, is organic in character is reflected in the idealistic pantheisms of his followers: Fichte (abstract personalism or "Subjective Idealism"), Schellmg (aesthetic idealism, theism, "Objective Idealism"), Hegel (Absolute or logical Idealism), Schopenhauer (voluntaristic idealism), Schleiermacher (spiritual pantheism), Lotze ("Teleological Idealism"). 19th century French thought was grounder in the psychological idealism of Condillac and the voluntaristic personalism of Biran. Throughout the century it was essentially "spiritualistic" or personalistic (Cousin, Renouvier, Ravaisson, Boutroux, Lachelier, Bergson). British thought after Hume was largely theistic (A. Smith, Paley, J. S. Mill, Reid, Hamilton). In the latter 19th century, inspired largely by Kant and his metaphysical followers, it leaned heavily towards semi-monistic personalism (E. Caird, Green, Webb, Pringle-Pattison) or impersonalistic monism (Bradley, Bosanquet). Recently a more pluralistic personalism has developed (F. C. S. Schiller, A. E. Taylor, McTaggart, Ward, Sorley). Recent American idealism is represented by McCosh, Howison, Bowne, Royce, Wm. James (before 1904), Baldwin. German idealists of the past century include Fechner, Krause, von Hartmann, H. Cohen, Natorp, Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey, Brentano, Eucken. In Italy idealism is represented by Croce and Gentile, in Spain, by Unamuno and Ortega e Gasset; in Russia, by Lossky, in Sweden, by Boström; in Argentina, by Aznar. (For other representatives of recent or contemporary personalism, see Personalism.) -- W.L.

moodir ::: n. --> The governor of a province in Egypt, etc.

Mu'an Xingtao. (J. Mokuan Shoto; K. Mogam Songdo 木菴性瑫) (1611-1684). Chinese CHAN master, calligrapher, and pioneer of the oBAKUSHu in Japan. He was a native of Quanzhou in present-day Fujian province. After his novice ordination at the age of eighteen, Mu'an received the full monastic precepts from the monk Yongjue Yuanxian (1578-1657) on Mt. Gu (present-day Fujian province). Mu'an visited the eminent Chan master MIYUN YUANWU before he returned to Yongjue, under whom he is said to have attained awakening. Later, Mu'an continued his studies under FEIYIN TONGRONG and his disciple YINYUAN LONGQI at the monastery of Wanfusi on Mt. Huangbo (present-day Fujian province). Mu'an eventually became Yinyuan's disciple and inherited his lineage. In 1655, Mu'an arrived in Nagasaki, Japan, and began his residence at the monastery of Fukusaiji. In 1661, Mu'an followed Yinyuan to his new monastery of MANPUKUJI in Uji. Three years later, Mu'an succeeded Yinyuan as the abbot of the monastery, and the next year he oversaw the ordination of monks at the triple-precept platform ceremony (sandan kaie). In 1670, he received the purple robe, and later with the support of the shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna (1639-1680), he established the monastery of Zuishoji in Edo. In 1675, he turned over the administration of Zuishoji to his disciple Tetsugyu Doki (1628-1700) and that of Manpukuji to Huilin Xingji (1609-1681).

Muhak Chach'o. (無學自超) (1327-1405). A Korean SoN monk and pilgrim during the transition from the Koryo to the Choson dynasty; Muhak was a native of Samgi (present-day South Kyongsang province). After his ordination in 1344, Muhak traveled to different monasteries to study. In 1353, he went to China, where he met the Indian ĀCĀRYA ZHIKONG CHANXIAN (d. 1363; K. Chigong Sonhyon; S. *sunyadisya-Dhyānabhadra) and studied under his Korean student NAONG HYEGŬN at the Yuan-dynasty capital of Yanjing. Muhak returned to Korea in 1356. When Naong returned two years later, Muhak continued his studies under him at the hermitage of Wonhyoam on Mt. Ch'onsong. In 1392, shortly after the establishment of the Choson dynasty, Muhak was invited to the palace as the king's personal instructor (wangsa) and given the title Venerable Myoom (Subtle Adornment). He was also asked to reside at the royal monastery of Hoeamsa. In 1393, Muhak assisted the Choson-dynasty founder, King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398), in deciding on the location for the new capital in Hanyang (present-day Seoul). Among his writings, Muhak's history of the Korean Son tradition, Pulcho chongp'a chido, is still extant.

Mukan Fumon. (無關普門) (1212-1291). Japanese proper name of RINZAISHu monk and first abbot of NANZENJI; also known as Gengo. Mukan was born in Hoshina in Shinano province (present-day Nagano prefecture) and received the BODHISATTVA precepts around 1230 at a monastery affiliated with MYoAN EISAI's (1141-1215) lineage. He became versed at Japanese exoteric and esoteric Buddhist teachings, and traveled around the eastern part of Japan, especially the Kanto and Tohoku regions, to lecture. Between 1243 and 1249, Mukan studied under ENNI BEN'EN (1202-1280). Mukan traveled to China in 1251, where he received transmission from Duanqiao Miaolun (1201-1261), the tenth-generation master in the YANGQI PAI collateral lineage of the LINJI ZONG, before returning to Japan in 1263. Mukan became the third abbot of Tohukuji in 1281 and was later appointed in 1291 by the cloistered Emperor Kameyama (r. 1260-1274) to be the founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN) of Nanzenji. There is a well-known story about his appointment as the Nazenji abbot. The monastery was originally built as a royal palace, but soon after the emperor moved there, ghosts began to haunt it. After several other monks failed to exorcise the ghosts, the emperor finally invited Mukan to try. Mukan succeeded in removing the ghosts by conducting Zen meditation with his disciples. In gratitude, the emperor turned the palace into a Rinzai monastery and appointed Mukan its abbot.

Myoan Eisai. (明庵榮西) (1141-1215). Japanese monk associated with the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) and ZENSHu (C. CHAN ZONG) traditions; a successor in the HUANGLONG PAI collateral lineage of the Chinese LINJI ZONG, he was also the first monk to introduce the Chan school to Japan. Eisai became a monk at a young age and received the full monastic precepts on HIEIZAN, studying the Tendai teachings at the monastery of MIIDERA. In 1168, he left for China and made a pilgrimage to Mt. Tiantai and Mt. Ayuwang in present-day Zhejiang province. He returned to Japan that same year with numerous Tiantai texts of and made an effort to revitalize the Tendai tradition in Japan. In 1187, Eisai set out on another trip to China. This second time, he stayed for five years and studied under the Chan master Xu'an Huaichang (d.u.) on Mt. Tiantai. Eisai followed Xu'an to the monastery of Jingdesi on Mt. Tiantong when the latter was appointed its abbot in 1189. After receiving dharma transmission from Xu'an, Eisai returned to Japan in 1191. Eisai's efforts to spread the teachings of Zen was suppressed by his fellow Tendai monks of ENRYAKUJI despite his claim that the denial of Chan meant the denial of the teachings of SAICHo, the spiritual progenitor of Tendai. In 1198, Eisai composed his KoZEN GOKOKURON, wherein he defended Zen and argued for its usefulness in governing the nation and protecting Japan from foreign invasion. In 1199, he traveled to Kamakura where he won the support of the new shogunate and became the founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN) of the monastery of Jufukuji. Three years later, the shogun Minamoto Yoriie (1182-1204) established KENNINJI and appointed Eisai as its founding abbot. In 1214, he composed his treatise on tea, the KISSA YoJoKI, for Minamoto Sanetomo (1192-1219) who suffered from ill health. At Kenninji, Eisai taught a form of Zen that reflected his training in the esoteric (MIKKYo) teachings of Tendai.

Myoe Koben. (明慧高弁) (1173-1232). A Japanese SHINGONSHu monk who sought to revitalize the Kegonshu (C. HUAYAN ZONG) in Japan; commonly known as Myoe Shonin. Koben promoted traditional Buddhist values over the newer approaches of so-called Kamakura Buddhism. Against the prevailing tide of belief that the world was in terminal decline (J. mappo; C.MOFA), he took a positive stance on Buddhist practice by arguing that salvation could still be attained through traditional means. Koben was born in Kii province (present-day Wakayama Prefecture) and orphaned at the age of eight when both parents died in separate incidents. He went to live under the care of his maternal uncle Jogaku Gyoji, a Shingon monk at Jingoji on Mt. Takao, northwest of Kyoto. In 1188, at the age of sixteen, he was ordained by Jogaku at ToDAIJI. He took the ordination name Joben and later adopted the name Koben. After ordination, he studied Shingon, Kegon, and esoteric Buddhism (MIKKYo) at one of Todaiji's subtemples, Sonshoin. Koben tried twice to travel on pilgrimage to India, first in the winter of 1202-1203 and second in the spring of 1205, but was unsuccessful. On his first trip, Kasuga, a spirit (KAMI) associated with the Fujiwara family shrine in Nara, is said to have possessed the wife of Koben's uncle, Yuasa Munemitsu, and insisted that Koben not leave Japan. In the second attempt, he fell ill before he set out on his trip. In both instances, Koben believed that the Kasuga deity was warning him not to go, and he consequently abandoned his plans. These portents were supported by Fujiwara opposition to his voyage. In 1206, the retired emperor Gotoba gave Koben a plot of land in Toganoo. Gotoba designated the temple there as Kegon, renamed it Kozanji, and requested that Koben revive the study of Kegon doctrine. A year later, Gotoba appointed him headmaster of Sonshoin with the hope of further expanding Koben's promotion of the Kegon school. Despite this generous attention, Koben focused little of his efforts on this mission. He initially built a hermitage for himself at Toganoo, and it was not until 1219 that he constructed the Golden Hall at Kozanji. Koben dismissed the newer schools of Buddhism in his day, particularly HoNEN's (1122-1212) reinterpretation of pure land practice in the JoDOSHu. In 1212, he denounced Honen's nenbutsu (C. NIANFO) practice in Zaijarin ("Refuting the False Vehicle"), a response to Honen's earlier work, Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shu ("Anthology of Selections on the Nenbutsu and the Original Vow"; see SENCHAKUSHu). In contrast to the Jodoshu's exclusive advocacy of the single practice of reciting the Buddha's name, Koben defended the traditional argument that there were many valid methods for reaching salvation. Koben spent the last several decades of his life experimenting with ways to make Kegon doctrine accessible to a wider audience. In the end, however, his efforts were largely unsuccessful. He was unable to garner popular support, and his disciples never founded institutionally independent schools, as did the disciples of the other teachers of Kamakura Buddhism. Koben was fascinated by his dreams and recorded many of them in a well-known text known as the Yume no ki, or "Dream Diary." Like most Japanese of his day, Koben regarded many of these dreams to be portents coming directly from the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and gods.

mystery ::: 1. A spiritual truth that is incomprehensible to reason and knowable only through divine revelation. 2. Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding; an enigma. 3. A mysterious character or quality. 4. The skills, lore, practices and secret rites that are peculiar to a particular activity or group and are regarded as the special province of initiates. Mystery, mystery"s, Mystery"s, mysteries, mystery-altar"s. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)

nabob ::: n. --> A deputy or viceroy in India; a governor of a province of the ancient Mogul empire.
One who returns to Europe from the East with immense riches: hence, any man of great wealth.


Nanhuasi. (南華寺). In Chinese, "Southern Florate Monastery"; located in present-day Guangdong province close to Nanhua Mountain and facing the Caoqi River. The monastery was built by an Indian monk in 502 CE during the Liang dynasty and was originally named Baolinsi (Bejeweled Forest Monastery). It went through several name changes until it was renamed Nanhuasi in 968 CE during the Song dynasty, and it has carried that name ever since. In 677 CE, during the Tang dynasty, HUINENG, the so-called sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of the CHAN school, is said to have come to Nanhuasi, where he founded the so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) of Chan. From that point on, the monastery became an important center of the Chan school, and Huineng's remains are enshrined there, as are those of the Ming-dynasty Chan monk HANSHAN DEQING (1546-1623 CE). The monastery contains a stone slab that supposedly displays indentations left by Huineng's constant prostrations during his devotional services. The monastery is also famous for housing a bell named the Nanhua Bell, which weighs six tons and can be heard up to ten miles away.

Nanquan Puyuan. (J. Nansen Fugan; K. Namch'on Powon 南泉普願) (748-834). Chinese CHAN master in the HONGZHOU ZONG; a native of Xinzheng in present-day Henan province. In 777, Nanquan received the full monastic precepts from a certain VINAYA master Hao (d.u.) at the nearby monastery of Huishansi in Songyue. Along with studying such important MAHĀYĀNA scriptures as the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA and AVATAMSAKASuTRA, Nanquan also explored the major texts of the SAN LUN ZONG, the Chinese counterpart of the MADHYAMAKA school of Buddhist philosophy. He later became the disciple of the eminent Chan master MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and eventually one of his dharma successors. In 795, he began his long-time residence on Mt. Nanquan in Chiyang (present-day Anhui province), whence he acquired his toponym. He remained on the mountain for thirty years, where he devoted himself to teaching his students. Among his immediate disciples, ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN (778-897) is most famous. Nanquan is renowned for his enigmatic sayings and antinomian behavior. Many of his noteworthy conversations with other masters are quoted in public case collections, such as the BIYAN LU and CONGRONG LU. Nanquan's teaching style is perhaps best captured in the (in)famous public case (GONG'AN) "Nanquan cuts the cat in two" (case no. 63 of the Biyan lu, case no. 14 in the WUMENGUAN). Monks from the eastern and western wings of the monastery were arguing over possession of a cat. Nanquan grabbed the cat and told the monks, "If anyone can say something to the point, you will save this cat's life; if not, I will kill it." No one replied, so Nanquan cut the cat in two. In the following gong'an in the Biyan lu (case no. 64), his disciple Zhaozhou Congshen returned to the monastery and heard the story. He immediately took off his straw sandals, placed them on his head, and walked away. Nanquan remarked, "If you had been here a moment ago, you could have saved that cat's life."

Nanshan lü zong. (J. Nanzan risshu; K. Namsan yulchong 南山律宗). In Chinese, the "South Mountain School of Discipline," the name for a loose affiliation of Chinese exegetes who traced their lineage back to the Chinese VINAYA master DAOXUAN (596-667). (The name Nanshan, or South Mountain, refers to Daoxuan's residence at ZHONGNANSHAN in present-day Shanxi province.) This tradition is largely concerned with the exegesis of the SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya") of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school. This VINAYA text, which came to be adopted widely throughout East Asia, was translated into Chinese in 405 by the Kashmīri monk BUDDHAYAsAS (c. early fifth century CE) and is still followed today in the East Asian Buddhist traditions. It taught a code of discipline that involved 250 principal monastic precepts for monks, 348 for nuns. The central scripture of the Nanshan lü zong is Daoxuan's influential commentary on the Sifen lü, the Sifen lü shanfan buque xingshi chao, which was composed in 626. Although the Nanshan lü zong remained the dominant tradition of vinaya exegesis in China, other groups such as the DONGTA LÜ ZONG (East Pagoda) and Xiangbu (Xiang Region) vinaya schools also flourished. The interpretations of the Nanshan lü zong were introduced into Japan by the Chinese monk GANJIN (C. Jianzhen; 687-763), who helped established the School of Discipline (J. RISSHu), one of the six schools of the Nara tradition of early Japanese Buddhism (see NARA BUDDHISM, SIX SCHOOLS OF).

Nanyang Huizhong. (J. Nan'yo Echu; K. Namyang Hyech'ung 南陽慧忠) (675?-775). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; a native of Yuezhou in present-day Zhejiang province. He is said to have studied under the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713) as a youth and to have eventually become one of his dharma successors. After Huineng's death, Nanyang led an itinerant life, traveling from one monastery to the next until he settled down on Mt. Baiya in Nanyang (present-day Henan province), whence he acquired his toponym. He is said to have remained in seclusion on the mountain for some forty years. In 761, he was invited to the palace by Emperor Suzong (r. 756-762), who honored Nanyang as his teacher. He took up residence at the monastery of Qianfusi, but later moved to Guangzhaisi at the request of Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779). Nanyang later established the monasteries of Yanchangsi and Changshousi and installed a copy of the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING) at each site. Juizong lived during a period of great efflorescence in the Chan school, but he was not closely identified with any one school. He is, however, said to have been critical of the teachings of the Chan master MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and other HONGZHOU ZONG teachers in Sichuan in the south of China, who rejected the authority of the traditional Buddhist scriptures; he is also said to have criticized the Hongzhou interpretation of "mind is buddha" as being akin to the sREnIKA HERESY, in which the body is simply an impermanent vessel for an eternal mind or soul. The notion that "inanimate objects can preach the dharma" (wujing shuofa) is also attributed to Nanyang.

Nanyue Huairang. (J. Nangaku Ejo; K. Namak Hoeyang 南嶽懷讓) (677-744). Chinese CHAN monk of the Tang dynasty, Huairang was a native of Jinzhou in present-day Shandong province. At an early age, Huairang is said to have gone to the monastery of Yuquansi in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province) where he studied VINAYA under the vinaya master Hongjing (d.u.). Later, he visited SONGSHAN and continued his studies under Hui'an (also known as Lao'an or "Old An"; 582-709), a reputed disciple of the fifth patriarch HONGREN (601-674). Hui'an purportedly introduced Huairang to the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713), from whom Huairang eventually received dharma transmission. In 713, Huairang began teaching at the monastery of Boresi on Mt. Nanyue (present-day Hunan province), whence his toponym. There, Huairang acquired his most famous disciple, MAZU DAOYI (709-788). As most of what is known of Huairang comes from the work of Mazu and Mazu's students, some scholars contend that the obscure figure of Huairang was used as a convenient means of linking Mazu's successful HONGZHOU ZONG line with the legendary sixth patriarch Huineng. The Chan lamplight records (CHUANDENG LU) trace the GUIYANG ZONG and LINJI ZONG, two of the traditional "five houses" (see WU JIA QI ZONG) of the mature Chan tradition, back to Nanyue Huirang.

Nanyue Huisi. (J. Nangaku Eshi; K. Namak Hyesa 南嶽慧思) (515-577). Chinese monk in the TIANTAI school and teacher of TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597); also known as Great Master Nanyue and Great Master Si. Huisi was a native of Yuzhou in present-day Anhui province. According to his biography in the Liang-era GAOSENG ZHUAN, Huisi was obsessed with the prospect of death in his youth and assiduously pursued a means of attaining immortality. Studying with his teacher Huiwen (d.u.), about whom next to nothing is known, Huisi is said to have learned a meditative technique based on NĀGĀRJUNA's premise of the identity of emptiness, provisionality, and their mean (see SANDI), which he later taught to his own students. Monks who disagreed with his teachings tried to poison him, so Huisi left northern China for the south, but his popularity there prompted jealous monks to brand him a spy. This charge was rejected by the Chen-dynasty emperor, and Huisi continued to teach in the south, where he attracted many students, including the renowned Tiantai Zhiyi. Huisi's meditative teachings on the suiziyi sanmei ("cultivating SAMĀDHI wherever mind is directed," or "the samādhi of freely flowing thoughts") were recorded in Zhiyi's MOHE ZHIGUAN. In this type of meditation, the adept is taught to use any and all experiences, whether mental or physical, whether wholesome or unwholesome, as grist for the mill of cultivating samādhi. Huisi is credited with the compilation of several treatises, such as the Dasheng zhiguan, Cidi chanyao, Fahua jing anle xingyi, and others.

Nan zong. (J. Nanshu; K. Nam chong 南宗). In Chinese, "Southern School," an appellation used widely throughout the Tang dynasty, largely due to the efforts of HEZE SHENHUI (684-758) and his lineage, to describe what they claimed to be the orthodox lineage of the CHAN ZONG; in distinction to the collateral lineage of the "Northern School" (BEI ZONG) of SHENXIU (606-706) and his successors. Heze Shenhui toured various provinces and constructed ordination platforms, where he began to preach that HUINENG (638-713), whom he claimed as his teacher, was the true sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of the Chan school. In 732, during an "unrestricted assembly" (WUZHE DAHUI) held at the monastery of Dayunsi in Huatai, Shenhui engaged a monk by the name of Chongyuan (d.u.) and publicly criticized what he called the "Northern School" of Shenxiu's disciples PUJI (651-739), YIFU (661-736), and XIANGMO ZANG (d.u.) as being merely a collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage, which advocated an inferior gradualistic teaching. Shenhui argued that his teacher Huineng had received the orthodox transmission of Bodhidharma's lineage and the "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO), which was the unique soteriological doctrine of Bodhidharma and his Chan school. Shenhui launched a vociferous attack on the Northern School, whose influence and esteem in both religious and political circles were unrivaled at the time. He condemned Shenxiu's so-called "Northern School" for having wrongly usurped the mantle of the Chan patriarchy from Huineng's "Southern School." Shenhui also (mis)characterized the teaching of the "Northern School" as promoting a "gradual" approach to enlightenment (JIANWU), which ostensibly stood in stark contrast to Huineng's and thus Shenhui's own "sudden awakening" (DUNWU) teachings. As a result of Shenhui's polemical attacks on Shenxiu and his disciples, subsequent Chan historians, such as GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), came to refer reflexively to a gradualist "Northern School" that was to be rigidly distinguished from a subitist "Southern School." Modern scholarship has demonstrated that, in large measure, the centrality of the "Southern School" to early Chan history is a retrospective creation. The Chan patriarchal lineage going back to Chan's putative founder, Bodhidharma, was still inchoate in the eighth century; indeed, contemporary genealogical histories, such as the LIDAI FABAO JI, CHUAN FABAO JI, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, and BAOLIN ZHUAN, demonstrate how fluid and fragile the notion of the Chan lineage remained at this early period. Because the lineages that eventually came to be recognized within the later tradition were not yet cast in stone, it was therefore possible for Shenhui to advocate that a semilegendary, and relatively unknown figure, Huineng, rather than the leading Chan figures of his time, was the orthodox successor of the fifth patriarch HONGREN and the real sixth patriarch (liuzu). While this characterization is now known to be misleading, subsequent histories of the Chan tradition more or less adopted Shenhui's vision of early Chan history. The influential LIUZU TAN JING played an important role in this process of distinguishing a supposedly inferior, gradualist Northern School from a superior, subitist Southern School. By the eleventh century, with the composition of the mature Chan genealogical histories, such as the CHODANG CHIP (C. ZUTANG JI) and JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, this orthodox lineage was solidified within the tradition and became mainstream. In these later "transmission of the lamplight" records (CHUANDENG LU), the "Southern School" was now unquestioned as the orthodox successor in Bodhidharma's lineage, a position it retained throughout the subsequent history of the Chan tradition. Despite Shenhui's virulent attacks against the "Northern School," we now know that Shenxiu and his disciples were much more central to the early Chan school, and played much more important roles in Chan's early growth and development, than the mature tradition realized.

Naong Hyegŭn. (懶翁慧勤) (1320-1376). In Korean, "Old Lazybones, Earnest in Wisdom," an eminent Korean SoN master and pilgrim of the Koryo dynasty. Naong was a native of Yonghae in present-day North Kyongsang province and is said to have decided to become a monk after the traumatic death of a close friend in 1339. After his ordination by the monk Yoyon (d.u.) of the hermitage of Myojogam on Mt. Kongdok, Naong traveled from one monastery to the next until he settled down at the monastery of Hoeamsa in 1344. Four years later at Hoeamsa, Naong is said to have attained his first awakening. In 1347, he left for China where he met the Indian master ZHIKONG CHANXIAN (1289-1363; K. Chigong Sonhyon; S. *sunyadisya-Dhyānabhadra) at the monastery of Fayuansi in the Yuan-dynasty capital of Yanjing; later, Naong would receive dharma transmission from Zhikong. After studying under Zhikong, Naong visited the Chan master Pingshan Chulin (1279-1361) at Jingcisi in Hangzhou (present-day Zhejiang province). Naong is said to have later received Pingshan's chowrie (FUZI; VĀLAVYAJANA) as a sign of his spiritual attainment. Before his return to the Yuan capital of Yanjing in 1355, Naong made a pilgrimage to MT. PUTUOSHAN, where he made offerings to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA (GUANYIN). Upon his arrival back in Yanjing, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of Guangjisi by Emperor Xundi (r. 1333-1368). In 1358, Naong returned to Korea and three years later was invited to the royal palace, where he taught the king and queen. In 1370, Naong was appointed the royal preceptor (wangsa) and abbot of the influential monastery of SONGGWANGSA. Naong was viewed as a living buddha and eventually became the object of cultic worship: in the apocryphal Ch'isong kwangmyong kyong ("Book of Blazing Light"), which was widely disseminated in Korea in the sixteenth century, Naong is said to have been an emanation of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha himself. He spent the next few years revitalizing the community at his old monastery of Hoeamsa. Among his many disciples, MUHAK CHACH'O (1327-1405) is most famous.

Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho. (Ngawang Losang Gyatso) (1617-1682). The fifth DALAI LAMA of Tibet, widely held to be one of the most dynamic and influential members of his lineage. He was the first Dalai Lama to formally wield both religious and secular power over the Tibetan state and is renowned for his diverse range of religious and political activities. Commonly referred to as "the great fifth" (lnga pa chen po), Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho established himself as a gifted teacher, accomplished tantric practitioner, prolific author, and skillful statesman. The fifth Dalai Lama was born to an aristocratic family in the region of 'Phyong rgyas (Chongye) near the burial grounds of the early Tibetan dynastic rulers. His family had close ties with the RNYING MA sect, although the Dalai Lama claimed in one of his autobiographies that his mother had been the tantric consort of the JO NANG master TĀRANĀTHA and that Tāranātha was his biological father. He was recognized as the fifth Dalai Lama in 1622 by BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, although there was a rival candidate, Grags pa rgyal mtshan. The fifth Dalai Lama mastered the DGE LUGS curriculum but also had a strong interest in Rnying ma, SA SKYA, and BKA' BRGYUD. During this period, the Dge lugs was being persecuted by the kings of Gtsang, who were patrons of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD. The fifth Dalai Lama cultivated a relationship with the Qoshot Mongols. This deepened a connection with the Mongols begun by the third Dalai Lama, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO, and enhanced by the fourth Dalai Lama, YON TAN RGYA MTSHO. With the aid of the Qoshot Mongol ruler Gushri Khan (1582-1655), the fifth Dalai Lama and his Dge lugs sect prevailed after a period of bitter political rivalry against the Bka' brgyud and their supporters in the Gtsang court. In 1642, the Dalai Lama and his regent Bsod nams chos 'phel became the rulers of Tibet, although it took nearly a decade before their power was consolidated throughout the provinces of central Tibet and extended to parts of eastern and western Tibet. The relationship thus forged between the Dalai Lama and the Mongol ruler was based on the so-called priest-patron (YON MCHOD) model previously established between the Sa skya heirarch ' PHAGS PA BLO GROS RGYAL MTSHAN and Qubilai Khan. The Dalai Lama promoted the view that he and the previous Dalai Lamas were incarnations (SPRUL SKU) of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA and that he himself was linked to the three great religious kings (chos rgyal) SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO, KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, and RAL PA CAN. In 1645, the fifth Dalai Lama began construction of the PO TA LA Palace on the site of Srong btsan sgam po's palace on Dmar po ri (Red Hill) in LHA SA. He named it after POTALAKA, the abode of Avalokitesvara. The palace included his residence quarters and space for the Tibetan government, the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG, both relocated from 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery. In 1652, at the invitation of the Qing emperor, the fifth Dalai Lama traveled to the Manchu imperial court in Beijing, where he was greeted with great ceremony, although he resented attempts by the Chinese to present him as a vassal of the Qing emperor rather than as an equal head of state. The Dalai Lama forced the conversion to Dge lugs of those monasteries he considered doctrinally heterodox or politically dangerous. These included numerous Bka' brgyud institutions and, famously, the monastery of Dga' ldan (formerly Rtag brtan) phun tshogs gling (see JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING), whose Jo nang texts were ordered to be locked under state seal. The fifth Dalai Lama did, however, support the founding of new Rnying ma institutions, such as RDZOGS CHEN monastery and SMIN GROL GLING, and the renovation of RDO RJE BRAG. He himself was a "treasure revealer" (GTER STON), discovering several texts that are included in his collected works. His religious training was broad and eclectic; among teachers of the Dge lugs sect, he was particularly close to the first PAn CHEN LAMA, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, who had also been the teacher of the fourth Dalai Lama, and from whom the fifth Dalai Lama received both his novice vows in 1625 and his monastic vows in 1638. After the Pan chen Lama's death, the Dalai Lama identified his next incarnation, continuing the alternating relation of teacher and student between the two foremost lamas of the Dge lugs. He died in 1682, but his death was kept secret by his regent, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, until 1697. He is entombed in a massize STuPA in the Po ta la. The fifth Dalai Lama was a prolific and talented author, with his collected works comprising twenty-five volumes on a wide range of topics. Of particular note are his extensive autobiographies. Among his more strictly "religious" works, his LAM RIM teachings entitled LAM RIM 'JAM DPAL ZHAL LUNG is well known.

Nguyen Thiều. (C. Yuanshao 元韶) (c. 1610-c. 1691). Chinese monk who is considered the founding patriarch of a Vietnamese branch of the Chinese LINJI ZONG of CHAN. Born in Guangdong (China), he became a monk at the age of nineteen. He arrived in Vietnam in 1665 accompanying Chinese merchants and settled in Bình Định province (central Vietnam). He eventually built the Thạp Tháp Di Đà monastery and began to teach Chan. He also founded the Hà Trung monastery in Thuạn Hóa and Quốc n monastery in Huế. After that, at the request of Lord Nguyẽn Phúc Tàn, he returned to China to bring back Buddhist materials and utensils and to invite other eminent monks to Vietnam. Among these monks was the Chan master Thạch Liem. Nguyen Thièu was the first monk to teach Linji Chan in central Vietnam. The modern Vietnamese Buddhist claim of an affinity with Linji Chan derives from this transmission via Nguyen Thièu.

Nitto guho junrei gyoki. (入唐求法巡行). In Japanese, "Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Dharma"; a renowned travel diary, in four rolls, by the Japanese TENDAISHu monk ENNIN (794-864) of his nine years sojourning in Tang China. In 838, Ennin sailed to China with his companions Engyo (799-852) and Jokyo (d. 866), arriving in Yangzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) at the mouth of the Yangzi River. The next year, he found himself at the monastery of Kaiyuansi, where he received the teachings and rituals of the various KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) deities from the monk Quanya (d.u.). When adverse winds kept him from returning to Japan, he remained behind at the monastery of Fahuayuan on Mt. Chi in Dengzhou (present-day Shandong province). From there, Ennin made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN, where he studied TIANTAI ZONG doctrine and practice. In 840, Ennin arrived in the capital Chang'an, where he studied under the master (ĀCĀRYA) Yuanzheng (d.u.) of the monastery of Daxingshansi. The next year, Ennin also studied the teachings of the TAIZoKAI (garbhadhātu) and the SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA under the ācārya Yizhen (d.u.) of the monastery of Qinglongsi. In 842, Ennin furthered his studies of the taizokai under the ācārya Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery Xuanfasi, SIDDHAM under Yuanjian (d.u.) of Da'anguosi, and siddham pronunciation under the Indian ācārya Baoyue (d.u.). In 845, Ennin fled the Huichang persecution of Buddhism (HUICHANG FANAN) that was then raging in Chang'an, and arrived back in Japan in 847. Ennin's record includes not only detailed information on the routes he took between Japan and China, but also the procedures and expenses required in order to obtain travel permits. In addition, his diary contains detailed descriptions of the daily rituals followed at a Korean monastery in Shandong province where he (and other foreign travelers) stayed for some time. The Nitto guho junrei gyoki is therefore an important source for studying the daily lives of travelers, merchants, officials, and monks in medieval China.

Niutou Farong. (J. Gozu Hoyu; K. Udu Pobyung 牛頭法融) (594-657). In Chinese, "Oxhead, Dharma Interfusion"; proper name of the founder of an early CHAN school often known in English as the "Oxhead school" (NIUTOU ZONG), after his toponym Niutou (Oxhead). Farong was a native of Yanling in present-day Jiangsu province. Little is known of his early years. He is said to have studied the teachings of MADHYAMAKA and to have spent twenty years in the mountains after his ordination by a certain dharma master Ling (d.u.). In 643, Farong entered the monastery of Youqisi on Mt. Niutou (in present-day Jiangsu province), whence he acquired his toponym. In 647, he gave a public lecture on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and six years later he lectured on the PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA at the monastery of Jianchusi (see BAO'ENSI). The influential treatise JUEGUAN LUN ("Extinguishing Cognition Treatise") is attributed by tradition to BODHIDHARMA, the legendary founder of the Chan school, but it is now generally believed to have been composed by Farong or one of his students. Although Farong's official biography in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN does not mention this event, later stele inscriptions and Chan genealogical histories (see CHUANDENG LU) report that DAOXIN, the putative fourth patriarch of the Chan school, instructed Farong in the sudden teaching (DUNJIAO); Farong's connections with Daoxin are, however, historically dubious. Some of the more unusual positions Farong took include the notion that even inanimate objects, such as rocks, rivers, and flowers, possess the buddha-nature (FOXING). Farong was also one of the earliest teachers in the Chan school to advocate the nonreliance on conceptual descriptions of Buddhism (see BULI WENZI).

Niutou zong. (J. Gozushu; K. Udu chong 牛頭宗). In Chinese, "Oxhead School"; a lineage of early Chan that traces itself to the Chan master NIUTOU FARONG (594-657), a reputed disciple of the fourth patriarch DAOXIN (580-651), although the connections between the two monks are tenuous. The monk Zhiwei (646-722) is often credited with the actual formation of the Niutou zong as a lineage that could claim independence from both the Northern school (BEI ZONG) and Southern school (NAN ZONG) of Chan. The school was active in the seventh through eighth centuries, but reached its zenith in the third quarter of the eighth century. The school's name is derived from Mt. Niutou (in present-day Jiangsu province), where Farong and his students are said to have taught a form of Chan distinct from that of the other lineages then current in China. The Chan historian GUIFENG ZONGMI characterizes the Niutou school as the "tradition (that believes) all things are to be cut off without support" (minjue wuji zong). The teachings of the Niutou tradition show a strong predilection toward the notion of emptiness (suNYATĀ) and PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, as exemplified in its influential treatise JUEGUAN LUN ("Extinguishing Cognition Treatise"), which uses a series of negative argumentations, derived from MADHYAMAKA antecedents, to open students to an experience of the pure wisdom that transcends all dualities. Oxhead writings also frequently employ a threefold rhetorical structure of an initial question by the teacher, followed by the student's hesitation in how to respond, culminating in understanding; this structure seems to have its antecedents in TIANTAI ZHIYI's teachings of the "three truths" (SANDI) of absolute, conventional, and mean. One of the enduring influences of the Niutou school is on the 780 CE composition of the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), which deploys a similar threefold rheotic in developing its understanding of Chan.

nomarchy ::: n. --> A province or territorial division of a kingdom, under the rule of a nomarch, as in modern Greece; a nome.

nome ::: --> of Nim
Alt. of Nomen ::: n. --> A province or political division, as of modern Greece or ancient Egypt; a nomarchy.
Any melody determined by inviolable rules.


Och: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.), governing the Sun, ruler of 28 Olympian Provinces of the Universe; his day is Sunday.

of the 196 provinces into which Heaven is divided.

of the 196 provinces in which the universe is

of the 196 Olympic Provinces. Arathron’s sigil

of the Olympian Provinces. As a Monday angel,

of the shadow of death and his special province is

Olympian province: See: Olympian Spirits.

Olympian Spirits: According to the Arbatel, a magic ritual published in the late 16th century, spirits who dwell in the air and in interplanetary space, each governing a certain number of the 196 Olympic Provinces into which the universe is divided. The seven Olympic Spirits, also referred to as Stewards of Heaven, are: Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel, and Phul (q.v.).

Ophiel: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing Mercury, ruler of 14 Olympian Provinces of the universe; his day is Wednesday.

orb ::: 1. A sphere or spherical object. 2. An eye or eyeball. poet. and rhet. 3. A sphere or celestial body, such as the sun or the moon. 4. Something of circular form; a circle or an orbit. 5. *Fig. A range of endeavor or activity; a province. *orbs, moon-orb.

oscan ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Osci, a primitive people of Campania, a province of ancient Italy. ::: n. --> The language of the Osci.

Otiot ::: Weekly children's magazine. ::: Ottoman Empire Rule ::: (1517-1917) The land of Israel was conquered by the Turkish Ottoman Empire and divided into four districts. It was attached to the Province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul.

Paegun Kyonghan. (白雲景閑) (1299-1374). Korean SoN master in the Imje (C. LINJI ZONG) lineage, who is known as one of the three great Son masters of the late-Koryo dynasty, along with T'AEGO POU (1301-1376) and NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376). After entering the monastery at a young age, Kyonghan eventually traveled to Yuan-dynasty China in 1351, where he studied under the Chan master Shiwu Qinggong (1272-1352), a Linji-Chan teacher from whom he received dharma transmission, and under the Indian monk ZHIKONG CHANXIAN, who later came to live and teach in Korea. After awakening in 1353, Kyonghan returned to Korea, residing at An'guksa and Sin'gwangsa, both in Hwanghae province, and later at Ch'wiamsa in Yoju, where he passed away in 1374. Kyonghan's record of dharma talks, Paegun hwasang orok ("Discourse Records of the Master Paegun"), in two rolls, was compiled posthumously by his disciple Sokch'an. Kyonghan is also the author of the PULCHO CHIKCHI SIMCH'E YOJoL, an anthology of the biographies and teachings of the Buddhist patriarchs and Son masters.

Paegyangsa. (白羊寺). In Korean, "White Ram Monastery"; the eighteenth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Paegam (White Cliff) Mountain in South Cholla province. The monastery was founded in 632 by the Paekche monk Yohwan (d.u.) and was originally called Paegamsa; it was renamed Chongt'osa after a reconstruction project during the Koryo dynasty in 1034. Its current name of Paegyangsa comes from a Koryo-era legend. Sometime during the reign of King Sonjo of the Choson dynasty (r. 1567-1607), a teacher now known as Hwanyang (d.u., lit. "Goat Caller") was said to have been leading a recitation assembly on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), when a white ram came down out of the mountains to listen to the monks recite the SuTRA. Once the event was over, the ram appeared to Hwanyang in a dream and explained that he had been reborn as a ram for transgressions he had committed in heaven; after hearing the master's sermon, however, he was redeemed and was able to take rebirth once again as a divinity (DEVA). The next day the body of the ram was found on the monastery grounds, and Paegyangsa received the name by which it has been known ever since. Paegyangsa is guarded by the Gate of the Four Heavenly Kings (Sach'onwang mun). The main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) is unusually located to the right of the gate, rather than centered in the compound, and an eight-story stone STuPA is located behind the main hall, rather than in front of it. The oldest extant building on the campus is the Kŭngnak pojon, or SUKHĀVATĪ hall, the construction of which was sponsored by the queen-consort of the Choson king Chungjong (r. 1506-1544). The main shrine hall, reconstructed in 1917 by the prominent Buddhist reformer MANAM CHONGHoN (1876-1957), is dedicated to sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, and enshrines an image of sākyamuni flanked by the bodhisattvas MANJUsRĪ and SAMANTABHADRA. Much of the monastery burned in 1950 during the Korean War, and reconstruction extended into the 1990s. In 1996, Paegyangsa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition; the monastery is thus also known as the Kobul Ch'ongnim.

Paekp'a Kŭngson. (白坡亘璇) (1767-1852). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty, also known as Kusan. Paekp'a was a native of Mujang in present-day North Cholla province. In 1778, he was ordained by a certain Sihon (d.u.) at the nearby monastery of Sonŭnsa. In 1790, he moved from his original residence at the hermitage of Yongmunam on Mt. Ch'o to the Yongwonam on Mt. Pangchang, where he studied under the renowned Hwaom chong (C. HUAYAN ZONG) master, Solp'a Sangon (1707-1791). A year before Sangon passed away, Kŭngson received the full monastic precepts from him. Paekp'a established himself at the famous hermitage of Unmunam and attracted many students. He studied the teachings of the renowned CHAN master XUEFENG YICUN at Mt. Yonggu and acquired the name Paekp'a. In order to practice Son meditation, he returned to Yongmunam and revived POJO CHINUL's Samādhi and PrajNā Society (CHoNGHYE KYoLSA). He subsequently returned to Unmunam to compile his influential treatise Sonmun sugyong ("Hand Mirror of the Son School"), which was later the subject of a famous critique by the Son master CH'OŬI ŬISUN (1786-1866) in his Sonmun sabyon mano ("Prolix Words on Four Distinctive Types in the Son School"). Paekp'a was a staunch promoter of Son, who sought to resolve what he perceived to be a fundamental internal tension within the Son tradition: the radical subitism of the Imje chong (LINJI ZONG), which advocated the simultaneity of sudden awakening (DUNWU) and cultivation (K. tono tonsu; C. dunwu dunxiu), and the more moderate subitism of the Heze zong and POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), which advocated sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation (K. tono chomsu; C. DUNWU JIANXIU). Paekp'a's goal was to demonstrate how the subitist "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN) that became emblematic of both the Linji zong and the Korean Son tradition after Chinul could be reconciled with Korean Buddhism's preferred soteriological schema of moderate subitism. By contrast, Ch'oŭi was more concerned with exploring deeper levels of accommodation between Son practice and Buddhist doctrinal teachings (KYO), by demonstrating the fundamental unity of these two major strands of the religion. Their respective positions set the stage for subsequent debates during the late Choson dynasty over whether Korean Buddhism was an exclusively Son, or a broader ecumenical, tradition, an identity debate that continues into the present day. Kŭngson's many writings also include the Suson kyolsamun, T'aegoamga kwasok, Sikchisol, Ojong kangyo sagi, Sonyo ki, and Chakpop kwigam.

palatinate ::: n. --> The province or seigniory of a palatine; the dignity of a palatine. ::: v. t. --> To make a palatinate of.

particularism ::: n. --> A minute description; a detailed statement.
The doctrine of particular election.
Devotion to the interests of one&


pasha ::: n. --> An honorary title given to officers of high rank in Turkey, as to governers of provinces, military commanders, etc. The earlier form was bashaw.

Pegu. [alt. Bago]. Former capital of the Mon (Talaing) kingdom of RāmaNNadesa (1287-1539) in Lower Burma; also called Hanthawaddi. Founded c. 825 CE on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, Pegu served as an important entrepôt, which had flourishing commercial and cultural links with Sri Lanka, India, and ports farther east. The port was made the Mon capital in 1353 when the Mon court was transferred there from the city of Muttama (Martaban). The kingdom of RāmaNNadesa had originally gained independence in 1287 with the collapse of its former suzerain, the Burmese empire of PAGAN (Bagan), and for much of the next two and a half centuries it was engaged in internecine warfare with Pagan's landlocked successor state, AVA, for control of the maritime province of Bassein on Pegu's western flank. As the capital of a wealthy trading kingdom, Pegu was filled with numerous Buddhist shrines and monasteries. These included the Kyaikpien, Mahazedi, Shwegugale, and Shwemawdaw pagodas, and the nearby Shwethalyaung, a colossal reclining buddha built in 994. The most important Mon king in the religious sphere to rule from Pegu was Dhammacedi (r. 1472-1492) who, in 1476, conducted a purification of the Mon sāsana along the lines of the reformed Sinhalese tradition. The purification is recorded in the KALYĀnĪ INSCRIPTIONS erected in Pegu at site of Kalyānī Sīmā Hall. Pegu fell to the Burmese in 1539, who retained it as the capital of their new Burmese Empire until 1599. The beauty of Pegu was regularly extolled in the travelogues of European merchants and adventurers. Pegu again briefly became the capital of an independent Mon kingdom between 1747 and 1757, after which it was utterly destroyed by the Burmese king ALAUNGPAYA (r. 1752-1760), founder of the Konbaung empire (1752-1885). It was rebuilt and subsequently served as the British capital of Lower Burma between 1852 and 1862 and is currently the capital of Bago District.

Phaleg: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing Mars, ruler of 35 Olympian Provinces of the universe; his day is Tuesday.

Phra Kaew Morakot. In Thai, "The Emerald Buddha" (full name: Phra Phuttha Maha Mani Ratana Patimakorn; P. Buddhamahāmaniratnapatimā); this most sacred and venerated buddha image in Thailand is currently enshrined at Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), an ornate temple located on the grounds of the royal palace in the Thai capital of Bangkok. The image, which is in the seated meditation posture, is 29.5 inches (forty-five centimeters) tall; despite its name, it is in fact not made of emerald, but is carved from a single block of a green stone thought to be either jasper or jade. Kaew is an indigenous Thai word for "glass" or "translucence"; morakot derives from the Sanskrit word for emerald (S. morakata). According to legend, the Emerald Buddha was the first buddha image ever made and was carved five hundred years after the Buddha's death out of a sacred gem that came from INDRA's palace. The image is said to have been made by NĀGASENA (c. 150 BCE), the interlocutor of the MILINDAPANHA, in the north Indian city of PĀtALIPUTRA around 43 BCE. The image was then taken to Sri Lanka in the fourth century CE, and was on its way to Burma in 457, when the ship carrying it went off course and the image next appeared in Cambodia. The image eventually came into Thai hands and made its way to AYUTHAYA, Chiangrai, Chiangmai, and ultimately Bangkok. The image's actual provenance is a matter of debate. Some art historians argue that on stylistic grounds the Emerald Buddha appears to have been carved in northern Thailand around the fifteenth century, while others argue for a south Indian or Sri Lankan origin based on its meditative posture, which is uncommon in Thai buddha images. The Emerald Buddha first enters the historical record upon its discovery in 1434 CE, in the area that is now the northern Thai province of Chiangrai, when lightning struck a chedi (P. cetiya, S. CAITYA) and a buddha image made of stucco was found inside. As the stucco began to flake off, the image of the Emerald Buddha was revealed. At that time, Chiangrai was ruled by the Lānnā Thai kingdom, whose king attempted to bring the image back to his capital of Chiangmai. The chronicles relate that three times he sent an elephant to bring the Emerald Buddha to Chiangmai, but each time the elephant went to Lampang instead, so the king finally relented and allowed the image to remain there. In 1468, the new Chiangmai monarch, King Tiloka, finally succeeded in moving the image to Chiangmai and installed it in the eastern niche of a large STuPA at Wat Chedi Luang. The image remained there until 1552, when it was taken to LUANG PRABANG, then the capital of Laos, by the Lao ruler, who was also ruling Chiangmai at the time. In 1564, the king then took the image to Vientiane, where he set up a new capital after fleeing the Burmese. The Emerald Buddha remained in Vientiane for 214 years, until 1778 when the Siamese general Taksin captured the city and took the Emerald Buddha to Thonburi, then the Siamese capital. In 1784, when Bangkok was established as the capital, the image was installed there, in Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, as the palladium of the nation (then known as Siam). Because Wat Phra Kaew is located within the palace grounds, the temple is unique in Thai Buddhism for having no monastic residences; the grounds contain only sacred shrines, stupas, and the main ubosoth (UPOsADHA hall), where the Buddha resides. The image of the Emerald Buddha is always clothed in golden raiments, which are changed according to the seasons. King Rāma I (r. 1782-1809) had two seasonal costumes made for the statue: a ceremonial robe for the hot season and a monastic robe for the rainy season. King Rāma III (1824-1851) had another costume made for the cold season: a mantle of gold beads. The ruling monarch performs the ceremonial changing of the garments each season.

Phúc ĐiỂn. (福田) (c. late-nineteenth century). Scholar-monk of the Nguyễn dynasty, considered one of the most important historians of Buddhism in premodern Vietnam. His biography is recorded in the Thiền Uyẻn Truyền Đăng Lục ("Recorded Transmission of the Lamplight in the CHAN Community"). According to this source, he was a native of Sơn Minh, Hà Nội province. His family name was Vũ. He left home to become a monk at the age of twelve and first studied under the Venerable Vien Quang of Thịnh Liẹt Đại Bi Temple. After three years, Vien Quang passed away, and Phúc Đièn went to study under the Venerable Từ Phong of Nam Dư Phúc Xuan Temple. When he was twenty years old Từ Phong passed away, and Phúc Đièn moved to Phap Van Temple in Bắc Ninh province and received full ordination under the Venerable Từ Quang. Phúc Đièn's biography shows that he was not only an author, translator, and historian, but also an activist who tirelessly built and repaired many monasteries. Besides reprinting, editing, translating (from classical Chinese into vernacular Nôm Vietnamese) numerous Buddhist texts, and recording detailed histories of various temples, he also left behind several independent works, the most important of which are the Tam Giao Nguyen Lưu ("Sources of the Three Religions"), the Đại Nam Thiền Uyẻn Truyền Đăng Tạp Lục ("Recorded Transmission of the Lamplight [in the Chan Community] of Vietnam"), and the Thiền Uyẻn Truyền Đăng Lục ("Transmission of the Lamplight in the Chan Community"). His extant writings include more works on history than on Buddhist doctrine. His aspiration was to collect all the extant materials regarding the origin and transmission of Vietnamese Buddhism. Because he was convinced that Vietnamese Buddhism was a continuation of the orthodox school of Chinese Buddhism (and specifically the CHAN ZONG), he implicitly accepted the hermeneutical strategies of Chinese Chan in constructing his view of Vietnamese Buddhist history. However, in addition to Chinese Chan documents, he also consulted Vietnamese sources, together with copious notes drawn from his own fieldwork at various temples. His writings, therefore, provide valuable sources for the understanding of Vietnamese Buddhist history.

Phul: The Olympian Spirit (q.v.) governing the Moon, ruler of seven Olympian Provinces of the universe; his day is Monday.

Physical consciousness ::: There is the universal physical cons- ciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct dealing with all these external objects and movements and forces. This physical consciousness-plane receives from the other planes their powers and influences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper ; we have a vital-physical part in us

Pojo Chinul. (C. Puzhao Zhine; J. Fusho Chitotsu 普照知訥) (1158-1210). In Korean, lit. "Shining Universally, Knowing Reticence"; the premier Korean SoN master of the Koryo dynasty and one of the two most influential monks in the history of Korean Buddhism (along with WoNHYO); he usually referred to himself using his cognomen Moguja (Oxherder). Chinul was a native of the Tongju district to the west of the Koryo capital of Kaesong (present-day Sohŭng in Hwanghae province). In 1165, he was ordained by the Son master Chonghwi (d.u.) at Kulsansa on Mt. Sagul, one of the monastic centers of the so-called "Nine Mountains school of Son" (see KUSAN SoNMUN). In 1182, Chinul passed the Son clerical examinations (SŬNGKWA) held at the monastery of Pojesa in the capital of Kaesong, but rather than take an ecclesiastical position he opted instead to form a retreat society (KYoLSA) with some fellow monks. Chinul left the capital and headed south and began his residence at Ch'ongwonsa in Ch'angp'yong (present-day South Cholla province). There, Chinul is said to have attained his initial awakening while reading the LIUZU TAN JING. In 1185, Chinul relocated himself to Pomunsa on Mt. Haga (present-day North Kyongsang province), where he had his second awakening while reading LI TONGXUAN's HUAYAN JING HELUN ("Commentary to the AVATAMSAKASuTRA"). In 1188, Chinul and the monk Tŭkchae (d.u.) launched the first Samādhi and PrajNā Retreat Society (CHoNGHYE KYoLSA) at the monastery of Kojosa on Mt. Kong (present-day North Kyongsang province). Chinul subsequently moved the community to the Kilsangsa on Mt. Songgwang, which was later renamed SUSoNSA, or the Son Cultivation Community, by King Hŭijong (r. 1204-1211); this is the major monastery now known as SONGGWANGSA. On his way to establish the retreat society, Chinul is said to have briefly resided at the hermitage Sangmujuam on CHIRISAN, where he attained his final awakening while reading the recorded sayings (YULU) of the CHAN master DAHUI ZONGGAO. In addition to reciting the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, the practice of the Son Cultivation Community at Kilsangsa was purportedly based on the three principles of the concurrent practice of SAMĀDHI and PRAJNĀ as taught in the Liuzu tan jing, faith and understanding of the perfect and sudden teachings (K. wondon kyo; C. YUANDUN JIAO) according to the AvataMsakasutra, and the shortcut method of "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN) developed by Dahui. Chinul is renowned for developing an ecumenical approach to Buddhist thought and practice, which sought to reconcile the insights of the "word of the Buddha"-viz., the scriptures, or KYO-with the "mind of the Buddha"-viz., Son practice. He taught an approach to Buddhist practice that combined an initial sudden awakening followed by continued gradual cultivation (K. dono chomsu; C. DUNWU JIANXIU), which he saw as the optimal soteriological schema for most practitioners. Chinul also was the first to introduce "questioning meditation" (kanhwa Son) into the Korean Son tradition, and this type of meditation would hold pride of place in Korean Buddhism from that point forward. Chinul was later given the posthumous title Puril Pojo (Buddha-Sun That Shines Universally). His many works include the SUSIM KYoL ("Secrets on Cultivating the Mind"), KANHWA KYoRŬI RON ("Resolving Doubts About Observing the Meditative Topic"), WoNDON SoNGBUL NON ("The Complete and Sudden Attainment of Buddhahood"), and his magnum opus, the PoPCHIP PYoRHAENGNOK CHoRYO PYoNGIP SAGI ("Excerpts from the 'Dharma Collection and Special Practice Record' with Personal Notes"), which is included in the SAJIP ("Fourfold Collection").

pomeranian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Pomerania, a province of Prussia on the Baltic Sea. ::: n. --> A native or inhabitant of Pomerania.

Pongsonsa. (奉先寺). In Korean, "Respecting Ancestors Monastery"; the twenty-fifth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Unak in Kyonggi province. The monastery was constructed by T'anmun (d.u.) in 968, in the twentieth year of the reign of Koryo King Kwangjong (r. 949-975), and was originally named Unaksa, after the mountain on which it was built. In 1469, the first year of the reign of King Yejong (r. 1468-1469), Queen Chonghŭi (1418-1483) decided that the tomb of her deceased husband, King Sejo (r. 1445-1468), should be established on this mountain, and she therefore had the monastery renamed "Respecting Ancestors Monastery" (Pongsonsa). The monastery became the headquarters of the KYO school when the two schools of Kyo (Doctrine) and SoN (Meditation) were restored in 1551, during the reign of the Choson king Myongjong (r. 1545-1567). The monastery was repeatedly destroyed by fire during several wars, including the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of the late-sixteenth century, the Manchu invasions of the seventeenth century, and the Korean War.

Popchusa. (法住寺). In Korean, "Monastery Where the Dharma Abides"; the fifth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located at the base of Songni (Leaving Behind the Mundane) Mountain in North Ch'ungch'ong province. Popchusa was founded in 553, during the reign of the Silla King Chinhŭng (r. 540-576), by the monk Ŭisin (d.u.) who, according to legend, returned from the "western regions" (viz. Central Asia and India) with scriptures and resided at the monastery; hence the monastery's name. In 1101, during the Koryo dynasty, ŬICH'oN (1055-1101) held an assembly to recite the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings") here for the protection of the state (see HUGUO FOJIAO), which is said to have been attended by thirty thousand monks. On entering the monastery, to the back and left of the front gate there are two granite pillars that date from the eleventh century, which were used to support the hanging paintings (KWAEBUL) that were unfurled on such important ceremonial occasions as the Buddha's birthday. A pavilion on the right houses a huge iron pot dated to 720 CE, which was purportedly once used to prepare meals for monks and pilgrims; off to the side is a water tank made of stone that would have held about 2,200 gallons (ten cubic meters) of water. There is also a lotus-shaped basin dating from the eighth century and a lion-supported stone lantern sponsored by the Silla monarch Songdok (r. 702-737) in 720. The main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) houses images of VAIROCANA, sĀKYAMUNI, and Rocana buddhas. Behind these three statues are three paintings of the same buddhas, accompanied by BODHISATTVAs, a young ĀNANDA, and the elderly MAHĀKĀsYAPA. In the paintings sākyamuni and Rocana are surrounded by rainbows and Vairocana by a white halo. Popchusa is especially renowned for its five-story high wooden pagoda, which dates from the foundation of the monastery in 553; it may have been the model for the similar pagoda at HoRYuJI in Nara, Japan. The current pagoda was reconstructed in 1624 and is the oldest extant wooden pagoda in Korea. The pagoda is painted with pictures of the eight stereotypical episodes in the life of the Buddha (see BAXIANG). Inside are four images of sākyamuni: the east-facing statue is in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRĀ); the west, in the teaching pose (DHARMACAKRAMUDRĀ); the south, in the touching-the-earth gesture (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ); and the north, in a reclining buddha posture, a rare Korean depiction of the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. Around the four buddha images sit 340 smaller white buddhas, representing the myriad buddhas of other world systems. The ceiling inside is three stories high, and the beams, walls, and ceiling are painted with various images, including bodhisattvas and lotus flowers. Outside the pagoda is Popchusa's most striking image, the thirty-three-meter (108-foot), 160-ton bronze statue of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. The original image is said to have been constructed by the Silla VINAYA master CHINP'YO (fl. eighth century), but was removed by the Taewon'gun in 1872 and melted down to be used in the reconstruction of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul. A replacement image was begun in 1939 but was never completed; another temporary statue was crafted from cement and installed in 1964. The current bronze image was finally erected in 1989. Near the base is a statue of a woman with a bowl of food, representing the laywoman SUJĀTĀ, who offered GAUTAMA a meal of milk porridge before his enlightenment.

Potalaka. (T. Po ta la; C. Butuoluoshan; J. Fudarakusen; K. Pot'araksan 補陀落山). According to the GAndAVYuHASuTRA, a mountain that is the abode of the bodhisattva of compassion, AVALOKITEsVARA. The precise location of the mountain is the subject of considerable speculation. According to XUANZANG, it is located in southern India to the east of the Malaya Mountains. He describes it as a perilous mountain with a lake and a heavenly stone palace at the summit. A river flows from the summit, encircling the mountain twenty times before flowing into the South Sea. Those who seek to meet the bodhisattva scale the mountain, but few succeed. Xuanzang says that the bodhisattva appears to his devotees at the base the mountain in the form of Mahesvara (siva) or an ascetic sadhu covered in ashes. Modern scholarship has speculated that Xuanzang was describing the mountain called Potikai or Potiyil in Tamil Nadu. Other sources place the mountain on an island in the Indian Ocean. In East Asian Buddhism, it is called PUTUOSHAN and is identified as a mountainous island in the Zhoushan Archipelago, about sixty-two miles off the eastern coast of Zhejiang province. When the fifth DALAI LAMA constructed his palace in LHA SA, he named it PO TA LA, after this mountain identified with Avalokitesvara, of whom he is considered the human incarnation.

pretorium ::: n. --> The general&

primate ::: a. --> The chief ecclesiastic in a national church; one who presides over other bishops in a province; an archbishop.
One of the Primates.


proconsulary ::: a. --> Of or pertaining of a proconsul; as, proconsular powers.
Under the government of a proconsul; as, a proconsular province.


proconsul ::: n. --> An officer who discharged the duties of a consul without being himself consul; a governor of, or a military commander in, a province. He was usually one who had previously been consul.

procurator ::: n. --> One who manages another&

proper province is not the 1st but the 7th or 10th Heaven (it was in the 10th Heaven that Enoch

propretor ::: n. --> A magistrate who, having been pretor at home, was appointed to the government of a province.

provincial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to province; constituting a province; as, a provincial government; a provincial dialect.
Exhibiting the ways or manners of a province; characteristic of the inhabitants of a province; not cosmopolitan; countrified; not polished; rude; hence, narrow; illiberal.
Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical province, or to the jurisdiction of an archbishop; not ecumenical; as, a provincial synod.


provincialism ::: n. --> A word, or a manner of speaking, peculiar to a province or a district remote from the mother country or from the metropolis; a provincial characteristic; hence, narrowness; illiberality.

provincialist ::: n. --> One who lives in a province; a provincial.

provinciality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being provincial; peculiarity of language characteristic of a province.

provinciate ::: v. t. --> To convert into a province or provinces.

Puhyu Sonsu. (浮休善修) (1543-1615). Korean Son master of the Choson dynasty. Sonsu was a native of Osu in present-day North Cholla province. In 1562, he went to CHIRISAN, where he became the student of a certain Sinmyong (d.u.) and later continued his studies under the Son master Puyong Yonggwan (1485-1571). He was especially renowned for his calligraphy. Sonsu survived the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions from 1592 to 1598 and resided after the war at the monastery of HAEINSA. Sonsu and his disciple PYoGAM KAKSoNG were once falsely accused by another monk and were subsequently imprisoned; they were released later when the king learned of their innocence. In 1614, Sonsu went to the hermitage of Ch'ilburam at the monastery of SONGGWANGSA and passed away the next year after entrusting his disciples to Kaksong. He was given the posthumous title Honggak Tŭnggye (Expansive Enlightenment, Mastery of All). He left over seven hundred disciples, seven of whom became renowned Son masters in their own right and formed separate branches of Sonsu's lineage. His writings can be found in the Puhyudang chip.

Pusoksa. (浮石寺). In Korean, "Floating Rock Monastery," located on Mt. Ponghwang, in North Kyongsang province; one of the major Silla HWAoM (C. HUAYAN ZONG) monasteries established by ŬISANG (625-702), the founder of the Hwaom school in Korea. According to the monastery's foundation story in the SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms"), while Ŭisang was studying in China, he stayed over at the home of a layman, whose daughter Sonmyo (C. Shenmiao) became enamored of the master. When the time came for Ŭisang to return to Silla, he went to see Sonmyo to let her know that he was leaving, but she was not at home, so he just left a note for her. After receiving the message, Sonmyo ran down to the waterfront, only to see that his ship had already disappeared over the horizon. In despair, she jumped into the sea and died, but was reborn as a dragon who protected Ŭisang on the voyage back to Silla. After returning home, Ŭisang tried to build a monastery on Mt. Ponghwang in order to establish the Hwaom teachings in Silla. There were, however, five hundred bandits living on the mountain at the time, who stopped Ŭisang from proceeding. The dragon woman Sonmyo frightened them away by transforming herself into a huge rock floating in the air. The monastery takes its name "Pusok" (Floating Rock) from this rock, which is believed to be the massive boulder that sits next to the main shrine hall. Sonmyo Pavilion is named after this female dharma protector. Many Silla and Koryo monks studied Hwaom doctrine at Pusoksa, including the Silla SoN masters Hyech'ol (785-861) and Muyom (801-888), and the Koryo state preceptors Kyorŭng (964-1053) and Hagil (1052-1144). Despite its close sectarian associations with the Hwaom school, the monastery's shrine halls are more directly linked to the PURE LAND teachings, reflecting Ŭisang's eclectic approach to Buddhist thought and practice. These pure land linkages include (1) the Anyang nu (Pavilion of Peaceful Nurturing) is an alternative name for the pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ; (2) Muryangsu chon (Hall of Immeasurable Life), the main shrine hall of the monastery, is dedicated to AMITĀBHA, rather than to the MAHĀVAIROCANA image that might be expected in a Hwaom monastery; (3) the statue of AMITĀBHA in the main hall faces east so that worshippers will face west, in the direction of the Amitābha's pure land, when worshipping in the hall; (4) after entering the Ilchu mun (One-Pillar Gate), the front entrance gate to the monastery grounds, the monastery is laid out over nine stone terraces, which is often interpreted as corresponding to the pure land theory of nine grades of the pure land (kup'um chongt'o; see C. JIUPIN), a sort of a soteriological outline of rebirth in the pure land, which ranges from the worst of the worst to the best of the best. Pusoksa is currently a branch monastery (MALSA) of the sixteenth district monastery (PONSA) KOUNSA (Secluded Cloud Monastery), which was also founded by Ŭisang.

Putuoshan. (J. Fudasen; K. Pot'asan 普陀山/補陀山). In Chinese, "Mount POTALAKA"; a mountainous island in the Zhoushan Archipelago, about sixty-two miles off the eastern coast of Zhejiang province; also known as Butuoshan, Butuoluojiashan, Xiaobaihuashan, etc. Putuoshan is considered one of the four Buddhist sacred mountains in China, along with WUTAISHAN in Shanxi, EMEISHAN in Sichuan, and JIUHUASHAN in Anhui. Each of the mountains is said to be the residence of a specific BODHISATTVA, and Putuoshan is regarded as the sacred mountain of AVALOKITEsVARA, known in Chinese as GUANYIN pusa, the revered "bodhisattva of compassion." There are many legends told about Putuoshan. During the Tang dynasty, an Indian monk is said to have come to Putuoshan and immolated his ten fingers, after which Avalokitesvara appeared and preached the dharma to him. As this legend spread, Putuoshan gained fame as the sacred site of Avalokitesvara. In 916 CE, a Japanese monk was bringing a statue of Avalokitesvara back to Japan from Wutaishan, but was delayed on Putuoshan by fierce storms. He built a monastery for Avalokitesvara on the island and named it Baotuo monastery, an abbreviated Chinese transcription for the Sanskrit word Potalaka, an Indian holy mountain that, according to the GAndAVYuHA of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, is thought to be the abode of Avalokitesvara. Since that sutra said that Mt. Potalaka was an isolated mountainous island rising out of the ocean, the sacred geography seemed to match Putuoshan's physical geography. After the Southern Song dynasty, the scale of monasteries, nunneries, monks and nuns in Putuoshan increased significantly through donations from the imperial court and lay Buddhists. Many people came to Putuoshan, especially to pray for safe voyages. It was also popular for the emperor to perform religious rites on Putuoshan. In 1131, during the Southern Song dynasty, all Buddhist schools on Putuoshan were designated as CHAN monasteries. In 1214, Putuoshan was ordered to emphasize the worship of Avalokitesvara. At the height of its prestige, there were as many as 218 monasteries on the island, housing more than two thousand monks and nuns. There are now three major monasteries on Putuoshan-Pujisi, Fayusi, and Huijisi-all affiliated with either the LINJI ZONG or the CAODONG ZONG of CHAN Buddhism, and seventy-two smaller temples. Pious pilgrims come to Putuoshan from all over China to worship Avalokitesvara, and Putuoshan continues to be one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in China. See also POTALAKA; PO TA LA.

Pyogam Kaksong. (碧巖覺性) (1575-1660). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty; also known as Chingwon. Kaksong was a native of Poŭn (in present-day North Ch'ungch'ong province). After losing his father at an early age, Kaksong became a monk under Solmuk (d.u.) at the hermitage of Hwasanam. Kaksong received the full monastic precepts in 1588 from a certain Pojong (d.u.) and subsequently became the disciple of the eminent Son master PUHYU SoNSU, whom he accompanied from one mountain monastery to another. When Japanese troops stormed the Korean peninsula in 1592 during the Hideyoshi invasions, Kaksong served in the war in place of his teacher, who had been recommended earlier to the king by the eminent monk SAMYoNG YUJoNG. Kaksong launched a successful sea campaign against Japanese naval forces. Kaksong was once falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned, but was later released and appointed prelate (p'ansa) of both the Son and KYO traditions and abbot of the monastery Pongŭnsa in the capital of Seoul. In 1624, he was appointed the supreme director of the eight provinces (p'alto toch'ongsop) and oversaw the construction of Namhansansong. Kaksong then spent the next few years in Cholla province, restoring the monasteries of HWAoMSA, SONGGWANGSA, and SSANGGYESA, which had been burned during the Hideyoshi invasions. He also taught at HAEINSA, PAEGUNSA, and Sangsonam, but eventually returned to Hwaomsa, where he passed away in 1660. He produced many famous disciples, such as Ch'wimi Such'o (1590-1668), Paekkok Ch'onŭng (1617-1680), Moun Chinon (1622-1703), and Hoeŭn Ŭngjun (1587-1672). Kaksong's lineage expanded into eight branches, and his influence on the subsequent development of Korean Son rivalled that of CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG, the preeminent Korean monk during the Choson dynasty. Kaksong also composed many treatises, including the Sonwonjipto chung kyorŭi, Kanhwa kyorŭi, Songmun sangŭi ch'o, and others.

Qimingsi. (齊明寺). In Chinese, "Brightness of Qi" convent, located in Yanguan county in Zhejiang province; the residence for several Qi-dynasty nuns listed in the BIQIUNI ZHUAN ("Lives of the Nuns") collection, including Dele (421-501 CE), SENGMENG (418-489 CE), Chaoming (438-498 CE), and Shi Faxuan (434-516 CE). Differing explanations of its foundation appear in the Biqiuni zhuan. The first story credits Sengmeng for founding the convent. It is said that when her mother became ill, Sengmeng returned to her home in Yanguan county to tend to her. While there, Sengmeng decided to turn her residence into a convent. It is said that she participated actively in the construction of the convent's various halls. The second account credits a devout layman named Yüan Jian for donating his residence to build the convent in 487 CE, during the Qi dynasty (479-502 CE). According to this version, the nun Dele was chosen as abbess of the convent because of her renowned lecturing skills and intellectual talent, her meditative expertise, and her ability to attract a wide following of both monks and nuns, including the aforementioned Shi Faxuan.

Qingyuan Xingsi. (J. Seigen Gyoshi; K. Ch'ongwon Haengsa 青原行思) (d. 740). A Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty, Qingyuan is said to have been a native of Jizhou in present-day Jiangxi province. Little is known of his career besides the fact that he was ostensibly the student of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG. He later resided at the monastery of Jingjusi on Mt. Qingyuan (present-day Jiangxi province) and acquired many students, of whom SHITOU XIQIAN (700-790) is the most famous. Like many of the reputed disciples of Huineng (e.g., YONGJIA XUANJUE and NANYUE HUAIRANG), Qingyuan's relation with Huineng is dubious. Later, three major "houses" (jia) of the Chan tradition, YUNMEN, CAODONG, and FAYAN, traced their lineages back to Huineng via Shitou and his teacher Qingyuan (see WU JIA QI ZONG). Qingyuan was given the posthumous title Chan master Hongji (Universal Salvation).

Ral pa can. (Ralpachen) (r. 815-838). The name by which Khri gtsug lde btsan (Titsuk Detsen), the forty-first ruler of the Tibetan dynastic period, is best known. He is considered to be the third of three great religious kings (chos rgyal) of Tibet, together with his predecessors SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO and KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN. All three are regarded as human incarnations of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA. Ral pa can is remembered as an enthusiastic patron of Buddhism, especially for raising the position and prestige of monks by establishing a tax to sustain their needs. He was so devoted to the SAMGHA that he is said to have allowed monks to sit on his long locks of hair; his sobriquet "ral pa can" means "having long locks." He patronized the translation of Buddhist texts from a wide range of materials, including TANTRAs and sĀSTRAs that were not transmitted to other countries in East or Southeast Asia. The first standard Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicon, the MAHĀVYUTPATTI, was also completed during his reign. In addition to his support for Buddhism, Ral pa can is known for his military conquests, which expanded the territory of the Tibetan empire to its largest extent, conquering regions of China, India, Nepal, Khotan, Turkestan, and Gansu. After Tibetan armies attacked Yanzhou in modern Shandong Province, the Chinese sued for peace. A peace treaty in 821 set the boundaries between the two countries, marking a period of peaceful relations along the border. Three great bilingual steles bearing the inscription of this treaty were fashioned. One, erected in 823, still stands in front of the JO KHANG temple. Ral pa can's Buddhist sympathies eventually garnered the resentment of the aristocracy. In 838, he was assassinated by his elder brother, GLANG DAR MA, thus ending the period of the religious kings and the early propagation (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet. According to Buddhist accounts, his death initiated a period of persecution of Buddhism.

Ratio: According to St. Augustine, reason is the mind's capacity of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned. Ratio est mentis motio ea quae discuntur distinguendi et connectendi potens. He also calls it an aspectus animi, quo per seipsum, non per corpus verum intuetur. It precedes the exercise of the intellectual capacity. He says of man: Nam ideo vult intelligere, quia ratio praecedit. Reason is, however, inferior to the intellect. Man possesses reason before he begins the activity of intellection, which is a contemplation. Action is rather the province of reason. -- J.J.R.

realm ::: 1. A kingdom. 2. The region, sphere, or domain within which anything occurs, prevails, or dominates. 3. The special province or field of someone or something. **realms.

realm ::: n. --> A royal jurisdiction or domain; a region which is under the dominion of a king; a kingdom.
Hence, in general, province; region; country; domain; department; division; as, the realm of fancy.


reconquer ::: v. t. --> To conquer again; to recover by conquest; as, to reconquer a revolted province.

rectory ::: n. --> The province of a rector; a parish church, parsonage, or spiritual living, with all its rights, tithes, and glebes.
A rector&


reduce ::: n. --> To bring or lead back to any former place or condition.
To bring to any inferior state, with respect to rank, size, quantity, quality, value, etc.; to diminish; to lower; to degrade; to impair; as, to reduce a sergeant to the ranks; to reduce a drawing; to reduce expenses; to reduce the intensity of heat.
To bring to terms; to humble; to conquer; to subdue; to capture; as, to reduce a province or a fort.
To bring to a certain state or condition by grinding,


reduction ::: n. --> The act of reducing, or state of being reduced; conversion to a given state or condition; diminution; conquest; as, the reduction of a body to powder; the reduction of things to order; the reduction of the expenses of government; the reduction of a rebellious province.
The act or process of reducing. See Reduce, v. t., 6. and To reduce an equation, To reduce an expression, under Reduce, v. t.


Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.

region ::: n. --> One of the grand districts or quarters into which any space or surface, as of the earth or the heavens, is conceived of as divided; hence, in general, a portion of space or territory of indefinite extent; country; province; district; tract.
Tract, part, or space, lying about and including anything; neighborhood; vicinity; sphere.
The upper air; the sky; the heavens.
The inhabitants of a district.


residency ::: n. --> Residence.
A political agency at a native court in British India, held by an officer styled the Resident; also, a Dutch commercial colony or province in the East Indies.


Rgyud smad. (Gyume). In Tibetan, the "Lower Tantric College," one of two major DGE LUGS centers for tantric studies in LHA SA, together with RGYUD STOD. Prior to his death in 1419, TSONG KHA PA is said to have enjoined his disciple Rgyud Shes rab seng ge (1383-1445) to spread his tantric teachings. In 1432, he founded a tantric college in the Sras district of Gtsang called the Sras rgyud grwa tshang (the "tantric college of Se") or as the Gtsang stod rgyud (the "tantric [college] of Tsang, the upper [region]"). The term stod, lit. "upper" in Tibetan, also means "western" and is sometimes used as a synonym for Gtsang, the province to the west of the central province of Dbus. In 1433, he returned to Lha sa and founded Rgyud smad grwa tshang, or the "tantric college of lower [Tibet])." The term smad, literally "lower," also means "eastern." In 1474, Shes rab seng ge's disciple, Rgyud chen Kun dga' don grub, left Rgyud smad when he was not selected as the abbot. He later founded another tantric college in Lha sa, which he called Dbus stod 'Jam dpal gling grwa tshang or the "Garden of MANJUsRĪ College of Upper Ü." It eventually became known as Rgyud stod. Shortly after its founding, it moved to the RA MO CHE temple in Lha sa. Hence, the the standard translations "lower tantric college" for Rgyud smad and "upper tantric college" for Rgyud stod have no implications of hierarchy or curricular gradation, but refer simply to the geographical locations of the institutions from which they evolved. Monks from the three great Dge lugs monasteries of Lha sa ('BRAS SPUNGS, SE RA, and DGA' LDAN) who had achieved one of the two higher DGE BSHES (geshe) degrees-the lha ram pa or the tshogs ram pa-could enter as a dge bshes bka' ram pa. Which of the two tantric colleges a geshe attended was determined by his birthplace. The curriculum of both of the tantric colleges involved study of the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA, CAKRASAMVARATANTRA, and VAJRABHAIRAVATANTRA systems. These were studied through memorization and debate, as in the sutra colleges. Monks also received instruction in the performance of ritual, the use of MUDRĀ, the making of images, and the construction of MAndALAs. Monks were also instructed in chanting; the deep chanting that has become famous in the West was taught at both Rgyud smad and Rgyud stod. Those who successfully completed the curriculum received the title of dge bshes sngags ram pa. Monks who were not already geshes of one of three monasteries could enter one of the tantric colleges to receive ritual instruction but received a lower degree, called bskyed rim pa. Becoming a dge bshes sngags ram pa and especially an officer of one of the tantric colleges (dge bskos or disciplinarian; bla ma dbu mdzad, lit. "chant leader" but the vice abbot; and mkhan po or abbot) was essential for holding positions of authority in the Dge lugs hierarchy. For example, the DGA' LDAN KHRI PA was required to be a former abbot of Rgyud smad or Rgyud stod. After the Chinese takeover of Tibet, Rgyud smad and Rgyud stod were reestablished in exile in India.

Risshu. [alt. Ritsushu] (律宗). In Japanese, "School of Discipline," one of the so-called six schools of the Nara tradition of early Japanese Buddhism (see NARA BUDDHISM, SIX SCHOOLS OF); the term is also sometimes seen transcribed as RITSUSHu. Although its origins are uncertain, a decree by the Grand Council of State (J. Daijokan) in 718 acknowledged Risshu as one of major schools of Buddhism in the Japanese capital of Nara. The school is dedicated to the exegesis and dissemination of the rules of Buddhist VINAYA, especially those associated with the SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya") of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school. Rather than an established religious institution, the Risshu, like the other contemporaneous schools of the Nara period (710-974), should instead be considered more of an intellectual tradition or school of thought. Risshu arose as an attempt to systematize monastic rules and practices on the basis of Chinese translations of Indian vinaya texts. Throughout the first half of the eighth century, Japanese monks relied on the Taiho Law Code (701), a set of government-mandated monastic regulations, to guide both their ordination ceremonies (J. jukai) and their conduct. Realizing that Japan lacked proper observance of the vinaya, Nara scholars who had studied monastic discipline in China sought the aid of GANJIN (C. Jianzhen; 687-763), a well-known Chinese master of the NANSHAN LÜ ZONG (South Mountain School of Discipline), the largest of the three vinaya traditions of China. Their attempts to use Ganjin to establish an orthodox ordination ceremony in Japan met with considerable resistance, first from the Chinese court, which did not want to part with Ganjin, and second with entrenched interests in Nara, which had grown accustomed to the Taiho regulations. After five failed attempts to travel to Japan at these monks' invitation, Ganjin finally arrived in Japan in 754. Then sixty-six and blind, Ganjin finally established an ordination platform that summer at the great Nara monastery of ToDAIJI. Soon thereafter, two more ordination platforms were erected under the jurisdiction of Risshu: one at Yakushiji in Shimotsuke province (in present-day Tochigi prefecture), and one at Kanzeonji in Chikuzen province (in present-day Fukuoka prefecture). In his later years, Ganjin also founded the monastery of ToSHoDAIJI in Nara, where he trained monks according to his own codification of the rules. Risshu and the other Nara schools fell into a period of decline over the course of the Heian period (794-1185), which ultimately set the stage for a restoration of Risshu in the early Kamakura period (1185-1333). Under the leadership of the Tendai priest Shunjo (1166-1227), who had studied in China, a group of monks with interests in vinaya assembled at Sennyuji in Kyoto. They would later become identified as the Hokkyo, or "northern capital," branch of the Risshu school, in contrast to the Nankyo (southern capital) branch in Nara. Monks in Nara also attempted to restore Risshu, as exemplified by Kakujo's (1194-1249) move to Toshodaiji and the efforts of Eizon (1201-1290), who incorporated esoteric practice (see MIKKYo) in his restoration of Risshu at Saidaiji in Nara. Today, Risshu survives in the two monasteries of Toshodaiji and Saidaiji, although the latter was officially joined with the SHINGONSHu during the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912).

royalty ::: n. --> The state of being royal; the condition or quality of a royal person; kingship; kingly office; sovereignty.
The person of a king or sovereign; majesty; as, in the presence of royalty.
An emblem of royalty; -- usually in the plural, meaning regalia.
Kingliness; spirit of regal authority.
Domain; province; sphere.


rubicon ::: n. --> A small river which separated Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, the province alloted to Julius Caesar.

Ryogen. (良源) (912-985). In Japanese, "Virtuous Fount"; a tenth-century exponent of the TENDAISHu during the Heian Period, also known posthumously as Jie Daishi. Born in omi province (present-day Shiga prefecture), Ryogen became the eighteenth appointed head (zasu) of the Tendai school in 966 and spent the last nineteen years of his life at ENRYAKUJI reforming monastic discipline, promoting doctrinal studies, and writing works of his own. He used strategic political alliances to help what was then a marginalized Tendai school become the most powerful religious institution in Japan; in addition, he raised funds both to reconstruct burned monastic buildings on HIEIZAN and to construct new monasteries within its precincts. In response to escalating disputes among regional monastic communities, Ryogen also established in 970 the first permanent fighting force to defend and serve the interests of the Mt. Hiei monks. While this move appears to contradict a set of reforms he had previously issued that forbade his monks from carrying weapons, it seems that his first troops may actually have been hired mercenaries rather than "monk soldiers" (J. SoHEI). Among Ryogen's disciples, perhaps the best known is GENSHIN (942-1017), the author of the influential oJo YoSHu.

Ryokan. (良寛) (1758-1831). In Japanese, "Virtuous Liberality"; Edo-period ZEN monk in the SoToSHu, often known as Ryokan Taigu (lit. Ryokan, the Great Fool). Ryokan was associated with a reformist group within the contemporary Soto monastic community that sought to restore formal meditative practice and the study of the writings of DoGEN KIGEN. Ryokan grew up in Echigo province (present-day Niigata prefecture), the son of a SHINTo priest. He became a novice monk at age seventeen at the nearby Soto monastery of Koshoji and was ordained when he turned twenty-one under a Soto monk named Kokusen (d. 1791). He left for Kokusen's monastery in the Bitchu province (present-day Okayama prefecture) and subsequently inherited the temple after Kokusen died. Soon afterward, however, he departed from the monastery, choosing instead to follow an itinerant lifestyle for the next several years. In 1804, he settled down for twelve years in a hut on Mt. Kugami, situated near his hometown. In 1826 Ryokan met Teishin (d. 1872), a young nun who had been previously widowed, and the two remained close companions until Ryokan's death. Ryokan eventually chose for himself a radically simple existence, living much of his life as a hermit, owning few possessions and begging for alms. He was well regarded for his love of children and his compassion for people from all social strata, including prostitutes. His expression of compassion was so extreme that he is even said to have placed lice inside his robes so they would not get cold and to have exposed his legs to mosquitoes while he slept. Ryokan was a renowned calligrapher and poet (in both Chinese and vernacular Japanese). Most of his verses are written as thirty-one-syllable tanka, although he also wrote ninety choka (long poems) and at least twenty other verses in nonstandard form. Ryokan's poetry addressed his common everyday experiences in the world in direct, humble terms. Ryokan did not publish during his lifetime; rather, his verses were collected and published posthumously by his companion Teishin.

Saddhatissa, Hammalawa. (1914-1990). A prolific Pāli scholar, translator, social activist, and senior Buddhist monk. Born at Hammalawa in Satkorale province, Sri Lanka, he was ordained a BHIKsU in 1926 and pursued his undergraduate studies in Sri Lanka at Vidyodaya Pirivena and Prachina Bhasopakara Samagama. He continued his studies in Benares in India, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and ultimately received his Ph.D. at Edinburgh in 1965. He was proficient in Pāli, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Sinhala, and Hindi and held numerous academic posts in Asia, Europe, and North America, including Professor of Pāli at Banaras Hindu University from 1956 to 1957, Lecturer in Sinhala at SOAS from 1958 to 1960, Professor of Buddhism and Pāli at the University of Toronto from 1966 to 1969, and Visiting Lecturer at Oxford in 1973. While holding these posts, he also conducted numerous lecture tours in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 1956, he served as an advisor to Dr. BHIMRAO RAMJI AMBEDKAR (1891-1956) at Nagpur, India, during the organization of mass conversions of members of the Dalit caste (the so-called untouchables) to Buddhism. Between 1957 and 1985 he served as head of London Buddhist Vihara, and in 1966 revived the British MAHĀBODHI SOCIETY, which had been defunct since World War II, serving as its president. He also helped found the New London Buddhist Vihara in 1964; the Buddhist Center, Oakenholt, in Oxford in 1971; the Buddhist Research Library, in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka in 1984; and the Buddha Vihara, Handsworth, in Birmingham in 1986. He was appointed president of the Sangha Council of Great Britain in 1966, and the Sanghanayaka Thera of the United Kingdom in 1980. In 1984 he served as vice-president of the Pali Text Society. His English publications and critical editions and translations include The Buddha's Way, Buddhist Ethics, The Birth-Stories of the Ten Bodhisattas and the Dasabodhisattuppattikathā, Sutta Nipāta, Upāsakajanālankāra, Handbook for Buddhists, Introduction to Buddhism, and The Life of the Buddha.

Saicho. (最澄) (767-822). In Japanese, "Most Pure"; the monk traditionally recognized as the founder of the TENDAISHu in Japan; also known as Dengyo Daishi (Great Master Transmission of the Teachings). Although the exact dates and place of Saicho's birth remain a matter of debate, he is said to have been born to an immigrant Chinese family in omi province east of HIEIZAN in 767. At age eleven, Saicho entered the local Kokubunji and studied under the monk Gyohyo (722-797), a disciple of the émigré Chinese monk Daoxuan (702-766). In 785, Saicho received the full monastic precepts at the monastery of ToDAIJI in Nara, after which he began a solitary retreat in a hermitage on Mt. Hiei. In 788, he built a permanent temple on the summit of Mt. Hiei. After Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806) moved the capital to Kyoto in 794, the political significance of the Mt. Hiei community and thus Saicho seem to have attracted the attention of the emperor. In 797, Saicho was appointed a court priest (naigubu), and in 802 he was invited to the monastery of Takaosanji to participate in a lecture retreat, where he discussed the writings of the eminent Chinese monk TIANTAI ZHIYI on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. Saicho and his disciple GISHIN received permission to travel to China in order to acquire Tiantai texts. In 804, they went to the monastery or Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai and studied under Daosui (d.u.) and Xingman (d.u.), disciples of the eminent Chinese Tiantai monk JINGQI ZHANRAN. Later, they are also known to have received BODHISATTVA precepts (bosatsukai) from Daosui at Longxingsi. He is also said to have received tantric initiation into the KONGoKAI and TAIZoKAI (RYoBU) MAndALAs from Shunxiao (d.u.). After nine and a half months in China, Saicho returned to Japan the next year with numerous texts, which he catalogued in his Esshuroku. Emperor Kanmu, who had been ill, asked Saicho to perform the esoteric rituals that he had brought back from China as a therapeutic measure. Saicho received permission to establish the Tendai sect and successfully petitioned for two Tendai monks to be ordained each year, one for doctrinal study and one to perform esoteric rituals. After the death of Kanmu in 806, little is known of Saicho's activities. In 810, he delivered a series of lectures at Mt. Hiei on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA, and the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings"). In 812, Saicho also constructed a meditation hall known as the Hokkezanmaido. Later, Saicho is also said to have received kongokai initiation from KuKAI at the latter's temple Takaosanji, but their relations soured after a close disciple of Saicho's left Saicho for Kukai. Their already tenuous relationship was sundered completely when Saicho requested a tantric initiation from Kukai, who replied that Saicho would need to study for three years with Kukai first. Saicho then engaged the eminent Hossoshu (FAXIANG ZONG) monk Tokuitsu (d.u.) in a prolonged debate concerning the buddha-nature (see BUDDHADHĀTU, FOXING) and Tendai doctrines, such as original enlightenment (see HONGAKU). In response to Tokuitsu's treatises Busshosho and Chuhengikyo, Saicho composed his Shogonjikkyo, Hokke kowaku, and Shugo kokkaisho. Also at this time, Saicho began a prolonged campaign to have an independent MAHĀYĀNA ordination platform established at Mt. Hiei. He argued that the bodhisattva precepts as set forth in the FANWANG JING, traditionally seen as complementary to monastic ordination, should instead replace them. He argued that the Japanese were spiritually mature and therefore could dispense entirely with the HĪNAYĀNA monastic precepts and only take the Mahāyāna bodhisattva precepts. His petitions were repeatedly denied, but permission to establish the Mahāyāna ordination platform at Mt. Hiei was granted a week after his death. Before his death Saicho also composed the Hokke shuku and appointed Gishin as his successor.

Samantabhadra. (T. Kun tu bzang po; C. Puxian; J. Fugen; K. Pohyon 普賢). The Sanskrit name of both an important bodhisattva in Indian and East Asian Buddhism and of an important buddha in Tibetan Buddhism. As a bodhisattva, Samantabhadra is a principal bodhisattva of the MAHĀYĀNA pantheon, who is often portrayed as the personification of the perfection of myriad good works and spiritual practices. He is one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, and an attendant of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, standing opposite MANJUsRĪ at the Buddha's side. In the PANCATATHĀGATA configuration, he is associated with the buddha VAIROCANA. Samantabhadra figures prominently in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. In a chapter named after him, he sets forth ten SAMĀDHIs. In the GAndAVYuHA (the final chapter of the AvataMsakasutra), the bodhisattva SUDHANA sets out in search of a teacher, encountering fifty-two beings (twenty of whom are female), including the Buddha's mother Mahāmāyā (MĀYĀ), the future buddha MAITREYA, as well as AVALOKITEsVARA and MANJUsRĪ. His final teacher is the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who sets forth the ten vows in his famous BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHĀNA. In China, the center of Samantabhadra's worship is EMEISHAN in Sichuan province, which began to develop in the early Tang. According to legend, Samantabhadra arrived at the mountain by flying there on his white elephant, his usual mount. As a buddha, Samantabhadra is the primordial buddha (ĀDIBUDDHA) according to the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He is depicted naked, blue, and in sexual union with his consort Samantabhadrī. He is embodiment of the original purity of all phenomena of SAMSĀRA and NIRVĀnA. Called the "primordial basis" (ye gzhi), he is regarded as the eternal union of awareness (RIG PA) and emptiness (suNYATĀ), of emptiness and appearance, and of the nature of the mind and compassion. As such he is the wellspring of the ATIYOGA teachings.

Samyong Yujong. (四溟惟政) (1544-1610). Influential Korean SoN master during the Choson dynasty and important resistance leader during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of the late sixteenth century. Yujong was a native of Miryang in present-day South Kyongsang province. He was ordained by a monk named Sinmuk (d.u.) at the monastery of CHIKCHISA on Mt. Hwanghak (in present-day North Kyongsang province). In 1561, he passed the clerical examinations (SŬNGKWA) for Son monks and was appointed the abbot of Chikchisa in 1573. He later became the disciple of the eminent Son master CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG (a.k.a. SoSAN TAESA). When the Japanese invaded the Korean peninsula in 1592, Yujong took over his teacher Hyujong's place as leader of the monks' militia (ŭisŭnggun) against the invading troops. Leading several thousand monk-soldiers, Yujong's army played a crucial role in several battles where the Japanese were defeated. After the war ended, Yujong is also said to have gone to Japan as an emissary of the Korean king to negotiate peace with the new shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616); he also helped to negotiate the release of some three thousand Korean hostages and prisoners of war taken during the invasion. For his valor during the war, Yujong was appointed prelate (p'ansa) of the SoN (Meditation) and KYO (Doctrine) schools of the Choson-dynasty ecclesia. By the eighteenth century, Yujong had become the object of a popular cult in Korea, and shrines to Yujong and his teacher Hyujong were erected around the country.

satrap ::: n. --> The governor of a province in ancient Persia; hence, a petty autocrat despot.

Sde dge. (Derge). A region on the Tibet-China border, which until the 1950s was one of the most famous kingdoms in Khams; now incorporated into China's Sichuan province. The kingdom with its twenty-five districts enjoyed the autonomy of an independent state throughout much of its existence. Included among its famous monasteries are DPAL SPUNGS, KAḤ THOG, RDZOGS CHEN, ZHE CHEN, and DPAL YUL. From the eighteenth century onward, its royal family supported a famous printery that became the repository of hundreds of thousands of woodblock prints. The printing of the entire BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR edited by TAI SI TU Gstug lag chos kyi 'byung gnas (1700-1774) and of the foundational texts of the SA SKYA and RNYING MA sects, among others, were started there in 1729 and completed in 1744. In the nineteenth century, the region became the center of the Khams RIS MED (nonsectarian) movement; many of the modern traditions of Tibetan Buddhism can be traced back to its founders 'JAM MGON KONG SPRUL, 'JAM DBYANGS MKHYEN BRTSE, and DPAL SPRUL RIN PO CHE.

see ::: n. --> A seat; a site; a place where sovereign power is exercised.
Specifically: (a) The seat of episcopal power; a diocese; the jurisdiction of a bishop; as, the see of New York. (b) The seat of an archibishop; a province or jurisdiction of an archibishop; as, an archiepiscopal see. (c) The seat, place, or office of the pope, or Roman pontiff; as, the papal see. (d) The pope or his court at Rome; as, to appeal to the see of Rome.


Sengcan. (J. Sosan; K. Sŭngch'an 僧粲) (d. 606?). Chinese monk and reputed third patriarch of the CHAN tradition. Although the influential Chan poem XINXIN MING ("Faith in Mind") is attributed to Sengcan, little is actually known of this mysterious figure, and he may simply have been a later invention created to connect the BODHIDHARMA-HUIKE line of early Chan with the East Mountain teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) of DAOXIN (580-651) and HONGREN (602-675). Most of what is known of Sengcan is constructed retrospectively in such early Chan genealogical histories as the BAOLIN ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, CHUAN FABAO JI, and LIDAI FABAO JI, and in later Chan histories known as "transmission of the lamplight records" (CHUANDENG LU). Sengcan is claimed to have studied under Huike, the first Chinese disciple of the Chan founder, Bodhidharma, and the second patriarch of the Chan school. During Emperor Wu's (r. 502-549) persecution of Buddhism, Sengcan is said to have gone into hiding and later resided on Mt. Sikong in Shuzhou (present-day Anhui province). The Lengqie shizi ji and Chuan fabao ji claim that Daoxin became Sengcan's disciple sometime in the late-sixth century, but Daoxin's connection to this dubious figure is tenuous at best and most probably spurious. Sengcan was later given the posthumous title Chan Master Jingzhi (Mirror-like Wisdom).

Sengyou. (J. Soyu; K. Sŭngu 僧祐) (445-518). Early Chinese VINAYA teacher and scriptural cataloguer, whose career is indicative of early Chinese Buddhism's concerns to preserve the integrity of the dispensation and to transmit its beliefs and practices accurately. According to his biography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"), Sengyou was born in Jianye (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu province), the capital of the Liu-Song dynasty (420-479), the first of the four short-lived southern dynasties that formed during the Six Dynasties period. He became a monk at an early age, and studied under vinaya master Faying (416-482). Later, Sengyou himself gained a reputation as a vinaya master; the Gaoseng zhuan says that, whenever he was invited by the prince Wenxuan (406-494) of the Qi dynasty (479-502) to lecture on the vinaya, typically seven or eight hundred people would attend. During the Yongming era (483-493) of the Qi dynasty, Sengyou received an imperial order to travel to the Wu region (in present-day Jiangnan) to lecture on the Shisong lü, the SARVĀSTIVĀDAVINAYA, as well as to explain the methods for receiving the precepts. In addition to his vinaya-related activities, Sengyou also tried to establish an authoritative canon of Buddhist texts by compiling the CHU SANZANG JIJI ("Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the TRIPItAKA"), the earliest extant Buddhist scriptural catalogue (JINGLU). In his catalogue, Sengyou introduced three criteria for distinguishing an apocryphal scripture (see APOCRYPHA) from a genuine one: (1) the meanings and expressions found in a text were "shallow and coarse"; (2) a text did not come from "foreign regions"; (3) a text was not translated by a "Western guest." While the first criterion was a more subjective form of internal evidence, the latter two were important pieces of external evidence that all subsequent cataloguers adopted as objective standards for determining textual authenticity. Sengyou's other extant major works include the Shijia pu ("Genealogy of sĀKYAMUNI"), in five rolls, and the Buddhist apologetic HONGMING JI ("Collection for the Propagation and Clarification [of Buddhism]"), in fourteen rolls.

Sesshu Toyo. (雪舟等楊) (1420-1506). A Japanese monk-painter of the Muromachi (1337-1573) period, best known for his use of realism in landscape painting. He was born to a warrior family in Bitchu province (present-day Okayama Prefecture, in the southwestern part of the main Japanese island of Honshu) and became a ZEN monk in the RINZAISHu tradition in 1431. From early in his monastic career, however, Sesshu (lit. Snow Boat) showed more interest in painting than in Zen training. Around 1440, he moved to SHoKOKUJI, one of the GOZAN (five mountains) temples of Kyoto, where he received formal training in Chinese painting of the Song-dynasty (960-1279) style from Tensho Shubun (d. c. 1444-1450), the most famous monk-painter of his time. In 1467, Sesshu traveled to China, where he studied the emerging Ming style of painting. After returning to Japan in 1469, he established an atelier in present-day oita Prefecture in Kyushu; subsequently, he moved to present-day Yamaguchi prefecture in the far west of Honshu in 1486. Using his "splashed-ink" (haboku) style, he established a style of realism in landscape painting, which included bold brush strokes and splashes of ink, with subtle tones. Many students gathered around him, later forming what became known as the Unkoku-rin (Cloud Valley) school, after the name of the monastery where Sesshu served as abbot. Sesshu's best-known works include his 1486 Sansui chokan ("Long Landscape Scroll"), a fifty-foot-long scroll depicting the four seasons; Haboku sansui ("Splashed-Ink Landscape") of 1495; and the Ama-no-Hashidate zu ("View of Ama-no-Hashidate") of c. 1501-1505, which offers an unusual bird's-eye view of a picturesque sandbar, bay, and mountains in Tango province facing the Sea of Japan/East Sea. Sesshu is often judged to be the greatest of all Japanese painters.

Shang Tianzhusi. (上天竺寺). In Chinese, "Upper Tianzhu Monastery," located on Mt. Tianzhu in Hangzhou, along the southern coast of China. (TIANZHU is one of the common Sinographic transcriptions of Sindu, or India.) Founded by King Qian Liu (852-932 CE) of the Kingdom of Wuyue (907-978 CE) during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period following the demise of the Tang dynasty. According to certain sources, before he became king, Qian Liu dreamed of a woman dressed in white robes, who promised to protect him and his descendants if he was compassionate and did not kill living creatures. She then informed him that she could be found on Mt. Tianzhu in Hangzhou twenty years hence. When Qian Liu ascended the throne, he dreamed once more of this white-robed woman, whom he realized was BAIYI GUANYIN (White-Robed AVALOKITEsVARA). In this dream, she informed Qian Liu that she needed a residence, in return for which she would bestow her patronage on his kingdom. When the king discovered that, of all the monasteries on Mt. Tianzhu, only one housed a Baiyi Guanyin icon, he became its patron and named it the Tianzhu Kanjing Yuan (Tianzhu Center for Reading Scriptures). Later renamed Upper Tianzhu monastery, it became renowned as a GUANYIN pilgrimage site. The monastery is also known for its association with the Song-dynasty legend of Princess MIAOSHAN (first complete rendition 1100 CE) when Jiang Zhiqi (1031-1104 CE), prefect of Ruzhou in Henan province, was transferred to Hangzhou in 1104 CE. Upon his arrival, he had the Miaoshan legend inscribed on a stele to be enshrined in Upper Tianzhu monastery.

Shaolinsi. (J. Shorinji; K. Sorimsa 少林寺). In Chinese, "Small Grove Monastery"; located at the foot of SONGSHAN in Dengfeng county, Henan province. According to the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks"), the Xiaowen emperor (r. 471-500 CE) of the Northern Wei dynasty built the monastery in 496 CE for the Indian monk Fotuo (d.u.). Shaolinsi initially was an important center of translation activities, and many famous monks, including BODHIRUCI, RATNAMATI, JINGYING HUIYUAN, and XUANZANG, resided at the monastery. But the monastery is best known in the East Asian tradition as the putative center of martial arts in China. Fotuo, the monastery's founder, is claimed to have had two disciples who displayed sublime acrobatic skills, perhaps a harbinger of later martial-arts exercises. Li Shimin (599-649; r. 626-649), second ruler and Taizong emperor of the Tang dynasty (618-907), is said to have used the Shaolin monks' martial talents, especially with the heavy cudgel, to help his father found their new dynasty. Within another century, Shaolinsi became associated with the legend of the Indian monk BODHIDHARMA (c. early fifth century), the putative founder of the CHAN school, who is said to have practiced wall-gazing meditation (BIGUAN) for nine years in a cave above the monastery; according to later traditions, Bodhidharma also taught himself self-defense techniques both to protect himself against wild animals and for exercise, which he transmitted to his disciples at the monastery. In subsequent years, the monastery continued to be renowned as a center of both martial arts and Chan Buddhism. In 1245, the Yuan emperor Shizu (r. 1260-1294) appointed the Chan master Xueting Fuyu (1203-1275) abbot of Shaolinsi, and under Xueting's guidance the monastery flourished. At least by the fifteenth century, the connection between Shaolinsi and the martial arts became firmly established in the Chinese popular imagination and "Shaolin monks" remain popular on the international performing-arts circuit.

Shenxiu. (J. Jinshu; K. Sinsu 神秀) (606?-706). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and putative founder of the "Northern school" (BEI ZONG) of early Chan Buddhism. Shenxiu was a native of Kaifeng in present-day Henan province. As an extraordinarily tall man with well-defined features, Shenxiu is said to have had a commanding presence. In 625, Shenxiu was ordained at the monastery of Tiangongsi in Luoyang, but little is known of his activities in the first two decades following his ordination. In 651, Shenxiu became a disciple of HONGREN (601-674), cofounder of the East Mountain Teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) and the monk later recognized as the fifth patriarch of the Chan school; indeed, by many early accounts, such as the CHUAN FABAO JI and LENGQIE SHIZI JI, Shenxiu became Hongren's legitimate successor. According to the famous story in the LIUZU TANJING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), however, Shenxiu lost a verse-writing contest to the unlettered HUINENG (638-713), whom Hongren then in secret sanctioned as the sixth patriarch. However, it is unclear how long Shenxiu studied with Hongren. One source states that it was for a period of six years, in which case he would have left Hongren's monastery long before Huineng's arrival, making the famous poetry contest impossible. Regardless of the date of his departure, Shenxiu eventually left Hongren's monastery for Mt. Dangyang in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province), where he remained for over twenty years and attracted many disciples. Shenxiu and his disciples were the subjects of a polemical attack by HEZE SHENHUI (684-758), who disparaged Shenxiu as representing a mere collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage and for promoting what Shenhui called a "gradual" (jian) approach to enlightenment. Shenhui instead promoted a "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO), which he claimed derived from a so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) founded by Huineng, another (and relatively obscure) disciple of Hongren, whom Shenhui claimed was Hongren's authentic successor and the true sixth patriarch (LIUZU). Later Chan historians such as GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) began to use the designation "Northern school" (Bei zong) to describe the lineage of Shenxiu and his disciples YIFU (661-736), PUJI (651-739), and XIANGMO ZANG (d.u.). While Shenhui's characterization of Shenxiu and his supposed "gradualism" is now known to be misleading, subsequent histories of the Chan tradition (see CHUANDENG LU) more or less adopted Shenhui's vision of early Chan; thus Huineng, rather than Shenxiu, comes to be considered the bearer of the orthodox Chan transmission. As one mark of Shenxiu's high standing within the Chan tradition of his time, in 700, Shenxiu was invited to the imperial palace by Empress WU ZETIAN, where the empress prostrated herself before the nonagenarian monk. She was so impressed with the aged Chan master that she decided to build him a new monastery on Mt. Dangyang named Dumensi. She also gave him the title of state preceptor (GUOSHI). Upon his death, he was given a state funeral. He is one of only three Buddhist monks whose biography is included in the Tang shi ("Tang Annals"). This is clearly not the profile of an imposter within the Chan lineage. Shenxiu's teachings are known to have focused on the transcendence of thoughts (linian) and the five expedient means (fangbian; S. UPĀYA); these teachings appear in "Northern school" treatises discovered at Dunhuang, such as the YUANMING LUN, Guanxin lun, and DASHENG WUSHENG FANGBIAN MEN. Shenxiu was an expert on the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, a text favored by Hongren and the early Chan tradition, and is also thought to have written a substantial commentary on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. Despite the uncomplimentary portrayal of the "Northern school" in mainstream Chan materials, it is now recognized that Shenxiu and his disciples actually played a much more important role in the early growth and development of the Chan school than the mature tradition acknowledged.

Shide. (J. Jittoku; K. Sŭptŭk 拾得) (d.u.). In Chinese, lit. "Picked Up"; a legendary layman of the Tang dynasty. The young Shide is said to have acquired his name from having been adopted or "picked up" by the hermit Fenggan (d.u.). Shide is known to have worked in the kitchen of the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. TIANTAI in present-day Zhejiang province. Shide became a favored subject in brushstroke art and was often depicted madly wielding his broom around the monastery, often together with the legendary poet HANSHAN. Fenggan, Hanshan, and Shide are collectively known as the "three hermits of Guoqing."

Shi. (J. Shaku; K. Sok; V. Thích 釋). The transcription of the first syllable of the Buddha's clan name, sĀKYA (C. Shijia), as found in the Buddha's appellation sĀKYAMUNI, "Sage of the sākya Clan." In East Asian Buddhism since the time of DAO'AN (312-385), monks traditionally abandoned their family's surname and used in its place the Buddha's own clan name; hence, monks and nuns in premodern East Asia typically took the surname Shi. Before Dao'an, ordinands had adopted the surname of their preceptors, including using ethnikons in case their master was a foreigner, e.g., AN for monks and missionaries who hailed from PARTHIA, also known as Aršak or Arsakes (C. ANXI GUO)-viz., the Arsacid kingdom (c. 250 BCE-224 CE) southeast of the Caspian Sea; ZHU for Indians; ZHI for monks from KUSHAN (Yuezhi) in northwest India; YU for monks from KHOTAN; KANG for monks from SOGDIANA; and BO for monks from KUCHA. While Dao'an was resided in Xiangyang (in present-day Hubei province) between 365 and 379, he introduced the custom of adopting Shi as the monastic surname so that all Buddhist monks would have a common religious identity. The adoption of the Buddha's surname signified the monks' and nuns' severance of their ties with their natal families and worldly society, as well as the dedication of their lives to the lineage of the Buddha. The custom became general practice after 385, when there seemed to be textual justification for the practice in a translated passage from the Zengyi ahan jing (EKOTTARĀGAMA), which referred to "sRAMAnAs who were sons of the sākya" (C. shamen Shijiazi; S. sramana-sākyaputrīyāḥ). Zhu DAOSHENG (355-434) was one of the last influential Chinese monks to adopt the surname of his preceptor, rather than that of the Buddha. See also FAMING; sĀKYABHIKsU.

Shitou Xiqian. (J. Sekito Kisen; K. Soktu Hŭich'on 石頭希遷) (700-790). In Chinese, "Rare Transformation Atop a Stone"; master in the Tang-dynasty CHAN ZONG, who was an important ancestor in the lineages of the CAODONG ZONG, YUNMEN ZONG, and FAYAN ZONG, three of the five major houses of the mature Song-dynasty Chan tradition (see WU JIA QI ZONG). Xiqian is claimed to have studied with the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713) while still a youth and was present at the master's deathbed. He subsequently traveled to Qingyuanshan in modern-day Jiangxi province to study with a monk who was claimed to have been one of the sixth patriarch's most eminent disciples: QINGYUAN XINGSI (d. 740). Xingsi is said to have thought highly of his new disciple, famously calling him a unicorn among the other horned animals in his congregation, and eventually made Xiqian his principal dharma heir (FASI). In 742, after his teacher's death, he traveled to Mt. Nanyue (present-day Hunan province), where he lived in a hermitage built on top of a large boulder, hence his cognomen Shitou ("Atop a Stone"). In 762, he traveled to Tanzhou near present-day Changsha, before returning to Mt. Nanyue, where he passed away at the age of ninety. Although during his lifetime Xiqian seems to have been a fairly obscure teacher in a little-known regional lineage, he retrospectively came to be viewed as one of the two most influential teachers of the classical Chan period, along with MAZU DAOYI (709-788). This inflated appraisal is largely a result of the prominence of Xiqian's third-generation successor DONGSHAN LIANGJIE (807-869), one of the two teachers after whom the Caodong school is named. Xiqian is the author of the CANTONG QI, regarded by the Chinese Caodong zong and Japanese SoToSHu as one of their foundational scriptures. Xiqian's short verse, in a total of 220 Sinographs, is highly regarded for its succinct and unequivocal expression of the teaching of nonduality.

shogun ::: n. --> A title originally conferred by the Mikado on the military governor of the eastern provinces of Japan. By gradual usurpation of power the Shoguns (known to foreigners as Tycoons) became finally the virtual rulers of Japan. The title was abolished in 1867.

Shuiyue Guanyin. (J. Suigatsu Kannon; K. Suwol Kwanŭm 水月觀音). In Chinese, "Moon in the Water AVALOKITEsVARA"; a representation of the BODHISATTVA GUANYIN that is frequently depicted in East Asian art. The name of this bodhisattva derives from this image's most characteristic feature: a luminous disk that encircles the bodhisattva and evokes both a nimbus (see KĀYAPRABHĀ) and a full moon, effectively suggesting its power to dispel the darkness of the night. Another connotation is indicated in texts such as the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahāprajNāpāramitāsāstra), where the term "moon in the water" connotes that all phenomena are like reflections of the moon on the surface of the water, thereby signifying insubstantiality and impermanence. The origin of Shuiyue Guanyin and its iconography is said to be based on the GAndAVYuHA section of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, which describes the quest for ultimate truth by the youth SUDHANA. During his pilgrimage, Sudhana encounters Guanyin at the latter's sacred island home of POTALAKA. Artists used this account of Potalaka as the basis for Shuiyue Guanyin images from the eighth century onwards. The first Shuiyue Guanyin is presumed to have been painted by Zhou Fang (active c. 780-810 CE), but the earliest extant depiction appears on a silk banner at DUNHUANG dated to 943: Shuiyue Guanyin appears in the lower right of a large painting of the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed Guanyin (SĀHASRABHUJASĀHASRANETRĀVALOKITEsVARA). There, the deity is seated on a rock outcropping surrounded by water, posed in majestic ease, attired in beautiful robes and sashes with intricate details on his robes and jewelry. Behind him is a lush bamboo grove with sheer, mountainous cliffs. Further standard attributes of Shuiyue Guanyin are the image of the buddha AMITĀBHA in his crown as well as a willow branch and a KUndIKĀ bottle placed to the figure's right. Water spread by means of a willow branch was thought to have a healing effect on the believer. The island of Potalaka was believed to be located somewhere in the ocean south of India, but by the late Tang dynasty the Chinese had identified it with PUTUOSHAN, an island offshore from Zhejiang province near the seaport of Ningbo. It is probably due to maritime contacts between Ningbo and the Korean peninsula that Shuiyue Guanyin depictions became popular during the Koryo dynasty in Korea. Koryo images of Shuiyue Guanyin are especially renowned for their splendor and this form of the bodhisattva remains common in Korean Buddhist painting.

silesia ::: n. --> A kind of linen cloth, originally made in Silesia, a province of Prussia.
A twilled cotton fabric, used for dress linings.


Siming Zhili. (J. Shimei Chirei; K. Samyong Chirye 四明知禮) (960-1028). Chinese monk of the TIANTAI tradition. Zhili was a native of Siming in present-day Zhejiang province. After losing his mother at an early age, Zhili resolved to become a monk and he received the full monastic precepts at age fifteen. He then studied the VINAYA and the scriptures of the Tiantai tradition. In 991, he became the abbot of Ganfusi, and four years later he began his residence at the monastery Bao'enyuan on Mt. Siming, whence his toponym. In 1009, he completed the restoration of Bao'enyuan and the following year his monastery received the official plaque renaming it Yanqingsi. Zhili later found himself at the center of the SHANJIA SHANWAI or "Home-Mountain/Off-Mountain" debate that racked the Song-dynasty Tiantai school. Zhili's Shanjia (Home Mountain) faction and the Tiantai monk Ciguang Wu'en's (912-986) Shanwai (Off Mountain) faction were split over the authenticity of one of TIANTAI1 ZHIYI's texts and the practice of contemplation, as well as the role and value of practices and concepts generated from outside the Tiantai tradition in explicating Tiantai doctrine. In response to this debate, Zhili composed a series of letters, which were edited together as the SIMING SHIYI SHU. Zhili also composed the Shibu'er men zhiyao chao and wrote extensively on various PURE LAND-related repentance rituals. Zhili's disciples later comprised three separate branches of the Chinese Tiantai tradition.

Sinhŭngsa. (神興寺). In Korean, "Divinely Flourishing Monastery"; the third district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located in Outer Soraksan (Snowy Peaks Mountain) near the town of Sokch'o. The monastery was founded in 652 by the Silla VINAYA master CHAJANG (d.u.; fl. c. mid-seventh century), who named it Hyangsongsa, or City of Fragrances [see GANDHAVATĪ] (monastery), but it has been nicknamed "Monastery of Frequent Changes" because it has changed its location, name, and school affiliation so many times over the centuries. When Hyangsongsa burned down in 698, the Silla Hwaom (C. HUAYAN) teacher ŬISANG (625-702) had it rebuilt three years later near its current site and renamed it Sonjongsa (Meditative Absorption Monastery). The monastery was damaged during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of 1592-1598 and burned to the ground in 1642. The three monks who remained after the conflagration each dreamed of a spirit who told them that relocating the monastery's campus would protect it from any future damage by fire, water, or wind. Following the spirit's recommendation, the monks moved the site ten leagues (K. i; C. li) below where the monastery was then located and renamed it Sinhŭngsa, the name it has kept ever since. Sinhŭngsa proper is built on a foundation of natural stone with four large cornerstones. The visitor reaches the monastery along a half-mile-long path that is flanked by reliquaries and memorial stele until reaching the Ilchumun (Single Pillar Gate). Sinhŭngsa's main shrine hall is the Kŭngnak pojon (SUKHĀVATĪ Basilica), which faces west and is decorated on the outside by the ten ox-herding paintings (see OXHERDING PICTURES, TEN). Inside, AMITĀBHA is enshrined together with his companion BODHISATTVAs, AVALOKITEsVARA and MAHĀSTHĀMAPRĀPTA; they sit below a canopy of yellow dragons and in front of a painting of sĀKYAMUNI with an elderly KĀsYAPA and a young-looking ĀNANDA. Right after entering the Ilchumun is found the 14.6-meter (48 foot) high T'ongil Taebul (Unification Great Buddha) sitting on a 4.3 meter (14 foot) pedestal. Casting of this bronze image started in 1987 and was finished ten years later; it is now the largest seated bronze buddha image in the world, larger even than the Japanese KAMAKURA DAIBUTSU (at 13.35 meters, or 44 feet, high). Its pedestal is decorated with images of the sixteen ARHAT protectors of Buddhism (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA). This monastery should be distinguished from the homophonous Sinhŭngsa (Newly Flourishing Monastery), located in the T'aebaek Mountains near the city of Samch'ok in Kangwon province; that temple is the fourth district monastery of the Chogye order.

sircar ::: n. --> A Hindoo clerk or accountant.
A district or province; a circar.
The government; the supreme authority of the state.


Sku 'bum. (Kumbum). In Tibetan, literally "one hundred thousand images," referring to a general architectural style of elaborate, multistories CAITYAs, including the Rgyal rtse sku 'bum (Gyantse Kumbum), GCUNG RI BO CHE, Jo nang sku 'bum, and Rgyang 'bum mo che (Gyang Bumoche). ¶ Sku 'bum is also the name of a Tibetan monastery founded in 1560 by Rin chen brtson 'grus rgyal mtshan (d.u.) commemorating the birthplace of DGE LUGS founder TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA; it is situated near Lake Kokonor and close to Xining, the capital of Qinghai province (incorporating much of the Tibetan A mdo region) in China. In 1583, the third DALAI LAMA, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO , expanded the site by adding a temple dedicated to MAITREYA (T. Byams pa), after which the complex became known as Sku 'bum Byams pa gling (Kumbum Jampa Ling). The institution is centered around a miraculous tree marking Tsong kha pa's actual birthplace. It is also the site where Tsong kha pa's mother is said to have fashioned a STuPA in 1379. Unlike other Tibet sites with the name sku 'bum, the name of the monastery does not derive from its architectural style but rather from a white sandalwood tree that grew at the spot where Tsong kha pa's father planted his placenta (in other versions, it grew from a drop of blood from the umbilical cord). The tree is said to have one hundred thousand leaves, with each leaf bearing an image of the seed syllables (BĪJA) and hand implements of the buddha SiMhanāda, the buddha whom Tsong kha pa will eventually become. Over the centuries, Sku 'bum developed into an enormous complex, one of the largest in the region, with thirty temples, over a thousand buildings, and some 3,600 monks. It had four colleges, one each for the study of doctrine, tantra, medicine, and the KĀLACAKRATANTRA. The monastery's hereditary abbot was the A skya Rin po che, considered the incarnation of Tsong kha pa's father. Sku 'bum is counted among the six great Dge lugs monasteries in Tibet, traditionally drawing large numbers of monks from Mongolia, as well as parts of eastern Tibet. Since 1959, the size of the monastic population has been drastically reduced and, since the 1990s, the monastery has become a popular destination for Han Chinese tourists.

Somdej Toh. [alt. Somdet Toh] (1788-1872). The popular name of Phra Buddhacharn Toh Phomarangsi, one of the most famous Thai monks of the nineteenth century. He was born in Kamphaeng Phet province and, according to some accounts, was the son of King Rāma II. After his ordination, he distinguished himself as a scholar of Pāli scriptures and was eventually appointed as preceptor to Prince Mongkut (later King RĀMA IV) when the prince was ordained as a novice. Somdej Toh retired to the forest shortly thereafter, returning to Bangkok when he was summoned by Mongkut after his coronation as king. He remained a mentor to the king throughout his life and many stories are told of their friendship. He served first as abbot of Wat Rakhang, across the river from the Thai royal palace. Somdej Toh was renowned for his eloquent sermons and his skills as a poet, as well as for being a meditation and VINAYA master. He also was famous as a maker of highly prized amulets. After his death, he became the object of a devotional cult, with mediums who claim to speak in his voice.

Sonamsa. (仙巖寺). In Korean, "Monastery of the Peaks of the Perfected," one of the main mountain monasteries of the T'AEGO CHONG of Korean Buddhism; located on the opposite side of CHOGYE Mountain from SONGGWANGSA, and near the city of Sunch'on, in South Cholla province. The monastery claims to have been founded in 529 by the legendary Koguryo monk ADO. In 861, the monk TOSoN (827-898) enlarged the monastery and gave it its current name Sonamsa. During the Koryo dynasty, the royal monk ŬICH'oN (1055-1101) expanded the monastery again, making it a center for ecumenical training in both Doctrine (KYO) and Meditation (SoN). The monastery was destroyed during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of the late-sixteenth century; rebuilt, it burned again in the eighteenth century and was reconstructed by the monks Nuram Sikhwal (1752-1830) and Haebung Chollyong (d. 1826) during the reign of the Choson King Sunjo (r. 1800-1834). During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), Sonamsa was one of the thirty-one major district monasteries (ponsan) of the Buddhist ecclesiastical administration. After the purification movement (chonghwa undong) that occurred in Korean Buddhism after the end of Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War, Sonamsa was the only major mountain monastery to remain under the control of the married monks in the T'aego order. The contemporary CHOGYE CHONG claims legal title to Sonamsa and lists it officially as the twentieth of its twenty-five parish monasteries (PONSA), but has ceded control to the T'aego order. In 1985, the T'aego order opened a center at Sonamsa to train a new generation of priests in its order. The entrance to Sonamsa is graced by two bridges, one of which, the Sŭngson Bridge, is considered one of the most beautiful in Korea, especially when its view is combined with nearby Kangsollu Tower and a pond that includes a tree-studded island. Sonamsa also preserves one of the largest hanging pictures (see KWAEBUL, T'AENGHWA) in Korea, which depicts in intricate detail all the assemblies of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (K. Hwaom kyong).

Songgwangsa. (松廣寺). In Korean, "Piney Expanse Monastery"; the twenty-first district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Chogye in South Cholla province. Along with HAEINSA and T'ONGDOSA, Songgwangsa is one of the "three-jewel monasteries" (SAMBO SACH'AL), which represent one of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) of Buddhism; Songgwangsa has traditionally been considered the "SAMGHA-jewel monastery" (sŭngbo sach'al), because of the succession of sixteen state preceptors (K. kuksa; C. GUOSHI) who resided at the monastery during the Koryo dynasty. According to legend, Songgwangsa began as a small monastery named Kilsangsa, which was founded by a certain Hyerim (d.u.). In 1197, that monastery was restored and expanded by the eminent Son master POJO CHINUL, who moved his SAMĀDHI and PRAJNĀ Community (CHoNGHYE KYoLSA) to the Kilsangsa site. To commemorate the establishment of the expanded monastery, King Hŭijong (r. 1204-1211) renamed it SUSoNSA, or Son Cultivation Community, in 1208. (Still today, the meditation hall at the monastery uses the name Susonsa.) Chinul's reliquary STuPA, the Kamno t'ap (Sweet Dew Reliquary), sits on a hill behind the meditation hall, overlooking the monastery he founded. During the Choson dynasty, Songgwang, the original name of the mountain on which Susonsa was built, became the name of the monastery itself, and the mountain came to be known instead as Mt. Chogye. One of the most famous buildings at the monastery is the Kuksa chon (State Preceptors Hall), built in 1369 and now listed as Korean National Treasure no. 56, which enshrined early Choson-period portraits (CHINYoNG) of Chinul and the sixteen state preceptors at Songgwangsa. (The portraits were themselves collectively listed as cultural treasure no. 1043.) The portraits were stolen in 1995 in a brazen late-night heist and only three have been recovered. In 1969, Songgwangsa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are all expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition. Songgwangsa is thus also known as the Chogye Ch'ongnim.

Songshan. (J. Suzan; K. Sungsan 嵩山). In Chinese, "Lofty Mountain"; sacred mountain located in northern Henan province. Mt. Song, also known as Zhongyue (Middle Marchmount), belongs to what is known as the wuyue, or five marchmounts. Mt. Song is actually a mountain range consisting of two groups of peaks. To the east there are twenty-four peaks known collectively as Taishi, and to the west twenty-six peaks known as Shaoshi. Since ancient times, Mt. Song has been considered sacred. Emperors frequently made visits to the mountain and many who sought physical immortality found it to be an ideal dwelling place. Mt. Song has also been the home of many Buddhist monks. Sometime during the Han dynasty, a monastery known as Fawangsi (Dharma King Monastery) was built on Mt. Song. For centuries, the monastery received the support of many emperors, such as Emperor Wendi of the Sui dynasty, who renamed it Shelisi (sARĪRA Monastery), Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649) who renamed it Gongdesi (Merit Monastery), and Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) who renamed it Wenshushili Guangde Bao'ensi (MaNjusrī's Vast Virtue, Requiting Kindness Monastery). During the Song dynasty, the monastery was supported by Emperor Renzong (r. 1022-1063), who once again renamed it Fawangsi. Mt. Song was also the home of the famous monastery of SHAOLINSI, which is claimed to have been built on its Shaoshi peaks by a certain Indian monk named Fotuo (d.u.) in 496. Shaolinsi is perhaps best remembered as the home of the semilegendary Indian monk BODHIDHARMA, who is presumed to have dwelled in a cave nearby for nine years, engaged in BIGUAN (wall contemplation). To the west of Fawangsi, there was also a monastery by the name of Xianjusi (Tranquil Dwelling Monastery), which had once been the private villa of Emperor Xuanwudi (r. 499-515) of the Northern Wei dynasty. Xianjusi was the residence of the meditation master Sengchou (480-560), and also PUJI (651-739), the disciple of CHAN master SHENXIU, and his disciple YIXING. Other monasteries such as Yongtaisi, Fengchansi, and Qingliangsi were also built on Mt. Song.

Sonunsa. (禪雲寺). In Korean, "Cloud of Meditation Monastery"; the twenty-fourth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Tosol (TUsITA) in North Cholla province. There are several conflicting narratives concerning its foundation, but the prevailing view is that the monastery was founded by the meditation master Komdan (fl. c. 577) during the reign of the Paekche king Widok (r. 554-598). Sonunsa has a history of repeated destruction and reconstruction through the Koryo and Choson periods. Most of the monastery's present structures, including its main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN), were built during the reign of the Choson-dynasty King Kwanghae (r. 1608-1623). The monastery is famous for its associations with worship of KsITIGARBHA (K. Chijang posal) and is well known for its many camellia bushes, one of the few flowers that bloom during the harsh Korean winter.

sphere ::: 1. The sky considered as a vaulted roof; firmament. 2. The place or environment within which a person or thing exists; a field of activity or operation; orbit, province, realm, domain. 3. A celestial abode. 4. A field of something specified. 5. The orbit of a celestial body, such as that of a planet. Also fig. **spheres.**

spirits ruling the 196 provinces of Heaven) “the

stadtholder ::: n. --> Formerly, the chief magistrate of the United Provinces of Holland; also, the governor or lieutenant governor of a province.

Sudoksa. (修德寺). In Korean, "Cultivating Merit Monastery"; the seventh district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on the slopes of Toksung (Virtue Exalted) mountain in South Ch'ungch'ong province. According to Sudoksa's monastic records, the monastery was first constructed at the end of the Paekche dynasty by Sungje (d.u.). During the reign of the Paekche king Mu (r. 600-641) the monk Hyehyon (d.u.) is said to have lectured there on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). Alternate records state, however, that the monastery was founded by Chimyong (d.u.) during the reign of the Paekche king Pop (r. 599-600). The monastery was subsequently repaired by the renowned Koryo-dynasty Son monk NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376), and since that time Sudoksa has been one of the major centers of SoN (C. CHAN) practice in Korea. Sudoksa is best known for its TAEUNG CHoN, the main shrine hall. The taeung chon was rebuilt in 1308 and is presumed to be the oldest wooden building in Korea, having been spared the conflagrations that struck many Korean monasteries during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions (1592-1598). It was constructed in the Chusimp'o style, so that its support pillars are wider in the middle than they are at the bottom or top. The Tap'o-style bracketing, imported from Fujian during the Southern Song dynasty, is similar to other Koryo-era monasteries, such as Pongjongsa and PUSoKSA. Inside the hall are images of three buddhas, sĀKYAMUNI, AMITĀBHA and BHAIsAJYAGURU, and two bodhisattvas, MANJUsRĪ and SAMANTABHADRA. Paintings depict KsITIGARBHA, the ten kings of hell (see SHIWANG; YAMA), and some indigenous Korean divinities. Many of the oldest original wall paintings were damaged during the Korean War and have now been removed to the safety of the monastery's museum. The courtyard holds two STuPAs, a three-story stone pagoda probably from the Koryo dynasty, and an older seven-story granite pagoda from the late Paekche dynasty, with typical upward curving corners. There is a thirty-three foot high statue of Maitreya a short walk up the mountain; the statue is unusual in that it is wearing Korean clothes, including a double cylindrical hat. It was erected by the Son master MAN'GONG WoLMYoN (1872-1946), one of the renowned Son teachers of the modern era who taught at Sudoksa; other famous masters associated with the monastery include KYoNGHo SoNGU (1849-1912), the nun KIM IRYoP (1869-1971), and Hyeam Hyonmun (1884-1985). Sudoksa recently opened a museum near its entrance to hold the large number of important historical artistic and written works the monastery owns, such as the exquisite wall paintings that formerly were located in the taeung chon. In 1996, Sudoksa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are all expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition; the monastery is thus also known as the Toksung Ch'ongnim.

Sugi. (守其) (c. mid-thirteenth century). Korean monk during the Koryo dynasty who served as editor-in-chief of the second carving of the Korean Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). To supervise this massive editorial project, Sugi established a main editorial headquarters at Kanghwa Island, off the west-central coast of Korea, and a branch at Namhae in the far south of the Korean peninsula. Sugi gathered an army of scholars, first to collate the various editions of the scriptures and to establish the correct reading, and then to proofread meticulously the finished xylographs to ferret out any misprints. In editing this new canon, Sugi and his editorial team consulted principally three earlier canons: (1) the Chinese canon, carved during the Song-dynasty's Kaibao reign era between 971 and 983, which he called variously the Old Song edition (Ku-Song pon), Song edition (Song pon), etc.; (2) the Khitan Liao canon, printed c. 1031-1055, which he generally referred to as the Khitan edition (Tan pon); and (3) the first Koryo canon of 1011, which he usually called the State edition (Kuk pon). Foremost among these editions was the Liao canon of the Khitans, a complete copy of which Koryo had received in 1064. The xylographs of 1,514 texts in 6,815 rolls were carved between 1236 and 1251 in a total of 81,258 wood blocks-the oldest of the few complete xylographic canons still extant in East Asia. This second Koryo canon continues to be stored today in paired wooden archives at HAEINSA in Kyongsang province, as they have been since 1398. Sugi documented in remarkable detail the process he and his editorial team followed in compiling this new canon in his thirty-roll KORYoGUK SINJO TAEJANG KYOJoNG PYoLLOK ("Supplementary Record of Collation Notes to the New Carving of the Great Canon of the Koryo Kingdom"), which was finished around 1247. In these notes, Sugi collated seventy-six passages from sixty-five different texts. In his textual analysis of a specific scripture, Sugi generally treated major issues of structure, translator attribution, textual lineage, and the like; he did not discuss minor variations in readings of a few Sinographs. In a typical entry for a specific text, Sugi lists the case character in the second Koryo canon where the work appears; the title of the text and the roll (K. kwon; C. quan) in which the disputed point appears; followed by the passage itself, generally indicated by kwon, scroll (p'ok) and line (haeng) numbers. The most common types of textual problems noted by Sugi in earlier canons were transpositions of passages (K. chonhu toch'ak) and dittographies (K. chungsa; chungch'om). After evaluating the discrepancies in the different canonical editions, Sugi then indicated which reading he preferred and this reading was then entered into the second Koryo carving. Sugi also treated issues of textual authenticity in the course of editing his canon, especially in attempting to adjudicate the authenticity of some of the variant Chinese translations of Indic Buddhist scriptures. The information Sugi provides in his "Collation Notes" offers important information on how East Asian Buddhist scholars in the premodern era went about the task of collating and editing multiple recensions of thousands of scriptures into a definitive canonical collection. Sugi's notes also help to document the textual genealogies of the various East Asian canons and provide definitive proof that, in style and format, the second Koryo canon imitated both the Chinese Kaibao and first Koryo canons, but its readings followed more closely those found in the Khitan Liao canon. Sugi's annotations are thus an extremely valuable source for detailing medieval Chinese xylographic lineages. In making editorial decisions, Sugi rejects such discredited techniques as following the reading of the majority of manuscripts-as when he rejects the readings of both the Kaibao and first Koryo canons-or following uncritically the "best" manuscript, as in the cases where he rejects the reading of the Khitan edition. Sugi's reputation for scholarly accuracy was such that Japanese scholars adopted the second Koryo canon as the textus receptus for the modern Taisho printed edition of the canon, the TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo, compiled in Japan between 1922 and 1934.

Sukhothai. The first Thai polity in mainland Southeast Asia. Located in the central Menam valley, it began as a frontier outpost of the Khmer empire. In 1278 two local princes raised a successful rebellion to create a new kingdom with the city of Sukhothai as its capital. Under King Ramkhamhaeng (r. 1279-1298), Sukhothai brought several neighboring states under its sway and by the early 1300s enjoyed suzerainty over entire the Menam river basin, and westward across the maritime provinces of Lower Burma. Ramkhamhaeng established diplomatic and commercial relations with China and its envoys twice visited the Chinese capital on tributary missions to the emperor. Having won independence, the kings of Sukhothai chose a new cultural orientation to buttress their rule. The former Khmer overlords were votaries of Hinduism and MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism and the earliest CAITYAs in the city display the architectural features of traditional Khmer tower pyramids. The Thai ruling house abandoned these traditions in favor of Sinhalese-style Pāli Buddhism. In the 1330s a charismatic monk named Si Satha introduced a Sinhalese ordination lineage into the kingdom along with a collection of buddha relics around which was organized a state cult. The shift in religious affiliation is reflected in the lotus-bud and bell-shaped caityas built during the period, which have their prototypes in Sri Lanka. Sukhothai is upheld as a golden age in Thai cultural history. Known for its innovations in architecture and iconography, the kingdom also gave definitive form to the modern Thai writing system which is based on Mon and Khmer antecedents. By the mid-fourteenth century, with the rise of the kingdom of AYUTHAYA to its south, Sukhothai entered a period of decline from which it never recovered. In 1378, Ayuthaya occupied Sukhothai's border provinces, reducing it to the status of a vassal state. After unsuccessful attempts to break free from her southern overlord, Sukhothai was finally absorbed as a province of the Ayuthaya kingdom in the fifteenth century.

*suraMgamasutra. (T. Dpa' bar 'gro ba'i mdo; C. Shoulengyan jing; J. Shuryogongyo; K. Sunŭngom kyong 首楞嚴經). A Chinese indigenous scripture (see APOCRYPHA), usually known in the West by its reconstructed Sanskrit title suraMgamasutra, meaning "Heroic March Sutra." Its full title is Dafoding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing Shoulengyan jing; in ten rolls. (This indigenous scripture should be distinguished from an early-fifth century Chinese translation of the suRAMGAMASAMĀDHISuTRA, attributed by KUMĀRAJĪVA, in two rolls, for which Sanskrit fragments are extant.) According to the account in the Chinese cataloguer Zhisheng's Xu gujin yijing tuji, the suraMgamasutra was brought to China by a sRAMAnA named Pāramiti. Because the suraMgamasutra had been proclaimed a national treasure, the Indian king had forbidden anyone to take the sutra out of the country. In order to transmit this scripture to China, Pāramiti wrote the sutra out in minute letters on extremely fine silk, then he cut open his arm and hid the small scroll inside his flesh. With the sutra safely hidden away, Pāramiti set out for China and eventually arrived in Guangdong province. There, he happened to meet the exiled Prime Minister Fangrong, who invited him to reside at the monastery of Zhizhisi, where he translated the sutra in 705 CE. Apart from Pāramiti's putative connection to the suraMgamasutra, however, nothing more is known about him and he has no biography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"). Zhisheng also has an entry on the suraMgamasutra in his KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU, but there are contradictions in these two extant catalogue accounts of the sutra's transmission and translation. The Kaiyuan Shijiao lu merely records that the sramana Huidi encountered an unnamed Western monk at Guangdong, who had with him a copy of the Sanskrit recension of this sutra, and Huidi invited him to translate the scripture together. Since the names of this Western monk and his patron Fangrong are not mentioned, the authenticity of the scripture has been called into question. Although Zhisheng assumed the suraMgamasutra was a genuine Indian scripture, the fact that no Sanskrit manuscript of the text is known to exist, as well as the inconsistencies in the stories about its transmission to China, have led scholiasts for centuries to questions the scripture's authenticity. There is also internal evidence of the scripture's Chinese provenance, such as the presence of such indigenous Chinese philosophical concepts as yin-yang cosmology and the five elements (wuxing) theory, the stylistic beauty of the literary Chinese in which the text is written, etc. For these and other reasons, the suraMgamasutra is now generally recognized to be a Chinese apocryphal composition. The sutra opens with one of the most celebrated stories in East Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA's near seduction by the harlot Mātangī. With Ānanda close to being in flagrante delicto, the Buddha sends the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ to save him from a PĀRĀJIKA offense, by employing the suraMgama DHĀRAnĪ to thwart Mātangī's seductive magic. The Buddha uses the experience to teach to Ānanda and the congregation the suRAMGAMASAMĀDHI, which counters the false views about the aggregates (SKANDHA) and consciousness (VIJNĀNA) and reveals the TATHĀGATAGARBHA that is inherent in all sentient beings. This tathāgatagarbha, or buddha-nature, is made manifest through the suraMgamasamādhi, which constitutes the "heroic march" forward toward enlightenment. The suraMgamasutra was especially influential in the CHAN school during the Song and Ming dynasties, which used the text as the scriptural justification for the school's distinctive teaching that Chan "points directly to the human mind" (ZHIZHI RENXIN), so that one may "see the nature and achieve buddhahood" (JIANXING CHENGFO). Several noted figures within the Chan school achieved their own awakenings through the influence of the suraMgamasutra, including the Ming-dynasty master HANSHAN DEQING (1546-1623), and the sutra was particularly important in the writings of such Ming-dynasty Chan masters as YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615). The leading Chan monk of modern Chinese Buddhism, XUYUN (1840-1959), advocated the practice of the suraMgamasutra throughout his life, and it was the only scripture that he ever annotated. As a mark of the sutra's influence in East Asian Buddhism, the suraMgamasutra is one of the few apocryphal scriptures that receives its own mention in another indigenous sutra: the apocryphal Foshuo fa miejin jing ("The Sutra on the Extinction of the Dharma") states that the first sutra to disappear from the world during the dharma-ending age (MOFA) will in fact be the suraMgamasutra. The Tibetan translation of this Chinese apocryphon was produced during the Qianlong era (1735-1796) of the Qing dynasty; the scripture was apparently so important in contemporary Chinese Buddhism that it was deemed essential for it to be represented in the Tibetan canon as well.

Tachikawaryu. (立川流). A strand of Japanese esoteric Buddhism that is generally regarded as heterodox by the mainstream SHINGONSHu tradition because of its involvement in ritual sex and magical elements. The school was established in 1114 in the town of Tachikawa (Izu province) by Ninkan (1057-1123), who is known to have combined Daoist yin-yang cosmology with Shingon rituals and taught sexual union as a direct way of attaining buddhahood. Its teachings were subsequently systematized by Raiyu (1226-1304). The school sought to achieve buddhahood in this very body (SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU) and taught that the loss of self that occurs through ritual sexuality was the most immediate approach to enlightenment; sexual climax, which the school termed the lion's roar (see SIMHANĀDA), constituted the moment of awakening. The Tachikawaryu was officially proscribed in the thirteenth century and its practices eliminated from the mainstream esoteric tradition through the efforts of the Shingon monk Yukai (1345-1416). Although its scriptures were lost (except for a few that are said to have been sealed so that they would never be reopened), some of its practices are thought to have continued to circulate in secret in Shingon circles.

T'aego chong. (太古宗). In Korean, "T'aego Order"; an order of Korean married monks established in 1969, in response to the post-Korean War domination of Korean Buddhism by the CHOGYE CHONG of celibate monks. The name of the school is taken from the late Koryo-period monk T'AEGO POU (1310-1382), who was presumed to have introduced the lineage of the Chinese LINJI ZONG (K. Imje chong) to Korea at the end of the Koryo dynasty. The Korean monastic tradition had traditionally institutionalized celibacy throughout its history, but during the Japanese colonial period in Korea (1910-1945), the Japanese government-general had officially sanctioned clergy marriage along with many other reforms of Korean Buddhism that mirrored Japanese policies toward Buddhism in Japan during the Meiji Restoration. Following liberation from Japan in 1945, the celibate monks of Korea launched a purification movement (chonghwa undong) in 1955 to remove all vestiges of Japanese influence from Korean Buddhism, including the institution of clergy marriage. This campaign was supported by the Korean president Syngman Rhee, who issued a series of orders calling for the resignation of all "Waesaek sŭngnyo" (Japanized monks) from monastic positions. The married monks regarded these orders as the beginning of a pomnan (C. fanan), or persecution, of their way of life. The schism between the two sides deepened, often involving violent confrontations and continuing litigation. In 1961, a Korean Supreme Court ruling formally returned administrative control of virtually all the major monasteries to the celibate monks of the Chogye chong. In 1969, the remaining married monks who refused to leave their families split from the Chogye chong and, under the leadership of TAERYUN (1884-1979), organized themselves into the T'aego chong. The T'aego chong is now the second largest Buddhist order in Korea, following the Chogye chong, which continues officially to observe celibacy. The major monasteries that remain under the control of the T'aego chong are T'AEGOSA and PONGWoNSA in Seoul and SoNAMSA in South Cholla province.

T'aego Pou. (太古普愚) (1301-1382). In Korean, "Grand Ancient, Universal Stupidity"; SoN master of the late Koryo dynasty, who is presumed to have introduced the lineage of the LINJI ZONG (K. Imje chong) of the Chinese CHAN school to Korea. T'aego was a native of Hongju in present-day South Ch'ungchong province. He is said to have been born into the prominent family of a court official and ordained as a youth in 1313 by the monk Kwangji (d.u.) at the monastery of Hoeamsa (Kyonggi province). T'aego later passed the clerical examinations (SŬNGKWA) for specialists of the Hwaom (C. HUAYAN) school in 1329. While investigating the Chan case (GONG'AN) "the ten thousand dharmas return to one" (case 45 of the BIYAN LU) in 1333, T'aego is said to have attained his first awakening at the monastery of Kamnosa in Songso (South Cholla province). Four years later, he is said to have had another awakening while investigating ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN's WU GONG'AN. In 1341, he built a hermitage near the monastery Chŭnghŭngsa on Mt. Samgak (Kyonggi province) named T'aegoam, whence he acquired his toponym. In 1346, T'aego headed for China, where he resided at the monastery of Daguangsi in the Yuan capital of Yanjing. T'aego is also said to have visited the eminent Chan master Shiwu Qinggong (1272-1352) and received his seal of transmission (C. YINKE, K. in'ga) and thus an affiliation with Shiwu's Linji lineage. After T'aego returned to Korea in 1348, he retired to Miwon on Mt. Sosol (Kyonggi province). In 1356, he was summoned to the Koryo capital of Kaesong, where he taught at the influential monastery of Pongŭnsa. That same year he was appointed the king's personal instructor, or "royal preceptor" (wangsa), and abbot of the monastery KWANGMYoNGSA, the major Son monastery in the capital. T'aego continued to serve as the personal advisor to successive kings until his death on Mt. Sosol in 1382. His teachings are recorded in the T'aego hwasang orok. ¶ In the last half of the twentieth century, attempts to trace the orthodox lineage of the contemporary Korean CHOGYE CHONG back to T'aego and his Chinese Linji lineage rather than to POJO CHINUL (1158-1210) caused a rift within the Korean Buddhist community. The focus of the critique is Chinul's putatively "gradualist" approach to Son Buddhist soteriology (viz., his advocacy of tono chomsu, C. DUNWU JIANXIU) and Chinul's lack of an authentic dharma transmission from a recognized Chan or Son master (he is known to have been an autodidact). T'aego was therefore credited with initiating true Son orthodoxy in Korea, based on T'aego's transmission from Shiwu Qinggong, an authentic successor in the Chinese Linji school with its quintessentially "sudden awakening" (DUNWU) soteriology. This issue remains a matter of unremitting controversy in contemporary Chogye order politics. T'aego's name has also been adopted by the T'AEGO CHONG, a modern order of Korean married monks, in order to give a patina of orthodoxy to its school as well.

Taehŭngsa. (大興寺). In Korean, "Monastery of Great Flourishing"; the twenty-second district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Turyun Mountain in near Haenam County in South Cholla province. According to memorial stele erected for early Koryo-dynasty monks, the monastery was founded some time before 900 CE, perhaps by either Chonggwan (fl. c. 426) or TOSoN (827-898). During the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions of the late sixteenth century, the monk CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG (1520-1604), also known as SoSAN TAESA, led a monastic militia based at the monastery in fighting the Japanese. After the fighting ended in 1598, Sosan proclaimed that Taehŭngsa would never be touched by the "three disasters" (samjae) of flood, fire, or wind, and it was in part due to his efforts that Taehŭngsa became an important Buddhist center. Sosan requested that his personal belongings be kept there even after his death, and today his calligraphy, portrait, robe, and bowls can be seen in the monastery's museum. A famous resident was the Son master CH'OŬI ŬISUN (1786-1866), the eighteenth-century reviver of the tea traditions of Korea, who developed the tea ceremony as a form of religious practice and is known for synthesizing the tea ceremony and Son practice, as exemplified in his slogan ta Son ilmi (tea and Son are a single taste). The monastery's main shrine hall (TAEŬNG CHoN) is approached by use of the Sinjin Bridge and enshrines images of sĀKYAMUNI, AMITĀBHA, and BHAIsAJYAGURU. Taehŭngsa is also known for its Ch'onbul chon, "Thousand-Buddha Hall," which enshrines a thousand miniature jade statues of the Buddha, all carved in Kyongju about 250 years ago. There is a story that the ship transporting the buddha images was hijacked by Japanese pirates, but the pirates later had a dream in which the Buddha severely admonished them and voluntarily returned the statues to Taehŭngsa. The grounds of the monastery also include a three-story stone pagoda from the Koryo dynasty, which is said to have held relics (K. sari; S. sARĪRA) of the Buddha brought to Korea by the VINAYA master CHAJANG (608-686). A five-inch (twelve-cm) high, seated bronze Buddha was found inside the base during repairs in 1967 to one of the other three-story pagodas, which appears to date back to the Silla dynasty. A seated MAITREYA Buddha is carved on a rock at Taehŭngsa, which is dated to the early Koryo dynasty. Taehŭngsa is also the home of a highly decorated bronze bell formerly owned by T'apsansa, which is held aloft by a hook shaped like a dragon.

Taksasilā. (P. Takkasilā; T. Rdo 'jog; C. Shishi guo; J. Sekishitsu koku; K. Soksil kuk 石室國). Capital of GANDHĀRA (in the Punjab province of modern Pakistan), often known in the West by its Greek name Taxila; an important early center of Indian Buddhist learning and transcontinental trade. The city is mentioned frequently in the JĀTAKAs, but not in the Pāli suttas, although it is presumed that the Buddha's physician JĪVAKA studied there. AsOKA is said to have built a dharmarājika STuPA and monastery there, which were enlarged when the city was rebuilt following Scythian invasions. Taksasilā was a center for both Hindu and Buddhist scholarship, which flourished especially between the first and fifth centuries CE. Among the schools of Indian Buddhism, the SARVĀSTIVĀDA was especially strong in the city. Taksasilā was visited by the Chinese pilgrims FAXIAN and XUANZANG, who described it in their travel records.

Tanluan. (J. Donran; K. Tamnan 曇鸞) (c. 476-542). Chinese monk and putative patriarch of the PURE LAND traditions of East Asia. He is said to have become a monk at an early age, after which he devoted himself to the study of the MAHĀSAMNIPĀTASuTRA. As his health deteriorated from his intensive studies, Tanluan is said to have resolved to search for a means of attaining immortality. During his search in the south of China, Tanluan purportedly met the Daoist master Tao Hongjing (455-536), who gave him ten rolls of scriptures of the Daoist perfected. Tanluan is then said to have visited BODHIRUCI in Luoyang, from whom he received a copy of the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING. Tanluan subsequently abandoned his initial quest for immortality in favor of the teachings of the buddha AMITĀBHA's pure land (see SUKHĀVATĪ). He was later appointed abbot of the monasteries of Dayansi in Bingzhou (present-day Shaanxi province) and Xuanzhongsi in nearby Fenzhou. Tanluan is famous for his commentary on the WULIANGSHOU JING YOUPOTISHE YUANSHENG JI attributed to VASUBANDHU.

Taxila. The Greek name for the Indian city of TAKsAsILĀ, an important center of Buddhist learning in the GANDHĀRA region (in Punjab province of modern Pakistan). See TAKsAsILĀ.

tetrarch ::: a. --> A Roman governor of the fourth part of a province; hence, any subordinate or dependent prince; also, a petty king or sovereign.
Four.


the 196 provinces in which Heaven is divided.

The first Dalai Lama, DGE 'DUN GRUB, was known as a great scholar and religious practitioner. A direct disciple of TSONG KHA PA, he is remembered for founding BKRA SHIS LHUN PO monastery near the central Tibetan town of Shigatse. The second Dalai Lama, Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, was born the son of a RNYING MA YOGIN and became a renowned tantric master in his own right. ¶ It is with the third Dalai Lama, BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO, that the Dalai Lama lineage actually begins. Recognized at a young age as the reincarnation of Dge 'dun rgya mtsho, he was appointed abbot of 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery near LHA SA and soon rose to fame throughout central Asia as a Buddhist teacher. He served as a religious master for the Mongol ruler Altan Khan, who bestowed the title "Dalai Lama," and is credited with converting the Tümed Mongols to Buddhism. Later in life, he traveled extensively across eastern Tibet and western China, teaching and carrying out monastic construction projects. ¶ The fourth Dalai Lama, Yon tan rgya mtsho, was recognized in the person of the grandson of Altan Khan's successor, solidifying Mongol-Tibetan ties. ¶ While the first four Dalai Lamas served primarily as religious scholars and teachers, the fifth Dalai Lama, NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO, combined religious and secular activities to become one of Tibet's preeminent statesmen. He was a dynamic political leader who, with the support of Gushi Khan, defeated his opponents and in 1642 was invested with temporal powers over the Tibetan state, in addition to his religious role, a position that succeeding Dalai Lamas held until 1959. A learned and prolific author, he and his regent, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, were largely responsible for the identification of the Dalai Lamas with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. The construction of the PO TA LA palace began during his reign (and was completed after this death). He is popularly known as the "Great Fifth." ¶ The sixth Dalai Lama, TSHANGS DBYANGS RGYA MTSHO, was a controversial figure who chose to abandon the strict monasticism of his predecessors in favor of a life of society and culture, refusing to take the vows of a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU). He is said to have frequented the drinking halls below the Po ta la palace. He constructed pleasure gardens and the temple of the NAGAs, called the KLU KHANG, on the palace grounds. He is remembered especially for his poetry, which addresses themes such as love and the difficulty of spiritual practice. Tibetans generally interpret his behavior as exhibiting an underlying tantric wisdom, a skillful means for teaching the dharma. His death is shrouded in mystery. Official accounts state that he died while under arrest by Mongol troops. According to a prominent secret biography (GSANG BA'I RNAM THAR), however, he lived many more years, traveling across Tibet in disguise. ¶ The seventh Dalai Lama, SKAL BZANG RGYA MTSHO, was officially recognized only at the age of twelve, and due to political complications, did not participate actively in affairs of state. He was renowned for his writings on tantra and his poetry. ¶ The eighth Dalai Lama, 'Jam dpal rgya mtsho (Jampal Gyatso, 1758-1804), built the famous NOR BU GLING KHA summer palace. ¶ The ninth through twelfth Dalai Lamas each lived relatively short lives, due, according to some accounts, to political intrigue and the machinations of power-hungry regents. According to tradition, from the death of one Dalai Lama to the investiture of the next Dalai Lama as head of state (generally a period of some twenty years), the nation was ruled by a regent, who was responsible for discovering the new Dalai Lama and overseeing his education. If the Dalai Lama died before reaching his majority, the reign of the regent was extended. ¶ The thirteenth Dalai Lama, THUB BSTAN RGYA MTSHO, was an astute and forward-looking political leader who guided Tibet through a period of relative independence during a time of foreign entanglements with Britain, China, and Russia. In his last testament, he is said to have predicted Tibet's fall to Communist China. ¶ The fourteenth and present Dalai Lama, Bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho, assumed his position several years prior to reaching the age of majority as his country faced the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. In 1959, he escaped into exile, establishing a government-in-exile in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala (DHARMAsALA) in northwestern India. Since then, he has traveled and taught widely around the world, while also advocating a nonviolent solution to Tibet's occupation. He was born in the A mdo region of what is now Qinghai province in China to a farming family, although his older brother had already been recognized as an incarnation at a nearby important Dge lugs monastery (SKU 'BUM). On his becoming formally accepted as Dalai Lama, his family became aristocrats and moved to Lha sa. He was educated traditionally by private tutors (yongs 'dzin), under the direction first of the regent Stag brag rin po che (in office 1941-1950), and later Gling rin po che Thub bstan lung rtogs rnam rgyal (1903-1983) and Khri byang rin po che Blo bzang ye shes (1901-1981). His modern education was informal, gained from conversations with travelers, such as the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer. When the Chinese army entered the Khams region of eastern Tibet in 1951, he formally took over from the regent and was enthroned as the head of the DGA' LDAN PHO BRANG government. In the face of Tibetan unrest as the Chinese government brought Tibet firmly under central control, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959; the Indian government accorded the Dalai Lama respect as a religious figure but did not accept his claim to be the head of a separate state. In 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an event that increased his prominence around the world. He is the author of many books in English, most of them the written record of lectures and traditional teachings translated from Tibetan.

The general superiority of theology in this system over the admittedly distinct discipline of philosophy, makes it impossible for unaided reason to solve certain problems which Thomism claims are quite within the province of the latter, e.g., the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the soul. Indeed the Scotist position on this latter question has been thought by some critics to come quite close to the double standard of truth of Averroes, (q.v.) namely, that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy. The univocal assertion of being in God and creatures; the doctrine of universal prime matter (q.v.) in all created substances, even angels, though characteristically there are three kinds of prime matter); the plurality of forms in substances (e.g., two in man) giving successive generic and specific determinations of the substance; all indicate the opposition of Scotistic metaphysics to that of Thomism despite the large body of ideas the two systems have in common. The denial of real distinction between the soul and its faculties; the superiority of will over intellect, the attainment of perfect happiness through a will act of love; the denial of the absolute unchangeableness of the natural law in view of its dependence on the will of God, acts being good because God commanded them; indicate the further rejection of St. Thomas who holds the opposite on each of these questions. However the opposition is not merely for itself but that of a voluntarist against an intellectualist. This has caused many students to point out the affinity of Duns Scotus with Immanuel Kant. (q.v.) But unlike the great German philosopher who relies entirely upon the supremacy of moral consciousness, Duns Scotus makes a constant appeal to revelation and its order of truth as above all philosophy. In his own age, which followed immediately upon the great constructive synthesis of Saints Albert, Bonaventure, and Thomas, this lesser light was less a philosopher because he and his School were incapable of powerful synthesis and so gave themselves to analysis and controversy. The principal Scotists were Francis of Mayron (d. 1327) and Antonio Andrea (d. 1320); and later John of Basoles, John Dumbleton, Walter Burleigh, Alexander of Alexandria, Lychetus of Brescia and Nicholas de Orbellis. The complete works with a life of Duns Scotus were published in 1639 by Luke Wadding (Lyons) and reprinted by Vives in 1891. (Paris) -- C.A.H.

The line of Karma pas originated during the twelfth century with DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA, a close disciple of SGAM PO PA BSOD NAMS RIN CHEN, who had himself studied under the famous YOGIN MI LA RAS PA. Dus gsum mkhyen pa established several important monasteries, including Mtshur phu, which served as the main seat of the Karma pas and the Karma bka' brgyud in central Tibet. Dus gsum mkhyen pa's successor, the second Karma pa KARMA PAKSHI, is remembered especially for his prowess in meditation and thaumaturgy. He was patronized by the Mongols, first by Mongke (1209-1259) and later by his brother, the Yuan emperor Qubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294) before losing the emperor's support. The third Karma pa RANG 'BYUNG RDO RJE continued this affiliation with the Mongol court, playing a role in emperor Toghun Temür's (r. 1333-1368) ascension to the throne. The fourth Karma pa Rol pa'i rdo rje and fifth Karma pa Bde bzhin gshegs pa maintained ties with the Chinese court-the former with Toghun Temür and the latter serving as the preceptor of the Yongle emperor (reigned 1402-1424) of the Ming dynasty, a position of great influence. The sixth Karma pa Mthong ba don ldan did not maintain the same political connections of his predecessors; he is remembered especially for his contributions to the religious life of the Karma bka' brgyud, producing meditation and ritual manuals. The seventh Karma pa Chos grags rgya mtsho is known primarily for his philosophical works on logic and epistemology (PRAMĀnA); his voluminous text on the topic is still used today as a principal textbook in many Bka' brgyud monasteries. The eighth Karma pa MI BSKYOD RDO RJE is among the most renowned scholars of his generation, a prolific author whose writings encompassed Sanskrit, poetry, and art, as well as MADHYAMAKA philosophy and tantra. The ninth Karma pa DBANG PHYUG RDO RJE is revered for his influential works on the theory and practice of MAHĀMUDRĀ. It was during his lifetime that the DGE LUGS hierarchs ascended to power, with an attendant decline in the political fortunes of his sect in central Tibet. His successor, the tenth Karma pa Chos kyi dbang phyug, was thus forced into a life of virtual exile near the Sino-Tibetan border in the east as his patron, the king of Gtsang, was defeated by the Gushri Khan, patron of the Dge lugs. As the war came to an end, the tenth Karma pa returned to LHA SA where he established ties with the fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO. The eleventh Karma pa Ye shes rdo rje and twelfth Karma pa Byang chub rdo rje lived relatively short lives, although the latter made an important journey through Nepal together with his disciple, the brilliant scholar and Sanskritist Si tu CHOS KYI 'BYUNG GNAS. The life of the thirteenth Karma pa Bdud 'dul rdo rje was, for the most part, lived outside the sphere of politics. He is remembered for his love of animals, to which he taught the dharma. Beginning during his lifetime and continuing into that of the fourteenth Karma pa Theg mchog rdo rje, there was a revival of Bka' brgyud doctrine in the eastern Tibetan province of Khams, as part of what has come to be called the RIS MED or non-sectarian movement. The fourteenth Karma pa's disciple, 'JAM MGON KONGS SPRUL BLO GROS MTHA' YAS, played a leading role. The fifteenth Karma pa Mkha' khyab rdo rje, a principal disciple of 'Jam mgon kongs sprul, was a prolific scholar. The sixteenth Karma pa RANG 'BYUNG RIG PA'I RDO RJE, like other lamas of his generation, saw the Communist Chinese occupation of Tibet, fleeing to India in 1959 and establishing an exile seat at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim. He was the first Karma pa to visit the West. The seventeenth Karma pa O rgyan 'phrin las rdo rje was enthroned at Mtshur phu monastery on September 27, 1992. In late December 2000, he escaped into exile, establishing a residence in Dharamsala, India. Although his identification as the Karma pa has been disputed by a small number of followers of a rival candidate, O rgyan 'phrin las rdo rje is regarded as the seventeenth Karma pa by the majority of the Tibetan community, including the Dalai Lama.

The seals of the seven angels who rule over the 196 provinces of heaven. From the collection

These desires and drives, however, tend to stray beyond their proper provinces and to become intermingled and confused in attempts to identify truth, goodness, and beauty, to turn justifications into explanations, to regard subsistent ideals as concretely existent facts, and to distort facts into accordance with desired ideals. It is the business of reason and philosophy to clear up this confusion by distinguishing human drives and interests from one another, indicating to each its proper province and value, and confining each to the field in which it is valid and in which its appropriate satisfaction may be found. By so doing, they dispel the suspicion and antagonism, with which the scientist, the moralist, the artist, and the theologian are wont to view one another, and enable a mind at harmony with itself to contemplate a world in which subsistent and the existent form a harmonious whole. --

Thích Quảng Đức. (釋廣德) (1897-1963). Vietnamese monk who became internationally known for his self-immolation (see SHESHEN) to protest the oppression of Buddhism by the government of the partisan Catholic president Ngô Đình Diẹm. Thích Quảng Đức was born in Khanh Hòa province (Central Vietnam) and his personal name was Lam Văn Tức. He left home to become a monk at the age of seven and received full ordination at the age of twenty. Subsequently, he went to Mount Ninh Hòa to practice austerities and led the life of a mendicant monk for five years. In 1932, he was invited to be a preceptor at the Ninh Hòa branch of the An Nam Association of Buddhist Studies. In 1934, he moved to South Vietnam, working with Buddhist communities in various provinces for several years. He then traveled to Cambodia and lived there for three years, devoting himself to rebuilding monasteries and studying Pāli literature. In 1953, the Nam Viẹt Association of Buddhist Studies invited him to be the abbot of Phước Hòa Temple. The last temple he supervised was Quan Thé m Temple in Gia Định. On June 11, 1963, when the tension between Buddhism and the government reached a high point, he led a procession of more than one thousand monks through the streets of Saigon. At a crossroad, he calmly sat down in lotus posture, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself on fire. He is revered by Vietnamese Buddhists, who refer to him as Bodhisattva Quảng Đức.

Thông Biẹn. (通辦) (d. 1134). The first Vietnamese Buddhist author to write a history of Vietnamese Buddhism based on the model of the "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG) histories of the Chinese CHAN school. He was a native of Đan Phượng (which is now in Hà Tay province, North Vietnam). His family name was Ngô and he was born into a Buddhist family. He was respected by the Lý court and was bestowed the title quềc sư (state preceptor; C. GUOSHI). The THIỀN UYỂN TẬP ANH relates that in a lecture in 1096 he interpreted Vietnamese Buddhist history as the continuation of the transmission of both the scriptural school and the mind (or Chan) school of Chinese Buddhism. According to Thông Biẹn, the Scriptural School began with Mou Bo and Kang Senghui, and the Chan school was transmitted by BODHIDHARMA. He further claimed that Chan came to Vietnam through two streams, represented, respectively, by VINĪTARUCI (d. 594) and VÔ NGÔN THÔNG (d. 826). Vinītaruci and Vô Ngôn Thông thus were the ancestral teachers of the two streams of Chan that produced numerous side branches in Vietnam. Later in his life, Thông Biẹn founded a great teaching center and taught the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. His contemporaries referred to him as Ngộ Phap Hoa (Awakened to the Lotus). Thông Biẹn's model of Vietnamese Buddhist history was subsequently adopted by Buddhist authors of later generations and thus exercised lasting influence on the traditional understanding of Vietnamese Buddhist history. Many modern Vietnamese Buddhist leaders still accept Thông Biẹn's views about the history of Buddhism in Vietnam.

Thudhamma. (P. Sudhamma). The majority Buddhist monastic fraternity (B. GAING; P. gana, cf. NIKĀYA) in contemporary Myanmar (Burma), comprising 85-90 percent of the monastic population of the country. The name derives from the Thudhamma Council, an ecclesiastical body appointed by royal decree in 1782, which was charged with reforming the Burmese sangha (S. SAMGHA) and uniting its various factions into a single fraternity under Thudhamma leadership. The Thudhamma Council established a common monastic curriculum and in general promoted uniformity of doctrinal interpretation and VINAYA practice among the kingdom's monasteries. With the exception of a short hiatus in the 1810s, the council remained a permanent governing body of the Burmese sangha until the late nineteenth century, when it was dissolved following the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885 and the deposition of the Burmese king. Even before that event, the authority of the council had declined in Lower Burma as a consequence of Britain's seizure of Burma's maritime provinces in 1824 and 1852. During the reign of MINDON MIN (1853-1878), Burmese monks living in British-controlled Lower Burma refused to recognize the authority of the Thudhamma Council and organized themselves into an independent fraternity called the DWAYA GAING (P. Dvāragana). In the Burmese kingdom itself, the council's policies were not supported by ultra-orthodox monks who, because of their prominent disciplinary observances and scriptural expertise, gained popular support and royal patronage. From among these reformist monks, two prominent factions emerged, the SHWEGYIN and Hngettwin, both of which eventually organized themselves into independent fraternities with their own network of monasteries. After the disestablishment of Buddhism as the state religion of Burma by the British, all "unreformed" monasteries, which were the vast majority in the country, came to be designated Thudhamma by default, even though there was no longer an ecclesiastical umbrella under which they operated nor a hierarchy to which they were answerable. This allowed for the politicization of Thudhamma monks during the British colonial period, some of whom became leaders of the Burmese independence movement. In 1980, the Burmese government's Ministry of Religious Affairs recognized the Thudhamma gaing as one of nine officially sanctioned monastic fraternities comprising the Burmese sangha. Somewhat more relaxed in matters of outward deportment than especially the Shwegyin and Dwaya, the Thudhamma gaing is renowned for its scholarship and maintains major monastic colleges in Yangon (Rangoon), Mandalay, and Pakokku.

Tiantai Zhiyi. (J. Tendai Chigi; K. Ch'ont'ae Chiŭi 天台智顗) (538-597). One of the most influential monks in Chinese Buddhist history and de facto founder of the TIANTAI ZONG. A native of Jingzhou (in present-day Hunan province), Zhiyi was ordained at the age of eighteen after his parents died during the wartime turmoil that preceded the Sui dynasty's unification of China. He studied VINAYA and various MAHĀYĀNA scriptures, including the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") and related scriptures. In 560, Zhiyi met NANYUE HUISI (515-577), who is later listed as the second patriarch of the Tiantai lineage, on Mt. Dasu in Guangzhou and studied Huisi's teachings on the suiziyi sanmei (cultivating SAMĀDHI wherever mind is directed, or the samādhi of freely flowing thoughts), the "four practices of ease and bliss" (si anle xing), a practice based on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, and the lotus repentance ritual. Zhiyi left Huisi at his teacher's command and headed for the southern capital of Jinling (present-day Jiangsu province) at the age of thirty (567) to teach the Saddharmapundarīkasutra and the DAZHIDU LUN for eight years at the monastery of Waguansi. The Shi chanboluomi cidi famen [alt. Cidi chanmen] are his lecture notes from this period of meditation and teaching. In 575, he retired to Mt. Tiantai (present-day Zhejiang province), where he built a monastery (later named Xiuchansi by the emperor) and devoted himself to meditative practice for eleven years. During this time he compiled the Fajie cidi chumen and the Tiantai xiao zhiguan. After persistent invitations from the king of Chen, Zhiyi returned to Jinling in 585 and two years later wrote the FAHUA WENJU, an authoritative commentary on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. Subsequently in Yangzhou, Zhiyi conferred the bodhisattva precepts on the crown prince, who later became Emperor Yang (r. 604-617) of the Sui dynasty. Zhiyi was then given the title Great Master Zhizhe (Wise One). Zhiyi also established another monastery on Mt. Dangyang in Yuquan (present-day Hunan province), which Emperor Wen (r. 581-604) later named Yuquansi. Zhiyi then began lecturing on what became his masterpieces, the FAHUA XUANYI (593) and the MOHE ZHIGUAN (594). At the request of the king of Jin, in 595 Zhiyi returned to Yangzhou, where he composed his famous commentaries on the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, i.e., the Weimojing xuanshou and the Weimojing wenshou, before dying in 597. Among the thirty or so works attributed to Zhiyi, the Fahua xuanyi, Fahuawenju, and Mohe zhiguan are most renowned and are together known as the Tiantai san dabu (three great Tiantai commentaries).

Tiantai zong. (J. Tendaishu; K. Ch'ont'ae chong 天台宗). In Chinese, "Terrace of Heaven School"; one of the main schools of East Asian Buddhism; also sometimes called the "Lotus school" (C. Lianhua zong), because of its emphasis on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). "Terrace of Heaven" is a toponym for the school's headquarters on Mt. Tiantai in present-day Zhejiang province on China's eastern seaboard. Although the school retrospectively traces its origins back to Huiwen (fl. 550-577) and NANYUE HUISI (515-577), whom the school honors as its first and second patriarchs, respectively, the de facto founder was TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), who created the comprehensive system of Buddhist teachings and practices that we now call Tiantai. Zhiyi advocated the three truths or judgments (SANDI): (1) the truth of emptiness (kongdi), viz., all things are devoid of inherent existence and are empty in their essential nature; (2) the truth of being provisionally real (jiadi), viz., all things are products of a causal process that gives them a derived reality; and (3) the truth of the mean (zhongdi), viz., all things, in their absolute reality, are neither real nor unreal, but simply thus. Zhiyi described reality in terms of YINIAN SANQIAN (a single thought contains the TRICHILIOCOSM [TRISĀHASRAMAHĀSĀHASRALOKADHĀTU]), which posits that any given thought-moment perfectly encompasses the entirety of reality; at the same time, every phenomenon includes all other phenomena (XINGJU SHUO), viz., both the good and evil aspects of the ten constituents (DHĀTU) or the five sense organs (INDRIYA) and their respective objects and the three realms of existence (TRAIDHĀTUKA) are all contained in the original nature of all sentient beings. Based on this perspective on reality, Zhiyi made unique claims about the buddha-nature (FOXING) and contemplation (GUAN): he argued that not only buddhas but even sentient beings in such baleful existences as animals, hungry ghosts, and hell denizens, possess the capacity to achieve buddhahood; by the same token, buddhas also inherently possess all aspects of the unenlightened three realms of existence. The objects of contemplation, therefore, should be the myriad of phenomena, which are the source of defilement, not an underlying pure mind. Zhiyi's grand synthesis of Buddhist thought and practice is built around a graduated system of calmness and insight (jianzi ZHIGUAN; cf. sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ), which organized the plethora of Buddhist meditative techniques into a broad, overarching soteriological system. To Zhiyi is also attributed the Tiantai system of doctrinal classification (panjiao; see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) called WUSHI BAJIAO (five periods and eight teachings), which the Koryo Korean monk CH'EGWAN (d. 970) later elaborated in its definitive form in his CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI (C. Tiantai sijiao yi). This system classifies all Buddhist teachings according to the five chronological periods, four types of content, and four modes of conversion. Zhiyi was succeeded by Guanding (561-632), who compiled his teacher's works, especially his three masterpieces, the FAHUA XUANYI, the FAHUA WENJU, and the MOHE ZHIGUAN. The Tiantai school declined during the Tang dynasty, overshadowed by the newer HUAYAN and CHAN schools. The ninth patriarch JINGXI ZHANRAN (711-782) was instrumental in rejuvenating the school; he asserted the superiority of the Tiantai school over the rival Huayan school by adapting Huayan concepts and terminologies into the tradition. Koryo monks such as Ch'egwan and Ŭit'ong (927-988) played major roles in the restoration of the school by helping to repatriate lost Tiantai texts back to China. During the Northern Song period, Wu'en (912-988), Yuanqing (d. 997), Zhiyuan (976-1022), and their disciples, who were later pejoratively called the SHANWAI (Off-Mountain) faction by their opponents, led the resurgence of the tradition by incorporating Huayan concepts in the school's thought and practice: they argued that since the true mind, which is pure in its essence, produces all phenomena in accord with conditions, practitioners should contemplate the true mind, rather than all phenomena. Believing this idea to be a threat to the tradition, SIMING ZHILI (960-1028) and his disciples, who called themselves SHANJIA (On-Mountain), criticized such a concept of pure mind as involving a principle of separateness, since it includes only the pure and excludes the impure, and led a campaign to expunge the Huayan elements that they felt were displacing authentic Tiantai doctrine. Although Renyue (992-1064) and Congyi (1042-1091), who were later branded as the "Later Off-Mountain Faction," criticized Zhili and accepted some of the Shanwai arguments, the Shanjia faction eventually prevailed and legitimized Zhili's positions. The orthodoxy of Zhili's position is demonstrated in the FOZU TONGJI ("Comprehensive History of the Buddhas and Patriarchs"), where the compiler Zhipan (1220-1275), himself a Tiantai monk, lists Zhili as the last patriarch in the dharma transmission going back to the Buddha. Tiantai theories and practices were extremely influential in the development of the thought and practice of the Chan and PURE LAND schools; this influence is especially noticeable in the white-lotus retreat societies (JIESHE; see also BAILIAN SHE) organized during the Song dynasty by such Tiantai monks as Zhili and Zunshi (964-1032) and in Koryo Korea (see infra). After the Song dynasty, the school declined again, and never recovered its previous popularity. ¶ Tiantai teachings and practices were transmitted to Korea during the Three Kingdoms period through such Korean monks as Hyon'gwang (fl. sixth century) and Yon'gwang (fl. sixth century), both of whom traveled to China and studied under Chinese Tiantai teachers. It was not until several centuries later, however, that a Korean analogue of the Chinese Tiantai school was established as an independent Buddhist school. The foundation of the Korean CH'oNT'AE CHONG is traditionally assumed to have occurred in 1097 through the efforts of the Koryo monk ŬICH'oN (1055-1101). Ŭich'on was originally a Hwaom monk, but he sought to use the Ch'ont'ae tradition in order to reconcile the age-old tension in Korean Buddhism between KYO (Doctrine) and SoN (Meditation). In the early thirteenth century, the Ch'ont'ae monk WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1245) organized the white lotus society (PAENGNYoN KYoLSA), which gained great popularity especially among the common people; following Yose, the school was led by Ch'on'in (1205-1248) and CH'oNCH'AEK (b. 1206). Although the Ch'ont'ae monk Chogu (d. 1395) was appointed as a state preceptor (K. kuksa; C. GUOSHI) in the early Choson period, the Ch'ont'ae school declined and eventually died out later in the Choson dynasty. The contemporary Ch'ont'ae chong is a modern Korean order established in 1966 that has no direct relationship to the school founded by Ŭich'on. ¶ In Japan, SAICHo (767-822) is credited with founding the Japanese TENDAISHu, which blends Tiantai and tantric Buddhist elements. After Saicho, such Tendai monks as ENNIN (793-864), ENCHIN (814-891), and ANNEN (b. 841) systematized Tendai doctrines and developed its unique forms, which are often called TAIMITSU (Tendai esoteric teachings). Since the early ninth century, when the court granted the Tendai school official recognition as an independent sect, Tendai became one of the major Buddhist schools in Japan and enjoyed royal and aristocratic patronage for several centuries. The Tendai school's headquarters on HIEIZAN became an important Japanese center of Buddhist learning: the founders of the so-called new Buddhist schools of the Kamakura era, such as HoNEN (1133-1212), SHINRAN (1173-1263), NICHIREN (1222-1282), and DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253), all first studied on Mt. Hiei as Tendai monks. Although the Tendai school has lost popularity and patrons to the ZENSHu, PURE LAND, and NICHIRENSHu schools, it remains still today an active force on the Japanese Buddhist landscape.

Tiantong Rujing. (J. Tendo Nyojo; K. Ch'ondong Yojong 天童如浄) (1162-1227). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG, also known as Jingchang (Pure Chang) and Changweng (Old Man Chang); he received his toponym Tiantong after the mountain where he once dwelled. Rujing was a native of Shaoxing in Yuezhou (present-day Zhejiang province) and was ordained at a local monastery named Tianyisi. Rujing later went to the monastery of Zishengsi on Mt. Xuedou to study under Zu'an Zhijian (1105-1192) and eventually became his dharma heir. Rujing spent the next few decades moving from one monastery to the next. In 1220, he found himself at Qingliangsi in Jiankang (Jiangsu province) and then at Rui'ansi in Taizhou and Jingcisi in Linan. In 1224, Rujing was appointed by imperial decree to the abbotship of the famous monastery of Jingdesi on Mt. Tiantong, where the Chan master HONGZHI ZHENGJUE had once resided. Rujing's teachings can be found in his recorded sayings (YULU), which were preserved in Japan. Although Rujing was a relatively minor figure in the history of Chinese Chan, he was profoundly influential in Japanese ZEN, due to the fact that the Japanese SoToSHu founder DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253) considered himself to be Rujing's successor. Dogen attributes many of the distinctive features of his own approach to practice, such as "just sitting" (SHIKAN TAZA) and "body and mind sloughed off" (SHINJIN DATSURAKU) to this man whom he regarded as the preeminent Chan master of his era. Little of this distinctively Soto terminology and approach actually appears in the records of Rujing's own lectures, however. Instead, he appears in his discourse record as a fairly typical Song-dynasty Chan master, whose only practical meditative instruction involves the contemplation of ZHAOZHOU's "no" (see WU GONG'AN). This difference may reflect the differing editorial priorities of Rujing's Chinese disciples. It might also derive from the fact that Dogen misunderstood Rujing or received simplified private instructions from him because of Dogen's difficulty in following Rujing's formal oral presentations in vernacular Chinese.

Tianxizai. (J. Tensokusai; K. Ch'onsikchae 天息災) (d. 1000). Kashmiri monk-translator, who arrived in China in 980. While residing at a cloister to the west of the imperial monastery of Taiping-Xingguosi in Yuanzhou (present-day Jiangxi province), he translated (sometimes working in collaboration with DĀNAPĀLA and Fatian) seventeen MAHĀYĀNA and prototantric scriptures into Chinese, including the BODHICARYĀVATĀRA, KĀRAndAVYuHA, AlpāksarāprajNāpāramitāsutra, Āyusparyantasutra, (Ārya)Tārābhattarikāyanāmāstottarasataka, Māricīdhāranī, and the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA.

to Agrippa, Heaven has 196 provinces, with 7

T'ongdosa. (通度寺). In Korean, "Breakthrough Monastery" (lit. "Penetrating Crossing-Over Monastery"); the fifteenth district monastery (PONSA) in the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located at the base of Yongch'uksan (S. GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA, or Vulture Peak) in Yangsan, South Kyongsang province. Along with HAEINSA and SONGGWANGSA, T'ongdosa is one of the "three-jewel monasteries" (SAMBO SACH'AL) that represent one of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) of Buddhism; T'ONGDOSA is the buddha-jewel monastery (pulbo sach'al), because of its ordination platform and the relics (K. sari; S. sARĪRA) of the Buddha enshrined in back of its main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN). The oldest of the three-jewel monasteries, T'ongdosa has long been regarded as the center of Buddhist disciplinary studies (VINAYA) in Korea, and has been one of the major sites of ordination ceremonies since the Unified Silla period (668-935). Relics, reputed to be those of the Buddha himself, are enshrined at the monastery, and its taeung chon is famous for being one of four in Korea that does not enshrine an image of the Buddha; instead, a window at the back of the main hall, where the image ordinarily would be placed, looks out on the Diamond Ordination Platform (Kŭmgang kyedan), which includes a reliquary (STuPA) that enshrines the Buddha's relics. This focus on vinaya and the presence of these relics, both of which are reminders of the Buddha, have led the monastery to be designated the buddha-jewel monastery of Korea. T'ongdosa is said to have been established by the vinaya master CHAJANG (608-686) in 646 to enshrine a portion of the relics that he brought back with him from his sojourn into China. While on pilgrimage at WUTAISHAN, Chajang had an encounter with the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ, who entrusted Chajang with a gold studded monk's robe (K. kasa; S. KAsĀYA) wrapped in purple silk gauze, one hundred pieces of relics of the Buddha's skull bone and his finger joint, beads, and sutras. One portion of the relics was enshrined together with the Buddha's robe in a bell-shaped stone stupa at the center of the Diamond Ordination Platform; another portion was enshrined in the nine-story pagoda at HWANGNYONGSA in the Silla capital of Kyongju. Under Chajang's leadership, the monastery grew into a major center of Silla Buddhism and the monastery continued to thrive throughout the Silla and Koryo dynasties, until the whole monastery except the taeung chon was destroyed by invading Japanese troops in the late sixteenth century. In 1641, the monk Uun (d.u.) rebuilt the monastery in its current configuration. The Diamond Ordination Platform was periodically damaged during the sporadic Japanese invasions that occurred during the Choson dynasty. In the fourth month of 1377, Japanese pirates invaded, seeking to plunder the sarīra; to keep them from falling into Japanese hands, the abbot went into hiding with the relics. Two years later, on the fifteenth day of the fifth month of 1379, the pirates came again, and the monks quickly whisked away the relics and hid them deep in the forest behind the monastery. The Japanese went in pursuit of the relics, but the abbot Wolsong (d.u.) took them to Seoul to keep them safe, returning with them once the danger had passed. During the Hideyoshi Invasions in the late sixteenth century, the relics were also removed in order to keep them safe. SAMYoNG YUJoNG, who was leading a monk's militia fighting the Japanese invaders, sent the relics to the Diamond Mountains (KŬMGANGSAN) in the north, where his teacher and the supreme commander, CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG, was staying. Hyujong decided that the relics were no safer there than back at their home monastery, so he returned them to T'ongdosa. Yujong covered the hiding place of the relics with weeds and thorn bushes and, once the Japanese threat was rebuffed, he restored the site to its former glory and the relics were reenshrined in 1603. The platform was repaired again in 1653 and on a grand scale in 1705. The Diamond Ordination Platform remains the site where BHIKsU and BHIKsUnĪ ordinations are held in Korea. In 1972, T'ongdosa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are all expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition; the monastery is thus also known as the Yongch'uk Ch'ongnim.

Touzi Yiqing. (J. Tosu Gisei; K. T'uja Ŭich'ong 投子義青) (1032-1083). Chinese CHAN master in the CAODONG ZONG. Touzi was a native of Qingzhou prefecture in present-day Shandong province. He entered the monastery of Miaoxiangsi at the age of seven and was ordained at age fifteen. During this period, Touzi is said to have studied Buddhist doctrine and the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. Later, Touzi became a disciple of the LINJI ZONG master Fushan Fayuan (991-1067), from whom he received the portrait (DINGXIANG), leather shoes, and patched robes of the deceased DAYANG JINGXUAN, a Caodong lineage holder. Touzi thus became a holder not of his teacher Fushan's but of Dayang's Caodong lineage. In 1073, he began his residence at the Chan monastery of Haihui Chansi on Mt. Baiyun in Shuzhou prefecture, present-day Anhui province. Eight years later, he moved to the nearby Mt. Touzi, whence he acquired his toponym. His teachings are recorded in the Shuzhou Touzi Qing heshang yulu and Touzi Qing heshang yuyao.

Turfan. Central Asian petty kingdom located along the northern track of the SILK ROAD through the Takla Makhan desert, in what is now the Chinese province of Xinjiang. This and other oasis kingdoms in Central Asia served as crucial stations in the transmission of Buddhism from India to China. Buddhism had a strong presence in Turfan from the seventh century through the fourteenth century, with important texts being translated, cave temples built, and works of art produced. The oldest physical manuscripts of the Indian Buddhist tradition are manuscripts in the KHAROstHĪ script (see GĀNDHĀRĪ), dated to the fourth to fifth centuries CE, which were discovered at Turfan. These and other discoveries were made by a team of German researchers led by Albert Grünwedel and Albert von Le Coq in a series of expeditions between 1902 and 1914. Turfan was also the locus where TOCHARIAN A (East Tocharian, or Turfanian) was used; manuscripts in Tocharian A date primarily from the eighth century. Western expeditions into the area led to the discovery of tens of thousands of textual fragments, in a variety of languages and scripts, which came to be known collectively as the "Turfan Collection." These texts belong to a variety of genres and schools, but the SARVĀSTIVĀDA is prevalent, leading to the conclusion that the school was prominent in Turfan. As with other locations in this region, the dry desert air helped to preserve the various materials on which these texts were written. In Turfan were found translations of Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist texts, as well as some original Buddhist poetry and lay literature. Also discovered in Turfan were the Bezaklik rock caves, dating from around the ninth century, which contain the painted images of thousands of buddhas. Albert von le Coq removed many of these and transported them to Berlin, where many were destroyed by Allied bombing during the Second World War. Although this area was a melting pot of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian traditions, Buddhist activity in the Turfan region saw a sharp rise in the ninth century, when the Uighur people moved from Mongolia into the Turfan region and many Turfan texts are recorded in the Uighur script. Buddhism seems to have survived in this region until as late as the fifteenth century.

up-line ::: n. --> A line or track leading from the provinces toward the metropolis or a principal terminus; the track upon which up-trains run. See Up-train.

VajiraNānavarorasa. (Thai. Wachirayanwarorot) (1860-1921). One of the most influential Thai monks of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; his name (given in its Pāli form here) is also rendered in the Thai vernacular as Wachirayanwarorot [alt. Wachirayan Warot]. The son of King Mongkut (RĀMA IV), after a youth spent in royal luxury, he was ordained as a monk in 1879. He distinguished himself as a scholar of the Buddhist scriptures and in 1892 became abbot of WAT BOWONNIWET [alt. Wat Bovoranives; P. Pavaranivesa], the leading monastery of the THAMMAYUT (P. Dhammayuttika) order. In 1893, he became patriarch of the order and served as supreme patriarch (sangharāja; S. SAMGHARĀJAN) of the Thai sangha (S. SAMGHA) from 1910 until his death. A distinguished scholar of Pāli, he was the author of many textbooks, including the definitive Thai primer on the Pāli VINAYA tradition, the Vinayamukha ("Gateway to the Discipline"), which he wrote in an (unsuccessful) attempt to bring together the two major sects of Thai Buddhism, the Thammuyut and the MAHANIKAI. VajiraNānavarorasa also designed the modern monastic curriculum and reorganized the Thai ecclesiastical hierarchy. As an advisor to King Chulalongkorn (RĀMA V), he also sought to extend modern education into the provinces. VajiraNānavarorasa's autobiography is considered the first work of the genre in Thai vernacular literature.

viaticum ::: n. --> An allowance for traveling expenses made to those who were sent into the provinces to exercise any office or perform any service.
Provisions for a journey.
The communion, or eucharist, when given to persons in danger of death.


viceroy ::: prep. --> The governor of a country or province who rules in the name of the sovereign with regal authority, as the king&

vilayet ::: n. --> One of the chief administrative divisions or provinces of the Ottoman Empire; -- formerly called eyalet.

walloons ::: n. pl. --> A Romanic people inhabiting that part of Belgium which comprises the provinces of Hainaut, Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg, and about one third of Brabant; also, the language spoken by this people. Used also adjectively.

Wanfosi. (J. Manbutsuji; K. Manbulsa 萬佛寺). In Chinese, "Monastery of Myriad Buddhas"; located outside the western gate of the old city wall of Chengdu in Sichuan province; currently only an archeological site. The monastery was founded during the Eastern Han period (25-220 CE) and survived through the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), changing its name several times in the course of its history. It was known as Anpusi during the Liang dynasty (502-556), JINGZHONGSI during the Tang dynasty (618-907), Jingyinsi during the Song dynasty (960-1279), and Zhulinsi, Wanfusi, and, finally, Wanfosi, during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), after which it fell into disrepair. Since the rediscovery of the site in 1882, some two hundred sculptures and other sacred objects have been uncovered during successive excavations, most of which are currently kept in the Sichuan Provincial Museum. The sculptures date mainly from the North-south Dynasties through the Tang periods. During the Tang, when the monastery was known as Jingzhongsi, it was the residence of the early CHAN monk CHoNGJUNG MUSANG (680-756, alt. 684-762), a Korean monk from the Unified Silla dynasty (668-935), whose prosperous Sichuan Chan lineage came to be known as the JINGZHONG ZONG line. His toponym Chongjung (Jingzhong) comes from this monastery of Jingzhongsi.

Wanshousi. (萬壽寺). In Chinese, "Long Life Monastery"; located on Mt. Jing, Hangzhou prefecture, in present-day Zhejiang province of China; the first of the so-called "five mountain" (wushan, cf. GOZAN) monasteries of the CHAN tradition in China. Wanshousi, also known as Jingshansi, was established by the Chan master FAQIN during the Tianbao reign (742-756) of the Tang dynasty. During the Song dynasty, the monastery was designated as a public monastery, or "monastery of the ten directions" (SHIFANG CHA), and was renamed on several occasions as Chengtian Chanyuan (Upholding Heaven Chan Cloister), Nengren Chansi (sākyamuni Chan Monastery), and Xingsheng Wanshou Chansi (Flourishing of Holiness, Long Life Chan Monastery). Wanshousi attracted many eminent abbots, such as DAHUI ZONGGAO and WUZHUN SHIFAN, and flourished under their supervision. The famous Japanese pilgrims DoGEN KIGEN and ENNI BEN'EN also studied at Wanshousi. The monastery was destroyed in a conflagration at the end of the Yuan dynasty but was reconstructed during the Hongwu era (1368-1398) of the Ming dynasty. Largely through the efforts of the abbot Nanshi Wenxiu and others, Wanshousi regained some of its past glory.

Wat Phra Phutthabat. In Thai, "Monastery of the Buddha's Footprint" (P. BUDDHAPĀDA); a Thai monastery located in Saraburi province. In the seventeenth century, a hunter encountered a large puddle of water that appeared to be a footprint of the Buddha (buddhapāda). Once this identification was verified, a monastery was built to enshrine the footprint. Visiting this monastery is considered a source of great merit, and it is traditional for the Thai king to make an annual pilgrimage to the site to pay homage to the relic.

Wat Phu. [alt. Wat Phou; Vat Phu]. In Lao, "Mountain Monastery"; an important Khmer monastery complex located in Champassak province on the Mekong River in southern Laos. The first monastery was probably constructed in the fifth century CE, although the surviving structures (now largely in ruins) date from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. Originally a saiva temple, the ruins contain a shrine to siva's bull Nandin, as well as pediments depicting INDRA, Kṛsnā, and Visnu. The temple complex was converted to Buddhist use in the thirteenth century, with Buddhist images added to many of the shrines. In 2001, the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

waywode ::: n. --> Originally, the title of a military commander in various Slavonic countries; afterwards applied to governors of towns or provinces. It was assumed for a time by the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, who were afterwards called hospodars, and has also been given to some inferior Turkish officers.

waywodeship ::: n. --> The office, province, or jurisdiction of a waywode.

Wolchongsa. (月精寺). In Korean, "Lunar Essence Monastery"; the fourth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Odaesan (see WUTAISHAN) in Kangwon province. The monastery's history is closely linked to the VINAYA master CHAJANG (fl. c. 590-658). While Chajang was on pilgrimage at Wutaishan in China, he came across a mysterious old monk who interpreted a prophetic dream he had had and gave him relics (K. sari; S. sARĪRA) of the buddha to take back to Korea with him. Seven days later, a dragon told him to return to Odaesan in Korea to build a monastery; in 643, Chajang arrived at Odaesan, where he eventually constructed Wolchongsa. Wolchongsa's main shrine hall, Chokkwang chon (Calm Radiance Hall), enshrines an image of sĀKYAMUNI as well as a mysterious statue that was found in the diamond pond south of the monastery. This statue, delicately carved in a style common to the eleventh century, is believed to be of BHAIsAJYAGURU. In front of the main hall is a nine-story octagonal pagoda, fifty feet (15.2 meters) high, that was constructed in the tenth century. Skillfully carved and multiangled, it is representative of Koryo-era STuPAs. In front of the stupa is a seated BODHISATTVA, perhaps MANJUsRĪ, making an offering. The statue has been carved with detailed attention to ornamental accessories and clothing. The Chongmyol pogung (Precious Basilica of Calm Extinction) houses the relics of the Buddha that Chajang brought back to Korea and is one of four major shrine halls in Korea that does not enshrine a buddha image (the relics take the place of an image). One of Wolchongsa's most famous residents during the twentieth century was the monk HANAM CHUNGWoN (1876-1951), who helped save some of its buildings from soldiers who had been ordered to burn them down during the Korean War (seventeen buildings were unfortunately burned and had to be reconstructed). Sangwonsa, one of Wolchongsa's branch monasteries (MALSA), is famous among Korean monasteries for its spectacular scenery and is a popular tourist stop.

Wumen Huikai. (J. Mumon Ekai; K. Mumun Hyegae 無門慧開) (1183-1260). In Chinese, "Gateless, Opening of Wisdom"; CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; author of the eponymous WUMEN GUAN ("Gateless Checkpoint"), one of the two most important collections of Chan GONG'AN (J. koan; K. kongan). A native of Hangzhou prefecture in present-day Zhejiang province, Huikai was ordained by the monk "One Finger" Tianlong (d.u.), who also hailed from Hangzhou (see also YIZHI CHAN). Wumen later went to the monastery of Wanshousi in Jiangsu province to study with Yuelin Shiguan (1143-1217), from whom Huikai received the WU GONG'AN of ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN; Huikai is said to have struggled with this gong'an for six years. In 1218, Huikai traveled to Baoyinsi on Mt. Anji, where he succeeded Yuelin as abbot. He subsequently served as abbot at such monasteries as TIANNINGSI, Pujisi, Kaiyuansi, and Baoningsi. In 1246, Huikai was appointed as abbot of Huguo Renwangsi in Hangzhou prefecture, and it is here that the Japanese ZEN monk SHINICHI KAKUSHIN studied under him. Emperor Lizong (r. 1224-1264) invited Huikai to provide a sermon at the Pavilion of Mysterious Virtue in the imperial palace and also to pray for rain. In honor of his achievements, the emperor bestowed upon him a golden robe and the title Chan master Foyan (Dharma Eye).

Wutaishan. (五臺山). In Chinese, "Five-Terraces Mountain"; a sacred mountain located in northern Shanxi province, which, together with EMEISHAN, PUTUOSHAN, and JIUHUASHAN, is one of the "four great mountains" (sidamingshan) of Buddhism in China. The name Wutai is derived from its five treeless, barren peaks (one in each cardinal direction and the center) that resemble terraces or platforms. During the Northern Wei dynasty (424-532), Wutaishan came to be identified with the mythic Mt. Qingliang (Clear and Cool) of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, which speaks of a mountain to the northeast where the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ is said to be constantly preaching the DHARMA. From the time of the identification of Mount Wutai as Mt. Qingliang, numerous testimonies to the manifestation of MaNjusrī on the mountain have been reported. Mt. Wutai thus came to be known as the primary abode and place of worship for MaNjusrī and for this reason drew pilgrims from across the continent, including South Asia and, later, Tibet. Numerous monasteries and hermitages of both Buddhists and Daoists occupy its peaks. The first Buddhist monastery on Wutaishan, Da Futu Lingjiusi (Great Buddha Vulture Monastery), is claimed to have been built by KĀsYAPA MĀTAnGA (d.u.) and Dharmaratna (d.u.) sometime during the first century (see also BAIMASI and SISHI'ER ZHANG JING). The name of the monastery was changed to Xuantongsi and then to (Da) Huayansi during the Tang dynasty to reflect its role as the center of HUAYAN studies. The Huayan patriarch CHENGGUAN (738-839) composed his great HUAYANJING SHU at this monastery. The esoteric monk AMOGHAVAJRA also assisted in the establishment of another monastery on Mt. Wutai, which was given the name Jingesi (Gold Pavilion Monastery) in 770 after its gilded tiles. Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) declared Jingesi as an important center for the new esoteric teachings (MIJIAO) brought to China by Amoghavajra. The monk FAZHAO also established the monastery of Zhulinsi (Bamboo Grove Monastery) on the model of a majestic monastery that MaNjusrī had revealed to him in a vision. The monasteries Qingliangsi, Beishansi, Manghaisi, and Da Wenshusi are also located on the mountain. During a pilgrimage to Wutaishan by the Korean monk CHAJANG (d.u., c. mid-seventh century), he had a vision in which MaNjusrī guided him to a Korean analogue of the mountain; that mountain is now known as Odaesan (the Korean pronunciation of Wutaishan) and is itself a major pilgrimage center of Korean Buddhism. During the Qing dynasty, Wutaishan was also the major center for the study of Tibetan Buddhism in China.

Wuzu Fayan. (J. Goso Hoen; K. Ojo Pobyon 五祖法演) (d. 1104). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG. Wuzu was a native of Mianzhou prefecture in present-day Sichuan province. After being ordained at the age of thirty-four, Fayan studied YOGĀCĀRA doctrine in his home province, but later went south where he studied under Huilin Zongben (1020-1099), Fushan Fayuan (991-1067), and BAIYUN SHOUDUAN. Fayan eventually became Baiyun's disciple and inherited his Linji lineage. After staying at various monasteries in Anhui province, Fayan moved to Mt. Wuzu (also known as East Mountain) in Hubei province, where he acquired his toponym. The mountain itself received its name, Wuzu (fifth patriarch), from its most famous past resident, the fifth patriarch of Chan, HONGREN. Mt. Wuzu thus became an important center for the Linji lineage, and it was there that Fayan taught his famous disciples YUANWU KEQIN, Taiping Huiqin (1059-1117), and Foyan Qingyuan (1067-1120), known collectively as the "three Buddhas of East Mountain." Wuzu's teachings are recorded in the Wuzu Fayan chanshi yulu.

Xiangshansi. (香山寺). In Chinese, "Fragrant Mountain Monastery"; located on SONGSHAN in Ruzhou, Henan province. It is not known when the monastery was first established, but it is thought to have been built c. 516 CE during the Northern Wei dynasty (386-584). One source credits the founding of a Xiangshan monastery in Xiangzhou to a certain general named Liu Qingzhi, but no further mention is made of either the general or the monastery. The current Xiangshansi underwent a major renovation around 1068 during the Northern Song dynasty, and special attention was paid to restoring its Dabei ta (Great Compassion pagoda), which still stands today; housed in the pagoda is a thousand-armed and thousand-eyed form of GUANYIN (SĀHASRABHUJASĀHASRANETRĀVALOKITEsVARA). Xiangshansi, like SHANG TIANZHUSI, is known for being a major pilgrimage site for Guanyin (AVALOKITEsVARA) worship. It became associated with the Princess MIAOSHAN incarnation of Guanyin, whose legend is inscribed on a stele at the monastery. The stele was commissioned in 1100 by a minor civil servant, Jiang Zhiqi (1031-1104), who was the prefect of Ruzhou. Jiang had the legend reinscribed on another stele at the Shang Tianzhusi when he moved to Hangzhou four years later.

Xinxing. (J Shingyo; K. Sinhaeng 信行) (540-594). In Chinese, "Practice of Faith"; founder of the "Third-Stage Sect" (SANJIE JIAO), a school of popular Buddhism that flourished during the Tang dynasty. Born in Ye in presentday Henan province, Xinxing ordained as a novice monk by the age of seventeen, after which he wandered the country, studying Buddhism and reading such Buddhist scriptures as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, and MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. Feeling guilty for accepting from the laity offerings that he did not believe he deserved, Xinxing eventually abandoned monastic life, participating in various state labor projects and cultivating ascetic practices. He is also known to have bowed to all he met on the street, following the teachings of the SADĀPARIBHuTA chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. It is uncertain exactly when Xinxing established the Third-Stage Sect, but it was probably sometime around 587. In 589, at the behest of Emperor Wendi, he entered Chang'an, the capital city of the Sui dynasty, and stayed at Zhenjisi (Authentic Quiescence Monastery, later renamed Huadu monastery), where he promoted actively the teachings of the school until his death in 594. Xinxing had about three hundred followers, including Sengyong (543-631) and Huiru (d. c. 618). Due to the proscription of the sect during the Tang dynasty, only a few fragments of Xinxing's writings are extant. These include the Sanjie fofa ("Buddhadharma during the Third Stage"), in four rolls, and sections of the Duigen qixing fa ("Principles on Practicing in Response to the Sense-Bases") and the Ming Dasheng wujinzang fa ("Clarifying the Teaching of the Mahāyāna's Inexhaustible Storehouse"). ¶ Xinxing's teachings derive from the doctrines of the degenerate dharma (MOFA) and the buddha-nature (FOXING); they emphasize almsgiving (S. DĀNA) as an efficient salvific method, which contributed to the development of the school's distinctive institution, the WUJINZANG YUAN (inexhaustible storehouse cloister). Because people during the degenerate age (mofa) were inevitably mistaken in their perceptions of reality, it was impossible for them to make any meaningful distinctions, whether between right and wrong, good and evil, or ordained and lay. Instead, adherents were taught to treat all things as manifestations of the buddha-nature, leading to a "universalist" perspective on Buddhism that was presumed to have supplanted all the previous teachings of the religion. Xinxing asserted that almsgiving was the epitome of Buddhist practice during the degenerate age of the dharma and that the true perfection of giving (DĀNAPĀRAMITĀ) meant that all people, monks and laypeople alike, should be making offerings to relieve the suffering of those most in need, including the poor, the orphaned, and the sick. In its radical reinterpretation of the practice of giving in Buddhism, even animals were considered to be a more appropriate object of charity than were buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks, or the three jewels (RATNATRAYA). Particularly significant were offerings made to the inexhaustible storehouse cloister (Wujinzang yuan), which served the needs of the impoverished and suffering in society-especially offerings made on the anniversary of Xinxing's death. See also XIANGFA JUEYI JING.

Xuansha Shibei. (J. Gensha Shibi; K. Hyonsa Sabi 玄沙師備) (835-908). Chinese CHAN master in the lineage of QINGYUAN XINGSI (d. 740) and a predecessor in the FAYAN ZONG of the classical Chan school; he was a native of Min (presentday Fujian province). Xuansha left home to study with the Chan master Lingxun (d.u.) on Mt. Furong and later received the monastic precepts in 864 from the VINAYA master Daoxuan (d.u.) at the monastery KAIYUANSI in Jiangxi province. Two years later, he visited the Chan master XUEFENG YICUN and became his disciple. Xuansha's adherence to the precepts is said to have been so strict that he was given the nickname Bei Doutuo, or "DHUTAnGA Bei." He subsequently left Xuefeng's side and established a cloister on Mt. Sheng (also known as Mt. Xuansha) in Fujian province, named Xuansha (Sublime Sand). In 898, he was summoned to live in the cloister of Anguoyin in Fujian by the king of Min. Emperor Zhaozong (r. 888-904) gave Xuansha the title of Great Master Zongyi (Tradition's Best). Luohan Kuichen (867-928) was one of his disciples. His sayings were published in the Xuansha guanglu and Xuansha Shibei chanshi yulu, and sporadic references to some of his more popular sayings (e.g., XUANSHA SANBING) can also be found in the BIYAN LU.

Xuanzang. (J. Genjo; K. Hyonjang 玄奘) (600/602-664). Chinese monk, pilgrim, and patriarch of the Chinese YOGĀCĀRA tradition (FAXIANG ZONG) and one of the two most influential and prolific translators of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese, along with KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413); in English sources, his name is seen transcribed in a variety of ways (now all outmoded), including Hsüan-tsang, Hiuen Tsiang, Yuan Chwang, etc. Xuanzang was born into a literati family in Henan province in either 600 or 602 (although a consensus is building around the latter date). In 612, during a state-supported ordination ceremony, Xuanzang entered the monastery of Jingtusi in Luoyang where his older brother was residing as a monk. There, Xuanzang and his brother studied the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA and various MAHĀYĀNA texts. When the Sui dynasty collapsed in 618, they both fled the capital for the safety of the countryside. In 622, Xuanzang was given the complete monastic precepts and was fully ordained as a monk (BHIKsU). By this time Xuanzang had also studied earlier translations of the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, JNĀNAPRASTHĀNA, and *TATTVASIDDHI under various teachers but came to doubt the accuracy of those translations and the veracity of their teachings. In order to resolve his doubts, Xuanzang embarked on an epic journey to India in 627, in flagrant disregard of the Taizong emperor's (r. 626-629) edict against traveling abroad. His trek across the SILK ROAD and India is well known, thanks to his travel record, the DA TANG XIYU JI, his official biography, and the famous Ming-dynasty comic novel based on Xuangzang's travels, XIYU JI ("Journey to the West"). (See "Routes of Chinese Pilgrims" map.) According to these sources, Xuanzang visited the various Buddhist pilgrimage sites of the subcontinent (see MAHĀSTHĀNA) and spent years at NĀLANDĀ monastery mastering Sanskrit, including fifteen months studying the texts of the Indian Yogācāra tradition under the tutelage of the 106-year-old sĪLABHADRA. In 645, Xuanzang returned to the Tang capital of Chang'an with over six hundred Sanskrit manuscripts that he had acquired in India, along with images, relics, and other artifacts. (These materials were stored in a five-story stone pagoda, named the DAYAN TA, or Great Wild Goose Pagoda, that Xuanzang later built on the grounds of the monastery of DA CI'ENSI; the pagoda is still a major tourist attraction in Xi'an.) The Taizong and Gaozong emperors (r. 649-683) honored Xuanzang with the title TREPItAKA (C. sanzang fashi; "master of the Buddhist canon") and established a translation bureau (yijing yuan) in the capital for the master, where Xuanzang supervised a legion of monks in charge of transcribing the texts, "rectifying" (viz., clarifying) their meaning, compiling the translations, polishing the renderings, and certifying both their meaning and syntax. Xuanzang and his team developed an etymologically precise set of Chinese equivalencies for Buddhist technical terminology, and his translations are known for their rigorous philological accuracy (although sometimes at the expense of their readability). While residing at such sites as HONGFUSI, Da ci'ensi, and the palace over an eighteen-year period, Xuanzang oversaw the translation of seventy-six sutras and sāstras in a total of 1,347 rolls, nearly four times the number of texts translated by Kumārajīva, probably the most influential of translators into Chinese. (Scholars have estimated that Xuanzang and his team completed one roll of translation every five days over those eighteen years of work.) Xuanzang's influence was so immense that he is often recognized as initiating the "new translation" period in the history of the Chinese translation of Buddhist texts, in distinction to the "old translation" period where Kumārajīva's renderings hold pride of place. Among the more important translations made by Xuanzang and his translation team are the foundational texts of the Yogācāra school, such as the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhi), ASAnGA's MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, and the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA, and many of the major works associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school of ABHIDHARMA, including definitive translations of the JNānaprasthāna and the encyclopedic ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, as well as complete translations of VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and SAMGHABHADRA's *NYĀYĀNUSĀRA. He translated (and retranslated) many major Mahāyāna sutras and sāstras, including the massive MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, in six hundred rolls; this translation is given a place of honor as the first scripture in the East Asian Buddhist canons (see DAZANGJING; KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). Also attributed to Xuanzang is the Chinese translation of the famed PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA, or "Heart Sutra," probably the most widely read and recited text in East Asian Buddhism. Because Xuanzang himself experienced a palpable sense of the Buddha's absence while he was sojourning in India, he also translated the Nandimitrāvadāna (Da aluohan Nantimiduo luo suoshuo fazhu ji, abbr. Fazhu ji, "Record of the Duration of the Dharma Spoken by the Great Arhat NANDIMITRA"), the definitive text on the sixteen ARHAT protectors (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) of Buddhism, which became the basis for the LOUHAN cult in East Asia.

Xuedou Chongxian. (J. Setcho Juken; K. Soltu Chunghyon 雪竇重顯) (980-1052). Chinese CHAN master in the YUNMEN ZONG of the mature Chan tradition; also known as Yinzhi. Xuedou was a native of Sichuan province. After his ordination under Renxian (d.u.) of the cloister of Pu'anyuan, Xuedou received doctrinal training from Yuanying (d.u.) of Dacisi and Guyin Yuncong (965-1032) of Shimen. During his travels in the south, Xuedou visited the Yunmen master Zhimen Guangzuo (d.u.) in Hubei province and became his leading disciple. Xuedou later resided on Cuiwei peak near Tongting Lake and the monastery of Zishengsi on Mt. Xuedou in Zhejiang province, whence he acquired his toponym. During his residence in Zishengsi, Xuedou acquired more than seventy students and composed his famed collection of one hundred old cases (guce, viz., GONG'AN) known as the Xuedou songgu, which in turn formed the basis of Chan master YUANWU KEQIN's influential BIYAN LU. Xuedou also composed the Tongting yulu, Xuedou kaitang lu, Puquan ji, Zuying ji, and various other texts. Xuedou's successful career as a teacher is often considered a period of revitalization of the Yunmen tradition.

Xuefeng Yicun. (J. Seppo Gison; K. Solbong Ŭijon 雪峰義存) (822-908). Chinese CHAN master in the lineage of QINGYUAN XINGSI (d. 740); a native of Min (presentday Fujian province). He was ordained at the age of seventeen and given the dharma name Yicun, but temporarily returned to lay clothing during the severe persecution of the HUICHANG FANAN and studied under Furong Lingxun (d.u.). After a brief stay with DONGSHAN LIANGJIE, Xuefeng left at Dongshan's direction to study with DESHAN XUANJIAN (780/2-865). Xuefeng then embarked on a journey with his colleagues Yantou Quanhuo (828-887) and Qinshan Wensui (d.u.). With the help of Yantou, Xuefeng is said to have had his first awakening experience during a snowfall on Mt. Ao in Hunan. Xuefeng and Yantou became Deshan's leading disciples. Xuefeng later established a monastery with the support of the king of Min on what came to be known as Mt. Xuefeng in Fujian province. The mountain was originally known as Mt. Xianggu (Elephant Bone) but acquired its new name after a famous exchange at the mountain between the king of Min and the monk Xuefeng. Xuefeng's monastery was given the name Chongshengsi and Yingtian Xuefeng Chanyuan. In 882, Emperor Xizong (r. 873-888) bestowed upon him the title Great Master Zhenjue (Authentic Enlightenment) and the purple robe. His disciples include YUNMEN WENYAN (the founder of the YUNMEN ZONG of the classical Chan school), XUANSHA SHIBEI (whose students eventually would go on to establish the FAYAN ZONG), Changjing Huileng (854-932), Baofu Congzhan (d. 928), and Gushan Shenyan (d. 943). His teachings are recorded in his Xuefeng Zhenjue chanshi yulu.

Xuyun. (雲) (1840-1959). In Chinese, "Empty Cloud"; CHAN monk of the modern period, renowned as one of the major reformers of modern Chinese Buddhism, especially of the Chan school; also known as Deqing. Xuyun was a native of Xiangxiang in Hunan province. He entered the monastery at the age of nineteen and received the precepts a year later from the monk Miaolian (d.u.). He then embarked on a long pilgrimage to famous mountains in China and to such distant sites as Tibet, India, and Sri Lanka, where he studied with teachers in a variety of Buddhist traditions. At the age of forty-three, Xuyun climbed WUTAISHAN, where he is said to have had a vision of the resident bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ. His awakening experience came at the drop of a teacup at the age of fifty-six. Xuyun was particularly renowned for his austerities and longevity. He became an important exponent of the convergence of "questioning meditation" (KANHUA CHAN) and recitation of the Buddha's name (NIANFO), who was noted for using the meditative topic (HUATOU) "Who is reciting the Buddha's name?" Xuyun spent the rest of his career propagating Buddhism throughout China until his death on Mt. Yunju in Jiangxi province at the advanced age of 120. See also TAIXU; YINGUANG.

Yangqi Fanghui. (J. Yogi Hoe; K. Yanggi Panghoe 楊岐方會) (992-1049). Chinese CHAN master and patriarch of the YANGQI PAI collateral line of the LINJI ZONG; one of the two major Linji sublineages, along with the HUANGLONG PAI. Yangqi was a native of Yuanzhou prefecture in present-day Jiangxi province. After studying under various teachers, he visited the Chan master Shishuang Chuyuan (986-1039), himself a successor of Fenyang Shanzhao (947-1024), and became one of Shishuang's leading disciples. Yangqi was later invited to serve as abbot of the monastery Putong Chanyuan on Mt. Yangqi in his hometown of Yuanzhou, whence he acquired his toponym. In 1046, he moved his residence to the monastery of Haihuisi on Mt. Yung'ai. Among his many talented disciples, the most famous is BAIYUN SHOUDUAN (1025-1072). His teachings are recorded in the Yangqi Fanghui chanshi yulu, Yangqi Fanghui chanshi houlu, and Yangqi Hui chanshi yuyao. See also WU JIA QI ZONG.

Yangqi pai. (J. Yogiha; K. Yanggi p'a 楊岐派). One of the two major branches of the LINJI ZONG of the CHAN school, which is listed among the five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the mature Chinese Chan tradition. The school is named after its founder, YANGQI FANGHUI (995-1049), who taught at Mt. Yangqi in what is now Yuanzhou province. Yangqi was a disciple of Shishuang Chuyuan (986-1039), a sixth-generation successor in the Linji school, who also taught HUANGLONG HUINAN (1002-1069), the founder of the HUANGLONG PAI sublineage of the Linji school. The Yangqi lineage flourished under its third-generation successors, Fojian Huiqin (1059-1117), Foyan Qingyuan (1067-1120), and YUANWU KEQIN (1063-1135), who promoted it among the literati, and it became one of the dominant schools of Song-dynasty Buddhism thanks to the decisive role played by Yuanwu's disciple DAHUI ZONGGAO (1089-1163). It was especially within this lineage that the meditative technique of the Chan of investigating the meditative topic or questioning meditation (KANHUA CHAN) flourished. The Yangqi masters took a different approach to GONG'AN (public case) training, criticizing "lettered Chan" (WENZI CHAN), a style of Chan developed by Yunmen and Huanglong masters, which gained popularity among the literati officials in the Northern Song period with its polished language and elegant verse explanations of the meaning of the gong'an. Dahui in particular presented the gong'an as a meditative tool for realizing one's innate enlightenment, not to demonstrate one's talent in clever repartee or one's literary prowess; at the same time, he critiqued the approaches of rival Chan schools, criticizing such Huanglong masters as JUEFAN HUIHONG (1071-1128) for clinging to intellectual and literary endeavors and such CAODONG ZONG masters as HONGZHI ZHENGJUE (1091-1157) for clinging to tranquillity and simply waiting for one's innate enlightenment to manifest itself. The school also produced many gong'an collections, including the BIYANLU ("Blue Cliff Record"), complied by Yuanwu Keqin, and the WUMEN GUAN ("Gateless Checkpoint"), compiled by the seventh-generation successor WUMEN HUIKAI (1183-1260). The Yangqi lineage was formally introduced to Korea by T'AEGO POU (1301-1382), who studied with the eleventh-generation Yangqi teacher Shiwu Qinggong (1272-1352); some modern Korean monks and scholars argue that the contemporary Korean Son tradition should be traced back to T'aego and his Yangqi lineage, rather than to POJO CHINUL (1158-1210). The Yangqi school reached Japan in the thirteenth century through pilgrim monks, including Shunjo (1166-1227), who studied with the Yangqi teacher Meng'an Yuancong (1126-1209), and NANPO JoMYo (1235-1309), better known by his imperially bestowed title Entsu Daio Kokushi ("state preceptor," see GUOSHI), who studied with the ninth-generation teacher XUTANG ZHIYU (1185-1269). All Linji lineages in contemporary Japan are affiliated with the Yangqi pai.

Yangshan Huiji. (J. Gyozan/Kyozan Ejaku; K. Angsan Hyejok 仰山慧寂) (807-883). Chinese CHAN master and patriarch of the GUIYANG ZONG [alt. Weiyang zong]. Yangshan was a native of Shaozhou prefecture in present-day Guangdong province. According to his biography, Yangshan's first attempt to enter the monastery at age fifteen failed because his parents refused to give their required permission. Two years later he cut off two of his fingers as a sign of his resolve to become a monk and became a sRĀMAnERA under the guidance of Chan master Tong (d.u.) of Nanhuasi. After he received his monastic precepts, Yangshan studied the VINAYAPItAKA. Yangshan is said to have received the teachings of the circle diagrams from Danyuan Yingzhen (d.u.), and he later became a disciple of Chan master GUISHAN LINGYOU after serving him for fifteen years. He later moved to Mt. Yang in Yuanzhou prefecture (present-day Jiangxi province), whence he acquired his toponym, and established a name for himself as a Chan master. Yangshan later moved to Mt. Dongping in his hometown of Shaozhou, where he passed away in the year 883 (alternative dates for his death are 916 and 891). He was posthumously honored with the title Dengxu dashi (Great Master Clear Vacuity) and a purple robe. He was also named Great Master Zhitong (Penetration of Wisdom). His teachings are recorded in the Yuanzhou Yangshan Huiji chanshi yulu. The names of the mountains on which Yangshan and his teacher Guishan resided were used in compound to designate their lineage, the Guiyang.

Yang Wenhui. (J. Yo Bunkai; K. Yang Munhoe 楊文會) (1837-1911). Chinese Buddhist layman at the end of the Qing dynasty, renowned for his efforts to revitalize modern Chinese Buddhism. A native of Anhui province, Yang fled from the Taiping Rebellion to Hangzhou prefecture. In 1862, he serendipitously acquired a copy of the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna") and became interested in Buddhism. In 1878, he traveled to England, where he served at the Chinese Embassy in London, befriending the Japanese Buddhist scholar NANJo BUN'Yu (1849-1927), who helped him to acquire Chinese Buddhist texts that had been preserved in Japan. After his return to China, Yang established a publishing press called the Jingling Kejing Chu and published more than three thousand Buddhist scriptures. In 1893, ANAGĀRIKA DHARMAPĀLA visited Yang in Shanghai. In 1894, Yang and the British missionary Timothy Richard translated the DASHENG QIXIN LUN into English. In 1907, the Jingling Kejing Chu began to publish primers of Buddhism in various languages. In 1910, Yang also founded the Fojiao Yanjiu Hui (Buddhist Research Society), where he regularly lectured until his death in 1911.

Yifu. (J. Gifuku, K. Ŭibok 義福) (661-736). Chinese CHAN master associated with the Northern school (BEI ZONG) of the early Chan tradition. Yifu was a native of Luzhou prefecture in present-day Shanxi province, who became a student of the lay master DU FEI (d.u.), the author of the CHUAN FABAO JI, at Fuxiansi in Luoyang. After Yifu received the full monastic precepts in 690, he went to the monastery of YUQUANSI in Jingzhou prefecture to study with the eminent Chan master SHENXIU. Yifu became Shenxiu's close disciple and continued to study under him probably until his master's death. Later, Yifu moved to the monastery of Huagansi on ZHONGNANSHAN, where he lived for about twenty years. During his stay at Huagansi, Yifu attracted a large following. In 722, he moved again to the grand monastery of DACI'ENSI in Chang'an, where he was patronized by the upper echelons of Tang Chinese society. At the request of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756), Yifu returned once again to Luoyang and resided at the monasteries of Fuxiansi and Nanlongxingsi. He received the posthumous title Chan Master Dazhi (Great Wisdom).

Yinguang. (J. Inko; K. In'gwang 印光) (1862-1940). Chinese monk renowned for his efforts to revitalize modern Chinese Buddhism, especially of the PURE LAND tradition; also sometimes referred to as the thirteenth patriarch of the Chinese JINGTU school and as Chang Cankui Seng (Forever Ashamed Monk). Yinguang was a native of Geyang in Shaanxi province. At a young age, Yinguang suffered from an eye ailment, probably conjunctivitis, which he is said to have cured by studying the Buddhist scriptures. He was formally ordained later at the monastery of Xing'an Shuangqisi in his home province. Yinguang's interest in pure land thought and practice is said to have been catalyzed by his encounter with the writings of the CHAN master Jixing Chewu (1741-1810), who came to be known as the twelfth patriarch of the pure land tradition in China. For more than twenty years, he resided in isolation at the monastery of Fayusi on the sacred mountain of PUTUOSHAN, where he studied the scriptures and practiced the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (NIANFO; cf. NAMU AMIDABUTSU). Yinguang's reputation grew with the publication of his private correspondences and his collected essays known as Jingtu jueyi lun ("Treatise on Resolving Doubts about the Pure Land"). His writings were often critical of Chan and emphasized the efficacy of pure land practice instead. Yinguang also worked to restore monasteries and to republish important pure land writings until his death in 1940. See also TAIXU; XUYUN.

Yinyuan Longxi. (J. Ingen Ryuki 隠元隆琦) (1592-1673). Chinese CHAN master and founding patriarch of the Japanese oBAKUSHu. Yinyuan was a native of Fuzhou, in present-day Fujian province. He began his training as a monk in his early twenties on PUTUOSHAN and was formally ordained several years later at Wanfusi on Mt. Huangbo. Yinyuan continued his training under the Chan master MIYUN YUANWU and, while serving under the Chan master FEIYIN TONGRONG at Wanfusi Yinyuan, was formally recognized as an heir to Feiyin's lineage in 1633. Seven years later, in 1640, Yinyuan found himself at the monastery of Fuyansi in Zhejiang province and at Longquansi in Fujian province in 1645. The next year, in 1646, he returned to Mt. Huangbo and revitalized the community at Wanfusi. In 1654, at the invitation of Yiran Xingrong (1601-1668), the abbot of the Chinese temple of Kofukuji in Nagasaki, Yinyuan decided to leave China to escape the succession wars and political turmoil that had accompanied the fall of the Chinese Ming dynasty. He was to be accompanied by some thirty monks and artisans. Due to political issues, however, Yinyuan was only allowed to enter Japan a year later in 1655. That same year, largely through the efforts of the Japanese monk Ryokei Shosen (1602-1670), the abbot of MYoSHINJI, Yinyuan was allowed to stay at Ryokei's home temple of Fumonji under virtual house arrest. The next year when Yinyuan expressed his wishes to return to China, Ryokei arranged a visit to Edo and an audience with the young shogun. At the end of 1658, Yinyuan made the trip to Edo and won the patronage of the shogun and his ministers. With their support, Yinyuan began the construction of MANPUKUJIs in Uji in 1661. The site came to be known as Mt. obaku, the Japanese pronunciation of his mountain home of Huangbo, and served as the center for the introduction of Ming-dynasty Chan into Japan. Yinyuan's teachings, especially those concerning monastic rules, catalyzed institutional and doctrinal reform among the entrenched Japanese ZEN communities. In 1664, Yinyuan left his head disciple MU'AN XINGTAO in charge of all administrative matters involving the monastery and retired to his hermitage on the compounds of Manpukuji. Nine years later Emperor Gomizunoo (r. 1611-1629) bestowed upon him the title state preceptor (J. kokushi, C. GUOSHI) Daiko Fusho (Great Radiance, Universal Illumination). He died shortly thereafter. Yinyuan brought many texts and precious art objects with him from China, and composed numerous texts himself such as the Huangbo yulu, Hongjie fayi, Fusho kokushi koroku, obaku osho fuso goroku, Ingen hogo, and obaku shingi.

Yishan Yining. (J. Issan Ichinei; K. Ilsan Illyong 一山一寧) (1247-1317). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; a native of Taizhou prefecture in present-day Zhejiang province. At a young age, Yishan became a student of a certain Wudeng Rong (d.u.) at the monastery of Hongfusi on Mt. Fu near his hometown in Taizhou. He was later ordained at the monastery of Puguangsi in Siming in Zhejiang province and continued to study VINAYA at Yingzhensi and TIANTAI thought and practice at Yanqingsi. Yishan then began his training in Chan under several teachers. He eventually became a disciple of Wanji Xingmi (d.u.), a disciple of the Chan master CAOYUAN DAOSHENG. In 1299, the Yuan emperor Chengzong (r. 1294-1307) bestowed upon him the title Great Master Miaoci Hongji (Subtle Compassion, Universal Salvation) and an official post as the overseer of Buddhist matters in Zhejiang. That same year, he was sent to Japan as an envoy of the court, but was detained temporarily at the temple of Shuzenji in Izu by the Kamakura shogunate. When the Hojo rulers learned of Yishan's renown in China, Yishan was invited to reside as abbot of the powerful monasteries of KENCHoJI, ENGAKUJI, and Jochiji in Kamakura. In 1313, Yishan was invited by the retired Emperor Gouda (r. 1274-1287) to reside as the third abbot of the monastery NANZENJI in Kyoto. Yishan had many students in Japan including the eminent Japanese monk MUSo SOSEKI. Yishan became ill and passed away in the abbot's quarters (J. hojo; C. FANGZHANG) of Nanzenji in 1317. The emperor bestowed upon him the title state preceptor (J. kokushi; C. GUOSHI) Issan (One Mountain). Yishan is also remembered for his calligraphy and for introducing to Japan the new commentaries written by the great Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) to Japan. He and his disciples, such as Shiliang Rengong (1266-1334), Mujaku Ryoen (d.u.), Monkei Ryoso (d. 1372), and Torin Yukyu (d. 1369), contributed much to the development of GOZAN culture in Japan.

Yixing. (J. Ichigyo; K. Irhaeng 一行) (683-727). In Chinese, "Single Practice"; a famous student of CHAN and master of esoteric Buddhism (MIJIAO), translator, and distinguished astronomer. Yixing was a native of Julu prefecture in present-day Hebei province. He became a monk under the eminent Chan master PUJI (651-739) in the Northern school (BEI ZONG) of the early Chan tradition and also studied the VINAYA under a monk by the name of Huizhen (d.u.). Having made a name for himself at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai, in 717, Yixing was invited by Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756) to the palace in Luoyang. While residing at the palace, Yixing became a disciple of the TREPItAKA sUBHAKARASIMHA and, together, they translated the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA. Based on subhakarasiMha's oral interpretations provided in the course of preparing their translation, Yixing also composed an important commentary on the sutra, the Darijing shu. In 727, Yixing's reputation in astronomy and calendrics prompted the emperor to have him devise a new calendar, which is known as the Dayan li. Yixing also devised an elaborate celestial globe, which used hydraulic power to portray the precise movements of the sun, moon, and constellations across the firmament. After his death, he was bestowed the posthumous title Chan master Dahui (Great Wisdom).

Yongjia Xuanjue. (J. Yoka Genkaku; K. Yongga Hyon'gak 永嘉玄覺) (675-713). Chinese CHAN monk renowned for his writings on meditation, also known as Mingdao, Yishujue, and Great Master Zhenjue (True Awakening); Yongjia is his toponym, the name of his hometown in Zhejiang province. Yongjia made a name for himself at a young age as an expert on meditation and the TIANTAI practices of calmness and insight (see sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ). He is said to have later received a seal of approval (YINKE) from the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of Chan, HUINENG, after studying under the master for only one day and a night; hence, his cognomen Yishujue (Single-Night Enlightened, or Overnight Guest). His teachings are primarily known through the influential works attributed to him, such as the ZHENGDAO GE and Yongjia ji. Yongjia was given the posthumous title Great Master Wuxiang (No Marks).

Yongjusa. (龍珠寺). In Korean, "Dragon Pearl Monastery"; the second district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mt. Hwa in Kyonggi province. The temple was constructed in 854 and originally named Karyangsa. It was rebuilt in 1790 to serve as the royal tomb of Prince Sado (1735-1762), the father of King Chongjo (r. 1776-1800). During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), Yongjusa became one of thirty-one head monasteries (PONSA) and it managed forty-nine branch temples (malsa) in several regions. A monks' training school was established in 1955, followed by a meditation hall in 1969. Yongjusa's main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) was constructed in 1790 and enshrines images of the buddhas sĀKYAMUNI, BHAIsAJYAGURU, and AMITĀBHA. Other cultural properties at the site include the main temple bell, bronze censers, and a hanging painting of the Buddha (KWAEBUL).

Yongming Yanshou. (J. Yomei Enju; K. Yongmyong Yonsu 永明延壽) (904-975). Chinese CHAN master in the FAYAN ZONG during the Five Dynasties and Song dynasty periods; also known as Chongxuan and Baoyizi. Yongming was a native of Lin'an prefecture in Zhejiang province. At the age of twenty-seven, Yongming left his post as a minor official to become a monk under Cuiyan Lingcan (d.u.), a disciple of the Chan master XUEFENG YICUN (822-908); he subsequently studied under TIANTAI DESHAO (891-972) and inherited his Fayan lineage. Beginning in 952, Yongming served as abbot of a series of different monasteries, including Zishengsi on Mt. Xuedou, Lingyinsi (at the request of the king of Wuyue), and Yongmingsi, whence he acquired his toponym. Yongming was renowned for his advocacy of the simultaneous cultivation of Chan meditation and NIANFO (recitation of the Buddha's name) and for his magnum opus ZONGJING LU, a massive Chan genealogical history, in one hundred rolls. His writings also include the famous WANSHAN TONGGUI JI and the WEIXIN JUE. Although Yongming's Fayan lineage declined in China during the Song dynasty, thirty-six envoys sent by the Koryo king to study under Yongming returned with his teachings to Korea, where the line continued to flourish. Yongming was posthumously given the title Chan master Zhijue (Wise Awakening).

Yongsong Chinjong. (龍城震鐘) (1864-1940). Korean monk during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), also known as Paek Yongsong; leader of a conservative group of monastic reformers, and one of the thirty-three signatories to the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919. Ordained at the monastery of HAEINSA in 1879, he received full monastic precepts five years later and became a disciple of Taeŭn Nango (1780-1841) at the hermitage of Ch'ilburam. Later, he had a great awakening while he was studying the JINGDE CHUANDENGLU at the monastery of SONGGWANGSA, where he became a disciple of the SoN master HWANSoNG CHIAN. One year after Korea was annexed by Japan, he established the monastery of Taegaksa and a Son center (Sonhagwon) in Seoul in an attempt to propagate Buddhism among a wider public. On March 1, 1919, he signed the Korean Declaration of Independence as a representative of the Buddhist community and was consequently incarcerated by the Japanese colonial government for eighteen months. During his year and a half in prison, he translated many sutras (such as the voluminous AVATAMSAKASuTRA, or Hwaomgyong) from literary Chinese into han'gŭl, the Korean vernacular script, in order to make more Buddhist texts accessible to ordinary Koreans. After his release from prison in March 1921, he established a community known as the Taegakkyo (Teaching of Great Awakening) and a translation center called Samjang Yokhoe (Society for Translating the TRIPItAKA), and devoted most of his time to the translation of Buddhist scriptures. In 1928 he published the journal Mua ("No Self") and with HANYoNG CHoNGHO also published the journal Puril ("Buddha Sun"). In May 1929, he and 127 other monks submitted a petition to the Japanese colonial government asking for the restoration of the tradition of celibacy in the Buddhist monasteries. Because of his interest in ensuring the continuance of the BHIKsU and BHIKsUnĪ traditions, Yongsong personally established many ordination platforms and transmitted the complete monastic precepts (kujokkye) several times during his career. He also stressed the need for monasteries to be self-sustaining economically. In accordance with his plan for self-sustenance, he participated in the management of a mine in Hamgyong province, and in 1922, he bought some land in Manchuria and ran a farm on the compounds of a branch of the Taegakkyo. He also started a Ch'amson Manil Kyolsahoe (Ten-Thousand Day Meditation Retreat Society) at the monastery of Ch'ilbulsa and attracted many followers from other monasteries. Yongsong was a prolific writer who left behind many works, including his famous Kwiwon chongjong ("The Orthodox Teaching that Returns to the Source"), a tract that compared Buddhism to Confucianism, Daoism, and Christianity, a modern twist on the old "three teachings" syncretism of medieval East Asian philosophy. This work was one of the first attempts by Buddhists to respond to the inroads made by Christianity in modern Korea. In his treatment, he suggests that Confucianism presented a complete moral doctrine but was deficient in transcendental teachings; Daoism was deficient in moral teachings but half-understood transcendental teaching; Christianity was fairly close to the Buddhist ch'on'gyo ("teachings of [humans] and divinities"), which taught the kinds of meritorious actions that would lead to rebirth in heavenly realms but was completely ignorant of the transcendental teaching. Only Buddhism, Yongsong concluded, presented all facets of both moral and transcendental teachings. Yongsong's other works include his Kakhae illyun, Susim non, and Ch'onggong wonil. See also IMWoTKO.

Yuanwu Keqin. (J. Engo Kokugon; K. Wono Kŭkkŭn 圜悟克勤) (1062-1135). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; also known as Wuzhuo and Foguo. Yuanwu was a native of Chongning, Pengzhou prefecture, in present-day Sichuan province (northwest of the city of Chengdu). Little is known about his early career, but Yuanwu eventually became a disciple of the Chan master WUZU FAYAN. According to legend, Yuanwu became ill after leaving Wuzu's side, and returned as Wuzu had predicted. Yuanwu then inherited Wuzu's Linji lineage. While traveling in the south, Yuanwu befriended the statesman ZHANG SHANGYING (1043-1122) and also won the support of other powerful local figures, such as the governor of Chengdu. At their request, Yuanwu served as abbot of several monasteries, including Jiashansi and Daolinsi, where he lectured on the Xuedou gonggu by XUEDOU CHONGXUAN. These lectures were later edited together as the BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record"), an influential collection of Chan cases (GONG'AN). Yuanwu was honored with several titles: Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1125) gave him the title Chan master Foguo (Buddha Fruition) and Gaozong the title Chan master Yuanwu (Consummate Awakening). The title Chan master Zhenjue (True Enlightenment) was also bestowed upon him. Among his hundred or so disciples, DAHUI ZONGGAO, the systematizer of the KANHUA CHAN method of meditation, is most famous. Yuanwu's teachings are recorded in the Yuanwu Foguo chanshi yulu and Yuanwu chanshi xinyao.

Yun'an Puyan. ( J. Unnan Fugan; K. Unam Poam 運庵普巖) (1156-1226). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG; a native of Siming in present-day Sichuan province. After studying under Shigu Xiyi (d.u.) and Wuyong Jingquan (1137-1207) following his ordination, Yun'an traveled to the monastery of Zhengzhao Chanyuan on Mt. Yang in 1184 and continued his training under the Chan master Songyuan Chongyue (1132-1202), who early in his vocation had been a student of DAHUI ZONGGAO. When Songyuan was moved to Guangxiao Chansi in Jiangsu province and again to Shiji Chanyuan in Anhui province, Yun'an followed and continued to serve the master for eighteen years. Yun'an eventually became Songyuan's successor. In 1202, after Songyuan's death, Yun'an was invited to reside in a new hermitage established by the master's brother in Yun'an's hometown in Siming. This hermitage was named Yun'an, whence he acquired his toponym. In 1206, Yun'an moved to Dasheng Puzhao Chansi in Jiangsu province, where he trained many eminent disciples, such as XUTANG ZHIYU. His disciples edited his sayings together in the Yun'an Puyan chanshi yulu.

Yungang. ( J. Unko; K. Un'gang 雲崗). A complex of some fifty-three carved Buddhist caves located at the southern foot of Mt. Wuzhou some ten miles west of the city of Datong, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The Yungang grottoes extend roughly half a mile from east to west and were carved over a fifty-year period between the fifth and sixth centuries CE under the patronage of the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) court. The caves themselves contain roughly fifty thousand Buddhist sculptures, which are noted for their rich variety. The grottoes at Yungang are divided into eastern, western, and central zones. Most of the best-preserved grottoes are found in the western zone, although Grotto No. 1 in the eastern section still contains numerous sculptures in relief. Grotto No. 5, located inside the entrance to the site, contains a giant buddha statue. Grottoes 16-20 are especially renowned for their five colossal buddha images. The iconographical features of the sculptures preserved at the Yungang caves are similar to those found in the contemporaneous cave complex at DUNHUANG; unlike Dunhuang, however, the Yungang caves contain no paintings. Since their completion, the Yungang grottoes have fallen victim to both war and natural disasters. After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese government took an interest in the site, officially placing it under state protection in 1961. In December 2001, the Yungang grottoes were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Yunmen Wenyan. ( J. Unmon Bun'en; K. Unmun Munon 雲門文偃) (864-949). Chinese CHAN monk and founder of the YUNMEN ZONG, one of the so-called five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the classical Chinese Chan tradition. Yunmen was a native of Jiaxing in present-day Zhejiang province. He was ordained at the age of sixteen by the VINAYA master Zhideng (d.u.) of the monastery Kongwangsi and two years later received the full monastic precepts at the precept platform in Piling (present-day Jiangsu province). After his full ordination, Yunmen returned to Kongwangsi and studied the DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya (SIFEN LÜ) under Zhideng. Later, Yunmen visited Muzhou Daoming (d.u.), a prominent disciple of the eminent Chan master HUANGBO XIYUN, and continued his studies of Chan under XUEFENG YICUN. Yunmen eventually became Xuefeng's disciple and inherited his lineage. Taking his leave of Xuefeng, Yunmen continued to visit other Chan masters throughout the country, and in 911 he visited the funerary STuPA of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG on CAOXISHAN. Yunmen then visited Lingshu Rumin (d. 918), a famed disciple of the Chan master Fuzhou Da'an (793-883), at his monastery of Lingshu Chanyuan in Shaozhou (present-day Guangdong province) and continued to study under Lingshu until his death in 918. Yunmen was then asked by the ruler of the newly established Nan Han state (917-971), Liu Yan (r. 917-942), to succeed Lingshu's place at Lingshu Chanyuan. In 923, he established a monastery on Mt. Yunmen in the region, whence he acquired his toponym. He continued to reside on Mt. Yunmen for thirty years and frequently visited the palace of the Nan Han state to preach. In 938, Liu Cheng (943-958), monarch of the Nan Han, bestowed on him the title Great Master Kuangzhen (Genuine Truth). According to his wishes, no funerary stupa was prepared for Yunmen and his body was left in his abbot's quarters (FANGZHANG). Yunmen was especially famous for his so-called one-word barriers (YIZI GUAN), in which he used a single utterance to respond to a student's question. For example, once a monk asked him, "When you kill your parents, you repent before the Buddha. But when you kill the buddhas and patriarchs, to whom do you repent?" Yunmen answered, "Lu" ("exposed"). Eighteen of Yunmen's most famous Chan cases (GONG'AN) are collected in the BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record"); his extended teachings are recorded in the Yunmen Kuangzhen chanshi guanglu.

Yunmen zong. ( J. Unmonshu; K. Unmun chong 雲門宗). In Chinese, "Cloud Gate school"; one of the so-called five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the mature Chinese CHAN tradition. It is named after the mountain, located in Shaozhou (present-day Guangdong province), where its founder YUNMEN WENYAN (864-949) taught. Yunmen Wenyan was famous for his "one-word barriers" or "one-word checkpoints" (YIZI GUAN), in which he responded to his students' questions by using only a single word. The school became one of the dominant Chan traditions in the Five Dynasties (Wudai) and early Song dynasty, producing such prominent masters as DONGSHAN SHOUCHU (910-990), Dongshan Xiaocong (d. 1030), XUEDOU ZHONGXIAN (980-1052), and Tianyi Yihuai (992-1064). Yunmen masters played a major role in the development of classical Chan literature. Xuedou Zhongxian's earlier collection of one hundred old cases (guce, viz., GONG'AN), known as the Xuedou songgu, served as the basis for the famous BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record"), which added the extensive commentaries and annotations of the Linji master YUANWU KEQIN (1063-1135) to Zhongxian's original compilation. Several Yunmen masters were closely associated with the Song-dynasty intelligentsia. Dajue Huailian (1009-1090), for example, was as personal friend of the Song literocrat (shidafu) and poet Su Shi (1036-1101). Fori Qichong (1007-1072) asserted the fundamental harmony of Confucianism and Buddhism, explaining Confucian philosophical concepts using Buddhist terminology. CHANGLU ZONGZE (fl. c. late eleventh to early twelfth century) institutionalized the practice of reciting the name of the Buddha (NIANFO) into the routine of Chan monastic life and wrote an influential text on Chan monastic regulations or "rules of purity" (QINGGUI), the CHANYUAN QINGGUI ("Pure Rules for the Chan Grove"). The Yunmen school survived for about two centuries before it was eventually absorbed into the LINJI ZONG.

Yunqi Zhuhong. (J. Unsei Shuko; K. Unso Chugoeng 雲棲祩宏) (1535-1615). Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG and one of the so-called four great monks of the Ming dynasty, along with HANSHAN DEQING (1546-1623), DAGUAN ZHENKE (1543-1603), and OUYI ZHIXU (1599-1655); also known as Fohui and Lianchi. Yunqi was a native of Renhe, Hangzhou prefecture (present-day Zhejiang province). In 1566, Yunqi abandoned his family and his life as a Confucian literatus and was ordained by Xingtianli (d.u.) of West Mountain. Yunqi wandered throughout the country in search of prominent teachers and attained his first awakening at Dongchang in present-day Shandong province. In 1571, he arrived at Mt. Yunqi in Hangzhou, whence he acquired his toponym. There, he was able to restore Yunqi monastery with the help of local followers. His reputation grew after he successfully brought rain and drove tigers from the area. Yunqi remained on the mountain and composed over thirty major works. With the help of his Confucian background, Yunqi was able to draw a large public to his Chan teachings, and he also promoted the practice known as NIANFO Chan in what was at the time the largest lay society in China. His influential works, such as the CHANGUAN CEJIN, Zizhi lu ("Record of Self-Knowledge"), Sengxun riji, and Zimen chongxing lu, were edited together as the Yunqi fahui ("Anthology of the Teachings of Yunqi Zhuhong").

Yuquansi. (玉泉寺). In Chinese, "Jade Spring Monastery"; important meditative center located on Mt. Yuquan in Jingzhou prefecture (present-day Hubei province). During the Daye reign period (605-617) of the Sui dynasty, a name plaque for the monastery was prepared by the King of Jin, and the eminent monk TIANTAI ZHIYI lectured there on his FAHUA XUANYI and MOHE ZHIGUAN. Yuquansi soon became a prominent center for meditators in China. The monastery became even more famous when the CHAN master SHENXIU of the Northern school (BEI ZONG) took up residence at the site sometime in the last quarter of the seventh century. The famed Chan master NANYUE HUAIRANG is also said to have ordained at Yuquansi.

Zanning. (J. Sannei; K. Ch'annyong 贊寧) (919-1001). Chinese VINAYA master and historian. Zanning was a native of Bohai in present-day Hebei province. Sometime between 926 and 930, he was ordained at the monastery of Xiangfusi in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and received his monastic precepts on Mt. Tiantai. Zanning then studied the "Four-Part Vinaya" (SIFEN LÜ) of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school and became an expert in the South Mountain vinaya lineage (NANSHAN LÜ ZONG). He thus came to be known as Lühu or "Vinaya Tiger," and was given the title Great Master Mingyi (Bright Righteousness). In 978, he also received the title Great Master Tonghui (Penetrating Wisdom) and was invited to the monastery of Tianshousi. Upon the Emperor's decree, Zanning compiled the influential Buddhist biographical record, the SONG GAOSENG ZHUAN, which was completed and entered into the official canon (DAZANGJING) in 988. He also composed the DA SONG SENG SHI LÜE, one of the earliest attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the history of Buddhism throughout Asia. His other writings include the Neidian ji, Jiuling shengxian lu, and Shichao yinyi zhigui.

zillah ::: n. --> A district or local division, as of a province.



QUOTES [6 / 6 - 547 / 547]


KEYS (10k)

   3 Sri Aurobindo
   1 Saul Ader
   1 Ramakrishna
   1 Gregory the Great

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   16 Anonymous
   14 Edward Gibbon
   9 Voltaire
   7 Niccol Machiavelli
   5 Henry David Thoreau
   5 Dorothy Parker
   5 Ashraf Ghani
   5 Ally Condie
   4 Mary Beard
   4 John Marshall
   4 Howard Zinn
   4 Elizabeth Speller
   4 Anthony Bourdain
   3 Thomas Carlyle
   3 Susan Sontag
   3 Shashi Tharoor
   3 Rajmohan Gandhi
   3 Rachel Notley
   3 Niccolo Machiavelli
   3 Michael Cunningham

1:If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe,
2:When one considers the clamorous emptiness of the world, words of so little sense, actions of so little merit, one loves to reflect on the great reign of silence. The noble silent men scattered here and there each in his province silently thinking and silently acting of whom no morning paper makes mention, these are the salt of the earth. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
3:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
   Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,
4:This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a truthconscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life.
   In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Mind of Light, 587,
5:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.

   No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.

   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,
6:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:The inner nature of man is the province of Music. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
2:Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove
3:The United States trades more with the province of Ontario alone than with Japan. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
4:It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove
5:Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
6:What does God really look like stripped naked? That's the province of enlightenment... the formless, perfect face of existence. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
7:The province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
8:War is a matter of vital importance to the state; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove
9:There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
10:Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
11:It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove
12:There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove
13:To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove
14:Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove
15:Are we alone in the universe? This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove
16:It is very bad for (an artist) to talk about how he (creates). It is not the (artist's) province to explain or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work. It's none of their business that you had to learn. Let them think you were born that way. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
17:Ch√¢teau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well-thousands of acres of land-a whole province of France-all France itself-lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove
18:There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell? ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove
19:There is only one law of Nature-the second law of thermodynamics-which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove
20:I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle and actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Work is the province of cattle. ~ Dorothy Parker,
2:War is the province of danger. ~ Carl von Clausewitz,
3:Spontaneity is the province of youth ~ Jacqueline Carey,
4:A Court of equity knows its own province. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
5:Isn't mockery the province of the insecure? ~ Roland Merullo,
6:The inner nature of man is the province of Music. ~ Confucius,
7:This is the province that pioneered dreaming big. ~ Paul Martin,
8:Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
9:Reckless behaviour is not the sole province of the young. ~ Eva Leigh,
10:...may we not be strangers in the lush province of joy ~ Charles Wright,
11:Her parents came from a Philippine province called Bicol, ~ Cinelle Barnes,
12:It is the special province of music to move the heart. ~ Johann Sebastian Bach,
13:Success at sports is the province of the almost empty head. ~ Jonathan Franzen,
14:Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions. ~ Christopher Buehlman,
15:No part of marriage is the exclusive province of any one sex. ~ Katharine Hepburn,
16:waived his right to a province. For one thing, he did not want to ~ Robert Harris,
17:Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province. ~ Huston Smith,
18:Late-night shortwave: province of ramblers and dreamers, madmen and ranters. ~ Anthony Doerr,
19:Rebelliousness really is the province of young people-that kind of iconoclasm. ~ Steve Martin,
20:survival has never really been the province of the fittest. Merely the hungriest. ~ Anonymous,
21:Flattery is the province of fools—those who give it and those who believe it. ~ Carole Lawrence,
22:If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers. ~ Frederick The Great,
23:The United States trades more with the province of Ontario alone than with Japan. ~ Ronald Reagan,
24:more familiar understandings of love are the province of patriarchal totalitarianism. ~ Nick Harkaway,
25:Fellini is a just a province kid. Rome exists for Fellini, not the other way around. ~ Scott McClanahan,
26:It is the province of the tarot reader to move backwards, forwards, even sideways in time. ~ Sasha Graham,
27:I've always considered the French-speaking part of Switzerland as a province of France. ~ Jean Luc Godard,
28:It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. ~ John Marshall,
29:Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life. ~ Paula Fox,
30:I have no family. My only responsibility is the welfare of Quebec. I belong to the province. ~ Maurice Duplessis,
31:It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr,
32:The book is Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203, by Judith A. Everard, ~ Sharon Kay Penman,
33:Boredom, as her mother had always told them, was a state to be pitied, the province of the witless. ~ Kate Morton,
34:It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr,
35:Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind. ~ Sara Sheridan,
36:Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason. ~ Carl Jung,
37:What has happened cannot be changed, and so you cannot touch it. Change is the province of the future. ~ Anthony Ryan,
38:"Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason." ~ Carl Jung,
39:it is essential that in entering a new Province you should have the good will of its inhabitants. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
40:His beauty was notable even in a province where the lack of it is more exceptional in a young man. ~ Tennessee Williams,
41:When you send a clerk on business to a distant province, a man of rigid morals is not your best choice. ~ Ihara Saikaku,
42:I tour as many countries as possible, and I've toured every state in America, plus every province in Canada. ~ Elton John,
43:British under Clive defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula to become rulers of Bengal, the richest province of India. ~ Shashi Tharoor,
44:No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial. ~ Agnes Smedley,
45:With her death Egypt became a Roman province. It would not recover its autonomy until the twentieth century. ~ Stacy Schiff,
46:But who shall parcel out His intellect by geometric rules, Split like a province into round and square? ~ William Wordsworth,
47:A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
48:I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul ~ Robert Henri,
49:I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free. ~ Marcus Garvey,
50:I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. ~ Leonard Cohen,
51:Never feel that a piece of criticism or advice is too much trouble to give, or that it exceeds your province. ~ Lord Mountbatten,
52:Duplicity was not the sole province of the capital, Bas knew, but the honest inheritance of the entire species. ~ Daniel Polansky,
53:The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well. ~ Elias Canetti, The Human Province (1942–1972).,
54:I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province. ~ Susan Sontag,
55:In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense. ~ Voltaire,
56:Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, / nave senza nocchiere in gran tempesta, / non donna di province, ma bordello. ~ Dante Alighieri,
57:brutal, media-obsessed ISIS commander in Anbar Province notorious for killing Shiite truck drivers and other civilians ~ Joby Warrick,
58:God made the Sea of Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. Grimes to improve upon the work? ~ Mark Twain,
59:Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. ~ Karl Popper,
60:This monumental work, Taijang-Kyung, is now preserved in eternity in the Hal-in-sa Temple, Mount Kaya, in the province ~ Pearl S Buck,
61:Mengding Mountain on the Tibetan Plateau in northwestern Sichuan Province is likely the birthplace of cultivated tea. ~ Mary Lou Heiss,
62:To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness. ~ Allen Ginsberg,
63:Less than fifteen cents to the province and more than twenty-five cents to Ottawa, this is far from being excessive! ~ Maurice Duplessis,
64:Power was not the province of those who made choices. Power was the ability to set the context in which choices were made. ~ Seth Dickinson,
65:stooges of the Raj, this well-entrenched, Raj-preferred party of landlords and landowners—Muslims in the province’s west, ~ Rajmohan Gandhi,
66:One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past. —Elias Canetti, The Human Province ~ Gretchen Rubin,
67:My fellow, you strike me at present as being situated in the moon, kingdom of dream, province of illusion, capital: Soap-Bubble. ~ Victor Hugo,
68:What does God really look like stripped naked? That's the province of enlightenment...the formless, perfect face of existence. ~ Frederick Lenz,
69:Palace Barracks, Holywood, a secure army base where British army families live during their tour of duty in the Province. The ~ Martin McGartland,
70:War is the province of danger and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior, von Clausewitz maintained. ~ Joe Haldeman,
71:I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province. ~ Francis Bacon,
72:The bog? What is that again?” “Every province has one. The place where a character’s energy returns after they are no longer… alive. ~ Lucian Bane,
73:Those who simply put their head down and power through this unsung province [Saskatchewan] are denying themselves its subtle powers. ~ Dave Bidini,
74:What did I expect him to say--that he would leave his wife? To do so was the province of fiction. Real life was not as easy as that. ~ Lynn Cullen,
75:I was a National-Socialist and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe. ~ Joachim Peiper,
76:The crowd had the plump, righteous, slightly constipated look that seems the exclusive province of businessmen who belong to the GOP. ~ Stephen King,
77:It's an extraordinary thing, this tiny little province of Northern Ireland, where carnage happened. And I was part of it. I grew up in it. ~ Liam Neeson,
78:Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change. ~ Jim Butcher,
79:For, although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
80:The crowd had that plump, righteous, and slightly constipated look that seems the exclusive province of businessmen who belong to the GOP. ~ Stephen King,
81:Le romantisme anglais fut un mélange heureux de laudanum, d'exil et de phtisie; le romantisme allemand, d'alcool, de province et de suicide. ~ Emil M Cioran,
82:Nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his province. A sick child is always the mother’s property: her own feelings generally make it so. ~ Jane Austen,
83:He is older, crueler, more experienced, perhaps stronger, but survival has never really been the province of the fittest. Merely the hungriest. ~ N K Jemisin,
84:The name "Pakistan" was formed as an acronym of Muslim majority regions in India: Punjab, Afghani Province, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan. ~ Firas Alkhateeb,
85:When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli,
86:The province of philosophy is not so much to prevent calamities befalling as to demonstrate that they are blessings when they have taken place. ~ Ernest Bramah,
87:That was a mother's obligation: to always accept her children as they were, rather than who she wanted them to be. That was the province of fathers. ~ Eva Leigh,
88:A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts. ~ Sarah Vowell,
89:The province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect. ~ John Dryden,
90:Do nothing to merely interest, assume or attract. This is not your province. Do only that wins the people you are after in the cheapest possible way ~ Claude C Hopkins,
91:It is infinitely harder to ask questions in such a way that the audience is led not to the answers (the province of the demagogue) but to new perceptions. ~ Gore Vidal,
92:The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well. ~ Elias Canetti (1905–1994), Jewish-Bulgarian writer. The Human Province (1942–1972),
93:War is a matter of vital importance to the state; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied. ~ Sun Tzu,
94:Compromise is possible. But possibility is a vast empire, and likelihood its smallest province. Still, the province is rich, and so we work to seize it. ~ Max Gladstone,
95:It’s that blasted Independent Province!” the fourth said. “It’s been chaos since they gained sovereignty. I’ve felt it in my roots since.  A war is coming. ~ Lucian Bane,
96:Rock music is the province of the young, and it should be made by young people. I'm not running around in a pair of spandex tights trying to reclaim my youth. ~ Nick Cave,
97:Technology has now enabled a type of ubiquitous surveillance that had previously been the province of only the most imaginative science fiction writers. ~ Glenn Greenwald,
98:Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing. ~ Robert Henri,
99:it provokes him to think that his profession will become the exclusive province of programmers, mechanics, engineers, and the autonomous systems they design. ~ Linda Nagata,
100:For however strong you may be in respect of your army, it is essential that in entering a new Province you should have the good will of its inhabitants. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
101:Roseto Valfortore lies one hundred miles southeast of Rome in the Apennine foothills of the Italian province of Foggia. In the style of medieval villages, ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
102:There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
103:In Hebei Province, in the heart of China’s northern grain belt, the average water level in the deep aquifer is dropping nearly three meters a year. Underground ~ Edward O Wilson,
104:Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
105:It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer. ~ Walt Disney,
106:Science is the special province of the ego. And magic and art are the special province of something else. I could name it, but I won't. It prefers to be unnamed ~ Terence McKenna,
107:There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
108:In this province Sandoval laid the foundation of a town, which, by the desire of Cortes, he named Medellin, after the latter's native place, in Estremadura. ~ Bernal D az del Castillo,
109:stooges of the Raj, this well-entrenched, Raj-preferred party of landlords and landowners—Muslims in the province’s west, Sikhs in the centre, and Hindu Jats in the east ~ Rajmohan Gandhi,
110:Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be. ~ Joyce Carol Oates,
111:It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution. ~ Richard Mentor Johnson,
112:Along with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can. ~ Robert Pyle,
113:I have to come to terms with the paternalism of American business. Companies are expected to take on so many social responsibilities which are the province of the state in Europe. ~ Nick Denton,
114:His daughter, as part of himself, came within the normal range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying region, a subject province; and Mr. Orme's was a highly centralized polity. ~ Edith Wharton,
115:Well, Ramadi is a provincial capital of Anbar province. It's a sprawling city west of Baghdad. It's a poor city, endless cinderblock houses and high-rises almost as far as the eye can see. ~ Tom Bowman,
116:The city and province were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory, proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and American residents. ~ Henry Walter Bates,
117:we handed him back his province and left our allies to be crucified and sawn in two. They were innocent. They thought we’d stay. But we were liberals and we didn’t want a bad conscience. ~ Graham Greene,
118:A second railway in Tibet opened, between Lhasa, the capital, and the second city, Shigatse. The first, in 2006, linked Qinghai province with Lhasa. The railways are the highest in the world. ~ Anonymous,
119:If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe,
120:The views of the Contact Group member-states must be taken seriously, as well as the guidelines set out in their document on Kosovo, which clearly says that the province should not be divided. ~ Martti Ahtisaari,
121:Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector. ~ David Rockefeller,
122:About half of the loyalists who left the United States ended up going north to Canada, settling in the province of Nova Scotia and also becoming pioneering settlers in the province of New Brunswick. ~ Rachel Martin,
123:Change is the province of leaders. It is the work of leaders to inspire people to do things differently, to struggle against uncertain odds, and to persevere toward a misty image of a better future. ~ James M Kouzes,
124:While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~ Dorothea Lange,
125:Does he [the president] possess the power of making war? That power is exclusively vested in Congress. . . . It is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war. ~ William Paterson,
126:Sometimes, when one goes back to the scene of one’s childhood, things seem smaller. What was mysterious and the sole province of adults suddenly seems commonplace and mundane when viewed with mature eyes. ~ Robin Hobb,
127:War is the province of chance. In no sphere of human activity is such a margin to be left for this intruder. It increases the uncertainty of every circumstance, and deranges the course of events. ~ Carl von Clausewitz,
128:Permian recalls the former Russian province of Perm in the Ural Mountains. For Cretaceous (from the Latin for chalk) we are indebted to a Belgian geologist with the perky name of J. J. d’Omalius d’Halloy. ~ Bill Bryson,
129:Our government is operating within an unprecedented revenue shortfall and that we have an obligation to all citizens of the province to manage our finances responsibly. And that's what we're going to do. ~ Rachel Notley,
130:Now I should rather suppose there is no reason for it: it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly commonplace: to be so without any is the province of genius. ~ Thomas Love Peacock,
131:To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province. ~ Virginia Woolf,
132:The province of science, on the other hand, is not to take so wide a survey, but to gain knowledge piece-meal: to locate points inductively, and thus to plot out the curve which we believe existence constitutes. ~ Anonymous,
133:Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
134:Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go. ~ Anthony Bourdain,
135:It is the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society; the application of those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other departments. ~ John Marshall,
136:Maybe they’d be interested in joining our bridge club.” The last bridge my parents had anything to do with involved the Gansu Province, dynamite, and a really ticked-off yak, but I just smiled and said, “Thanks. ~ Ally Carter,
137:Where land was controlled by noblemen and/or the Church in other parts of Europe, in the province of Holland, circa 1500, only 5 percent of the land was owned by nobles, while peasants owned 45 percent of it. ~ Russell Shorto,
138:Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
139:And innovation is no longer the province of in-house experts and research and development labs, but is produced through crowdsourcing and the contribution of ideas by independent participants in the platform. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,
140:A U.S. intelligence report leaked to the press grimly labeled Ramadi and Anbar Province “all but lost.” Virtually no one thought it possible that U.S. forces could turn the situation around there and win. Through ~ Jocko Willink,
141:Science can point out dangers, but science cannot turn the direction of minds and hearts. That is the province of spiritual powers within and without our very beginnings-powers that are the mysteries of life itself. ~ Oren Lyons,
142:The Tartar looked at the sky. The stars were as many as at home, there was the same blackness around, but something was missing. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were not like that at all, nor was the sky. ~ Anton Chekhov,
143:The Communists in Cuba didn't assist Castro in his revolution. They weren't on the side of the students. They didn't do anything to help in the invasion or the long-continuing struggle from the Oriente province down. ~ Dorothy Day,
144:Complete self-government for the province [gubernia and region], district and community through bureaucrats elected by universal suffrage; the abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state. ~ Vladimir Lenin,
145:Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern. ~ David Hume,
146:PRIEST, WILLIAM. Travels in the United States of America (1793-1797). London: 1802. PROUD, ROBERT. History of Pennsylvania (1681-1742). Also Description of the Province from 1760-1770. 2 Vols. Philadelphia: 1797 and 1798. ~ Anonymous,
147:If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, a do not be amazed at the matter, b for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. ~ Anonymous,
148:If we are generous enough, we can stretch our souls everywhere and everywhen else. If we succeed in doing so, we shall discover that our present embraces the past and the future and that the whole world is our province. ~ George Sarton,
149:It was officially known as Kwan-li-so Number 18. That meant Penal Labor Colony in Korean. It was a concentration camp. It was a gulag. It actually was hell, near the Taedong River in North Korea's P'yongan-namdo province. ~ David Baldacci,
150:Sometimes electricity provides unexpected benefits. In a remote village in China's Fujian province in which young men have traditionally had a hard time finding wives, the arrival of electricity has attracted more brides ~ Christopher Flavin,
151:It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is...If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each...This is of the very essence of judicial duty. ~ John Marshall,
152:The province of Texas is still part of the Mexican dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans; the same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-Americans have come into contact with populations of a different origin. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
153:Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
Marcus Aurelius ~ Marcus Aurelius,
154:I probably live in the best province for independent filmmakers. Manitoba has a sort of thieving-magpie approach, trying to lift productions from other provinces as well as from other countries. It makes it very hard for me to leave. ~ Guy Maddin,
155:The fifth province is not anywhere here or there, north or south, east or west. It is a place within each of us. It is that place that is open to the other, that swinging door which allows us to venture out and others to venture in. ~ Mary Robinson,
156:Have you ever, on a cloudless night, looked down from a passing aircraft flying over Canada? Endless, glowing strings of cities, towns, and homesteads. Stretching on and on, one province to the next. With only the stars in the distance. ~ Paul Martin,
157:I now never make the preparations for penetrating into some small province of nature hitherto undiscovered without breathing a prayer to the Being who hides His secrets from me only to allure me graciously on to the unfolding of them. ~ Louis Agassiz,
158:Lots of things are not possible for municipalities, suburbs, or collections of them now. They are not possible and they would become possible, because they would have more authority. They would have the same authority as a province now. ~ Jane Jacobs,
159:He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth, he would only read what was uncouth and useless. ~ Arthur Machen,
160:This is what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumes that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't. ~ Melissa Scott,
161:We must widen the circle of our love till it embraces the whole village; the village in its turn must take into its fold the district, the district the province, and so on until the scope of our love becomes co-terminous with the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
162:Cfr. D. Priori, Misure di polizia contro l’uso di barbe e baffi, in «Archivio storico per le province napoletane», 1961, III serie, vol. I, pp. 369-377; R. Zagaria, Il pallore e la barba durante il Risorgimento, Catania, Guaitolini, 1928. ~ Stefano Pivato,
163:"Are we alone in the universe?" This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science. ~ Paul Davies,
164:Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. ~ Cesar Chavez,
165:But elephants have souls. Anything that can get drunk, he reasoned, must have some soul. Perhaps this is all “soul” means. Events between soul and soul are not God’s direct province: they are under the influence either of Fortune, or of virtue. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
166:By steady, persistent steps the sense of security departed from Roman Britain. Its citizens felt by daily experience a sense that the world-wide system of which they formed a partner province was in decline. They entered a period of alarm. ~ Winston S Churchill,
167:Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition. ~ Eric Temple Bell,
168:The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province [Britain] was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean. ~ Edward Gibbon,
169:The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province. ~ Albert Einstein,
170:For the first time since 1815, Russia was denied control of the Polish capital. It was a signal triumph for the Central Powers. The Germans now set their long-term sights on Finland, Russia’s province since the Swedes had been driven out in 1808. ~ Martin Gilbert,
171:That was in 1957. And there I found out that Germany is a kind of province. I didn't know anything about expressionism, about the Bauhaus and Dada and surrealism. I was uneducated, so to speak - and everybody else was more or less uneducated, too. ~ Georg Baselitz,
172:In the province of the mind, what one
believes to be true is true or becomes
true, within certain limits to be found
experientially and experimentally. These
limits are further beliefs to be transcended.
In the mind there are no limits. ~ John C Lilly,
173:I find I look at this province with very different eyes then when I arrived. I recollect I then thought of it as singularly level, but now after galloping over the montañas my own only surprise is what could have induced me to have ever called it level! ~ Charles Darwin,
174:Critics are always complaining about the materialism of hip-hop and accusing the artists of living way above their means. But this ostentatious sort of spending isn't strictly the province of hip-hop. It's almost like a continuation of the American Dream. ~ Simon de Pury,
175:Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him? ~ Ally Condie,
176:The memory of Mark Antony and his attempts to create a new eastern Hellenistic empire had not yet died. So sensitive was the situation under Augustus that the emperor prohibited independent visits to the new province by Roman senators and eminent knights. ~ Elizabeth Speller,
177:a South American mercenary who served as Inspector General of the Turkish forces in Armenia, reported that the Governor-General of the province had ordered the local authorities in Adil Javus ‘to exterminate all Armenian males of twelve years of age and over’. ~ Niall Ferguson,
178:Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony... In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism. ~ Oriana Fallaci,
179:An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini,
180:Hinduism is like the Ganga, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every province, but the inner substance is retained everywhere. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
181:VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS OF ASSEMBLY. The House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania. Vol. I, Two Parts (1662-1707), Philadelphia: 1752; Vol. II (1707-1726), Philadelphia: 1753; Vol. III (1726-1744), Philadelphia: 1754; Vol. IV (1744-1758, Philadelphia: 1774. ~ Anonymous,
182:In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
183:It is very bad for (an artist) to talk about how he (creates). It is not the (artist's) province to explain or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work. It's none of their business that you had to learn. Let them think you were born that way. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
184:The idea that the government—any government—had a responsibility to help support those of able body who couldn’t support themselves was alien. That was charity, and charity was the province of churches or local associations and in no way the responsibility of government. ~ Zachary Karabell,
185:What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one - which is really the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini,
186:Thanh Hoa itself is a rich agricultural province. Rice fields, a pattern of many shades of green, stretch far into the distance along the road, which also winds through foothills and the fringes of heavy jungle where tigers are said to roam. The vegetation, wild or cultivated, is lush. ~ Noam Chomsky,
187:Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. Those who use it and those who endure it are turned to stone… a soul which has entered the province of force will not escape this except by a miracle. ~ Ron Rash,
188:If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don't be astonished at the situation, because one official protects another official, and higher officials protect them. 9 The profit from the land is taken by all; the king is served by the field. ~ Anonymous,
189:If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don't be astonished at the situation, because one official protects another official, and higher officials protect them. 9 The profit from the land is taken by all; the king is served by the field. ~ Anonymous,
190:The study of economic organization commonly proceeds as though market and administrative modes of organization were disjunct. Market organi­zation is the province of economists. Inter­nal organization is the concern of organization theory specialist. And never the twain shall meet. ~ Oliver E Williamson,
191:Sire—I have received an order, under your majesty's seal, to put to death all the protestants in my province. I have too much respect for your majesty, not to believe the letter a forgery; but if (which God forbid) the order should be genuine, I have too much respect for your majesty to obey it. ~ John Foxe,
192:Militarily, the great movements of resistance against colonial powers in the 18th and 19th century were almost all from Sufis: Imam Shamil in Caucasia, Amir Abd al Qadir in Algeria, The Barelvi family in the modern province of India, today which is Pakistan, and you can go down the line. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
193:The idea that the government—any government—had a responsibility to help support those of able body who couldn’t support themselves was alien. That was charity, and charity was the province of churches or local associations and in no way the responsibility of government. Yet those attitudes ~ Zachary Karabell,
194:The whole land seems aroused to discussion on the province of woman, and I am glad of it. We are willing to bear the brunt of thestorm, if we can only be the means of making a break in that wall of public opinion which lies right in the way of woman's rights, true dignity, honor and usefulness. ~ Angelina Grimke,
195:...discontented inhabitants who willingly admit a foreign power either through excessive ambition or through fear, as was the case with the Etolians, who admitted the Romans into Greece. So it was with every province that the Romans entered: they were brought in by the inhabitants themselves. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
196:What's really important to remember is that this type of legislation exists in one form or another in every other province in the country. The right to refuse unsafe work is a right that is enjoyed by every other farm worker, paid farm worker, in the country and every other paid worker in Alberta. ~ Rachel Notley,
197:What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. ~ August Wilhelm von Schlegel,
198:In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits. ~ John C Lilly,
199:Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 - When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
[Acts - 16:6-7] ~ Anonymous,
200:There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss,
201:Franco-Albertans have created a valuable legacy throughout the province. Our Government is pleased to support these projects, which showcase the thriving Francophone community in Calgary. We will continue to support our official languages and protect, celebrate, and strengthen Canada's linguistic duality. ~ Shelly Glover,
202:Some think that Russia should become a kind of a U.S. province, where it should supply natural resources to the United States and the rest of the world. But these people ignore one very important thing: The Russian people will never agree to this scenario. Russia is ultimately a self-sufficient country. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev,
203:The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us to making available what we are already acquainted with. ~ Ada Lovelace,
204:was only when talk veered toward that fogged-in province of burning bushes and giant obsidian cubes that we learned—mostly the hard way—that the more irrational a person’s belief, and the less evidence available to support it, the more likely he is to beat you up for suggesting that belief is wrongheaded. I ~ Ron Currie Jr,
205:For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt. ~ Terry Pratchett,
206:In his experience, the initial bridge of trust and comradeship too easily splinters under the pressure of personal ambition or rots through as proximity leads to a greater understanding of the other's flaws. Before long, a promotion or a move to a different province sends the last planks sweeping down a river. ~ Jenny White,
207:When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness. ~ Eugene Wigner,
208:Our problem is this: we usually discover him within some denominational or Christian ghetto. We meet him in a province and, having caught some little view, we paint him in smaller strokes. The Lion of Judah is reduced to something kittenish because our understanding cannot, at first, write larger definitions. ~ Calvin Miller,
209:A smaller unit, the Kunming Group, whose attacks have been traced to I.P. addresses in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, seemed focused on targets in Vietnam, Mr. Stewart said. It deployed malware and so-called spear phishing attacks that tried to entice victims to click on messages and links in Vietnamese. ~ Anonymous,
210:In these remote corners, I have discovered a center point, where East met West, and although there has been a collision of cultures, there is now a new Christian identity that is distinctly Chinese.

The circuitous mountain path in Yunnan province is red because over many years it has been soaked with blood. ~ Liao Yiwu,
211:The text of his speech, including some of the heckling that apparently even an emperor had to endure, was inscribed on bronze and put on display in the province, in what is now the city of Lyon, where it still survives. Claudius, it seems, did not get the chance that Cicero had to make adjustments for publication. ~ Mary Beard,
212:The first two things Gaudencio Rivera was made aware of--within hours of arriving by carabao-drawn cart at the secluded town of Tagbaoran on the island province of Palawan--were these: that the most beautiful woman in creation dwelt by the river, and that it was pointless to even dream of being loved by her. ~ Dean Francis Alfar,
213:But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction. ~ Edward Gibbon,
214:This was what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumed that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't...rather than ever admit fear, they walked with raised hackles, looking for a fight. ~ Melissa Scott,
215:The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty. ~ John Marshall,
216:The particular province of the shaman is the province of soul, that which feeds our embodied life, or fails to feed it. From a shamanic point of view, the relationship with animal allies, or animals that show themselves in animal forms, is a vital part of living. We're fully embodied, with full access to our natural soul energy. ~ Robert Moss,
217:No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace. ~ Adolf Hitler,
218:ONCE I STOOD on the bank of a rice paddy in rural Sichuan Province, and a lean and aging Chinese peasant, wearing a faded forty-year-old blue jacket issued by the Mao government in the early years of the Revolution, stood knee deep in water and apropos of absolutely nothing shouted defiantly at me, “We Chinese invented many things! ~ Mark Kurlansky,
219:Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to despatch them into different cities till the whole world is covered, forgetting no province or locality, no class or single individual. ~ Ignatius of Loyola,
220:I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. ~ Muhammad Iqbal,
221:If you go into Hasakah province in northeast Syria, that's an area that's as big as Lebanon. It's controlled by the Kurds, the Christians and the moderate Sunnis. And there are airstrips and hotels. You could settle a lot of people there.All we would have to do is be willing to provide them with some weaponry, some defensive weaponry. ~ Benjamin Carson,
222:The risk of leaving East Prussia, hearth of Junkerdom and the Hohenzollerns, to be held by only nine divisions was hard to accept, but Frederick the Great had said, “It is better to lose a province than split the forces with which one seeks victory,” and nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
223:The rural Chinese in Henan Province mixed alcohol and business like you wouldn’t believe. Perhaps as a result, they also had a charming nationalistic blind spot: they honestly believed they could out-drink everyone else on the planet. As an Irish-American who outweighed them by 50 pounds, I had come to find this both amusing and useful. ~ Matthew Polly,
224:Justice?... Justice is a delusion you will not find on this or any other sphere.
And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams, lithe walker, though dreams are a part of the sum of each life's experiences, which is the only wisdom that matters.
But revelation? That is the province of dream. It can be yours, but only if your heart is strong ~ Neil Gaiman,
225:When one considers the clamorous emptiness of the world, words of so little sense, actions of so little merit, one loves to reflect on the great reign of silence. The noble silent men scattered here and there each in his province silently thinking and silently acting of whom no morning paper makes mention, these are the salt of the earth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
226:Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to despatch them into different cities till the whole world is covered, forgetting no province or locality, no class or single individual. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola,
227:In war the chief incalculable is the human will, which manifests itself in resistance, which in turn lies in the province of tactics. Strategy has not to overcome resistance, except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfil this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise. ~ B H Liddell Hart,
228:I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path. ~ Edward Hirsch,
229:In a practical syllogism, the major premise is an opinion, while the minor premise deals with particular things, which are the province of perception. Now when the two premises are combined, just as in theoretic reasoning the mind is compelled to affirm the resulting conclusion, so in the case of practical premises you are forced at once to do it. ~ Aristotle,
230:There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future. ~ Kenneth E Boulding,
231:If some lose their whole fortunes, they will drag many more down with them . . . believe me that the whole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome in the Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiatic province. If Those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of credit will come down with a crash. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
232:Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta. ~ Stephen Harper,
233:Were there many sick people in Europe that you recall? Any notable outbreaks in your province?"
"I don't know. I don't actually remember anything before the surgery."
His eyebrows rose, his blue eyes sucking in all the light of the room. "The cybernetic operation?"
"No, the sex change."
The doctor's smile faltered.
"I'm joking. ~ Marissa Meyer,
234:Being perfectly turned out, from kid slippers to lace parasol, including pearl-embroidered petticoats and the third new pair of gloves that day, was the exclusive province of the American woman. More, it was her patriotic duty. The daughters of dukes could indulge in loose-waisted “pre-Raphaelite” dresses, but Americans had to look like aristocrats. ~ Carol Wallace,
235:In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experientially and experimentally. When the limits are determined, it is found that they are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits. The body imposes definite limits. ~ John C Lilly,
236:I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities. ~ Aldous Huxley,
237:Sichuanese dialect is like Mandarin put through a mangle. So the Mandarin ‘sh’ becomes ‘s’, vowels are stretched out like warm toffee, there are pirate-like rolling ‘r’ sounds at the end of sentences, and no one can tell the difference between ‘n’ and ‘l’ or ‘f’ and ‘h’ (the province of Hunan, for example, is known in Sichuan, helpfully, as ‘Fulan’). ~ Fuchsia Dunlop,
238:Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well-thousands of acres of land-a whole province of France-all France itself-lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. ~ Charles Dickens,
239:Because Matthew, more than any other NT document, addresses Jewish concepts closely paralleled in the emerging rabbinic movement, the common scholarly view that he wrote from the Roman province of Syria (which included Judea and Galilee) makes good sense. Some scholars also find similarities between Matthew and other documents from early Syrian Christianity. ~ Anonymous,
240:In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantify of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. ~ Howard Zinn,
241:When armed squads confiscated eight bulls, seven cows, four calves, three horses, thirty-six tons of wheat, a cart, a threshing machine, and a mill from B. Bondarenko of Aktyubinsk province, while sentencing him to a year in prison, he asked the presiding judge to provide an explanation for the basis of his conviction because he was not guilty of a crime. ~ Stephen Kotkin,
242:So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. ~ Charles Lamb,
243:A constant stream of red-shirted choppers came and went, men from the north and coastal fishermen—Irish, Bluenoses, Province men, a few French Canadians, St. Francis Indians, Passamaquoddy and Mi’kmaq, and P. I.s—men from Prince Edward Island—and sometimes a man from foreign shores. There were always two or three Québécois running from the impoverished habitant life. The ~ Annie Proulx,
244:I did apprentice with a Fjerdan shipbuilder. And a Zemeni gunsmith. And a civil engineer from the Han Province of Bolh. Tried my hand at poetry for a while. The results were … unfortunate. These days, being Sturmhond requires most of my attention.”

Bardugo, Leigh (2013-06-04). Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) (p. 132). Henry Holt and Co. (BYR). Kindle Edition. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
245:Protestantism as such is a better defender of the interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later tradition; it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some reason rejected. ~ Adolf Hitler,
246:When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove elsewhere, every region being equally crowded and over-peopled, and when human craft and wickedness have reached their highest pitch, it must needs come about that the world will purge herself in one or another of these three ways: floods, plague and famine ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
247:Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying, “. . . I make a decree that any people, nation, or language which speaks anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made an ash heap; because there is no other God who can deliver like this.” Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego in the province of Babylon. ~ David Jeremiah,
248:Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
249:And then I picture my father closing the door gently but firmly and keeping me safe inside this house. Inside these walls where I have been safe for so long. But this house isn’t safe anymore, I remind myself. This house is where I first saw Ky’s face on a microcard. Where they searched my father. Is there a safe place anywhere in this Borough? In this City, this Province, this world? ~ Ally Condie,
250:There is very little doubt that she would not on any account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time. But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
251:Ninety percent of our police are fighting terrorists, so we don't have enough oriented towards their key duty, which is enforcement of the law. But these are precisely the inheritance that we want to overcome. Particularly the mark for success for us would be that a woman can not only walk in the streets of every major city, but can go from one province to another without any hindrance. ~ Ashraf Ghani,
252:9At once the royal secretaries were summoned—on the twenty-third day of the third month, the month of Sivan. They wrote out all Mordecai’s orders to the Jews, and to the satraps, governors and nobles of the 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush.a These orders were written in the script of each province and the language of each people and also to the Jews in their own script and language. ~ Anonymous,
253:But here’s a little secret, between you, me, and the rest of the mall: buying shit isn’t enough. What we wish for in our secret hearts is self-expression, the chance to reveal ourselves and to be loved for this revelation, devoured by love. And thus, most of us go about our duties of commerce and leisure in a state of perpetual longing, with nocturnal excursions into the province of despair. ~ Steve Almond,
254:A PRINCE, therefore, should have no care or thought but for war, and for the regulations and training it requires, and should apply himself exclusively to this as his peculiar province; for war is the sole art looked for in one who rules, and is of such efficacy that it not merely maintains those who are born Princes, but often enables men to rise to that eminence from a private station; ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
255:Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
256:Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation. It should not be indulged in to the detriment of other and more serious avocations - should not absorb or engross the thoughts of those who worship at its shrine, but should be kept in the background, and restrained within its proper province. As a mere game, a relaxation from the severe pursuits of life, it is deserving of high commendation. ~ Paul Morphy,
257:Lusitania, after a Roman province on the Iberian Peninsula that occupied roughly the same ground as modern-day Portugal. “The inhabitants were warlike, and the Romans conquered them with great difficulty,” said a memorandum in Cunard’s files on the naming of the ship. “They lived generally upon plunder and were rude and unpolished in their manners.” In popular usage, the name was foreshortened to “Lucy. ~ Erik Larson,
258:In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal. Also, in Quebec, we have this added issue that we want people to speak French, because French is always on the verge of disappearing to some extent. I work, play and do everything in French. ~ Philippe Falardeau,
259:The research reported on in our book "A=B", has moved a whole active field of mathematics from the province of human thought to the realm of computer-fodder. It is quite exciting to think about what other fields of pure mathematics, hitherto thought to be reserved to human intelligence, might be moved to that realm next. The goal is to put ourselves out of business completely, and the work is well underway. ~ Herbert Wilf,
260:In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps even immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange oneself so fully from the world of things for a few moments, that the most ordinary objects and events appear quite new and unfamiliar. In this way their true nature is disclosed. What is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be difficult; it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of genius. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
261:And here she was now, over those boulders and parched hills, with a home of her own, a husband of her own, heading toward on final, cherished province: Motherhood. How delectable it was to think of this baby, her baby, their baby. How glorious it was to know that her love for it already dwarfed anything she had ever felt as a human being, to know that there was no need any longer for pebble games. ~ Khaled Hosseini,
262:Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev,
263:Even the Terrible Old Man who talks to leaden pendulums in bottles, buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold, and keeps stone idols in the yard of his antediluvian cottage in Water Street can only say these things were the same when his grandfather was a boy, and that must have been inconceivable ages ago, when Belcher or Shirley or Pownall or Bernard was Governor of His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay. ~ H P Lovecraft,
264:He also told me that I had no option but to forget all my relatives and friends in Northern Ireland, and that I had to realise that because of the IRA’s international contacts, I would have to accept that my life would always be at risk.  He told me that once I had left the Province I would be on my own, and they would not be able to guarantee my life, nor the lives of Angie and the boys if they should join me. I ~ Martin McGartland,
265:Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor. ~ Rod Liddle,
266:But it had seemed, when Cory broke up with Greer, that she became like a piece of knotted wire. Where were the qualities he had loved in her? He had taken on some of them himself. Because of course everyone was soft and hard. Skeleton and skin. But women claimed for themselves the province of softness, which men cast off. Maybe it was easier to say you liked it in a woman. But really, maybe you wished you had it yourself. ~ Meg Wolitzer,
267:There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell? ~ Dorothy Parker,
268:Within a world of free trade and democracy there are no incentives for war and conquest. In such a world it is of no concern whether a nation’s sovereignty stretches over a larger or a smaller territory. Its citizens cannot derive any advantage from the annexation of a province. us territorial problems can be treated without bias and passion; it is not painful to be fair to other people’s claims for self-determination. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
269:As their song crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that the world, which I had considered the province of meaningless chances, a mad dance of atoms, was as orderly as the hexagons in the honeycombs I had just crushed into wax and that behind everything, from Helen's weaving to Circe's mountain to Scylla's death, was a subtle pattern, an order of the most compelling lucidity, but hidden from me, a code I could never crack. ~ Zachary Mason,
270:Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province... Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated. ~ Aaron Copland,
271:The Canadian Identity, it seems, is truly elusive only at home. Beyond the borders Canadians know exactly who they are, within they see themselves as part of a family, a street, a neighbourhood, a community, a province , a region, and on special occasions like Canada Day and Grey Cup weekend and, of course, during the Winter Olympics, a country called Canada. Beyond the borders, they pine; within the borders, they more often whine ~ Roy MacGregor,
272:There is only one law of Nature-the second law of thermodynamics-which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time. ~ Arthur Eddington,
273:And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the eyelids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has fallen and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. ~ Hilary Thayer Hamann,
274:I think that, given the threat that ISIS poses to the region and beyond, as we have sadly seen in our own country, it is important to keep the Iraqi army on a path where they can actually take back territory, to work with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province and elsewhere so that their fighters can be also deployed, to work with the Kurds to provide them the support, but they're doing the fighting. We're doing the support and enabling. ~ Hillary Clinton,
275:No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service. ~ William Godwin,
276:In a post 9/11 world, in which the uncritical essentializing of people from the "Third-World" has been legitimized; Iraq and Afghanistan have been dehumanized in an attempt to disseminate enlightenment in those "dark" regions; the discourse of "honor killings" is prevalent in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and has carved a niche in Western academic discourse as another instance of the incorrigible bestiality of the Orient. ~ Nyla Ali Khan,
277:And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has fallen and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. (p. 37) ~ Hilary Thayer Hamann,
278:There's little in taking or giving
There's little in water or wine
This living, this living , this living
was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
the gain of the one at the top
for art is a form of catharsis
and love is a permanent flop
and work is the province of cattle
and rest's for a clam in a shell
so I'm thinking of throwing the battle
would you kindly direct me to hell? ~ Dorothy Parker,
279:Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition. ~ Eric Temple Bell,
280:Late December, in Bridgwater, Somerset, Western Province, a middle-aged man named Thomas Wharnton, going home from work shortly after midnight, was set upon by youths. These knifed him, stripped him, spitted him, basted him, carved him, served him—all openly and without shame in one of the squares of the town. A hungry crowd clamoured for hunks and slices, kept back—that the King's Peace might not be broken—by munching and dripping greyboys. ~ Anthony Burgess,
281:IN WRITING THIS BOOK, I returned again and again to what people call my homeland, where my parents were born, as was I. But for the Vietnamese, the homeland is not simply the country of origin. It is the village where one’s father was born and where one’s father was buried. My father’s father died where he was supposed to, as my father will not and as I will not, in the province of his birth, his mausoleum thirty minutes from Ho Chi Minh’s birthplace. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
282:Bill is about moving forward on a long overdue provision to protect vulnerable paid farm workers in Alberta to the same degree that they are protected in every other province in the country, and we feel confident that once people see how the bill actually applies to the regular family farm, they will see that a lot of the concerns were perhaps misplaced. And it's unfortunate that we created a situation that made people worry; that was not ever our intention. ~ Rachel Notley,
283:Coda"

There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell? ~ Dorothy Parker,
284:Five times was Athanasius expelled from his throne; twenty years he passed as an exile or a fugitive; and almost every province of the Roman empire was successively witness to his merit, and his sufferings in the cause of the Homoousion, which he considered as the sole pleasure and business, as the duty, and as the glory, of his life. Amidst the storms of persecution, the archbishop of Alexandria was patient of labour, jealous of fame, careless of safety; and ~ Edward Gibbon,
285:It is the duty of mankind on all suitable occasions to acknowledge their dependence on the Divine Being... Almighty God would mercifully interpose and still the rage of war among the nations... He would take this province under His protection, confound the designs and defeat the attempts of its enemies, and unite our hearts and strengthen our hands in every undertaking that may be for the public good, and for our defense and security in this time of danger. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
286:Su Shi
Leaving the town in the mountains
after seven years’ exile from his native province
the old poet meets a woman one third his age,
the most beautiful he has ever seen in this place.
“Will you not write a poem about me”, she asks him,
“since you have written so many others?”
He looks at her a long time
then nods his head regretfully.
To write, he thinks to himself, or be haunted:
some questions do not have answers.
~ David Brooks,
287:Coda
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battleWould you kindly direct me to hell?
~ Dorothy Parker,
288:The Province Of The Saved
539
The Province of the Saved
Should be the Art—To save—
Through Skill obtained in Themselves—
The Science of the Grave
No Man can understand
But He that hath endured
The Dissolution—in Himself—
That Man—be qualified
To qualify Despair
To Those who failing new—
Mistake Defeat for Death—Each time—
Till acclimated—to—
~ Emily Dickinson,
289:These funds had been built up over many years, mainly from North American sources sympathetic to the cause of a united Ireland, and it seemed that the money never entered the Republic of Ireland or the Province, but would be invested mainly in Europe. There was also income from protection rackets, bank robberies, post office raids, black taxis, DSS scams, video and CD pirating, fruit machines, republican clubs and pubs and local collections among sympathisers.  ~ Martin McGartland,
290:One Crucifixion Is Recorded—only
553
One Crucifixion is recorded—only—
How many be
Is not affirmed of Mathematics—
Or History—
One Calvary—exhibited to Stranger—
As many be
As persons—or Peninsulas—
Gethsemane—
Is but a Province—in the Being's Centre—
Judea—
For Journey—or Crusade's Achieving—
Too near—
Our Lord—indeed—made Compound Witness—
And yet—
There's newer—nearer Crucifixion
Than That—
~ Emily Dickinson,
291:Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best. ~ Voltaire,
292:The conclusion of both modern physics and depth psychology is that things are not what they seem. What we experience as normal reality—about ourselves and nature—is only the tip of an iceberg that arises out of an unfathomable abyss. Knowledge of this hidden realm is the province of the Magician, and it is through the Magician energy that we will come to understand our lives with a degree of profundity not dreamed of for at least a thousand years of Western history. ~ Robert L Moore,
293:A nonhuman animal had better have a good lawyer. In 1508, Bartholomé Chassenée earned fame and fortune for his eloquent representation of the rats of his French province. These rats had been charged with destroying the barley crop and also with ignoring the court order to appear and defend themselves. Bartholomé Chassenée argued successfully that the rats hadn't come because the court had failed to provide reasonable protection from the village cats along the route. ~ Karen Joy Fowler,
294:Was [Sisyphus] from your province?
'I don't know. I don't know if he's real,' Ky says. 'If he ever existed.'
'Then why tell his story?' I don't understand, and for a second I feel betrayed. Why did Ky tell me about this person and make me feel empathy for him when there's no proof that he ever lived at all?
Ky pauses for a moment before he answers, ...'Even if he didn't live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it's true anyway. ~ Ally Condie,
295:We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace on terms which have been contemplated by some powers we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
296:Separately, a second Chinese antitrust agency said Wednesday that it would punish Audi AG and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV's Chrysler arm after an investigation found the two car makers had pursued monopolistic practices, in Hubei province and Shanghai respectively. Under China's antimonopoly law, the companies could face fines of as much as 10% of their sales from the preceding year. The companies have said they are cooperating, though they declined to release further details. ~ Anonymous,
297:It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the first vision of a twilight country which was to become the province of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty campo for mute witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in good and evil. ~ Joseph Conrad,
298:The Shah regarded politics as the province of demagoguery, an art in which only charlatans could excel. He had no time for what he saw as the tedious process of achieving consensus through debate and discussion and tried to justify his solitary exercise of power by insisting it was what Iran needed to catch up with lost time. He believed he was more patriotic than anyone else and needed no advice on how best to promote and protect the highest interests of the nation. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi,
299:Here, the Prophet was born in a settled and stable province of a strong Roman Empire. Much as in our timeline, Islamic civilisation, the dar-al Islam, flourished, but under Roman protection. There were no centuries of inter-faith conflict in Europe – no crusades, for instance. Even in the pre-Christian days, the Romans were always pragmatic about local religions. To the Romans, Islam is a muscular sister creed of the Christianity that is their official state religion. ~ Stephen Baxter,
300:The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius, which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their diocese enjoyed a free importation of vice and error from every province of the empire; the eager pursuit of religious controversy afforded a new occupation to the busy idleness of the metropolis: and we may credit the assertion of an intelligent observer, who describes, with some pleasantry, the effects of their loquacious zeal. ~ Edward Gibbon,
301:The hidden village was something we found when we went to research in China we climbed a mountain in the Sichuan province where the panda sanctuary is based, and we climbed to this beautiful, mist-covered, almost primordial place and when we turned these corners these moss covered old buildings would come into view, revealing themselves and it was so beautiful and so unlike anything we'd seen that we literally took those moments and put them into the film [Kung Fu Panda 3]. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson,
302:And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. ~ Anonymous,
303:That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in manners of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever. ~ William Penn,
304:[T]he sprawl of government into every conceivable realm of life has caused the withering of traditional institutions. Fathers become unnecessary if the government provides Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Church charities lose their mission when the government provides food, shelter and income to the poor. And the non-poor no longer feel pressed to provide aid to those in need, be they aged parents or their unfortunate neighbors-"compassion" having become the province of the state. ~ Mona Charen,
305:prince of Persia” shows how Satan has organized his angelic troops: he has assigned a fallen angel to every country and province. This prince was responsible for Persia, which held the Jewish nation in captivity. Michael and Gabriel managed to destroy this evil angel’s influence over the Persian king and establish their own influence on behalf of God’s people. It is in complete harmony with the Word of God to believe that the prince of Persia who opposed Daniel was the devil’s own angel. ~ David Jeremiah,
306:By himself, man adjusts everything to his own comfort. By himself, he is an irresistible liar. For he never says anything truly unpleasant to himself without instantly counterbalancing it with something flattering. The sentence [aphorism] from the outside has an impact because it comes unexpectedly: one does not have any counterweight ready for it. One helps it with the same strength one would have met it with in other circumstances. ~ Elias Canetti, The Human Province, Seabury Press (1986), tr. 1978, p. 146,
307:In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that’s irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on matters of the spirit. ~ Jon Krakauer,
308:Military men are capable of abominable crimes; witness, in our recent time alone, Chile, My Lai, Greece. But it is a "liberal" fallacy that equates the military mind with real evil and makes it the exclusive province of lieutenants or generals; the secondary evil of which the military is frequently capable is aggressive, romantic, melodramatic, thrilling, orgasmic. Real evil, the suffocating evil of Auschwitz—gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring—was perpetrated almost exclusively by civilians. ~ William Styron,
309:Kissing gave a man all sorts of immoral ideas. Such ideas were, in Madame Hera's world, the province only of men. That Ainsley herself had had ideas - her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Madame would say to that.
In fact, those very ideas cropped up in several of the letters Felicity had forwarded to her, variously referred to as 'unnatural desires,' 'longing,' 'carnal stirrings,' fever of the blood,' 'indecent thoughts' and even, memorably, 'an irrepressible need to scratch an itch. ~ Marguerite Kaye,
310:Yet for all of his popular appeal and surface accessibility, Einstein also came to symbolize the perception that modern physics was something that ordinary laymen could not comprehend, “the province of priest-like experts,” in the words of Harvard professor Dudley Herschbach.3 It was not always thus. Galileo and Newton were both great geniuses, but their mechanical cause-and-effect explanation of the world was something that most thoughtful folks could grasp. In the eighteenth century of Benjamin ~ Walter Isaacson,
311:The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli,
312:I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province. ~ Susan Sontag,
313:In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor.
p. 264 ~ Rory Stewart,
314:Through the window on the far wall, he could see the remains of his homeland-buildings crumbled, the city walls in ruins, streets upturned, Cokyrian flags flying high to lay claim to it's newest province. And that was just the outer layer. Beneath, there were families in shreds, bleeding where the death of loved ones had left wounds so deep they would eternally fester. Cannan, his son and his families murdered brother had left behind were bleeding. Hytanica had nothing left to give and, therefore, nothing else to lose. ~ Cayla Kluver,
315:I remember how people would often come to see my master Jamyang Khyentse simply to ask for his guidance for the moment of death. He was so loved and revered throughout Tibet, especially in the eastern province of Kham, that some would travel for months on end to meet him and get his blessing just once before they died. All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: "Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche,
316:The high principles of Masonry were particularly welcome in the uncertain times leading up to the Revolution. American society was struggling with conflicting political loyalties, denominational conflicts among competing sects, cultural and language issues resulting from increased non-English-speaking immigration, and the problems of balancing self-government with being an English Colonial province. Masonry offered itself as a cultivated and ordered society of far-thinking individuals who could help mediate differences. ~ James Wasserman,
317:The situation, therefore, in the colonial countries, is tragic,” Cesaire continued. “Wherever colonization is a fact the indigenous culture begins to rot. And, among these ruins, something begins to be born which is not a culture but a kind of subculture, a subculture which is condemned to exist on the margin allowed it by European culture. This then becomes the province of a few men, the elite, who find themselves placed in the most artificial conditions, deprived of any revivifying contact with the masses of the people. ~ James Baldwin,
318:I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names.

Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province. ~ Susan Sontag,
319:A Prince, therefore, should have no care or thought but for war, and for the regulations and training it requires, and should apply himself exclusively to this as his peculiar province; for war is the sole art looked for in one who rules, and is of such efficacy that it not merely maintains those who are born Princes, but often enables men to rise to that eminence from a private station; while, on the other hand, we often see that when Princes devote themselves rather to pleasure than to arms, they lose their dominions. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
320:I examined into the mysteries of the science which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the wisdom of the past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the intricacies of political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the system which had governed by restriction, and imagined that the happiness of nations depended upon the perpetual interference of its rulers, and to prove to us that the only unerring policy of art is to leave a free and unobstructed progress to the hidden energies and province of Nature. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton,
321:When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret. ~ Bertrand Russell,
322:The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitiousfabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance ~ Thomas Huxley,
323:The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the province of 'complexes' and 'inhibitions'--catchwords of the decade--and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. ~ Evelyn Waugh,
324:Americans don't like to waste time on stupid things, for example, on the torturous process of coming up with names for their towns. And really, why strain yourself when so many wonderful names already exist in the world?The entrance to the town of Moscow is shown in the photograph. That's right, an absolutely authentic Moscow, just in the state of Ohio, not in the USSR in Moscow province.There's another Moscow in some other state, and yet another Moscow in a third state. On the whole, every state has the absolute right to have its very own Moscow. ~ Ilya Ilf,
325:Shake accepted a yellowed slip of paper and unfolded it. It was a page torn from a copy of Julius Caesar. Minh had underlined a passage and written a rough Vietnamese translation in the margin.           “`Cry `Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war.' Yes. It’s what I was thinking. It’s what happened on the Long Mountain March, isn’t it?”           “Yes...”           “It wasn’t the first time. It won’t be the last. Do you remember My Lai, Minh?”           “I remember what we heard. Quang Ngai Province. Civilians were executed by American soldiers. ~ Dale A Dye,
326:A sluggard once approached a fasting saint
And, baffled by despair, made this complaint:
‘The devil is a highwayman, a thief,
Who’s ruined me and robbed me of belief.’
The saint replied: ‘Young man, the devil too
Has made his way here to complain -- of you.
‘My province is the world,’ I heard him say;
‘Tell this new pilgrim of God’s holy Way
To keep his hands off what is mine -- if I
Attack him it’s because his fingers pry
In my affairs; if he will leave me be,
He’s no concern of mine and can go free. ~ Attar of Nishapur,
327:a man named Plough Jogger spoke his mind: I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war; been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates and all rates . . . been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth. . . . . . . The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers. . . . The chairman of that meeting ~ Howard Zinn,
328:This praise, though far from fulsome, gave me pleasure and that is to my shame. But there was something in him, some power of spirit, that made me want to please him. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, it was no more than the intensity of his wish. Men are distinguished by the power of their wanting. What this one wanted became his province and his meal, he governed it and fed on it from the first moment of desire. Besides, with the perversity of our nature, being tested had made me more desire to succeed, though knowing the enterprise to be sinful. ~ Barry Unsworth,
329:Though no immediate and complete escape from the ongoing power system is possible, least of all through mass violence, the changes that will restore autonomy and initiative to the human person all lie within the province of each individual soul, once it is roused. Nothing could be more damaging to the myth of the machine, and to the dehumanized social order it has brought into existence, than a steady withdrawal of interest, a slowing down of tempo, a stoppage of senseless routines and mindless acts. And has not all this in fact begun to happen? ~ Lewis Mumford,
330:There before you is perhaps the most important juncture in all the eastern empire.” He slid down from his mount to point out one road after the other, naming the destinations. “The port of Joppa lies three days to the southwest, and beyond that the road continues on to Egypt. The southern road there leads to Jerusalem. Along the eastern route lies Tiberias, and beyond that Damascus and the province of Syria. That road leading north and west goes to Tyre, Sidon, and on to Tarsus.” They stood upon a gentle rise, perhaps two hundred feet above the Megiddo Plains. ~ Davis Bunn,
331:The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
332:Only one further prize remained on the entire North Pacific coast, the peninsula of Korea. Although Japan clearly regarded Korea as essential to her security, a group of Russian adventurers resolved to steal it. Their plan was to establish a private company, the Yalu Timber Company, and begin moving Russian soldiers into Korea disguised as workmen. If they ran into trouble, the Russian government could always disclaim responsibility. If they succeeded, the empire would acquire a new province and they themselves would have vast economic concessions within it. ~ Robert K Massie,
333:There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of life ... the stakes in this realm could not be higher. For chances are that at some point along the line you will hold in your hands another person's heart. There is no greater responsibility on the planet. However you contend with this fragile organ, which pounds or seizes in accordance with your caprice, will take your full measure. ~ Lionel Shriver,
334:At the age of 17, Mozart was hired as a court musician to the current ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. During his time touring as a young man, Mozart had gained quite a following among the court in his home province of Salzburg, and his appointment found him surrounded by admirers, as well as friends among the other court musicians. During his four years of employment with the court in Salzburg, Mozart had the opportunity to explore new genres of music and wrote several violin concertos (a genre he would never touch again after this period). ~ Hourly History,
335:We should strengthen the faith of our people in their own future, the faith of every Canadian in Canada, and of every province in its sister province. This faith wrongs no one; burdens no one; menaces no one; dishonors no one; and, as it was said of old, faith moves mountains, so I venture reverently to express my own belief that if the difficulties of our future as a dominion were as high as the peaks of the Alps or Andes, yet that the pure patriotic faith of a united people would be all sufficient to overcome and ultimately to triumph over all such difficulties. ~ Thomas D Arcy McGee,
336:Hume is indeed sceptical about the possibility of metaphysical insights that go deeper than science can, he is not at all sceptical about the prospect of a science of human nature. His critique of metaphysics clears the way for the constructive phase of his project: an investigation of ‘the proper province of human reason’, which Hume believes will lead to the development of an empirical science of human nature based on ‘the only solid foundation’ of experiment and observation. Metaphysics tempts us to think we can find principles that show us the ultimate nature of reality. ~ David Hume,
337:You go to a lot of small communities in rural Alberta and you'll find a degree of diversity that probably hasn't existed in terms of immigration for a century - you'll find the Filipino grocery store, and the African Pentecostal church and maybe a mosque. Albertans are pro-immigration; they're also pro-integration. In my years in this province I cannot recall more than a handful of expressions of xenophobia or nativism that I've encountered. It's the land of new beginnings and fresh starts - it is rare Albertans who trace their roots here back more than a generation or two. ~ Jason Kenney,
338:Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they were men, or not rather that they are bones? ~ Henry David Thoreau,
339:One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great. ~ Edward Hopper,
340:The most rigid pattern was not the one imposed by the school system or the adolescent social system. It was the pattern I made of the people around me, a mythology for their incomprehensible activity, a mythology that brought me a cramped delight, which I protected by putting all possible space between myself and other people. the boundaries of my inner world did not extend out, but in, so that there was a large area of blank whiteness starting at my most external self and expanding inward until it reached the tiny inner province of dazzling color and activity that it safeguarded. ~ Mary Gaitskill,
341:The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
342:[T]he full time is come for applying to the occult sciences the same searching analysis to which the other myths of prehistoric times have been so rigorously subjected. To trace its earliest beginnings, to investigate its development by the aid of modern criticism, is the province of physical science, no less than of the sister science of morals. ...[B]oth had a common origin. Those ancient cosmogenies, those poetical systems... struck out to solve the problem of the universe and of the destiny of mankind, were the germs of science no less than of literature... philosophy... religion. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875),
343:Footnote to May 20.—Returning from Brussels to Aachen, we ran across a batch of British prisoners. It was somewhere in the Dutch province of Limburg, a suburb, I think, of Maastricht. They were herded together in the brick-paved yard of a disused factory. We stopped and went over and talked to them. They were a sad sight. Prisoners always are, especially right after a battle. Some obviously shell-shocked, some wounded, all dead tired. But what impressed me most about them was their physique. They were hollow-chested and skinny and round-shouldered. About a third of them had bad eyes and wore glasses. ~ William L Shirer,
344:Tomb Of Evrion
In this tomb—ornately designed,
the whole of syenite stone,
covered by so many violets, so many lilies—
lies handsome Evrion,
an Alexandrian, twenty-five years old.
On his father's side, he was of old Macedonian stock,
on his mother's side, descended from a line of magistrates.
He studied philosophy with Aristokleitos,
rhetoric with Paros, and at Thebes
the sacred scriptures. He wrote a history
of the province of Arsinoites. That at least will survive.
But we've lost what was really precious: his form—
like a vision of Apollo.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
345:Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. Religion was an early attempt to answer the questions we all ask: why are we here, where did we come from? Long ago, the answer was almost always the same: gods made everything. The world was a scary place, so even people as tough as the Vikings believed in supernatural beings to make sense of natural phenomena like lightning, storms or eclipses. Nowadays, science provides better and more consistent answers, but people will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not trust or understand science. ~ Stephen Hawking,
346:Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it. ~ Charles Dickens,
347:Exceptional subjective experiences of truth, which are the province of the mystic who affects all mankind by sending forth spiritual energy into the collective consciousness, are not understandable by the majority of mankind and are therefore of limited meaning except to other spiritual seekers. This led to an effort to be ordinary, because just being ordinary in itself is an expression of Divinity; the truth of one’s real self can be discovered through the pathway of everyday life. To live with care and kindness is all that is necessary. The rest reveals itself in due time. The commonplace and God are not distinct. ~ David R Hawkins,
348:For Britain the end began in 367 when a concerted attack was made on the province by barbarians from all sides. The Bath region seems to have suffered. Villas were destroyed and the slaughtered inhabitants thrown down wells. Within a few years some semblance of stability was restored for a decade or two but in the face of increasing barbarian raids and immigration and the general disintegration of the authority of the empire, the province of Britannia dissolved into a confusion of warring factions. Populations fled from the cities and no longer was there the will or the ability to maintain the urban infrastructure. ~ Barry W Cunliffe,
349:Strategy has moved from controlling unique internal resources and erecting competitive barriers to orchestrating external resources and engaging vibrant communities. And innovation is no longer the province of in-house experts and research and development labs, but is produced through crowdsourcing and the contribution of ideas by independent participants in the platform. External resources don’t completely replace internal resources—more often they serve as a complement. But platform firms emphasize ecosystem governance more than product optimization, and persuasion of outside partners more than control of internal employees. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,
350:I assume you are the sort of person who would go backstage after the opera in hopes of hearing the prima donna crying on the telephone, or walking in on the baritone fellating the basso buffo. I respect that-I was always the same way myself-though I suspect you are not very happy. Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions. I remember, even before this was visited upon me, how I envied those who eagerly did what they were told: those who married without complaint at father's behest; those who looked up rather than sideways in church; those, in short, who honestly believed in God, good kings, and righteous wars. ~ Christopher Buehlman,
351:Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction. ~ Thomas Ligotti,
352:But I can see that you are in pain, and that is the province of monsters. You drag your mother's corpse with you—it leaves a great furrow in the earth. If it is important enough to very rudely interrupt a woman who already owns two fingers she did not have this morning just to exhume those old bones, I will listen to you instead. It matters nothing to me. Believe me, it will not go easier for you if you come to feel warmly towards me because you have unburdened your soul. We have all the nights the world has ever made ahead of us. Speak of the dead in the dark, boy, and I will take her body from you, if you want to be rid of it. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
353:Ce sont les alliances où se laissent entraîner les princes berbères avec les chefs des factions romaines en lutte qui aboutissent au suicide de Juba 1er, successeur de Hiempsal II en -46 à l'agrandissement de la province romaine, à la ruine de Bogud, héritier de la partie occidentale de la Maurétanie de Bocchus Ier. Quand le second héritier, Bocchus II meurt, tout le nord de l'Afrique est administré directement par des fonctionnaires romains (33 - 25 av. J. -C.). Les deux derniers rois massyles, Juba II (25 av. - 23 ap. J.-C.) et Ptolémée (23 - 40 ap. J. -C.) font figure beaucoup plus de clients des Césars que de véritables princes autonomes.
p35 ~,
354:And so, he knows. He wants, he needs, to do the immoral, irresponsible thing. He wants to let this boy court his own destruction. He wants to commit that cruelty. Or (kinder, gentler version) he doesn't want to reconfirm his allegiance to the realm of the sensible, all the good people who take responsibility, who go to the right and necessary parties, who sell art made of two-by-fours and carpet remnants. He wants, for at least a little while, to live in that other, darker world - Blake's London, Courbet's Paris; raucous, unsanitary places where good behavior was the province of decent, ordinary people who produced no works of genius. ~ Michael Cunningham,
355:Descartes's declaration that reality divides neatly into two realms reassured the Church that the province of science would never overlap, and therefore never challenge , the world of theology and the spiritual. Science ceded the soul and the conscious mind to religion and kept the material world for itself. In return for this neat dividing up of turf, Descartes hoped, religious leaders would lay off scientists who were studying natural laws operating in the physical, nonmental realm. The ploy was only partly successful for Church science relations. Descartes himself was forced to flee Paris for Holland in search of greater tolerance. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,
356:The great majority of Castalians, the officials no less than the scholars and students, lived in their Pedagogic Province and their Order as if these constituted a stable, eternal, inevitable world. They knew, of course, that it had not always existed, that it had come into being slowly and amid bitter struggles in times of cruel distress; they knew it had originated at the end of the Age of Wars out of a double source: the heroically ascetic efforts of scholars, artists, and thinkers who had come to their senses, and the profound craving of the exhausted, bled, and betrayed peoples for order, normality, reason, lawfulness, and moderation. ~ Hermann Hesse,
357:No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it.... Such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest, are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it, who would thereby be deprived of the disposal of many places of trust and profit, of many opportunities of acquiring wealth and distinction, which the possession of the most turbulent, and, to the great body of the people, the most unprofitable province seldom fails to afford.23 ~ P J O Rourke,
358:Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. ~ Howard Zinn,
359:November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th. Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain. ~ Anonymous,
360:A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor for near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public Council, without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental principles, formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they were imagined to be, or that we have not at all adverted to some other far more important and far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those we had considered as omnipotent. ~ Edmund Burke,
361:My Grief On The Sea
MY grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
And the love of my soul!
Abandon'd, forsaken,
To grief and to care,
Will the sea ever waken
Relief from despair?
My grief and my trouble!
Would he and I were,
In the province of Leinster,
Or County of Clare!
Were I and my darling-O heart-bitter wound!-On board of the ship
For America bound.
On a green bed of rushes
All last night I lay,
And I flung it abroad
With the heat of the day.
And my Love came behind me,
He came from the South;
His breast to my bosom,
His mouth to my mouth.
~ Douglas Hyde,
362:With Henry she had less in common. He expected of her what she had not learnt, and was not willing to acquire. A man interfering in the woman’s province meets little toleration; and Henry was extremely precise in his requirements of exact order, punctuality, and excellence, in all the arrangements of his house. While breaking her in to housekeeping, he made himself appear almost in the light of a task-master — and what was worse, of a despised task-master. Averil thought she could not respect a brother whose displeasure was manifested by petulance, not sternness, and who cared not only about his dinner, but about the tidy appearance of the drawing-room — ~ Charlotte Mary Yonge,
363:Another badass Gurkha in recent memory was Sergeant Dipprasad Pun of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. In 2010, while serving as the lone on-duty guard patrolling a small one-room outpost on the edge of the Afghan province of Helmand, Pun was suddenly ambushed by somewhere between fifteen and thirty Taliban warriors armed with RPGs and assault rifles. During his Ultimate Mega Gurkha Freakout Limit Break Mode, the five-foot-seven-inch sergeant fired off four hundred rounds of machine gun ammunition (every bullet he had), chucked seventeen grenades, detonated a remote mine, and then took an enemy soldier down by chucking a twenty-pound machine gun tripod into the dude’s face. ~ Ben Thompson,
364:Many of the politicians in Delhi and Karachi, too, had once fought together against the British; they had social and family ties going back decades. They did not intend to militarize the border between them with pillboxes and rolls of barbed wire. They laughed at the suggestion that Punjabi farmers might one day need visas to cross from one end of the province to the other. Pakistan would be a secular, not an Islamic, state, its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, promised: Hindus and Sikhs would be free to practice their faiths and would be treated equally under the law. India would be better off without two disgruntled corners of the subcontinent, its people were told, less ~ Nisid Hajari,
365:Bee it therefore ordayned and enacted… that whatsoever person or persons within this province and the islands thereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is, to curse him, or shall deny our Savior Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or the Godhead or any of the sayd Three Persons of the Trinity, or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachful speeches, words or languages concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the sayd three persons thereof, shall be punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her land and goods to the lord proprietary and his heires. ~ Peter Manseau,
366:When they finally got to the front, it took Rin a long time to find her name. She scanned the lower half of the scroll, hardly daring to breathe. Surely she hadn’t scored well enough to make the top ten. She didn’t see Fang Runin anywhere. Only when she looked at Tutor Feyrik and saw that he was crying did she realize what had happened. Her name was at the very top of the scroll. She hadn’t placed in the top ten. She’d placed at the top of the entire village. The entire province. She had bribed a teacher. She had stolen opium. She had burned herself, lied to her foster parents, abandoned her responsibilities at the store, and broken a marriage deal. And she was going to Sinegard. ~ R F Kuang,
367:people of Yarba, who resold them to the Christians." " The inhabitants of this province (Yarba) it is supposed originated from the remnant of the children of Canaan, who were of the tribe of Nimrod. The cause of their establishment in the West of Africa was, as it is stated, in consequence of their being driven by Yar-rooba, son of Kahtan, out of Arabia to the Western Coast between Egypt and Abyssinia. From that spot they advanced into the interior of Africa, till they reach Yarba where they fixed their residence. On their way they left in every place they stopped at, a tribe of their own people. Thus it is supposed that all the tribes of the Soudan who inhabit the mountains are ~ Samuel Johnson,
368:I had killed people before, in war and as a member of the New Orleans police department, and I know what it does to you. Like the hunter, you feel an adrenaline surge of pleasure at having usurped the province of God. The person who says otherwise is lying. But the emotional attitude you form later varies greatly among individuals. Some will keep their remorse alive and feed it as they would a living gargoyle, to assure themselves of their own humanity; others will justify it in the name of a hundred causes, and they’ll reach back in moments of their own inadequacy and failure and touch again those flaming shapes that somehow made their impoverished lives historically significant. ~ James Lee Burke,
369:The order of the universe is not an assumption; it’s an observed fact. We detect the light from distant quasars only because the laws of electromagnetism are the same 10 billion light years away as here. The spectra of those quasars are recognizable only because the same chemical elements are present there as here, and because the same laws of quantum mechanics apply. The motion of galaxies around one another follows familiar Newtonian gravity. Gravitational lenses and binary pulsar spin-downs reveal general relativity in the depths of space. We could have lived in a universe with different laws in every province, but we do not. This fact cannot but elicit feelings of reverence and awe. ~ Carl Sagan,
370:Grimaud left the chamber, and led the way to the hall, where, according
to the custom of the province, the body was laid out, previously to
being put away forever. D'Artagnan was struck at seeing two open coffins
in the hall. In reply to the mute invitation of Grimaud, he approached,
and saw in one of them Athos, still handsome in death, and, in the
other, Raoul with his eyes closed, his cheeks pearly as those of the
Palls of Virgil, with a smile on his violet lips. He shuddered at seeing
the father and son, those two departed souls, represented on earth by
two silent, melancholy bodies, incapable of touching each other, however
close they might be. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
371:134. Letters are Commonplace
Letters are commonplace enough, yet what splendid things they are! When someone is in a distant province and one is worried about him, and then a letter suddenly arrives, one feels as though one were seeing him face to face. Again, it is a great comfort to have expressed one's feelings in a letter even though one knows it cannot yet have arrived. If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life. ~ Sei Sh nagon,
372:Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains.
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts
Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand. ~ Alexander Pope,
373:Balint pondered the programme outlined by Slawata: centralization, rule by an Imperial Council, the ancient kingdom of Hungary reduced to an Austrian province, and national boundaries to be re-arranged statistically according to the ethnic origin of the inhabitants! Why all this? To what purpose? Slawata had given him the answer: Imperial expansion in the Balkans so that feudal kingdoms for the Habsburgs reached the Sea of Marmora; and it was all to be achieved with the blood of Hungarian soldiers and paid for by Hungarian tax-money! So it was merely to help Vienna spread Austrian hegemony over the nations of the Balkans that Tisza was to be helped to build up the Hungarian national armed forces. ~ Mikl s B nffy,
374:I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my end", thought Levin; "and it's something to work and take trouble for. This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element in the condition of people, must be completely transformed. Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, then the whole world. Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it's an aim worth working for. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
375:It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. ~ Voltaire,
376:Toast For The Men Of Eidsvold
'Twas then this land of ours we drew
From centuries of ice and sorrow,
And let it of the sun's warmth borrow,
And law and plow brought order new;
We dug the wealth in mountain treasured,
Our stately ships the oceans measured,
And springtime thoughts were free to run
As round the Pole the midnight sun.
And still with God we'll conquer, hold:
Each plot reclaimed for harvest-reaping,
Each ship our sea takes to its keeping,
Each child-soul we to manhood mold,
Each spark of thought our life illuming,
Each deed to fruit of increase blooming,A province adds unto our land
And o'er our freedom guard shall stand.
~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson,
377:But no literature grows in isolation, and looking at the history of Indian writing in English is like looking at a silent movie made up of static postcards of Delhi, or Mumbai, or any other thronged Indian city: the life, the colour, the hubbub of hundreds of eager new writers and high-minded editors, peacocking poets and fiery-eyed pamphleteers, all of that has been bled out of collective memory. In the same year that Dean Mahomet wrote his Travels, the Madras Hircarrah (1794) started up, joining Hicky’s Bengal Gazette (1780) and the India Gazette (1781); the first in a flood of periodicals and journals that would breathlessly, urgently take the news of India running along from one province to another. The ~ Nilanjana Roy,
378:It is demonstrable,” said he, “that things cannot be otherwise than
as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must
necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose
is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are
visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones
were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a
magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be
the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork
all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not
express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. ~ Voltaire,
379:Its most memorable scene takes place in the piazza at Cesena early one morning in 1502, where the local governor, Remirro de Orco, is found in two pieces, with a bloody knife and a block of wood between them. “The ferocity of the spectacle,” Machiavelli recalls, “left the people at once satisfied and stupefied.” Cesare Borgia had made Remirro the governor of Romagna with instructions to pacify the rebellious province. This he did, but so brutally that he’d never have the loyalty of its people. So Borgia didn’t just sack his subordinate: he disassembled him and displayed the pieces. The shock and awe accomplished its purpose: at the cost of one life, others were saved that would have been lost if a new revolt had broken out. ~ John Lewis Gaddis,
380:Have you read the things that were published in Moskovskiye Novosti and Ogonyok in those days? For instance, General Kalugin’s exposures?10 Kalugin is a traitor. I saw Kalugin during my time in Leningrad when he was deputy head of the Directorate. He was an absolute loafer. A loafer, perhaps, but he remembers you. He doesn’t remember anything. He does remember, and he says that from the point of view of the intelligence service, you worked in a province and had nothing to show for your performance. Oh, he doesn’t remember a thing. He couldn’t remember me. I had no contact with him, nor did I meet him. It is I who remembers him, because he was a big boss and everybody knew him. As to whether he knew me, there were hundreds of us. ~ Vladimir Putin,
381:gain. In modern European custom, that need had been sated by the payment of war reparations into the victor’s coffers, the grabbing of a disputed province here or there, but that seemed rather picayune in view of this conflict’s cost. Instead, all the slaughter was to be justified by a new golden age of empire, the victors far richer, far grander than before. Naturally, this simply propelled the cycle to its logical, murderous conclusion. When contemplating all to be conferred upon the eventual winners, and all to be taken from the losers, how to possibly quit now? No, what was required was greater commitment—more soldiers, more money, more loss—to be redeemed when victory finally came with more territory, more wealth, more power. ~ Scott Anderson,
382:Jiang was not Han Chinese. She was a Turkic Uighur, a Muslim minority which emanated from the westernmost province of Xinjiang. Jiang’s family came from the desert capital Urumqi; her family had moved to Beijing when she was a child when Jiang’s father, a mid-ranking Party cadre, was posted to the Minorities Institute in the capital in the 1970s. Since her father was both an official and a Uighur, the family had been treated with a special deference reserved for select representatives of minority groups who served as symbols for the Party’s efforts to build ‘socialist solidarity’ between central China and the non-Han regions. In Beijing, Jiang had attended a special ‘experimental’ school reserved for the children of the Party élite. ~ Stephen Baxter,
383:Despite the risk, I don’t think it would be wise to cancel the festival,” he said, and would have left it at that had I not pursued a justification. “The Hytanicans are on edge, but there are still several days until the event. Word of the compensation we provided will spread, tempers will cool and excitement over the festival will set in. If we shut down the celebration, the people will feel twice wronged, and I’ll again be the most hated individual in the province. I’m the one they will blame.”
Narian was accustomed--as accustomed as one could be--to being disliked, but he didn’t want to lose the small bit of progress we had made toward redeeming his character. I wondered if this was in part because our marriage hung in the balance. ~ Cayla Kluver,
384:Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero’s recitals in the theatre. ~ M C Scott,
385:And a few hundred people, who risked their lives working for the Government or the RUC, have been pulled out of the Province because their undercover work had been detected by the IRA.  It is always necessary in such situations to pull out the person immediately, and often their families as well, and re-settle them in different locations throughout the mainland.  They are then given houses or apartments, new identities and sometimes a job.  Often, as the IRA keeps up its attempts to find and target these families, they have to be moved three or four times in an effort to keep them one step ahead of the gunmen.  I understand that these rescue missions, which are still carried out, have so far cost the British taxpayer between £75-£100 million. ~ Martin McGartland,
386:Christianity in this region remained as much a colonists’ religion as it would be once again during the French Empire of the twentieth century, and, just as in that later period, when the colonists left, so did the religion. Long wars during the sixth and seventh centuries forced many Romanized Africans to flee to other parts of the Mediterranean, and the Arab conquest virtually completed this process. As a Victorian scholar noted, “[T]he African churches were destroyed not because they were corrupt but because they failed to reach the hearts of the true natives of the province…. They fell because they were the churches of a party and not of a people.”4 Muslims did not have to eradicate African Christianity, because its believers had already fled. ~ Philip Jenkins,
387:You have always been my only muse. I cannot paint or sculpt. I have only my words to render your likeness. Sometimes I wish I were both God and Adam so I could tear out my rib and create you from my own flesh. I would say I’d create you from my heart, but I gave that to you when you left me. But that’s a cliché, isn’t it? Sadly, that’s all I have these days. The whole story is a cliché. I desired you. I ate of you. I lost you. That ancient story – older than the Garden, old as the Snake. I would have liked to call this story of ours The Temptation but the word temptation, once the province of pious theologians, has now been co-opted by every third second-rate romance novelist. And although I loved you, my beautiful girl, this is not a romance novel. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
388:Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone. ~ Nick Harkaway,
389:After Collecting The Autumn Taxes
From my high castle I look at the town below
Where the natives of Pa cluster like a swarm of flies.
How can I govern these people and lead them aright?
I cannot even understand what they say.
But at least I am glad, now that the taxes are in,
To learn that in my province there is no discontent.
I fear its prosperity is not due to me
And was only caused by the year's abundant crops,
The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few;
My house by the moat is leisurely and still.
In the autumn rain the berries fall from the eaves;
At the evening bell the birds return to the wood.
A broken sunlight quavers over the southern porch
Where I lie on my couch abandoned of idleness.
~ Bai Juyi,
390:The princess had accepted her fate in an effort to make the best of things, but she refused to do so any longer.
It wasn't till she was outside those walls that she'd realized the truth: the only one who could truly break her free was herself. That's why she was back. To claim what was truly hers. Not just the castle, but the province and its throne. Not just for her own happiness, but also for that of her people.
Now was the time to strike. It was why she had traveled so far, risked so much, and found strength that she hadn't known she possessed. Queen Ingrid's popularity had never been strong, but in the last few years, the kingdom had gone from indifference to downright terror. She couldn't allow her people to suffer this way any longer. It was time. ~ Jen Calonita,
391:In 63 B.C., a young Roman quaestor in Spain approached a statue of Alexander to pay homage to the commander, who had never lost a battle in his remarkable career. He broke down and wept before it. The 30-year-old realized that the Macedonian had already conquered the world at his age, while he was a mere administrator in a backwater Roman province who had frittered away his youth. The stone face smiled back at him, satisfied in his reputation as a military colossus.   This young man, Julius Caesar, eventually found his bearings and went on to his own successful career of conquest. He would raise up his own empire and lead armies to extraordinary victory. But it was to Alexander whom his knee bent, perhaps the only human worthy of such an act of praise by a Caesar. ~ Michael Rank,
392:C’était un de ces hommes politiques à plusieurs faces, sans convictions, sans grands moyens, sans audace et sans connaissance sérieuse, avocat de province, joli homme de chef-lieu, gardant un équilibre de finaud entre tous les partis extrêmes, sorte de jésuite républicain et de champignon libéral de nature douteuse, comme il en pousse par centaines sur le fumier populaire du suffrage universel.

Son machiavélisme de village le faisait passer pour fort parmi ses collègues, parmi tous les déclassés et les avortés dont on fait les députés. Il était assez soigné, assez correct, assez familier, assez aimable pour réussir. (…) On disait partout de lui « Laroche sera ministre », et il pensait aussi plus fermement que tous les autres que Laroche serait ministre. ~ Guy de Maupassant,
393:Hadrian’s dreams were realised; at least all the ambitions he believed himself to have held since boyhood were realised. Once he grasped power, he united the energy and determination of Trajan with the glittering rituals of the eastern kings of old. In just over ten years, by the time he sent his emissary to Athens, he had made the ill-used words ‘Roman peace’ a prosperous reality. He had crossed the empire, welcome in every province. He had assuaged his own curiosity and that of his people. Some thought him a scrupulous diplomatist, but they misunderstood; he was in his own way as strong and implacable as his fathers. Like them, he got what he wanted. The philosophers now come to Hadrian, and his days are full of the counsels of the wise – and the not so wise. ~ Elizabeth Speller,
394:To the man who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, “it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
395:With just one departure daily, the station is mostly empty. But Mr. Shiekhly says that in his mind’s eye he can still see the girl, and everything else that once made the station such a special place to him: a nice restaurant over there; groups of men playing backgammon and dominoes; the officers’ lounge that was, he recalls, “beautiful and full of wood.” The station itself is a time capsule. The ticket booths in the circular room are identified by destinations long out of reach to passenger trains. One sign reads, “Booking for Mosul Train.” Another booth is where passengers once bought tickets to Turkey, Syria and Anbar Province. “Now you have to take tanks or jet fighters to get to these places,” said Ahmed Abdulrahman, 50, who has worked at the station since the late 1970s. ~ Anonymous,
396:Three days after the earthquake in Louisiana there was another geological catastrophe announced, this time in China. The coast of the province of Kiangsu, north of Nanking, about half way between the mouth of the Yangtse and the old bed of the Hwangho, was ripped apart in a powerful, thunderous earthquake; the sea gushed into this fissure and joined up with the great lakes of Pan Yoon and Hungtsu between the cities of Hwaingan and Fugyang. Apparently as a result of the earthquake, the Yangtse left its course below Nanking and flowed down towards Lake Tai and on to Hang-Cho. Loss of human life cannot, so far, even be estimated. Hundred of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the provinces to the north and south. Japanese warships have been given orders to sail to the affected area. ~ Karel apek,
397:The dilemma is this. In the modern world knowledge has been growing so fast and so enormously, in almost every field, that the probabilities are immensely against anybody, no matter how innately clever, being able to make a contribution in any one field unless he devotes all his time to it for years. If he tries to be the Rounded Universal Man, like Leonardo da Vinci, or to take all knowledge for his province, like Francis Bacon, he is most likely to become a mere dilettante and dabbler. But if he becomes too specialized, he is apt to become narrow and lopsided, ignorant on every subject but his own, and perhaps dull and sterile even on that because he lacks perspective and vision and has missed the cross-fertilization of ideas that can come from knowing something of other subjects. ~ Henry Hazlitt,
398:The Dude Center
We used to run a cow-ranch,
In all that old term meant,
But all our ancient glories
In recent years have went;
We’re takin’ summer boarders,
And, puttin’ it quite rude,
It’s now the cowboy’s province
To herd the festive dude.
We used to run an outfit,
The greatest in the West;
Our cowboys were the wonders —
Our roundups were the best;
The punchers still are with us,
But now they merely guide
The tenderfoot from Boston
Who’s learnin’ how to ride.
We used to brand our cattle
And ship ‘em wide and far;
But now we import humans
From off the Pullman car;
The dudes have got us captures
And tied and branded, too;
And the cowboy’s readin’ Ibsen
When his daily toil is through.
~ Arthur Chapman,
399:Eating Bamboo Shoots
My new province is a land of bamboo-groves:
Their shoots in spring fill the valleys and hills.
The mountain woodman cuts an armful of them
And brings them down to sell at the early market.
Things are cheap in proportion as they are common;
For two farthings, I buy a whole bundle.
I put the shoots in a great earthen pot
And heat them up along with boiling rice.
The purple nodules broken – like an old brocade;
The white skin opened – like new pearls.
Now every day I eat them recklessly;
For a long time I have not touched meat.
All the time I was living at Lo-yang
They could not give me enough to suit my taste,
Now I can have as many shoots as I please;
For each breath of the south-wind makes a new bamboo
~ Bai Juyi,
400:Some day, for instance, the word 'opinion' itself may become the recognised name of the most dangerous political vice. Men may teach themselves by habit and association to suspect those inclinations and beliefs which, if they neglect the duty of thought, appear in their minds they know not how, and which, as long as their origin is not examined, can be created by any clever organiser who is paid to do so. The most easily manipulated State in the world would be one inhabited by a race of Nonconformist business men who never followed up a train of political reasoning in their lives, and who, as soon as they were aware of the existence of a strong political conviction in their minds, should announce that it was a matter of 'conscience' and therefore beyond the province of doubt or calculation. ~ Graham Wallas,
401:In 1995, China passed the National Maternal and Infant Health Law, forbidding couples who had “genetic diseases of a serious nature” to procreate. The conditions listed include mental retardation, mental illness, and seizures. These couples were required to undergo a mandatory premarital medical exam. It was hugely controversial, reviving international criticism that China practices eugenics. Actually, the wording of the national law was considered mild. Some provinces had more explicit regulations. In 1988, Gansu Province passed local regulations prohibiting “reproduction of the dull-witted, idiots, or blockheads.” Gansu abolished that law in 2002. Similarly, the National Maternal and Infant Health Law was defanged when requirements for the premarital medical examination were quietly dropped in 2003. ~ Mei Fong,
402:Caroline was slightly taken aback (shocked would be much too strong a word to describe her feelings). It was difficult to know what to say to Widgeon. The whole affair seemed so topsy turvy, so typical of the topsy turvy conditions of modern life. She had tried to help her country by Growing More Food, and all she had got for the trouble involved was more trouble. She had received countless forms to fill up; she had been visited by inspectors who seemed to think it was within their province to be rude to her, and who treated her as if she were trying to defraud the authorities of their just and lawful due, and she had been fined quite heavily for doing something she did not know was wrong. Somewhat naturally Caroline felt annoyed and the opportunity to break the law without any risk at all tempted her considerably. ~ D E Stevenson,
403:The first thing to consider is education. This is divided into two parts, music and gymnastics. Each has a wider meaning than at present: 'music' means everything that is in the province of the muses, and 'gymnastics' means everything concerned with physical training and fitness. 'Music' is almost as wide as what we should call 'culture', and 'gymnastics' is somewhat wider than what we call 'athletics'. Culture is to be devoted to making men gentlemen, in the sense which, largely owing to Plato, is familiar in England. The Athens of his day was, in one respect, analogous to England in the nineteenth century: there was in each an aristocracy enjoying wealth and social prestige, but having no monopoly of political power; and in each the aristocracy had to secure as much power as it could by means of impressive behaviour. ~ Anonymous,
404:One of the few advantages that India has over England is a great Knowability. After five years' service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste, in ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishman in the Empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without paying hotel-bills. Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very kind and helpful. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
405:Cathy smiled back ‘Rules were meant to be broken.’

‘Don’t disagree,’ Oversteegen replied immediately. ‘Indeed they are. Providin’, however, that the one breakin’ the rules is willin’ t’ pay the price for it, and the price gets charged in full. Which you were, Lady Catharine. I saluted you for it then–at the family dinner table that night, in fact. My mother was infinitely more indisposed thereafter; tottered back t’ her bed cursin’ me for an ingrate. My father was none too pleased either. I salute you for it, again. Otherwise, breakin’ rules becomes the province of brats instead of heroes. Fastest way I can think t’ turn serious political affairs int’ a playpen. A civilized society needs a conscience, and conscience can’t be developed without martyrs—real ones—against which a nation can measure its crimes and sins. ~ David Weber,
406:I began by preparing my pasta: my deft fingers forming the intricate shapes of rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, spaghetti, cannelloni, and linguini. Then I would brew sauces of sardines, or anchovies or zucchini or sheep's cheeses, of saffron, pine nuts, currants, and fennel. These I would simmer in the huge iron cauldrons, which were constantly bubbling above the fire. My pasta dishes, I have to say, were famous throughout the province, and the scent of my sauces carried by the breeze was sufficient to fill a poor man's stomach.
I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabatta and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary; plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves. ~ Lily Prior,
407:when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another. ~ Stephen King,
408:When you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union - each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an air-liner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you tread lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to really know another. ~ Stephen King,
409:THE BREAK OF ULSTER   Of the line of Ir, son of Milesius, to whom Ulster had been ap- portioned, that Branch called the Clan na Rory (after its great founder, Rory, who had been King of Ulster, and also High-King of Ireland) now had ruled the province for nearly 700 years, namely, for more than 300 years before the Christian Era, and more than 300 years after. And their capital city and the King’s seat had been at Emain Macha. During practically all of this time, from that fort’s first founding by Queen Macha, the Royal Court of Ulster had been a court of splendour, and ever noted as a centre of chivalry and the home of poetry. And the power, and might, and courage of Ulster had ever acted as a brake on the ambitions of their neighbouring royal depredators, and especially the royal aggressors of Connaught, who were made to fear Ulster’s name. But ~ Seumas MacManus,
410:The avoidance or postponement of answering such deep and basic questions was traditionally the province of religion, which excelled at it. Every thinking person always knew that an insuperable mystery lay at the final square of the game board, and that there was no possible way of avoiding it. So, when we ran out of explanations and processes and causes that preceded the previous cause, we said, “God did it.” Now, this book is not going to discuss spiritual beliefs nor take sides on whether this line of thinking is wrong or right. It will only observe that invoking a deity provided something that was crucially required: it permitted the inquiry to reach some sort of agreed-upon endpoint. As recently as a century ago, science texts routinely cited God and “God’s glory” whenever they reached the truly deep and unanswerable portions of the issue at hand. ~ Robert Lanza,
411:It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
412:Britain was playing on the same weakness in America, punishing American exporters in the confidence that all thirteen states, behaving as separate actors, could not retaliate. Spain was also busy pitting Northern and Southern states against each other in its attempt to wrest the Mississippi from America. One characteristic of the failed governments Madison studied, from the Achaean League to the Belgic Confederacy, was paralysis. They were unable to get things done. The Achaeans required the agreement of ten of twelve members, and the Belgic Confederacy required unanimous consent. The Belgic Confederacy consisted of fifty-two independent cities and seven provinces. Thus foreign powers and enemies needed to co-opt only one city or province out of fifty-nine to get their way.3 It was exactly what both Madison and Monroe had continually experienced in Congress. ~ Chris DeRose,
413:Horror Harvest Pakistan pays a heavy price for nurturing terror. Can it destroy the killing machine now? asks Sajjad Khan. Sajjad Khan | 1472 words Relatives mourn at the funeral of Mohammed Ali Khan,15,one of the students killed in the Peshawar school attack; Courtesy: ReutersPeshawar. Terror. The rhyme is as much a cruel coincidence as it is tragic. The capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one of South Asia's oldest cities and an ancient centre of learning, has suffered massively at the hands of terrorists since Pakistan got embroiled in the Afghan jihad nearly 35 years ago. But even for a city so used to the blood of its innocents being spilled, the horror of December 16 was incomparable: at least 132 students and nine staff members of the Army Public School and College (APSC) mowed down in cold blood by Taliban attackers on what should have been just another day at school. ~ Anonymous,
414:A close examination of the instructions in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta reveals that the meditator is never instructed to interfere actively with what happens in the mind. If a mental hindrance arises, for example, the task of satipaṭṭhāna contemplation is to know that the hindrance is present, to know what has led to its arising, and to know what will lead to its disappearance. A more active intervention is no longer the domain of satipaṭṭhāna, but belongs rather to the province of right effort (sammā vāyāma).

The need to distinguish clearly between a first stage of observation and a second stage of taking action is, according to the Buddha, an essential feature of his way of teaching. The simple reason for this approach is that only the preliminary step of calmly assessing a situation without immediately reacting enables one to undertake the appropriate action. ~ An layo,
415:Christianity had not started off as the ideology of an empire. Virtually nothing is known about its supposed founder, Jesus of Nazareth. There is not even any definite proof he was a historical rather than a mythical figure. Certainly the proof is not to be found in the Christian New Testament. It claims his birth was in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judaea, where his family had gone for a census during the time of Augustus. But there was no census at the time stated and Judaea was not a Roman province at the time. When a census was held in AD 7 it did not require anyone to leave their place of residence. Similarly, the New Testament locates Jesus’s birth as in the time of King Herod, who died in 4 BC. Roman and Greek writers of the time make no mention of Jesus and a supposed reference by the Jewish-Roman writer Josephus is almost certainly a result of the imagination of medieval monks.100 ~ Chris Harman,
416:. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658 ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
417:Thus, while it may be fairly easy to like yourself when feelings of love or happiness or serenity are present, deeper psychological health is seen only when you can maintain a posture of self-love and self-respect in the times of emotional hurt that accompany life’s inevitable contingencies of loss, loneliness, confusion, uncontrollable unfairness, and accidental mistake. The human feeling experience, much like the weather, is often unpredictably changeable. No “positive” feeling can be induced to persist as a permanent experience, no matter what Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy tells us. As disappointing as this may be, as much as we might like to deny it, as much as it causes each of us ongoing life frustration, and as much as we were raised and continue to be reinforced for trying to control and pick our feelings, they are still by definition of the human condition, largely outside the province of our wills. ~ Pete Walker,
418:Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.

This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
419:A woman from the Hunan Province told it to me,” said Charon. “Once upon a time a stranger came to a remote village with an elephant. Everyone got excited, including three blind men who didn’t know what an elephant was. They decided to find out for themselves. “The first man approached the elephant near its head. He reached his hand out and felt the leathery ear. The second man approached from behind and brushed the elephant’s bristly tail. The third came at it from the side and stroked its wide midsection. “ ‘What a strange creature an elephant is,’ the first man said. ‘So flat and thin, like wash hung from the line.’ “ ‘What are you talking about?’ said the second man. ‘That animal was hairy and coarse, like the bristles on a stiff broom.’ “ ‘You are both wrong!’ said the third. ‘The beast was as broad and sturdy as a wall.’ They three men argued and argued, but they never could come to an agreement.” Charon ~ William Ritter,
420:Explicitly grounding my analysis in multiple voices highlights the diversity, richness, and power of Black women's ideas as part of a long-standing African American women's intellectual community. Moreover, this approach counteracts the tendency of mainstream scholarship to canonize a few Black women as spokespersons for the group and then refuse to listen to any but these select few. While it is certainly appealing to receive recognition for one's accomplishments, my experiences as the "first," "one of the few," and the "only" have shown me how effective selecting a few and using them to control the many can be in stifling subordinate groups. Assuming that only a few exceptional Black women have been able to do theory homogenizes African-American women and silences the majority. In contrast, I maintain that theory and intellectual creativity are not the province of a select few but instead emanate from a range of people. ~ Patricia Hill Collins,
421:The Normans had first arrived in Gaul (the former Roman province roughly equivalent to modern France) in the ninth century as Viking raiders – their name, given to them by their enemies, signified ‘men of the North’. Around the start of the tenth century some of them started to settle in the area around Rouen and colonized the ancient Roman region of Neustria, so that over time it came to be known by the new name of ‘Normandy’. In the century that followed they ditched most of their Viking ways and adopted the manners and customs of their new neighbours, learning to speak French, giving their children French names, embracing Christianity, and refounding some of the churches and monasteries that their not-too-distant ancestors had looted and destroyed. And yet, as Ralph Glaber’s comment shows, people who lived in other parts of France still felt that the Normans had some distance to travel before they could be regarded as fully civilized. ~ Marc Morris,
422:The violence that began in 1915 killed perhaps half the Armenian Christians in the region. Although the accumulated stories of massacre numb after a while, some of the atrocities cry out particularly. One of the worst storm centers was the wilayet, or province, of Diyarbakir, under its brutal governor, Reşid Bey. Here, “men had horse shoes nailed to their feet; women were gang-raped.” One source placed the number of murdered Christians in this province alone at 570,000. In the summer of 1915, the New York Times reported that “the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.” During the 1915–16 era, at least 1 million Armenians were displaced, and plausible estimates for those actually killed range from eight hundred thousand to 1 million. If the word genocide has any meaning whatever, it certainly applies to these events.34 ~ Philip Jenkins,
423:But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who sees into things -- very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. There are no answers other than that. He was not like the rest of us. Not even like himself. His imagination, or soul, or whatever province of his mind was hungry for the sustaining rain of the world, would soak in the storms of his own haunted strangeness, and the berries would bloom, and they were what they were, and if the tendrils were peculiar, and some of them wild, the fruits were so shockingly luscious and potent that the thirsty were willing to savour the bitter for the sake of the concomitant sweet. He needed the very ordinary. He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said? The sort of man who makes you think the movement of foliage might be causing the breeze. ~ Joseph O Connor,
424:And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement. ~ Samuel Johnson,
425:There is no evidence that Wilson ever saw the petition, but it was understandable that colonized peoples looked to him for help. His Fourteen Points, the wartime statement of Allied principles intended to guarantee fairness in the peace negotiations, had pledged that during “the free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” the interests of the colonized should be given “equal weight” with those of the colonizers. That was precisely what the Vietnamese petitioners wanted. As a subject people, they declared, Wilson’s advocacy of self-determination had filled them “with hope…that an era of rights and justice [was opening] to them.” They did not demand independence from France, but they did call for “a permanent delegation of native people elected to attend the French parliament” as well as freedom of speech and association and foreign travel, technical and professional schools in every province, and equal treatment under the law. ~ Geoffrey C Ward,
426:Though gay men have begun to understand it is something in themselves these upright men so fear, too many of us have internalized their self-hatred as shame. That the flesh and the spirit are one in love is none of the business of the celibate men of God, especially those who believe they rule the province of love. But the mission of the homophobe is more pernicious even than his morality. He wants every one of us to be all alone, never to find the beloved friend.
A man ought to be free to find his reason. Not that freedom alone will serve it up: it requires the gods’ own fury of luck to get two people to meet. But when it finally happens, two men in love can’t rejoice out loud—joy of the very thing everyone burns for—without bracing for the rant of prophets, the schoolyard bully, and Rome’s “intrinsic evil.” I try to remember that we fight as a ragged people to outlast the calamity so that others can sleep as safe as my friend and I, like a raft in the tempest. ~ Paul Monette,
427:When relationships have outlived their shelf life, people often realize that at some level, they are sticking it our because they once thought in the light of their divine love that the other person would change. Sorry for breaking the poetic hope here, but that doesn't happen. People are like rubber bands. They may be able to stretch from time to time and do some amazing things, but in general they are who they are. If manipulation and machinations on your side get them to behave the way you want, I will set my clock on the fact that they will return to their previous way of behaving, or they will keep faking it. To be in a relationship with someone who is not really there doesn't make sense. People who aren't cooperating feel like a project to us, like something for us to rescue or fix. Rescuing is the province of firefighters and fairy tales, but it's not real life. The stance of sticking it out in hopes of redemption is an old story and one that has wasted many lives. ~ Ramani Durvasula,
428:Magnetism is, of course, not the same as gravity, but Kepler’s fundamental innovation here is nothing short of breathtaking: he proposed that quantitative physical laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that govern the heavens. It was the first nonmystical explanation of motion in the heavens; it made the Earth a province of the Cosmos. “Astronomy,” he said, “is part of physics.” Kepler stood at a cusp in history; the last scientific astrologer was the first astrophysicist. Not given to quiet understatement, Kepler assessed his discoveries in these words: With this symphony of voices man can play through the eternity of time in less than an hour, and can taste in small measure the delight of God, the Supreme Artist … I yield freely to the sacred frenzy … the die is cast, and I am writing the book—to be read either now or by posterity, it matters not. It can wait a century for a reader, as God Himself has waited 6,000 years for a witness. ~ Carl Sagan,
429:[The long ride to Riyadh]

When I first travelled, I was naive, sloppy, wide-eyed, and nothing happened to me. That’s probably where the dumb luck came in. Then I began to read the guidebooks, the State Department warnings, the endless elucidation of national norms, cultural cues and insults and regional dangers, and I became wary, careful, savvy. I kept my money taped inside my shoe, or strapped to my stomach. I took any kind of precaution, believing that the people of this area did this, and the people of that province did that. But then, finally, I realised no one of any region did anything I have ever expected them to do, much less anything the guidebooks said they would. Instead, they behaved as everyone behaves, which is to say they behave as individuals of damnably infinite possibility. Anyone could do anything, in theory, but most of the time everyone everywhere acts with plain bedrock decency, helping where help is needed, guiding where guidance is necessary. It’s almost weird. ~ Dave Eggers,
430:The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
431:Road-Side Dog
I went on a journey in order to acquaint myself with my province, in a two-horse
wagon with a lot of fodder and a tin bucket rattling in the back. The bucket was
required for the horses to drink from. I traveled through a country of hills and
pine groves that gave way to woodlands where swirls of smoke hovered over the
roofs of houses, as if they were on fire, for they were chimneyless cabins; I
crossed districts of fields and lakes. It was so interesting to be moving, to give
the horses their rein, and wait until, in the next valley, a village slowly appeared,
or a park with the white spot of a manor house in it. And always we were barked
at by a dog, assiduous in its duty. That was the beginning of the century; this is
its end. I have been thinking not only of the people who lived there once but also
of the generations of dogs accompanying them in their everyday bustle, and one
night - I don't know where it came from - in a pre-dawn sleep, that funny and
tender phrase composed itself: a road-side dog.
~ Czeslaw Milosz,
432:In reality, Kabila was no more than a petty tyrant propelled to prominence by accident. Secretive and paranoid, he had no political programme, no strategic vision and no experience of running a government. He refused to engage with established opposition groups or with civic organisations and banned political parties. Lacking a political organisation of his own, he surrounded himself with friends and family members and relied heavily for support and protection on Rwanda and Banyamulenge. Two key ministries were awarded to cousins; the new chief of staff of the army, James Kabarebe, was a Rwandan Tutsi who had grown up in Uganda; the deputy chief of staff and commander of land forces was his 26-year-old son, Joseph; the national police chief was a brother-in-law. Whereas Mobutu had packed his administration with supporters from his home province of Équateur, Kabila handed out key positions in government, the armed forces, security services and public companies to fellow Swahili-speaking Katangese, notably members of the Lubakat group of northern Katanga, his father’s tribe. ~ Martin Meredith,
433:The creative side of the female operates imperceptibly: its province is the potential man. When its play is unrestricted the level of the race is raised. One can always gauge the level of a period by the status of its womankind. Something more than freedom and opportunity are here involved because Woman's true nature never expressed itself in demands. Like water, woman always finds her own level. And like water also, she mirrors faithfully all that passes in the soul of man. What is called truly feminine therefore is only the deceptive masquerade which the uncreative male blindly accepts as the real show. It is the flattering substitute which the thwarted female offers in self-defense. It is the homosexual game which Narcissus exacts. It is most flagrantly revealed when the partners are extremely masculine and feminine. It can be mimicked most successfully in the shadow play of the avowed homosexuals. It reaches its blind culmination in the Don Juan. Here the pursuit of the unattainable reaches the burlesk proportions of a Chaplinesque pursuit. The end is always the same: Narcissus drowning in his own image. ~ Henry Miller,
434:There is another system, more beaded than weather or murder, that is moving up into the province. As Les leaves the chair to investigate his son’s crying a thousand zombies form an alliterative fog around Lake Scugog and beyond, mouthing the words Helen, hello, help. This fog predominates the region; however, other systems compete, bursting and winding with vowels braiding into dipthongs so long that they dissipate across a thousand panting lips. In the suburbs of Barrie, for instance, an alliteration that began with the wail of a cat in heat picked up the consonant “Guh” from a fisherman caught in surprise on Lake Simcoe. The echoing coves of the lake added a sort of meter, and by the time these sounds arrived in Gravenhurst, the people there were certain that a musical was blaring from speakers in the woods. All across the province, zombies, like extras in a crowd scene, imitate a thousand conversations. They open and close their mouths on things and sound is a heavy carpet of mumbling, a pre-production monstrosity. In minutes the Pontypool fog will march on the town of Sunderland and over the barriers south of Lindsay. ~ Tony Burgess,
435:The three classic levels of war – strategic, operational, and tactical – still exist in Fourth Generation war. But all three are affected, and to some extent changed, by the Fourth Generation. One important change is that, while in the first three generations strategy was the province of generals, the Fourth Generation has given us the “strategic corporal.” These days, the actions of a single enlisted man can have strategic consequences, especially if they happen to take place when cameras are rolling. The Second Persian Gulf War provides numerous examples. In one case, U.S. Marines had occupied a Shi’ite town in southern Iraq. A Marine corporal was leading a patrol through the town when it encountered a funeral procession coming the other way. The corporal ordered his men to stand aside and take their helmets off as a sign of respect. Word of that action quickly spread around town, and it helped the Marines’ effort to be welcomed as liberators. That in turn had a strategic impact, because the American strategy depended upon keeping Shi’ite southern Iraq quiet in order for American supply lines to pass through the territory. ~ William S Lind,
436:I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who did not perceive what we perceived, were in a quite legitimate position. Their opinion was quite in order. One must not be afraid to say that the kingdom of letters is only a province of the vast empire of entertainment. One picks up a book, one puts it aside; and even when one cannot put it down one very well understands that this interest is related to the facility of pleasure. That is to say that every effort of a creator of beauty or of fantasy should be bent, by the very essence of his work, on contriving for the public pleasure which demands no effort, or almost none. It is through the public that he should deduce what touches, moves, soothes, animates or enchants the public.

There are however several publics; amongst whom it is not impossible to find some people who do not conceive of pleasure without pain, who do not like to enjoy themselves without paying, and who are not happy if their happiness is not in some part their own contrivance through which they wish to realize what it costs them.
~ Paul Val ry,
437:Louis stared at her, nonplussed. He more than half suspected that one of the things which had kept their marriage together when it seemed as if each year brought the news that two or three of their friends' marriages had collapsed was their respect of the mystery--the half-grasped but never spoken idea that maybe, when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another. ~ Stephen King,
438:How can one talk about the economics of small independent countries? How can one discuss a problem that is a non-problem? There is no such thing as the viability of states or of nations, there is only a problem of viability of people: people, actual persons like you and me, are viable when they can stand on their own feet and earn their keep. You do not make nonviable people viable by putting large numbers of them into one huge community, and you do not make viable people non-viable by splitting a large community into a number of smaller, more intimate, more coherent and more manageable groups. All this is perfectly obvious and there is absolutely nothing to argue about. Some people ask: 'What happens when a country, composed of one rich province and several poor ones, falls apart because the rich province secedes?' Most probably the answer is: 'Nothing very much happens.' The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor. 'But if, before secession, the rich province had subsidised the poor, what happens then?' Well then, of course, the subsidy might stop. But the rich rarely subsidise the poor; more often they exploit them. ~ Ernst F Schumacher,
439:a perfect description of the “automatic cultural man”—man as confined by culture, a slave to it, who imagines that he has an identity if he pays his insurance premium, that he has control of his life if he guns his sports car or works his electric toothbrush. Today the inauthentic or immediate men are familiar types, after decades of Marxist and existentialist analysis of man’s slavery to his social system. But in Kierkegaard’s time it must have been a shock to be a modern European city-dweller and be considered a Philistine at the same time. For Kierkegaard “philistinism” was triviality, man lulled by the daily routines of his society, content with the satisfactions that it offers him: in today’s world the car, the shopping center, the two-week summer vacation. Man is protected by the secure and limited alternatives his society offers him, and if he does not look up from his path he can live out his life with a certain dull security:

Devoid of imagination, as the Philistine always is, he lives in a certain trivial province of experience as to how things go, what is possible, what usually occurs… . Philistinism tranquilizes itself in the trivial… ~ Ernest Becker,
440:It took eleven weeks to organize the hunt for Osama bin Laden. When that hunt began in earnest, I was in eastern Afghanistan, in and around Jalalabad, where I had traveled on five trips over the years. An old acquaintance named Haji Abdul Qadir had just reclaimed his post as the provincial governor, two days after the fall of the Taliban. Haji Qadir was an exemplar of Afghan democracy. A well-educated and highly cultured Pathan tribal leader in his early sixties, a wealthy dealer in opium and weapons and other basic staples of the Afghan economy, he had been a CIA-supported commander in the fight against the Soviet occupation, the governor of his province from 1992 to 1996, and a close associate of the Taliban in their time. He personally welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and helped him establish a compound outside Jalalabad. Now he welcomed the American occupation. Haji Qadir was a good host. We walked in the gardens of the governor’s palace, through swayback palms and feathery tamarisks. He was expecting a visit from his American friends any day now, and he was looking forward to the renewal of old ties and the ritual exchange of cash for information. ~ Tim Weiner,
441:Grayden and I, along with Dahnath, Drael and countless others, stayed to keep vigil, sitting on the hillside until the funeral blaze consumed itself, settling into cinders. In the early hours of the morning, a light, almost magical snow began to fall, and the moon’s glow as it reflected off the ground brightened the scenery, making everything seem new.
My uncle’s death had again set my family reeling. While we were accustomed to picking up pieces, sorting through rubble and holding on to memories, the brothers who had died had been the pillars of our family, strong leaders in Hytanica’s military, and shining examples of all that was good and honorable within our kingdom. But this time, beneath the grieving, there was hope--hope that glowed like the remaining embers. This land was again our own, the Province Wall would be torn down, and we citizens would once more walk through the city gates without fear or suspicion.
I shivered, and Grayden put his arm around me, snuggling me close to him, and a melancholy smile played across my face. My uncle had promised he would find a husband for me who would meet my father’s standards. And at what did the Captain of the Guard fail? ~ Cayla Kluver,
442:I was just thinking that it's a wonder you haven't rushed out to marry the first peasant girl you could find."
"Impertinent twit!" the countess exclaimed.
Marcus grinned at the girl's insolence, while the tightness in his chest eased. "Do you think I should?" he asked soberly, as if the question was worth considering.
"Oh, yes," Lillian assured him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "The Marsdens could use some new blood. In my opinion, the family is in grave danger of becoming overbred."
"Overbred?" Marcus repeated, wanting nothing more than to pounce on her and cry her off somewhere. "What has given you that impression, Miss Bowman?"
"Oh, I don't know..." she said idly. "Perhaps the earth-shattering importance you attach to wether one should use a fork or spoon to eat one's pudding."
"Good manners are not the sole province of the aristocracy, Miss Bowman." Even to himself, Marcus sounded a bit pompous.
"In my opinion, my lord, an excessive preoccupation with manners and rituals is a strong indication that someone has too much time on his hands."
Marcus smiled at her impertinence. "Subversive, yet sensible," he mused. "I'm not certain I disagree. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
443:No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives. Thus nearly all changes were far less perceptible to those who lived through them from day to day than appears when the salient features of an epoch are extracted by the chronicler. We peer at these scenes through dim telescopes of research across a gulf of nearly two thousand years. We cannot doubt that the second and to some extent the third century of the Christian era, in contrast with all that had gone before and most that was to follow, were a Golden Age for Britain. But by the early part of the fourth century shadows had fallen upon this imperfect yet none the less tolerable society. By steady, persistent steps the sense of security departed from Roman Britain. Its citizens felt by daily experience a sense that the world-wide system of which they formed a partner province was in decline. ~ Winston S Churchill,
444:Another excellent expedient is to send colonies into one or two places, so that these may become, as it were, the keys of the Province; for you must either do this, or else keep up a numerous force of men-at-arms and foot soldiers. A Prince need not spend much on colonies. He can send them out and support them at little or no charge to himself, and the only persons to whom he gives offence are those whom he deprives of their fields and houses to bestow them on the new inhabitants. Those who are thus injured form but a small part of the community, and remaining scattered and poor can never become dangerous. All others being left unmolested, are in consequence easily quieted, and at the same time are afraid to make a false move, lest they share the fate of those who have been deprived of their possessions. In few words, these colonies cost less than soldiers, are more faithful, and give less offence, while those who are offended, being, as I have said, poor and dispersed, cannot hurt. And let it here be noted that men are either to be kindly treated, or utterly crushed, since they can revenge lighter injuries, but not graver. Wherefore the injury we do to a man should be of a sort to leave no fear of reprisals. ~ Anonymous,
445:You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know what--to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of hero--a political saint. But I beg to be excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you...[what] it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through--but a man! ~ Joseph Conrad,
446:I Ask You
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside-leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles-each a different height-are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt-frog at the edge of a pond-and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
19
~ Billy Collins,
447:There were some places, and streets, where he did not venture since he had learnt that others had claims there greater than his own - not the gangs of meths drinkers who lived in no place and no time, nor the growing number of the young who moved on restlessly across the face of the city, but vagrants like himself who, despite the name which the world has given them, had ceased to wander and now associated themselves with one territory or 'province' rather than another. All of them led solitary lives, hardly moving from their own warren of streets and buildings: it is not known whether they chose the area, or whether the area itself had callen them and taken them in, but they had become the guardian spirits (as it were) of each place. Ned now knew some of their names: Watercress Joe, who haunted the streets by St Mary Woolnoth, Black Sam who lived and slept beside the Commercial Road between Whitechapel and Limehouse, Harry the Goblin who was seen only by Spitalfields and Artillery Lane, Mad Frank who walked continually through the streets of Bloomsbury, Italian Audrey who was always to be found in the dockside area of Wapping (it was she who had visited Ned in his shelter many years before), and 'Alligator' who never moved from Greenwich. ~ Peter Ackroyd,
448:WHEN on the Magpies' Bridge I see The Hoar-frost King has cast His sparkling mantle, well I know The night is nearly past, Daylight approaches fast. The author of this verse was Governor of the Province of Koshu, and Viceroy of the more or less uncivilized northern and eastern parts of Japan; he died A.D. 785. There was a bridge or passageway in the Imperial Palace at Kyoto called the Magpies' Bridge, but there is also an allusion here to the old legend about the Weaver and Herdsman. It is said, that the Weaver (the star Vega) was a maiden, who dwelt on one side of the River of the Milky Way, and who was employed in making clothes for the Gods. But one day the Sun took pity upon her, and gave her in marriage to the Herdboy (the star Aquila), who lived on the other side of the river. But as the result of this was that the supply of clothes fell short, she was only permitted to visit her husband once a year, viz. on the seventh night of the seventh month; and on this night, it is said, the magpies in a dense flock form a bridge for her across the river. The hoar frost forms just before day breaks. The illustration shows the Herdboy crossing on the Bridge of Magpies to his bride. A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (The Hyakunin-isshu), tr. by William N. Porter, [1909], ~ Anonymous,
449:John has a narrow mind. For him, neither the beauty nor the prosperity of the city of Ephesus is worth a second glance. Ephesus was situated at the end of the Silk Road from China and the caravan route from India which used to pass through the Parthian Empire en route to the West. But the prophet is quite unaware that this particular world exists at all. Even culture means absolutely nothing to him; for example, in 18:22 he rejoices that not only song but also the sound of the flute have disappeared. The world which he knows is limited to the seven churches whose Christianity corresponded with his own; and that in but a single province of the Roman Empire, namely Asia. As to the rest, he is only familiar with the mother church in Jerusalem and the sister church in Rome.
John is utterly obsessed by Rome. The fact that this particular metropolis had bestowed both law and peace upon no less than one-half of the world never got through to him at all. He is also quite oblivious of the fact that Rome oppresses nations and exploits slaves. He could not care less about national or social considerations. He abominates the "whore on the seven hills" simply because Rome is persecuting Christians. This is precisely what the Apocalypse is all about: innocent suffering. ~ Gilles Quispel,
450:The first time Halley set eyes on Howard was at a showing of The Towering Inferno. When she heard about him, her sister had wondered aloud how much of a future you could have with someone you’d met at a disaster movie. But at that point Halley wasn’t feeling picky. She had been in Dublin just over three weeks – not so long that she didn’t still get lost all the time on the infuriating streets that kept changing their names, but enough to disabuse her of most of her illusions about the place; enough too, with the deposit and first month’s rent for her new apartment, to separate her from most of the money she’d brought, and cut the time available for soul-searching and self-finding quite drastically. That afternoon she’d spent in an Internet café, reluctantly updating her résumé; she hadn’t had a conversation since the night before, a stilted exchange with the Chinese pizza delivery boy about his native Yunan province. When she spotted the poster for The Towering Inferno, which she and Zephyr must have watched twenty times together, it was like catching sight of an old friend. She went in and for three hours warmed herself in the familiar blaze of collapsing architecture and suffocating hotel guests; she stayed in her seat until the ushers started sweeping round her feet. ~ Paul Murray,
451:1891, a journalist from the Amrita Bazar Patrika managed to rummage through the wastepaper basket at the office of Viceroy Lord Lansdowne. There he found the fragments of a torn-up letter, which with great enterprise he managed to piece together. The letter contained explosive news, revealing as it did in considerable detail the viceroy’s plans to annex the Hindu Maharaja-ruled Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir. To the consternation of the British authorities, Amrita Bazar Patrika published the letter on its front page. The cat was out of the bag: the newspaper reached the Maharaja of Kashmir, who promptly protested, set sail for London and vehemently lobbied the authorities there to honour their predecessors’ guarantees of his state’s ‘independent’ status. The Maharaja was successful, and Indian nationalists congratulated the Patrika on having thwarted the colonialists’ imperial designs. Had this exposé not taken place, Kashmir would not have remained a ‘princely state’, free to choose the country, and the terms, of its accession upon Independence in 1947; it would have been a province of British India, subject to being carved up by a careless British pen during Partition. The contours of the ‘Kashmir problem’ would have looked very different today. Nonetheless, ~ Shashi Tharoor,
452:Some equestrians were involved in the potentially lucrative business of provincial taxation, thanks to another law of Gaius Gracchus. For it was he who first arranged that tax collecting in the new province of Asia should, like many other state responsibilities, be contracted out to private companies, often owned by equestrians. These contractors were known as publicani – ‘public service providers’ or ‘publicans’, as tax collectors are called in old translations of the New Testament, confusingly to modern readers. The system was simple, demanded little manpower on the part of the Roman state and provided a model for the tax arrangements in other provinces over the following decades (and was common in other early tax raising regimes). Periodic auctions of specific taxation rights in individual provinces took place at Rome. The company that bid the highest then collected the taxes, and anything it managed to rake in beyond the bid was its profit. To put it another way, the more the publicani could screw out of the provincials, the bigger their own take – and they were not liable to prosecution under Gaius’ compensation law. Romans had always made money out of their conquests and their empire, but increasingly there were explicitly, and even organised, commercial interests at stake. ~ Mary Beard,
453:I am not a well educated man except that I have educated myself, and,
because I have educated myself, what I say will not stand up, for lack of recognized authority. This in turn leaves me free to say what I will, in the hope that, like those small forces that do not threaten empires and are thus not fully pursued, the things in which I believe can survive in some high and forgotten place until the power of empire subsides.
And although I know that few will listen to or credit this, I think we are in a lost age, in which holiness and charity have been traded for the victory and penetration of knowledge, though all the knowledge in the world has not brought us any further than where we can go without it even in the outermost halls of grace. I believe that more is to be known and apprehended from the beauty of a face than in delving, no
matter how deep, simply into how things work, no matter how marvelous that may be. The greatest substance of the world is immaterial, the province of the heart, and its study cannot be forced or reasoned. Merely to touch upon the edge of things in parsing their mechanics is to forswear their fullness, for the entry to this fullness lies not in science but in art. I cannot prove this, for it cannot be proven, but I claim, assert, and have seen it. ~ Mark Helprin,
454:Morfyd pulled out the only other chair and sat across from Annwyl. “I have heard much about your brother. It amazes me you still live.”
Annwyl began to eat the hearty stew, desperately trying not to think too hard about what kind of meat it contained.
“It amazes me as well. Daily.”
“But you saved many people. Released many from his dungeons.”
Annwyl shrugged silently as she wondered whether that was gristle she currently chewed on.
“No one else would challenge him. No man would step forward to face him,” Morfyd pushed.
“Well, he’s my brother. He used to set fire to my hair and throw knives at my head. Facing him in combat was inevitable.”
“But you lived under his roof until two years ago. We’ve all heard the stories about life on Garbhán Isle.”
“My brother had other concerns after my father died. He wanted to make sure everyone feared him. He didn’t have time to worry about his bastard sister.”
“Why didn’t he marry you off? He could have forged an alliance with one of the bigger kingdoms.” Annwyl briefly thought of Lord Hamish of Madron Province and how close she came to being his bride. The thought chilled her.
“He tried. But the nobles kept changing their minds.”
“And did you help them with that?”
She held up her thumb and forefinger, a little bit apart.
“Just a little. ~ G A Aiken,
455:You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know what--to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a
mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a
man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back
to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of
violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of hero--a political saint. But I beg to be excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you," he cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed, "that what it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through--but a man! ~ Joseph Conrad,
456:The Broken Doll
An infant is a selfish sprite;
But what of that? the sweet delight
Which from participation springs,
Is quite unknown to these young things.
We elder children then will smile
At our dear little John awhile,
And bear with him, until he see
There is a sweet felicity
In pleasing more than only one
Dear little craving selfish John.
He laughs, and thinks it a fine joke,
That he our new wax doll has broke.
Anger will never teach him better;
We will the spirit and the letter
Of courtesy to him display
By taking in a friendly way
These baby frolics; till he learn
True sport from mischief to discern.
Reproof a parent's province is:
A sister's discipline is this;
By studied kindness to effect
A little brother's young respect.
What is a doll? a fragile toy.
What is its loss? if the dear boy,
Who half perceives he's done amiss,
Retain impression of the kiss
That followed instant on his cheek;
If the kind, loving words we speak
Of 'Never mind it,' 'We forgive,'If these in his short memory live
Only, perchance, for half a dayWho minds a doll-if that should lay
The first impression in his mind
That sisters are to brothers kind?
For thus the broken doll may prove
128
Foundation to fraternal love.
~ Charles Lamb,
457:He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
458:RAYNAL, ABBE. Philosophical and Political History of the British Settlements and Trade in North America. Translated from the French. (Dependence of Great Britain upon colonies and Discussion of taxation. Colonies held as "Shackled in their Industry and Commerce," etc.) 2 Vols. Edinburgh: 1776. Record of Indentures, Individuals Bound Out as Apprentices, Servants, etc., and of German and Other Redemptioners in the ofice of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. October 3, 1771 to October 5, 1773. Before Mayors John Gibson and William Fisher. MS. Presented to American Phil. Society by Thos. P. Roberts, 1835. Reproduced in publications of Pennsylvania Germany Society, Vol. XVI, Lancaster, Pa., 1907. 321 closely printed pages averaging about twenty-two names to each double page or above 3,500 names recorded; both recently arrived and transfers recorded. Full description of terms, considerations, previous place of residence, etc. RECORD BEFORE THE MAYOR. (1745.) James Hamilton, Register. MS. contributed by George W. Neifle, Chester, Pa. Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., Vols. 30, 31 and 32. REDEMPTIONERS, REGISTRY OF THE "Book A" Germans, etc. (1785-1804); "Book C" (1817-1831). MSS. Library Historical Society of Pennsylvania. RICHARDS, ML H. "German Emigration from New York Province into Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania-German Society Proceedings, Vol. VII Lancaster: 1899. ~ Anonymous,
459:During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church [...] But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. ~ Edward Gibbon,
460:I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.

Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself. ~ Marian Wright Edelman,
461:Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect. ~ Richard Hofstadter,
462:The Prince who establishes himself in a Province whose laws and language differ from those of his own people, ought also to make himself the head and protector of his feebler neighbours, and endeavour to weaken the stronger, and must see that by no accident shall any other stranger as powerful as himself find an entrance there. For it will always happen that some such person will be called in by those of the Province who are discontented either through ambition or fear; as we see of old the Romans brought into Greece by the Aetolians, and in every other country that they entered, invited there by its inhabitants. And the usual course of things is that so soon as a formidable stranger enters a Province, all the weaker powers side with him, moved thereto by the ill-will they bear towards him who has hitherto kept them in subjection. So that in respect of these lesser powers, no trouble is needed to gain them over, for at once, together, and of their own accord, they throw in their lot with the government of the stranger. The new Prince, therefore, has only to see that they do not increase too much in strength, and with his own forces, aided by their good will, can easily subdue any who are powerful, so as to remain supreme in the Province. He who does not manage this matter well, will soon lose whatever he has gained, and while he retains it will find in it endless troubles and annoyances. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
463:Moi, moreover, made full use of his control of government machinery to obtain funds, harass the opposition and manipulate the results. The delimitation of constituencies was skewed heavily to favour Kanu strongholds in the North Eastern, Rift Valley and Coast provinces. The number of voters needed to return a single seat in opposition strongholds in some cases was four times higher than in Kanu strongholds. Whereas the North Eastern province, with 1.79 per cent of the electorate, had ten seats, Nairobi province with 8.53 per cent had only eight seats; whereas Coast province with 8.37 per cent of the electorate had twenty seats, Central province with 15.51 per cent had only twenty-five seats. The average size of a secure Kanu constituency was only 28,350 voters, while seats in opposition areas were on average 84 per cent larger with 52,169 voters. The registration process was also manipulated. The government cut short the period allowed for voter registration and delayed the issuing of identity cards needed by young potential voters, effectively disenfranchising at least 1 million people. Opposition areas were under-registered. The highest figures for registration were in the Rift Valley. The independence of the Electoral Commission was also suspect. The man Moi appointed to head it was a former judge who had been declared bankrupt two years previously and removed from the bench for improper conduct. ~ Martin Meredith,
464:Today pluralism operates as a court religion, while having less and less intellectual credibility. Betraying the plastic terminology in which its directives are framed are the additions to the “Human Rights Code” passed in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1994. The Code cites “human dignity” to justify the criminalization of “conduct or communication [that] promotes the superiority or inferiority of a person or class because of race, class, or sexual orientation.” The law has already been applied to prosecute scholars making hereditarian arguments about social behavior, and its proponents defend this muzzling as necessary for “human dignity.” But never are we told whence that dignity is derived. It is certainly not the one to which the Bible, a text that unequivocally condemns certain “sexual orientations,” refers. Nor are we speaking here about the dignity of nonengineered academic discourse, an act that the supporters of the Ontario Human Rights Code consider to be criminal if judged insensitive. Yet the pluralist advocates of human rights codes that now operate in Canada, Australia, England, and on the European continent assume there is a human dignity. Indeed this dignity is so widely and passionately accepted, or so it is asserted, that we must criminalize unkind communication. In the name of that supposedly axiomatic dignity, we are called upon to suppress scholarship and even to imprison its authors. ~ Paul Edward Gottfried,
465:By An Evolutionist
By an Evolutionist
The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And the man said, ‘Am I your debtor?’
And the Lord–‘Not yet; but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better.’
I.
If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,
Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,
I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,
Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?
II.
What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?
Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar!
OLD AGE
Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.
Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.
I.
If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute?
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne,
Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy province of the brute.
II.
I have climb’d to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past.
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire,
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last,
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As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
466:The Dai horse neighs against the bleak wind of
    Etsu,
The birds of Etsu have no love for En, in the north,
Emotion is born out of habit.
Yesterday we went out of the Wild-Goose gate,
To-day from the Dragon-Pen.*
Surprised. Desert turmoil. Sea sun.
Flying snow bewilders the barbarian heaven.
Lice swarm like ants over our accoutrements.
Mind and spirit drive on the feathery banners.
Hard fight gets no reward.
Loyalty is hard to explain.
Who will be sorry for General Rishogu,
          the swift moving,
Whose white head is lost for this province?
*NOTE by Pound: "i. e., we have been warring from one end of the empire to the other, now east, now west, on each border."
  This poem is from CATHAY (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915), the volume of Chinese poems
  The book's widely-applauded publication prompted T.S. Eliot to remark that Pound had "reinvented Chinese poetry for our time."
   CATHAY is comprised of 18 translations of various early Chinese poems, eleven poems by T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku"), and the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Seafarer," which Pound included for timeline comparison of 8th-Century English poetry with 8th-Century Chinese poetry.
   CATHAY ranks among the most pivotal publications in the entire history of translation and of modern poetry in English.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Li Bai, South-Folk in Cold Country
,
467:When their father, the High King, learnt how that Eochaid had brought about his daughters’ dishonour and death, he rallied auxiliaries to his aid, and marched into Leinster, ravaging it as he went. The province and its king were saved only by Eochald’s humiliated submission, and his binding the province to pay to the High King at Tara, every alternate year for an Indefinite period, the tremendous tribute which came to be known as the Boru or cow-tribute — five thousand cows, five thousand hogs, five thousand cloaks, five thousand vessels of brass and bronze, and five thousand ounces of silver. This crushing tribute was henceforth laid upon Leinster, by the High King of Tara from the time of Tuathal forward till the reign of Fionnachta, a period of five hundred years — but in most cases having to be lifted with steel hands. It caused more bloody history than did almost any other festering sore with which Ireland was ever afflicted. During these five centuries hardly a High King sat upon the throne of Tara, who did not have to carry the bloody sword into Leinster again and again, forcibly to hack his pound of flesh from off that province’s palpitating body. And only sometimes was the fight fought between Meath and Leinster alone. Often, through alliances, mutual sympathies, antagonisms, hopes, or dangers, half of Ireland, and sometimes all of Ireland was embroiled. So, together with much that was good Tuathal left to his country a bloody legacy.[15] ~ Seumas MacManus,
468:When we asked him why he was so dedicated to reconciliation and to being willing to make concessions to his opponents, he did not hesitate to say that it had all been due to the influence and witness of the Christian churches. This was echoed by Tokyo Sexwale, the first Premier of the leading industrial province of Gauteng, when he too came to greet our synod as it was meeting in his province. Clearly the Church had made a contribution to what was happening in our land, even though its witness and ministry had been something of a mixed bag. Presumably without that influence things might have turned out a little differently. It could also be that at a very difficult time in our struggle, when most of our leaders were in jail or in exile or proscribed in some way or other, some of the leaders in the churches were thrust into the forefront of the struggle and had thereby given the churches a particular kind of credibility—people like Allan Boesak, formerly leader of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, Frank Chikane, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Peter Storey, former head of the Methodist Church, Beyers Naudé, the most prominent Afrikaner church dissident and also a general secretary of the SACC, Denis Hurley, formerly Roman Catholic Archbishop of Durban, and leaders of other faith communities who were there where the people were hurting. Thus when they spoke about forgiveness and reconciliation they had won their spurs and would be listened to with respect. ~ Desmond Tutu,
469:La pression des nationaux-socialistes commençait peu à peu à délabrer les nerfs des milieux cléricaux et bourgeois ; ils sentaient de plus en plus l’insistance subversive de l’impatiente Allemagne, qui leur serrait aussi la vis dans le domaine de l’économie. Le gouvernement Dollfuss, qui voulait conserver une Autriche indépendante et la préserver de Hitler, cherchait de plus en plus désespérément un dernier appui. La France et l’Angleterre étaient trop éloignées et au fond trop indifférentes, la Tchécoslovaquie était encore pleine de sa vieille rancune et de sa rivalité à l’égard de Vienne, si bien qu’il ne restait que l’Italie, qui s’efforçait alors d’étendre sur l’Autriche son protectorat économique et politique, afin de s’assurer les passages des Alpes et Trieste. Pour cette protection, Mussolini réclamait toutefois un très haut prix. L’Autriche devait s’adapter aux tendances fascistes, le Parlement, et par là même la démocratie devaient être liquidés. Cela n’était possible que si l’on écartait ou privait de ses droits le parti social-démocrate, le plus fort et le mieux organisé d’Autriche. Pour le briser, il n’y avait point d’autre moyen que la force brutale. En vue de cette action terroriste, le prédécesseur de Dollfuss, Ignaz Seipel, avait déjà créé une organisation, la Heimwehr69. Vue du dehors, elle offrait à peu près la plus pitoyable des apparences, elle était formée de petits avocats de province, d’officiers licenciés, d’ingénieurs sans travail, de toutes les médiocrités déçues, qui se haïssaient furieusement ~ Stefan Zweig,
470:The Duty Of A Brother
Why on your sister do you look,
Octavius, with an eye of scorn,
As scarce her presence you could brook?Under one roof you both were born.
Why, when she gently proffers speech,
Do you ungently turn your head?
Since the same sire gave life to each;
With the same milk ye both were fed.
Such treatment to a female, though
A perfect stranger she might be,
From you would most unmanly show;
In you to her 'tis worse to see.
When any ill-bred boys offend her,
Showing their manhood by their sneers,
It is your business to defend her
'Gainst their united taunts and jeers.
And not to join the illiberal crew
In their contempt of female merit;
What's bad enough in them, from you
Is want of goodness, want of spirit.
What if your rougher out-door sports
Her less robustious spirits daunt;
And if she join not the resorts
Where you and your wild playmates haunt:
Her milder province is at home;
When your diversions have an end,
When over-toiled from play you come,
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You'll find in her an in-doors friend.
Leave not your sister to another;
As long as both of you reside
In the same house, who but her brother
Should point her books, her studies guide?
If Nature, who allots our cup,
Than her has made you stronger, wiser;
It is that you, as you grow up,
Should be her champion, her adviser.
It is the law that hand intends
Which framed diversity of sex;
The man the woman still defends,
The manly boy the girl protects.
~ Charles Lamb,
471:If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless mediocrity!
People like Mr Bubentsov do not understand anything about art and are not very interested in it, but whenever they happen to come across talentless mediocrities they are pitiless and implacable, They are ready to forgive anyone, but not Makar, that eccentric loser with manuscripts lying in his trunk. The gardener damaged the old rubber plant, and ruined lots of expensive plants, and the general does nothing and goes on spending money like water; Mr Bubentsov only got down to work once a month when he was a magistrate, then stammered, muddled up the laws, and spoke a lot of rubbish, but all this is forgiven and not noticed; but there is no way that anyone can pass by the talentless Makar, who writes passable poetry and stories, without saying something offensive. No one cares that the general's sister-in-law slaps the maids' cheeks, and swears like a trooper when she is playing cards, that the priest's wife never pays up when she loses, and the landowner Flyugin stole a a dog from the landower Sivobrazov, but the fact that Our Province returned a bad story to Makar recently is know to the whole district and has provoked mockery, long conversations and indignation, while Makar Denisych is already being referred to as old Makarka.
If someone does not write the way required, they never try to explain what is wrong, but just say:
'That bastard has gone and written another load of rubbish! ~ Anton Chekhov,
472:Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another....
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity. ~ William Shakespeare,
473:Consumption was understood as a manner of appearing, and that appearance became a staple of nineteenth-century manners. It became rude to eat heartily. It was glamorous to look sickly. “Chopin was tubercular at a time when good health was not chic,” Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in 1913. “It was fashionable to be pale and drained; Princess Belgiojoso strolled along the boulevards … pale as death in person.” Saint-Saëns was right to connect an artist, Chopin, with the most celebrated femme fatale of the period, who did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB-influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks—at a moment when aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“One can never be too rich. One can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.) Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of that distinctively modern activity, promoting the self as an image. The tubercular look had to be considered attractive once it came to be considered a mark of distinction, of breeding. “I cough continually!” Marie Bashkirtsev wrote in the once widely read Journal, which was published, after her death at twenty-four, in 1887. “But for a wonder, far from making me look ugly, this gives me an air of languor that is very becoming.” What was once the fashion for aristocratic femmes fatales and aspiring young artists became, eventually, the province of fashion as such. Twentieth-century women’s fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ~ Susan Sontag,
474:White Night
I keep thinking of times that are long past,
Of a house in the Petersburg Quarter.
You had come from the steppeland Kursk Province,
Of a none-too-rich mother the daughter.
You were nice, you had many admirers.
On that distant white night we were sitting
On your window-sill, looking from high on
On the phantom-like scene of the city.
The street-lamps, like gauze butterflies fluttering,
Had been touched by the chill of the morning.
My soft words, as I opened my heart to you,
Matched the slumbering vistas before us.
We were plighted with timid fidelity
To the very same nebulous mystery
As the cityscape spreading unendingly
Far beyond the Neva, through the distances.
In that far-off impregnable wilderness,
Wrapped in springtime twilight ethereal,
Woodland glades and dense thickets were quivering
With mad nightingales' thunderous paeans.
Crazy resonant warbling ran riot,
And the voice of this plain-looking songster
Sowed derangement, ecstatic delight
In the depth of the mesmerised copsewood.
To those parts Night, a barefoot vagabond,
Stole its way along ditches and fences.
From our window-sill, after it tagging,
Was the trail of our cooed confidences.
To the words of this colloquy echoing
In the orchards beyond the tall palings
Spreading branches of apple and cherry trees
Swathed themselves in their pearly-white raiment.
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And the trees, like so many pale phantoms,
Waved their farewell, along the road thronging,
To White Night, that all-seeing enchanter,
Who was now to North Regions withdrawing.
~ Boris Pasternak,
475:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
   Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,
476:I didn’t know what had ignited our passion, but with my hands in Narian’s hair and our mouths moving together, I was rapidly losing my ability to think. It was afternoon, and we were in my study, the door closed but not locked, and anyone, Cokyrian or Hytanican, could walk in at any moment.
Narian lifted me and set me on my desk, knocking a few papers to the floor, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I laughed through our kiss until he was forced to come up for air.
“What?” he asked, cheeks flushed, his visage happy and dazed.
“What are we doing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m enjoying it,” he said, caressing my neck with his lips.
Despite how difficult he was making it for me to form words, I stuttered out a halfhearted objection. “Narian, you realize…we’re going to be caught.”
He was breathing heavily and took a moment to answer, too busy concentrating on the hollow of my throat. “Somehow…I can’t bring myself…to care.”
Still grasping his hair, I pulled his head back, kissing him once more fully on the lips. “That’s a new attitude you’ve adopted.”
He laughed. “The High Priestess and Rava appear to know we’re in love, so even if we’re discovered, it won’t be much of a shock to the powers that be.
Despite his words, he practically leaped away from me when the door opened. I crossed my legs, giving him a sideways glare for leaving me sitting rather inappropriately on the edge of my desk, and he rubbed the back of his neck in sheepish apology.
Of course it was Rava crossing the threshold, and she took in our postures before slamming the door, her expression particularly unpleasant.
“So this is how the two of you handle the affairs of the province,” she growled. ~ Cayla Kluver,
477:The girl circled in my arm was clean and fresh, and her sleeping breath was humid against the base of my throat. Something stirred in me in response to her helplessness, and yet at the same time I resented her. I had seen too damn many of these brisk and shining girls, so lovely, so gracious, and so inflexibly ambitious. They had counted their stock in trade and burnished it and spread it right out there on the counter. It was all yours for the asking. All you had to do was give her all the rest of your life, and come through with the backyard pool, cookouts, Eames chairs, mortgage, picture windows, two cars, and all the rest of the setting they required for themselves. These gorgeous girls, with steel behind their eyes, were the highest paid whores in the history of the world. All they offered was their poised, half-educated selves, one hundred and twenty pounds of healthy, unblemished, arrogant meat, in return for the eventual occupational ulcer, the suburban coronary. Nor did they bother to sweeten the bargain with their virginity. Before you could, in your hypnoid state, slip the ring on her imperious finger, that old-fashioned prize was long gone, and even its departure celebrated many times, on house parties and ski weekends, in becalmed sailboats and on cruise ships. This acknowledged and excused promiscuity was, in fact, to her advantage. Having learned her way through the jungly province of sex, she was less likely to be bedazzled by body hunger to the extent that she might make a bad match with an unpromising young man. Her decks were efficiently cleared, guns rolled out, fuses alight, cannonballs stacked, all sails set. She stood on the bridge, braced and ready, scanning the horizon with eyes as cold as winter pebbles. One ~ John D MacDonald,
478:—a slave was owned by a Continental Army soldier who'd been killed in the French and Indian War. The slave looked after the soldier's widow. He did everything, from dawn to dark didn't stop doing what needed to be done. He chopped and hauled the wood, gathered the crops, excavated and built a cabbage house and stowed the cabbages there, stored the pumpkins, buried the apples, turnips, and potatoes in the ground for winter, stacked the rye and wheat in the barn, slaughtered the pig, salted the pork, slaughtered the cow and corned the beef, until one day the widow married him and they had three sons. And those sons married Gouldtown girls whose families reached back to the settlement's origins in the 1600s, families that by the Revolution were all intermarried and thickly intermingled. One or another or all of them, she said, were descendants of the Indian from the large Lenape settlement at Indian Fields who married a Swede—locally Swedes and Finns had superseded the original Dutch settlers—and who had five children with her; one or another or all were descendants of the two mulatto brothers brought from the West Indies on a trading ship that sailed up the river from Greenwich to Bridgeton, where they were indentured to the landowners who had paid their passage and who themselves later paid the passage of two Dutch sisters to come from Holland to become their wives; one or another or all were descendants of the granddaughter of John Fenwick, an English baronet's son, a cavalry officer in Cromwell's Commonwealth army and a member of the Society of Friends who died in New Jersey not that many years after New Cesarea (the province lying between the Hudson and the Delaware that was deeded by the brother of the king of England to two English proprietors) became New Jersey. ~ Philip Roth,
479:CHAPTER XXVI.—A new Prince in a City or Province of which he has taken Possession, ought to make Everything new. Whosoever becomes prince of a city or State, more especially if his position be so insecure that he cannot resort to constitutional government either in the form of a republic or a monarchy, will find that the best way to preserve his princedom is to renew the whole institutions of that State; that is to say, to create new magistracies with new names, confer new powers, and employ new men, and like David when he became king, exalt the humble and depress the great, "filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away." Moreover, he must pull down existing towns and rebuild them, removing their inhabitants from one place to another; and, in short, leave nothing in the country as he found it; so that there shall be neither rank, nor condition, nor honour, nor wealth which its possessor can refer to any but to him. And he must take example from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, who by means such as these, from being a petty prince became monarch of all Greece; and of whom it was written that he shifted men from province to province as a shepherd moves his flocks from one pasture to another. These indeed are most cruel expedients, contrary not merely to every Christian, but to every civilized rule of conduct, and such as every man should shun, choosing rather to lead a private life than to be a king on terms so hurtful to mankind. But he who will not keep to the fair path of virtue, must to maintain himself enter this path of evil. Men, however, not knowing how to be wholly good or wholly bad, choose for themselves certain middle ways, which of all others are the most pernicious, as shall be shown by an instance in the following Chapter. ~ Niccol Machiavelli,
480:The Iron Bridge
I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.
But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat and reflective this morning,
sky-blue and streaked with high clouds,
and the more I look at the water,
which is like a talking picture,
the more I think of 1902
when workmen in shirts and caps
riveted this iron bridge together
across a thin channel joining two lakes
where wildflowers blow along the shore now
and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.
1902--my mother was so tiny
she could have fit into one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,
the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.
And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and while I wait for him to pop up,
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I picture him flying underwater with his strange wings,
as I picture you, my tiny mother,
who disappeared last year,
flying somewhere with your strange wings,
your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,
kicking deeper down into a lake
with no end or name, some boundless province of water.
~ Billy Collins,
481:Nothing consumed more of the Department’s attention than the press. “Never again,” President Jiang Zemin vowed after Tiananmen, “would China’s newspapers, radio, and television be permitted to become a battle-front for bourgeois liberalism.” China, Jiang said, would never succumb to what he called “so-called glasnost.” Journalists were still expected to “sing as one voice,” and the Department would help them do so by issuing a vast and evolving list of words that must and must not appear in the news. Some rules never changed: Any mention of Taiwan’s laws was to refer to them as “so-called laws,” while China’s political system was so unique that reporters were never to type the phrase “according to international practice” when drawing comparisons to Beijing. When it came to the economy, they were not to dwell on bad news during the holidays, or on issues that the government classified as “unsolvable,” such as the fragility of Chinese banks or the political influence of the wealthy. The most ardently forbidden subject was Tiananmen itself; no mention of the 1989 protests or the bloodshed appear in Chinese textbooks; when the government discusses the events of that year, it describes them as “chaos” or “turmoil” organized by a handful of “black hands.” Journalists had little choice but to heed those instructions to such a degree that, even as China became more diverse and clamorous, the world of the news was an oasis of calm—a realm of breathtaking sameness. Newspapers on opposite sides of the country often carried identical headlines, in identical font. In May 2008, when a powerful earthquake struck the province of Sichuan, papers across the country proclaimed in near-perfect unison that the earthquake had “tugged at the heartstrings of the Chinese Communist Party.” The next morning, I rounded up the local papers and marveled at their consistency. ~ Evan Osnos,
482:Takes them less than a week to run the Line thro’ somebody’s House. About a mile and a half west of the Twelve-Mile Arc, twenty-four Chains beyond Little Christiana Creek, on Wednesday, April 10th, the Field-Book reports, “At 3 Miles 49 Chains, went through Mr. Price’s House.” “Just took a wild guess,” Mrs. Price quite amiable, “where we’d build it,— not as if my Husband’s a Surveyor or anything. Which side’s to be Pennsylvania, by the way?” A mischievous glint in her eyes that Barnes, Farlow, Moses McClean and others will later all recall. Mr. Price is in Town, in search of Partners for a Land Venture. “Would you Gentlemen mind coming in the House and showing me just where your Line does Run?” Mason and Dixon, already feeling awkward about it, oblige, Dixon up on the Roof with a long Plumb-line, Mason a-squint at the Snout of the Instrument. Mrs. Price meantime fills her Table with plates of sour-cherry fritters, Neat’s-Tongue Pies, a gigantick Indian Pudding, pitchers a-slosh with home-made Cider,— then producing some new-hackl’d Streaks of Hemp, and laying them down in a Right Line according to the Surveyors’ advice,— fixing them here and there with Tacks, across the room, up the stairs, straight down the middle of the Bed, of course, . . . which is about when Mr. Rhys Price happens to return from his Business in town, to find merry Axmen lounging beneath his Sassafras tree, Strange Stock mingling with his own and watering out of his Branch, his house invaded by Surveyors, and his wife giving away the Larder and waving her Tankard about, crying, “Husband, what Province were we married in? Ha! see him gape, for he cannot remember. ’Twas in Pennsylvania, my Tortoise. But never in Maryland. Hey? So from now on, when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority,— isn’t that right, Gents?” “Ask the Rev,” they reply together, ~ Thomas Pynchon,
483:The increases in productivity brought about by Ford’s innovation were startling and revolutionized not just the automobile industry but virtually every industry serving a mass market. Introduction of “Fordist” mass production techniques became something of a fad outside America: German industry went through a period of “rationalization” in the mid-1920s as manufacturers sought to import the most “advanced” American organizational techniques.12 It was the Soviet Union’s misfortune that Lenin and Stalin came of age in this period, because these Bolshevik leaders associated industrial modernity with large-scale mass production tout court. Their view that bigger necessarily meant better ultimately left the Soviet Union, at the end of the communist period, with a horrendously overconcentrated and inefficient industrial infrastructure—a Fordism on steroids in a period when the Fordist model had ceased to be relevant. The new form of mass production associated with Henry Ford also had its own ideologist: Frederick W. Taylor, whose book The Principles of Scientific Management came to be regarded as the bible for the new industrial age.13 Taylor, an industrial engineer, was one of the first proponents of time-and-motion studies that sought to maximize labor efficiency on the factory floor. He tried to codify the “laws” of mass production by recommending a very high degree of specialization that deliberately avoided the need for individual assembly line workers to demonstrate initiative, judgment, or even skill. Maintenance of the assembly line and its fine-tuning was given to a separate maintenance department, and the controlling intelligence behind the design of the line itself was the province of white-collar engineering and planning departments. Worker efficiency was based on a strict carrot-and-stick approach: productive workers were paid a higher piece rate than less productive ones. In typical American fashion, Taylor hid ~ Francis Fukuyama,
484:But if the case be thus with the Latin versions, how great are the contempt and profanation shown in the French, German, Polish and other languages! And yet here is one of the most successful artifices adopted by the enemy of Christianity and of unity in our age, to attract the people. He knew the curiosity of men, and how much one esteems one’s own judgment, and therefore he has induced his sectaries to translate the Holy Scriptures, every one into the tongue of the province where he finds himself placed, and to maintain this unheard-of opinion, that every one is capable of understanding the Scriptures, that all should read them, and that the public offices should be celebrated and sung in the vulgar tongue of each district. But who sees not the artifice? There is nothing in the world which, passing through many hands, does not change and lose it first luster: wine which has been often poured out and poured back loses its freshness and strength, wax when handled changes its color, coins lose their stamp. Be sure also that Holy Scripture, passing through so many translators, in so many versions and reversions, cannot but be altered. And if in the Latin versions there is such a variety of opinion among these turners of Scripture, how much more in their vernacular and mother-tongue editions, which not every one is able to check or to criticize? It gives a very great license to translators to know that they will only be tested by those of their own province. Every district has not such clear seeing eyes as France and Germany. “Are we sure,” says a learned profane writer,927 “that in the Basque provinces and in Brittany there are persons of sufficient judgment to give authority to this translation made into their tongue; the universal Church has no more arduous decision to give;” it is Satan’s plan for corrupting the integrity of this holy Testament. He well knows the result of disturbing and poisoning the source; it is at once to spoil all that comes after. ~ Francis de Sales,
485:But if the case be thus with the Latin versions, how great are the contempt and profanation shown in the French, German, Polish and other languages! And yet here is one of the most successful artifices adopted by the enemy of Christianity and of unity in our age, to attract the people. He knew the curiosity of men, and how much one esteems one’s own judgment, and therefore he has induced his sectaries to translate the Holy Scriptures, every one into the tongue of the province where he finds himself placed, and to maintain this unheard-of opinion, that every one is capable of understanding the Scriptures, that all should read them, and that the public offices should be celebrated and sung in the vulgar tongue of each district. But who sees not the artifice? There is nothing in the world which, passing through many hands, does not change and lose it first luster: wine which has been often poured out and poured back loses its freshness and strength, wax when handled changes its color, coins lose their stamp. Be sure also that Holy Scripture, passing through so many translators, in so many versions and reversions, cannot but be altered. And if in the Latin versions there is such a variety of opinion among these turners of Scripture, how much more in their vernacular and mother-tongue editions, which not every one is able to check or to criticize? It gives a very great license to translators to know that they will only be tested by those of their own province. Every district has not such clear seeing eyes as France and Germany. “Are we sure,” says a learned profane writer,927 “that in the Basque provinces and in Brittany there are persons of sufficient judgment to give authority to this translation made into their tongue; the universal Church has no more arduous decision to give;” it is Satan’s plan for corrupting the integrity of this holy Testament. He well knows the result of disturbing and poisoning the source; it is at once to spoil all that comes after. ~ Saint Francis de Sales,
486:The children and young people upon whom came this outpouring of the Holy Spirit and through whom came these visions and revelations were members of the Adullam Rescue Mission in Yunnanfu, Yunnan Province, China. For the most part, these children had been beggars in the streets of the city. In some cases they were poor children with one or both parents dead and had been brought to the Home. There were also some prodigals who had run away from their homes in more distant parts of this or adjoining provinces. But from whatever source they came, these children, mostly boys ranging in ages from six to eighteen, had come to us without previous training in morals and without education. Begging is a sort of "gang" system in which stealing is a profitable part. The morals are what would be expected of a "gang" in a godless land. The Bible is carefully and daily taught in the Adullam Home, and the gospel is constantly preached. Since the children coming into the home have always been open to the teachings given, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded below, some of them were doubtless converted, while many had a very good knowledge of the main themes of the Bible. All who received the Holy Spirit knew enough to believe in one God and to trust in the blood of Christ for salvation. They also prayed for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They sought Christ. We did not see any one seeking visions or any of the manifestations that were received day by day as all single heartedly prayed and praised the Lord Jesus. He alone was sought and magnified throughout all the weeks of the Spirit's outpouring. In this visitation from the Lord all were treated impartially. The oldest and the youngest, the first arrivals and the latest comers, the best and the worst, all sitting together around their common Father's table were alike treated to His heavenly bounties. This giving of the Promised Spirit was clearly a love gift of grace "apart from works" or personal merit. It was not something that was worked ~ Anonymous,
487:To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before.
[excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children] ~ Rod Serling,
488:The Name "Arthur" The etymology of the Welsh name Arthur is uncertain, though most scholars favour either a derivation from the Roman gens name Artorius (ultimately of Messapic or Etruscan origin), or a native Brittonic compound based on the root *arto- "bear" (which became arth in Medieval and Modern Welsh). Similar "bear" names appear throughout the Celtic-speaking world. Gildas does not give the name Arthur but he does mention a British king Cuneglasus who had been "charioteer to the bear". Those that favor a mythological origin for Arthur point out that a Gaulish bear goddess Artio is attested, but as yet no certain examples of Celtic male bear gods have been detected. John Morris argues that the appearance of the name Arthur, as applied to the Scottish, Welsh and Pennine "Arthurs", and the lack of the name at any time earlier, suggests that in the early 6th century the name became popular amongst the indigenous British for a short time. He proposes that all of these occurrences were due to the importance of another Arthur, who may have ruled temporarily as Emperor of Britain. He suggests on the basis of archaeology that a period of Saxon advance was halted and turned back, before resuming again in the 570s. Morris also suggests that the Roman Camulodunum, modern Colchester, and capital of the Roman province of Britannia, is the origin of the name "Camelot". The name Artúr is frequently attested in southern Scotland and northern England in the 7th and 8th centuries. For example, Artúr mac Conaing, who may have been named after his uncle Artúr mac Áedáin. Artúr son of Bicoir Britone, was another 'Arthur' reported in this period, who slew Morgan mac Fiachna of Ulster in 620/625 in Kintyre. A man named Feradach, apparently the grandson of an 'Artuir', was a signatory at the synod that enacted the Law of Adomnan in 697. Arthur ap Pedr was a prince in Dyfed, born around 570–580. Given the popularity of this name at the time, it is likely that others were named for a figure who was already established in folklore by that time. ~ Roger Lancelyn Green,
489:IN T H E last twenty-five years I have had a lot of people staying with me and sometimes I am tempted to write an essay on guests. There are the guests who never shut a door after them and never turn out the light when they leave their room. There are the guests who throw themselves on their bed in muddy boots to have a nap after lunch, so that the counterpane has to be cleaned on their departure. There are the guests who smoke in bed and burn holes in your sheets. There are the guests who are on a regime and have to have special food cooked for them and there are the guests who wait till their glass is filled with a vintage claret and then say: "I won't have any, thank you." There are the guests who never put back a book in the place from which they took it and there are the guests who take away a volume from a set and never return it. There are the guests who borrow money from you when they are leaving and do not pay it back. There are the guests who can never be alone for a minute and there are the guests who are seized with a desire to talk the moment they see you glancing at a paper. There are the guests who, wherever they are, want to be somewhere else and there are the guests who want to be doing something from the time they get up in the morning till the time they go to bed at night. There are the guests who treat you as though they were SOME NOVELISTS I HAVE KNOWN 459 gauleiters in a conquered province. There are the guests who bring three weeks* laundry with them to have washed at your expense and there are the guests who send their clothes to the cleaners and leave you to pay the bill. There are the guests who telephone to London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and New York, and never think of inquiring how much it costs. There are the guests who take all they can get and offer nothing in return. There are also the guests who are happy just to be with you, who seek to please, who have resources of their own, who amuse you, whose conversation is delightful, whose interests are varied, who exhilarate and excite you, who in short give you far more than you ~ Anonymous,
490:We live in an extraordinary age. These are times of stunning changes in social organization, economic well-being, moral and ethical precepts, philosophical and religious perspectives, and human self-knowledge, as well as in our understanding of that vast universe in which we are imbedded like a grain of sand in a cosmic ocean. As long as there have been human beings, we have posed the deep and fundamental questions, which evoke wonder and stir us into at least a tentative and trembling awareness, questions on the origins of consciousness; life on our planet; the beginnings of the Earth; the formation of the Sun; the possibility of intelligent beings somewhere up there in the depths of the sky; as well as, the grandest inquiry of all - on the advent, nature and ultimate destiny of the universe. For all but the last instant of human history these issues have been the exclusive province of philosophers and poets, shamans and theologians. The diverse and mutually contradictory answers offered demonstrate that few of the proposed solutions have been correct. But today, as a result of knowledge painfully extracted from nature, through generations of careful thinking, observing, and experimenting, we are on the verge of glimpsing at least preliminary answers to many of these questions.

...If we do not destroy ourselves, most of us will be around for the answers. Had we been born fifty years earlier, we could have wondered, pondered, speculated about these issues, but we could have done nothing about them. Had we been born fifty years later, the answers would, I think, already have been in. Our children will have been taught the answers before most of them will have had the opportunity to even formulate the questions. By far the most exciting, satisfying and exhilarating time to be alive is the time in which we pass from ignorance to knowledge on these fundamental issues; the age where we begin in wonder and end in understanding. In all of the four-billion-year history of the human family, there is only one generation priveleged to live through that unique transitional moment: that generation is ours. ~ Carl Sagan,
491:Grand Provost.”
Rava’s voice, clear and crisp, startled me. She stood to my left, in the doorway of her office, and I had the impression she had been watching for me.
“Come in for a moment.”
The Cokyrian second-in-command retreated into her alcove, and I followed, closing the door as she went to stand behind her desk.
“How much power do you think he has?” she asked contemptuously, straightening her black tunic with a hard tug on the bottom.
“I don’t understand.” I tenaciously met her eyes, despite the dread creeping along my spine. It was obvious she had overheard my conversation with Narian.
“I understand the influence you have all too well. The commander will do exactly what you want, bend to your will. That alone should prove to you that strength is a woman’s endowment, not a man’s.”
She was testing me, taunting me, and I resented her for it.
“Are you going to continue with cryptic comments or are you going to say what you mean?” I demanded, rallying to take the offensive.
“You may love Nantilam’s little prince, but you’re blind to the fact that he is an instrument. He has been from the beginning and he always will be, until she has no further use for him. Nantilam cares for him and would rather see him alive than dead, but she will not listen to him, or to words he bears from you. I have her ear. She will listen only to the most powerful woman n this godforsaken province, and that woman is me.”
She was baiting me, successfully; I was on the verge of losing my temper. Knowing that would be a mistake, I let the silence between us lengthen, taking several slow and steady breaths. Then I gave her a small smile.
“The High Priestess made me Grand Provost because she wanted a woman in control who would understand the people. You do not understand my people, Rava. You keep them miserable because you fear them. And everything else aside, that makes you weak.”
Though Rava glowered at me, I was done with her, and coolly left her office. I could almost feel the slow tick of time, counting down to Narian’s return. He would prove one of us right and one of us wrong. ~ Cayla Kluver,
492:IN T H E last twenty-five years I have had a lot of people staying with me and sometimes I am tempted to write an essay on guests. There are the guests who never shut a door after them and never turn out the light when they leave their room. There are the guests who throw themselves on their bed in muddy boots to have a nap after lunch, so that the counterpane has to be cleaned on their departure. There are the guests who smoke in bed and burn holes in your sheets. There are the guests who are on a regime and have to have special food cooked for them and there are the guests who wait till their glass is filled with a vintage claret and then say: "I won't have any, thank you." There are the guests who never put back a book in the place from which they took it and there are the guests who take away a volume from a set and never return it. There are the guests who borrow money from you when they are leaving and do not pay it back. There are the guests who can never be alone for a minute and there are the guests who are seized with a desire to talk the moment they see you glancing at a paper. There are the guests who, wherever they are, want to be somewhere else and there are the guests who want to be doing something from the time they get up in the morning till the time they go to bed at night. There are the guests who treat you as though they were SOME NOVELISTS I HAVE KNOWN 459 gauleiters in a conquered province. There are the guests who bring three weeks* laundry with them to have washed at your expense and there are the guests who send their clothes to the cleaners and leave you to pay the bill. There are the guests who telephone to London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and New York, and never think of inquiring how much it costs. There are the guests who take all they can get and offer nothing in return. There are also the guests who are happy just to be with you, who seek to please, who have resources of their own, who amuse you, whose conversation is delightful, whose interests are varied, who exhilarate and excite you, who in short give you far more than you can ever hope to give them and whose visits are only too brief. ~ Anonymous,
493:New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa ~ John Steinbeck,
494:Ben Apfelgarten
There was a certain gentleman, Ben Apfelgarten called,
Who lived way off in Germany a many years ago,
And he was very fortunate in being very bald
And so was very happy he was so.
He warbled all the day
Such songs as only they
Who are very, very circumspect and very happy may;
The people wondered why,
As the years went gliding by,
They never heard him once complain or even heave a sigh!
The women of the province fell in love with genial Ben,
Till (may be you can fancy it) the dickens was to pay
Among the callow students and the sober-minded men-With the women-folk a-cuttin' up that way!
Why, they gave him turbans red
To adorn his hairless head,
And knitted jaunty nightcaps to protect him when abed!
In vain the rest demurred-Not a single chiding word
Those ladies deigned to tolerate--remonstrance was absurd!
Things finally got into such a very dreadful way
That the others (oh, how artful) formed the politic design
To send him to the reichstag; so, one dull November day,
They elected him a member from the Rhine!
Then the other members said:
"Gott im Himmel! what a head!"
But they marvelled when his speeches they listened to or read;
And presently they cried:
"There must be heaps inside
Of the smooth and shiny cranium his constituents deride!"
Well, when at last he up 'nd died--long past his ninetieth year-The strangest and the most lugubrious funeral he had,
For women came in multitudes to weep upon his bier-The men all wond'ring why on earth the women had gone mad!
And this wonderment increased
Till the sympathetic priest
70
Inquired of those same ladies: "Why this fuss about deceased?"
Whereupon were they appalled,
For, as one, those women squalled:
"We doted on deceased for being bald--bald--bald!"
He was bald because his genius burnt that shock of hair away
Which, elsewise, clogs one's keenness and activity of mind;
And (barring present company, of course) I'm free to say
That, after all, it's intellect that captures womankind.
At any rate, since then
(With a precedent in Ben),
The women-folk have been in love with us bald-headed men!
~ Eugene Field,
495:This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living organisms; then life rose from the subconscience of the plant into conscious animal formations and through them to the thinking life of man. Mind founded in life developed intellect, developed its types of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error till it reached the spiritual perception and illumination and now can see as in a glass dimly the possibility of supermind and a truthconscious existence. In this inevitable ascent the mind of Light is a gradation, an inevitable stage. As an evolving principle it will mark a stage in the human ascent and evolve a new type of human being; this development must carry in it an ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life.
   In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, Mind of Light, 587,
496:On this Thirtieth Day of May in the First Year of Cokyrian dominance over the Province of Hytanica, the following regulations shall be put into practice in order to assist our gracious Grand Provost in her effort to welcome Cokyri into our lands--and to help ensure the enemy does not bungle the first victory it has managed in over a century.
Regulation One. All Hytanican citizens must be willing to provide aid to aimlessly wandering Cokyrian soldiers who cannot on their honor grasp that the road leading back to the city is the very same road that led them away.
Regulation Two. It is strongly recommended that farmers hide their livestock, lest the men of our host empire become confused and attempt to mate with them.
Regulation Three. As per negotiated arrangements, crops grown on Hytanican soil will be divided with fifty percent belonging to Cokyri, and seventy-five percent remaining with the citizens of the province; Hytanicans will be bound by law to wait patiently while the Cokyrians attempt to sort the baffling deficiency in their calculations.
Regulation Four. The Cokyrian envoys assigned to manage the planting and farming effort will also require Hytanican patience while they slowly but surely learn what is a crop and what is a weed, as well as left from right.
Regulation Five. Though the Province Wall is a Cokyrian endeavor, it would be polite and understanding of Hytanicans to remind the enemy of the correct side on which to be standing when the final stone is laid, so no unfortunates may find themselves trapped outside with no way in.
Regulation Six. When at long last foreign trade is allowed to resume, Hytanicans should strive to empathize with the reluctance of neighboring kingdoms to enter our lands, for Cokyri’s stench is sure to deter even the migrating birds.
Regulation Seven. For what little trade and business we do manage in spite of the odor, the imposed ten percent tax may be paid in coins, sweets or shiny objects.
Regulation Eight. It is regrettably prohibited for Hytanicans to throw jeers at Cokyrian soldiers, for fear that any man harried may cry, and the women may spit.
Regulation Nine. In case of an encounter with Cokyrian dignitaries, the boy-invader and the honorable High Priestess included, let it be known that the proper way in which to greet them is with an ass-backward bow.
~ Cayla Kluver,
497:Narian was once more making preparations for a journey to Cokyri; as official liaison, he frequently traveled between the mother empire and the province. Knowing that the trip was long and arduous I didn’t expect him to come to me that night, and I didn’t bother to light a lantern when I adjourned to my bedroom. Instead, I relied on memory and moonlight to guide me to my dressing table.
I unpinned my dark brown hair--it was not yet long enough to tie back, but letting it merely hang was impractical--and reached behind to tug at the laces of my dress. They were difficult to loosen without the aid of my personal maid, Sahdienne, who had been among those servants rehired for the sake of the economy. I sighed in frustration and stood, about to send for her when I felt warm hands rest on my waist from behind. My irritation dispersed as I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against a sturdy chest, breathing in his presence. Narian had come.
He swept my hair off my neck, his fingers giving me pleasant chills, then took over what I had been attempting. My dress rustled to the floor, leaving me standing in my chemise, and he sweetly and tenderly kissed my neck and shoulders. He pushed my shift down my arms, his mouth following, and I leaned against him, my legs weak, keenly attuned to every brush of his lips against my flushed skin.
My heart beat faster, and I twisted to face him, kissing him deeply, hardly aware that he had begun to walk backward, leading me toward the bed. We fell together upon the mattress, not entirely gracefully, but neither of us thinking about form. He rolled on top of me, his breath quickening along with mine, and it was only when he took hold of my bunched up chemise that my brain snapped into action. I placed my hands on his shoulders and shook my head, and he flopped flat on his back beside me with a groan.
After a moment to regain his composure, he propped himself up on his elbow to look down at me, desire still lurking in his mesmerizing eyes.
“Alera? Are you…all right?”
“Narian, we can’t do this.” I was more than a little shocked at the both of us.
His brow furrowed, and he ran a hand through his disheveled hair. He took a breath and opened his mouth, then stopped, apparently unable to decide exactly what he wanted to say.
“Why not?”
Because,” I said, pushing myself upright. “We’re not married! ~ Cayla Kluver,
498:When he had ate his fill, and proceeded from the urgent first cup and necessary second to the voluntary third which might be toyed with at leisure, without any particular outcry seeming to suggest he should be on his guard, he leant back, spread the city’s news before him, and, by glances between the items, took a longer survey of the room. Session of the Common Council. Vinegars, Malts, and Spirituous Liquors, Available on Best Terms. Had he been on familiar ground, he would have been able to tell at a glance what particular group of citizens in the great empire of coffee this house aspired to serve: whether it was the place for poetry or gluttony, philosophy or marine insurance, the Indies trade or the meat-porters’ burial club. Ships Landing. Ships Departed. Long Island Estate of Mr De Kyper, with Standing Timber, to be Sold at Auction. But the prints on the yellowed walls were a mixture. Some maps, some satires, some ballads, some bawdy, alongside the inevitable picture of the King: pop-eyed George reigning over a lukewarm graphical gruel, neither one thing nor t’other. Albany Letter, Relating to the Behaviour of the Mohawks. Sermon, Upon the Dedication of the Monument to the Late Revd. Vesey. Leases to be Let: Bouwerij, Out Ward, Environs of Rutgers’ Farm. And the company? River Cargos Landed. Escaped Negro Wench: Reward Offered. – All he could glean was an impression generally businesslike, perhaps intersown with law. Dramatic Rendition of the Classics, to be Performed by the Celebrated Mrs Tomlinson. Poem, ‘Hail Liberty, Sweet Succor of a Briton’s Breast’, Offered by ‘Urbanus’ on the Occasion of His Majesty’s Birthday. Over there there were maps on the table, and a contract a-signing; and a ring of men in merchants’ buff-and-grey quizzing one in advocate’s black-and-bands. But some of the clients had the wind-scoured countenance of mariners, and some were boys joshing one another. Proceedings of the Court of Judicature of the Province of New-York. Poor Law Assessment. Carriage Rates. Principal Goods at Mart, Prices Current. Here he pulled out a printed paper of his own from an inner pocket, and made comparison of certain figures, running his left and right forefingers down the columns together. Telescopes and Spy-Glasses Ground. Regimental Orders. Dinner of the Hungarian Club. Perhaps there were simply too few temples here to coffee, for them to specialise as he was used. ~ Francis Spufford,
499:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.

   No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.

   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,
500:Cia Dope Calypso
In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way
First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man
Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Mai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief's brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA
The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. aid
The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA
He got so sloppy and peddled so loose
He busted himself and cooked his own goose
Took the reward for the opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold
Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA
14
Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood
Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA
The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. intelligence came in to Laos
Mary Azarian/Matt Wuerker I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosavan
All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA
And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars
It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA
All through the Sixties the dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshall Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting comfiture for President Thieu
All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA
Operation Haylift Offisir Wm Colby
Saw Marshall Ky fly opium Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of Dirty Tricks
"Hitch-hiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix
Subsidizing the traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA
15
~ Allen Ginsberg,
501:Là in Kakania, in quello Stato incompreso, che ormai non esiste più e che in tante cose fu un modello ingiustamente sottovalutato, c’era anche velocità, ma non troppa. Quando si era all’estero e si ripensava a questo paese, sorgeva davanti agli occhi il ricordo di quelle sue strade bianche, larghe e comode, risalenti al tempo delle marce a piedi e dei postali, strade che si diramavano in tutte le direzioni, come le vie di trasmissione del regolamento, come i nastri del traliccio chiaro nelle uniformi dei soldati, e che cingevano le province con il braccio bianco-cartaceo dell’amministrazione. E che province! Ghiacciai e mari, il Carso e i campi di grano della Boemia, notti sull’Adriatico percorse dallo stridio inquieto dei grilli, e villaggi slovacchi dove il fumo usciva dai camini come da narici camuse e il villaggio se ne stava rannicchiato tra due collinette, quasi che la terra avesse dischiuso un poco le labbra per riscaldare il suo bambino. Naturalmente su quelle strade si incontravano anche automobili; ma non troppe. Ci si preparava anche là alla conquista dell’aria; ma senza eccedere in solerzia. Di quando in quando si faceva partire una nave per il Sudamerica o per l’Estremo Oriente; ma non troppo spesso. Non si ambiva al dominio del mondo, né dal punto di vista economico né da quello politico; si era al centro dell’Europa, dove si intersecano gli antichi assi del mondo; le parole “colonia” e “oltremare” risuonavano ancora come un qualcosa di remoto e di non sperimentato. Si viveva nel lusso, ma di certo non con l’estrema raffinatezza dei francesi. Si praticava lo sport, ma non da forsennati come gli anglosassoni. Si spendevano somme ingenti per l’esercito, ma solo quel tanto che bastava per esser certi di rimanere la penultima delle grandi potenze. Anche la capitale, pur essendo una delle città più grandi del mondo, era un po’ più piccola di tutte le altre, ma notevolmente più grande di quanto lo siano di solito le grandi città. E l’amministrazione di questo paese, illuminata, discreta, volta a smussare prudentemente tutti gli spigoli, era nelle mani della migliore burocrazia d’Europa, alla quale si poteva rimproverare un solo difetto: ritenere saccenteria e presunzione il genio e la geniale intraprendenza dei privati che non fossero legittimati a ciò dal privilegio di alti natali o di un incarico statale. E d’altronde, c’è forse qualcuno cui piaccia farsi comandare da chi non è autorizzato? In Kakania, poi, un genio passava sempre per uno sciocco, ma a differenza di quel che capitava dalle altre parti, non succedeva mai che uno sciocco passasse per un genio. ~ Robert Musil,
502:Message From Abroad
To Andrew Lytle
Paris, November 1929
Their faces are bony and sharp but very red, although
their ancestors nearly two hundred years have dwelt
by the miasmal banks of tidewaters where malarial fever
makes men gaunt and dosing with quinine shakes them
as with a palsy. Traveller to America (1799).
What years of the other times, what centuries
Broken, divided up and claimed? A few
Here and there to the taste, in vigilance
Ceaseless, but now a little stale, to keep us
Fearless, not worried as the hare scurrying
Without memory . . .
Provence,
The Renascence, the age of Pericles, each
A broad, rich-carpeted stair to pride
With manhood now the cost-they're easy to follow
For the ways taken are all notorious,
Lettered, sculptured, and rhymed;
Those others, incuriously complete, lost,
Not by poetry and statues timed,
Shattered by sunlight and the impartial sleet.
What years . . . What centuries . . .
Now only
The bent eaves and the windows cracked,
The thin grass picked by the wind,
Heaved by the mole; the hollow pine that
Screams in the latest storm-these,
These emblems of twilight have we seen at length,
And the man red-faced and tall seen, leaning
In the day of his strength
Not as a pine, but the stiff form
Against the west pillar,
Hearing the ox-cart in the street-
41
His shadow gliding, a long nigger
Gliding at his feet.
II
Wanderers to the east, wanderers west:
I followed the cold northern track,
The sleet sprinkled the sea;
The dim foam mounted
The night, the ship mounted
The depths of nightHow absolute the sea!
With dawn came the gull to the crest,
Stared at the spray, fell asleep
Over the picked bones, the white face
Of the leaning man drowned deep;
The red-faced man, ceased wandering,
Never came to the boulevards
Nor covertly spat in the sawdust
Sunk in his collar
Shuffling the cards;
The man with the red face, the stiff back,
I cannot see in the rainfall
Down Saint-Michel by the quays,
At the corner the wind speaking
Destiny, the four ways.
III
I cannot see you
The incorruptibles,
Yours was a secret fate,
The stiff-backed liars, the dupes:
The universal blue
Of heaven rots,
Your anger is out of dateWhat did you say mornings?
Evenings, what?
The bent eaves
On the cracked house,
That ghost of a hound. . . .
42
The man red-faced and tall
Will cast no shadow
From the province of the drowned.
~ Allen Tate,
503:I choose you,” I said, leaning toward him, and his mouth met mine with such ardor that my senses reeled all over again. He lay down with me on top of him, and it took all my strength of will to pull away.
“But we have to be married.”
He studied me, concluding that I truly believed in what I said.
“Then let’s go get married.”
“Now?” I blurted, eyes wide.
“Is now a problem?”
“The banns need to be published six weeks in advance of the wedding!”
“Banns?” He rolled me sideways off him so that we lay facing each other, his voice dubious.
“The banns announce our betrothal,” I elaborated, hoping not to dampen his enthusiasm or his readiness to tolerate Hytanican tradition. “They give time for anyone who might have an objection to our union to come forward.”
I recognized the problem even as the words left my mouth, but he was first to say it.
“And when the entire province objects, what then?” He pushed himself into a sitting position, then took my hands and gently pulled me up beside him. “Alera, how important is this custom to you?”
I peered out the window at the stars while I gave the matter serious thought, pondering Narian’s way of life and if I could reconcile myself to it. I wanted to, but part of me was afraid of it--of going against the doctrines I had been raised to follow. I believed strongly in my kingdom’s religion. I also knew I had to uphold the traditions my people valued if they were to believe in me and accept me as their leader. If I were to switch now to Cokyrian custom, their trust would be betrayed.
“It’s very important,” I ultimately answered, not looking at him.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, cupping my chin to raise my eyes to his. “I wouldn’t deserve you if I didn’t respect your beliefs.”
He gave me a light kiss, signifying that things were resolved between us, although the real problem remained.
“I don’t know when the people will accept you, but I cannot go behind their backs. It may be a long wait.”
Narian’s expression was resigned. “So we wait.”
His attitude lifted my spirits, and a splendid idea struck me. “Our priests are sworn to keep confidences--we could be betrothed.”
“And betrothal--it doesn’t involve banns or ceremonies or parades in this kingdom?” He was teasing me, assuring me he was fine with my decision.
“No.” I laughed. “Just an exchange of rings. I’ll wear mine around my neck.”
“I’ll wear mine on my hand where I should. My soldiers will be oblivious.” He smirked, then added, “And it will confirm your countrymen’s suspicions that I am ignorant.”
I gazed into his eyes, at the love that shone within them, and laid my head upon his chest, content, for now, to have him hold me. ~ Cayla Kluver,
504:Esther Agrees to Help the Jews ESTHER 4 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes  o and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews,  p with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them  q lay in sackcloth and ashes. 4When Esther’s young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. 6Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him,  r and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 8Mordecai also gave him  s a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. 9And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. 10Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 11“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside  t the inner court without being called,  u there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one  v to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.” 12And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16“Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for  w three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law,  x and if I perish, I perish.” 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. ~ Anonymous,
505:I’m giving you a chance to walk away, to live. Don’t be a fool--take it.”
Cannan tucked his knife into the shaft of his boot, then cast his eyes over Steldor, Galen, Adrik and Koranis. All resolutely met his gaze.
“I don’t see fear in this room, Narian,” he said, shaking his head. “Do what you must, as will we.”
“Then you’re asking to die!” For a moment there was a pleading note in Narian’s voice, an indication of how torn he was about his position. He didn’t want to put these men to death. “If I arrest you, you will be executed. If I let you go forward, you will fail.”
“The only way we could fail,” Steldor interjected in a low voice, “is by accepting what you have handed our people. We owe this to them.”
“You owe them your leadership, not the sacrifice of your lives. The High Priestess will not relinquish this province, in that she is unyielding. She and the Overlord fought too long and too hard for it. Don’t do this.
My uncle approached the Cokyrian commander with an almost sympathetic expression. His dark eyes had lost none of their determination, but he meant to reach the young man with his words.
“Who are you, Narian?” The question was strange, but Narian seemed to understand its significance. “From the moment you set foot in Hytanica, you have tried to play both sides. You’ve spent far too long being a Cokyrian with Hytanican blood, and it ends now, for better or worse. There is no more in between, so do what you must. Either have us arrested, or allow us to go forward.”
Narian met Cannan’s gaze, not discomfited by the taller man’s proximity. In truth, he had nothing at all to fear from us, what with the powers he possessed. But I wished I could see something in his eyes, some indication of what he would do from here.
“Very well, Captain. I will do as you say--what I must.”
Showing us his back, Narian ascended the stairs, disappearing through the cellar door. Steldor immediately made to follow, but Cannan grasped his shirt.
“Let me go,” my cousin snapped, but his father stepped closer, until their faces were just inches apart.
“Don’t be reckless,” the captain muttered. “He will kill you if you challenge him.”
Steldor gave in, and his father released his grip.
“Then what do we do?” Galen asked.
“Nothing has changed.” Cannan looked around at the men who would follow his orders, to the grave and beyond. “We will do exactly what we have planned. Until and unless Narian stops us, we proceed.”
“But…but isn’t that dangerous?” King Adrik queried.
“This has always been dangerous. But I’m willing to take a chance on Narian.”
The silence in the aftermath of the captain’s statement reinforced my sense that, at a single wave of the Cokyrian commander’s hand, we would all be buried alive. ~ Cayla Kluver,
506:Je n'ai jamais vu le Sheikh Ahmed, qui était encore très peu connu à l'époque déjà lointaine où j'étais en Algérie [à Sétif, durant l'année scolaire 1917-1918], et d'ailleurs je n'ai pas eu l'occasion d'aller dans la province d'Oran; c'est seulement beaucoup plus tard que je suis entré en correspondance avec Mostaganem par l'entremise de Taillard. Quant au 1er voyage de Sh.[eikh] A.[ïssa] [F. Schuon], voici ce qu'il en est exactement : quand il m'a annoncé qu'il partait pour l'Algérie, sa lettre m'est arrivée trop tard pour qu'une réponse puisse encore lui parvenir avant la date de son départ, de sorte que je n'ai pas pu lui donner alors une indication quelconque; tout ce que j'ai pu faire et ce que j'ai fait était d'invoquer pour lui la barakah de Sidi Abul-Hassan [ash-Shâdhilî], en demandant qu'il soit conduit auprès du Sheikh Ahmed, et c'est ce qui est arrivé en effet, à la suite d'un ensemble de circonstances assez singulières comme vous le savez; je dois dire que lui-même n'a jamais rien su de cela, car j'ai trouvé inutile de lui en parler. Pour ce qui est de la suite, c'est lui qui me l'a raconté la 1re fois qu'il est venu ici: à son arrivée, il n'a pas pu voir le Sheikh Ahmed qui était souffrant, et ceux qui l'ont reçu lui ont déclaré que, ne le connaissant pas, ils ne pouvaient pas l'admettre à séjourner à la zawîyah; au cours de la conversation, il lui est arrivé de prononcer mon nom, je ne sais à quel propos, et l'attitude à son égard a changé aussitôt : on lui a dit alors qu'on venait justement de recevoir une lettre de moi le jour même, et, bien que naturellement il n'y ait eu dans cette lettre rien le concernant, cette coïncidence a été interprétée comme un signe favorable, de sorte qu'on l'a autorisé à rester. Quelques jours plus tard, il m'a écrit pour me faire savoir où il était, mais il ne savait pas encore de quoi il s'agissait en réalité ni ce que c'était que la tarîqah; c'est en lui répondant que je lui ai donné des explications qui l'ont déterminé à demander son rattachement; il ne s'agit donc pas d'une lettre qui lui aurait été renvoyée de France comme vous l'avez entendu dire, puisque je n'avais pas pu lui écrire avant son départ. Vous voyez par tout cela que je pourrais bien dire, sans exagération, que sans moi il n'y aurait jamais eu de Sh. A. ! - Je vous disais la dernière fois qu'il n'y avait aucune différence entre son cas et celui des autres moqaddem qui ont cessé d'entretenir des relations avec Mostaganem; il y en a cependant une qui, en un certain sens, serait à son désavantage : c'est que les autres avaient été nommés par le Sheikh Ahmed, tandis que lui ne l'a été qu'après sa mort et par le Sheikh Adda.

16 septembre 1950
[Cahiers de l'Unité n°13, Stanislas Ibranoff, Rene Guenon et la tradition hindoue par Renaud Fabbri] ~ Ren Gu non,
507:How nice that our former stable boy has begotten a namesake from my elder daughter,” the countess remarked acidly. “This will be the first of many brats, I am sure. Regrettably there is still no heir to the earldom…which is your responsibility, I believe. Come to me with news of your impending marriage to a bride of good blood, Westcliff, and I will evince some satisfaction. Until then, I see little reason for congratulations.”
Though he displayed no emotion at his mother’s hard-hearted response to the news of Aline’s child, not to mention her infuriating preoccupation with the begetting of an heir, Marcus was hard-pressed to hold back a savage reply. In the midst of his darkening mood, he became aware of Lillian’s intent gaze.
Lillian stared at him astutely, a peculiar smile touching her lips. Marcus arched one brow and asked sardonically, “Does something amuse you, Miss Bowman?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I was just thinking that it’s a wonder you haven’t rushed out to marry the first peasant girl you could find.”
“Impertinent twit!” the countess exclaimed.
Marcus grinned at the girl’s insolence, while the tightness in his chest eased. “Do you think I should?” he asked soberly, as if the question was worth considering.
“Oh yes,” Lillian assured him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “The Marsdens could use some new blood. In my opinion, the family is in grave danger of becoming overbred.”
“Overbred?” Marcus repeated, wanting nothing more than to pounce on her and carry her off somewhere. “What has given you that impression, Miss Bowman?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” she said idly. “Perhaps the earth-shattering importance you attach to whether one should use a fork or spoon to eat one’s pudding.”
“Good manners are not the sole province of the aristocracy, Miss Bowman.” Even to himself, Marcus sounded a bit pompous.
“In my opinion, my lord, an excessive preoccupation with manners and rituals is a strong indication that someone has too much time on his hands.”
Marcus smiled at her impertinence. “Subversive, yet sensible,” he mused. “I’m not certain I disagree.”
“Do not encourage her effrontery, Westcliff,” the countess warned.
“Very well—I shall leave you to your Sisyphean task.”
“What does that mean?” he heard Daisy ask.
Lillian replied while her smiling gaze remained locked with Marcus’s. “It seems you avoided one too many Greek mythology lessons, dear. Sisyphus was a soul in Hades who was damned to perform an eternal task…rolling a huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again just before he reached the top.”
“Then if the countess is Sisyphus,” Daisy concluded, “I suppose we’re…”
“The boulder,” Lady Westcliff said succinctly, causing both girls to laugh.
“Do continue with our instruction, my lady,” Lillian said, giving her full attention to the elderly woman as Marcus bowed and left the room. “We’ll try not to flatten you on the way down. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
508:There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane -- as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout -- there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.
Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it ill be with us long after his demise. Religious zealots like bin Laden, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, and Dan Lafferty are common to every age, just as zealots of other stripes are. In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that's irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on the matters of the spirit.
The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end -- wealth, fame, eternal salvation -- but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture.
Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God... ~ Jon Krakauer,
509:however, the round trip was a very long one (fourteen months was in fact well below the average). It was also hazardous: of twenty-two ships that set sail in 1598, only a dozen returned safely. For these reasons, it made sense for merchants to pool their resources. By 1600 there were around six fledgling East India companies operating out of the major Dutch ports. However, in each case the entities had a limited term that was specified in advance – usually the expected duration of a voyage – after which the capital was repaid to investors.10 This business model could not suffice to build the permanent bases and fortifications that were clearly necessary if the Portuguese and their Spanish allies* were to be supplanted. Actuated as much by strategic calculations as by the profit motive, the Dutch States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, therefore proposed to merge the existing companies into a single entity. The result was the United East India Company – the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (United Dutch Chartered East India Company, or VOC for short), formally chartered in 1602 to enjoy a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.11 The structure of the VOC was novel in a number of respects. True, like its predecessors, it was supposed to last for a fixed period, in this case twenty-one years; indeed, Article 7 of its charter stated that investors would be entitled to withdraw their money at the end of just ten years, when the first general balance was drawn up. But the scale of the enterprise was unprecedented. Subscription to the Company’s capital was open to all residents of the United Provinces and the charter set no upper limit on how much might be raised. Merchants, artisans and even servants rushed to acquire shares; in Amsterdam alone there were 1,143 subscribers, only eighty of whom invested more than 10,000 guilders, and 445 of whom invested less than 1,000. The amount raised, 6.45 million guilders, made the VOC much the biggest corporation of the era. The capital of its English rival, the East India Company, founded two years earlier, was just £68,373 – around 820,000 guilders – shared between a mere 219 subscribers.12 Because the VOC was a government-sponsored enterprise, every effort was made to overcome the rivalry between the different provinces (and particularly between Holland, the richest province, and Zeeland). The capital of the Company was divided (albeit unequally) between six regional chambers (Amsterdam, Zeeland, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam). The seventy directors (bewindhebbers), who were each substantial investors, were also distributed between these chambers. One of their roles was to appoint seventeen people to act as the Heeren XVII – the Seventeen Lords – as a kind of company board. Although Amsterdam accounted for 57.4 per cent of the VOC’s total capital, it nominated only eight out of the Seventeen Lords. ~ Niall Ferguson,
510:You!” she snarled, her glower intended for Narian. He walked unflinchingly toward her, keeping me close to his side. “You knew of this plot! Confess the part you have played and I will perhaps spare your life.”
Narian put a hand on my shoulder, telling me to stay where I was, then took a few steps closer to the woman who had been like a mother to him. I stood frozen, waiting along with her to hear his answer. What was going on? What had Narian done?
“I am not a part of this,” he declared.
Nantilam quickly closed the remaining distance between them. She was infuriated, her green eyes flaring as vividly as the flames outside.
“But you know more than you have told me.” Her voice was low, dangerous, rumbling with anger.
“I know that the Hytanicans’s first rebellion was meant to distract us, and that those captured willingly sacrificed their lives. I know that right now, the men you wanted to execute are waging one last fight to reclaim their kingdom.”
My head was spinning, both at the news and at my own idiocy. How could I have failed to see this? How could I not have known it would happen? I had chosen to be blind, even when Narian had all but begged me to come to Cokyri with him. I hadn’t wanted to see it. But the clues had been there. Now people were dying in Hytanica. Someone, probably London, had set the fires here in Cokyri to hinder the arrival of messengers from the province with word of the revolt and to forestall the High Priestess from sending reinforcements. We were trapped and helpless, able only to imagine the battle taking place on the other side of the river.
“I knew something was amiss,” the High Priestess simmered. “I knew it the moment I saw Alera with you. You’re a traitor, Narian.”
He shook his head, his expression hard. “I am no traitor. I did everything you asked of me. I conquered Hytanica for you and the Overlord, I administered the province as you wanted for months, and I did not plot against you.” Narian’s voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “I am not to blame for what is happening today--for giving the Hytanicans a fair chance at retaking what is rightfully theirs. My only sin is that I did not try to stop them.”
Nantilam scrutinized him for what seemed an eternity.
“I listened to you,” she vehemently said at last. “I loved you, and I trusted you, and I fought not to lose you after my brother’s death.”
“You never trusted me,” Narian contradicted, interrupting whatever else she had intended to say. “And with good reason. You believe the only way to repay a betrayal if with a betrayal. You betrayed me in the worst way imaginable. You lied to me my entire life, trained me and used me as a weapon, never telling me the real reason I was of value to you.” His blue eyes flashed, their sapphire brilliance rivaling the ever-changing emerald sparks in hers. “But I will no longer be manipulated for your causes, and I will not become another warlord. You can consider yourself repaid. ~ Cayla Kluver,
511:longer; it cannot deceive them too much." Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation. "As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" "Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment." "If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?" "Truly yes, madame." "Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?" "It is true, madame." "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go home!" XVI. Still Knitting Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible ~ Charles Dickens,
512:I turned and flipped the latch on the door, then pulled hard on the handle, stumbling over the threshold into the fresh air. I would have fallen in the dirt for the second time that day except that someone standing outside caught me. Terrified that my escape was being thwarted, I struck out at whoever it was, feeling a sharp pain when my fist connected with the person’s jaw.
Empress, you hit hard!” a male voice exclaimed, then he captured my arms and trapped them behind my back. By the strange expletive he had used, I knew him to be Cokyrian--my luck was golden. “What’s going on here?”
The butcher staggered into the doorway, squinting in the sunlight.
“Your girl’s a thief,” he muttered at sight of the man who held me, sparing a glower for me as though warning me to be quiet. I ground my teeth and looked away, intending to do just that.
Now that I had stopped struggling, the Cokyrian soldier released me, and I considered whether or not to run. Then I saw who had been restraining me--Saadi, the man with whom Narian and my uncle had dealt after my failed prank. There would be no point in running if he remembered who I was.
“My girl?” Saadi repeated, his pale blue eyes calculating. “She is no Cokyrian. Besides, I would expect you to show any comrade of mine more respect than that.”
“My apologies,” the butcher forced himself to say, and rage filled me at his newly respectful attitude. “She broke into my store and I assumed from her clothing…I also assume you’ll see her punished for her crime.”
“You were about to punish her yourself, weren’t you?”
Saadi scrutinized me, noting the red marks around my wrists and perhaps the beginnings of the bruises I would have across my mouth.
“In Cokyri, you would be killed for what you did to her--what you tried to do.”
“It’s good we’re not in Cokyri then,” the butcher sneered.
Saadi’s jaw clenched, and he seemed to be fighting a deep urge to pummel the merchant who stood before him.
“I should take you to join the men at the gallows.”
“I would welcome it.”
“I can see why,” Saadi coldly retorted, with a subtle look up and down at the heavyset man. “But I’m afraid the lack of your business might dampen the economy in the province, and that is something my sister would frown upon. She’ll be disappointed, though--she does so enjoy seeing men like you hang.”
“And I enjoy seeing women in skirts as God intended.”
Another strained moment passed, then Saadi laughed. “Perhaps if your God had paid less attention to clothing and more to abilities, you and your kind wouldn’t be in this position right now.”
The butcher shifted uncomfortably, and Saadi quickly dispensed with him. “If you want me to arrest her for thievery, I’ll also arrest you for assault. So I would advise that you go back to your meat and your customers, may they be few.”
The man did not need to be told twice. He slammed the door in our faces, and I could hear the lock click into place. It was then that I noticed the canvas bag at Saadi’s feet. He must have seen flight in my eyes, for he started running at almost the same moment I did. ~ Cayla Kluver,
513:About a half hour later, there was a knock on my door and I stiffened, my heart hammering. Who could want to see me?”
“Come in!”
Narian slipped through the door, closing it quietly behind him, and I laughed at myself. I was not used to him entering my room in a conventional fashion.
“I never knew your home--all of Cokyri--was so beautiful,” I confessed when he was sitting beside me. “We’re not told about these things when we learn about history.”
“It is beautiful,” he agreed, almost wistfully, and I wondered what he was thinking.
“You really grew up here, in this temple?”
He was nodding, absentmindedly rubbing his wrist, and I simply watched him for a moment.
“And you love it,” I surmised.
“I suppose I do. It feels like home. But I don’t miss it when I’m with you.”
He kissed me, then leaned back against the pillows, pulling me along with him.
“Narian,” I murmured, lifting my head to look at him. He was so handsome, so perfect with his halo of golden hair and his intense blue eyes that I ached for him to kiss me and touch me. But there were things I wanted to ask him. “What was causing the friction between you and the High Priestess?”
An ironic smile lit his features. “Call it a familial disagreement. She doesn’t understand my change of heart--that I don’t care anymore if she sees us together. Ever since the Overlord’s death, she’s been trying to win me back, you might say. She knows I’m not happy with her. But she doesn’t realize that she’s already lost me--this place may feel like home to me forever, but it will never again be home. This part of my life is over. My loyalty has turned.”
“You’ve never said that before,” I pointed out, feeling like there was something important he was not telling me. “That your loyalty is to Hytanica.”
“I only recently came to realize it myself. But that is where my loyalty lies.”
He was resolute, decided--and he was making me uneasy. What had the High Priestess said at dinner? The Grand Provost wouldn’t leave her province in unrest. I hadn’t had I?
“Narian--” I started, sitting up, but he interrupted me.
“Your loyalty has always been to Hytanica, and I don’t want there to be anything standing between us. So I’ve made up my mind, Alera. It’s a good thing.”
I nodded, trying to shrug off my disquiet, for he was, of course, right. I stood up and tugged on his arm, trying to get him to move.
He laughed. “I told you I was tired, remember?”
“Yes, but as long as we’re here, I’d like you to show me something.”
“What might that be?” He came to his feet, and I dragged him toward the door.
“I want to see where Miranna was confined.” I clutched nervously at my blouse, unsure how he would react, for I had not been able to think of a tactful way to raise the topic.
He stopped, forcing me to face him. “Alera, do you really want to see that?”
“You told me she was well cared for here,” I bristled, my tone slightly accusatory. “If that’s true, then you have nothing to hide from me.”
Narian released me. “I didn’t lie to you. The High Priestess made certain Miranna was well accommodated. But she was still a prisoner. I just want to be sure that you are ready to see this.”
“I’m ready. ~ Cayla Kluver,
514:ISIS was forced out of all its occupied territory in Syria and Iraq, though thousands of ISIS fighters are still present in both countries. Last April, Assad again used sarin gas, this time in Idlib Province, and Russia again used its veto to protect its client from condemnation and sanction by the U.N. Security Council. President Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on the Syrian airfield where the planes that delivered the sarin were based. It was a minimal attack, but better than nothing. A week before, I had condemned statements by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had explicitly declined to maintain what had been the official U.S. position that a settlement of the Syrian civil war had to include Assad’s removal from power. “Once again, U.S. policy in Syria is being presented piecemeal in press statements,” I complained, “without any definition of success, let alone a realistic plan to achieve it.” As this book goes to the publisher, there are reports of a clash between U.S. forces in eastern Syria and Russian “volunteers,” in which hundreds of Russians were said to have been killed. If true, it’s a dangerous turn of events, but one caused entirely by Putin’s reckless conduct in the world, allowed if not encouraged by the repeated failures of the U.S. and the West to act with resolve to prevent his assaults against our interests and values. In President Obama’s last year in office, at his invitation, he and I spent a half hour or so alone, discussing very frankly what I considered his policy failures, and he believed had been sound and necessary decisions. Much of that conversation concerned Syria. No minds were changed in the encounter, but I appreciated his candor as I hoped he appreciated mine, and I respected the sincerity of his convictions. Yet I still believe his approach to world leadership, however thoughtful and well intentioned, was negligent, and encouraged our allies to find ways to live without us, and our adversaries to try to fill the vacuums our negligence created. And those trends continue in reaction to the thoughtless America First ideology of his successor. There are senior officials in government who are trying to mitigate those effects. But I worry that we are at a turning point, a hinge of history, and the decisions made in the last ten years and the decisions made tomorrow might be closing the door on the era of the American-led world order. I hope not, and it certainly isn’t too late to reverse that direction. But my time in that fight has concluded. I have nothing but hope left to invest in the work of others to make the future better than the past. As of today, as the Syrian war continues, more than 400,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians. More than five million have fled the country and more than six million have been displaced internally. A hundred years from now, Syria will likely be remembered as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the twenty-first century, and an example of human savagery at its most extreme. But it will be remembered, too, for the invincibility of human decency and the longing for freedom and justice evident in the courage and selflessness of the White Helmets and the soldiers fighting for their country’s freedom from tyranny and terrorists. In that noblest of human conditions is the eternal promise of the Arab Spring, which was engulfed in flames and drowned in blood, but will, like all springs, come again. ~ John McCain,
515:My morning schedule saw me first in Cannan’s office, conferring with my advisor, but our meeting was interrupted within minutes by Narian, who entered without knocking and whose eyes were colder than I had seen them in a long time.
“I thought you intended to control them,” he stated, walking toward the captain’s desk and standing directly beside the chair in which I sat.”
He slammed a lengthy piece of parchment down on the wood surface, an unusual amount of tension in his movements. I glanced toward the open door and caught sight of Rava. She stood with one hand resting against the frame, her calculating eyes evaluating the scene while she awaited orders.
Cannan’s gaze went to the parchment, but he did not reach for it, scanning its contents from a distance. Then he looked at Narian, unruffled.
“I can think of a dozen or more men capable of this.”
“But you know who is responsible.”
Cannan sat back, assessing his opposition. “I don’t know with certainty any more than you do. In the absence of definitive proof of guilt on behalf of my son and his friends, I suggest you and your fellows develop a sense of humor.” Then the captain’s tone changed, becoming more forbidding. “I can prevent an uprising, Narian. This, you’ll have to get used to.”
Not wanting to be in the dark, I snatched up the parchment in question. My mouth opened in shock and dismay as I silently read its contents, the men waiting for me to finish.
On this Thirtieth Day of May in the First Year of Cokyrian dominance over the Province of Hytanica, the following regulations shall be put into practice in order to assist our gracious Grand Provost in her effort to welcome Cokyri into our lands--and to help ensure the enemy does not bungle the first victory it has managed in over a century.
Regulation One. All Hytanican citizens must be willing to provide aid to aimlessly wandering Cokyrian soldiers who cannot on their honor grasp that the road leading back to the city is the very same road that led them away.
Regulation Two. It is strongly recommended that farmers hide their livestock, lest the men of our host empire become confused and attempt to mate with them.
Regulation Three. As per negotiated arrangements, crops grown on Hytanican soil will be divided with fifty percent belonging to Cokyri, and seventy-five percent remaining with the citizens of the province; Hytanicans will be bound by law to wait patiently while the Cokyrians attempt to sort the baffling deficiency in their calculations.
Regulation Four. The Cokyrian envoys assigned to manage the planting and farming effort will also require Hytanican patience while they slowly but surely learn what is a crop and what is a weed, as well as left from right.
Regulation Five. Though the Province Wall is a Cokyrian endeavor, it would be polite and understanding of Hytanicans to remind the enemy of the correct side on which to be standing when the final stone is laid, so no unfortunates may find themselves trapped outside with no way in.
Regulation Six. When at long last foreign trade is allowed to resume, Hytanicans should strive to empathize with the reluctance of neighboring kingdoms to enter our lands, for Cokyri’s stench is sure to deter even the migrating birds.
Regulation Seven. For what little trade and business we do manage in spite of the odor, the imposed ten percent tax may be paid in coins, sweets or shiny objects.
Regulation Eight. It is regrettably prohibited for Hytanicans to throw jeers at Cokyrian soldiers, for fear that any man harried may cry, and the women may spit.
Regulation Nine. In case of an encounter with Cokyrian dignitaries, the boy-invader and the honorable High Priestess included, let it be known that the proper way in which to greet them is with an ass-backward bow.
~ Cayla Kluver,
516:II L'Association bretonne. Il est une institution qui distingue la Bretagne des autres provinces et où se réflète son génie, l'Association bretonne. Dans ce pays couvert encore de landes et de terres incultes, et où il reste tant de ruines des anciens âges, des hommes intelligents ont compris que ces deux intérêts ne devaient pas être séparés, les progrès de l'agriculture et l'étude des monuments de l'histoire locale. Les comices agricoles ne s'occupent que des travaux d'agriculture, les sociétés savantes que de l'esprit; l'Association bretonne les a réunis: elle est à la fois une association agricole et une association littéraire. Aux expériences de l'agriculture, aux recherches archéologiques, elle donne de la suite et de l'unité; les efforts ne sont plus isolés, ils se font avec ensemble; l'Association bretonne continue, au XIXe siècle, l'oeuvre des moines des premiers temps du christianisme dans la Gaule, qui défrichaient le sol et éclairaient les âmes. Un appel a été fait dans les cinq départements de la Bretagne à tous ceux qui avaient à coeur les intérêts de leur patrie, aux écrivains et aux propriétaires, aux gentilshommes et aux simples paysans, et les adhésions sont arrivées de toutes parts. L'Association a deux moyens d'action: un bulletin mensuel, et un congrès annuel. Le bulletin rend compte des travaux des associés, des expériences, des essais, des découvertes scientifiques; le congrès ouvre des concours, tient des séances publiques, distribue des prix et des récompenses. Afin de faciliter les réunions et d'en faire profiter tout le pays, le congrès se tient alternativement dans chaque département; une année à Rennes, une autre à Saint-Brieuc, une autre fois à Vitré ou à Redon; en 1858, il s'est réuni à Quimper. A chaque congrès, des questions nouvelles sont agitées, discutées, éclaircies[1]: ces savants modestes qui consacrent leurs veilles à des recherches longues et pénibles, sont assurés que leurs travaux ne seront pas ignorés; tant d'intelligences vives et distinguées, qui demeureraient oisives dans le calme des petites villes, voient devant elles un but à leurs efforts; la publicité en est assurée, ils seront connus et appréciés. D'un bout de la province à l'autre, de Rennes à Brest, de Nantes à Saint-Malo, on se communique ses oeuvres et ses plans; tel antiquaire, à Saint-Brieuc, s'occupe des mêmes recherches qu'un autre à Quimper: il est un jour dans l'année où ils se retrouvent, où se resserrent les liens d'études et d'amitié. [Note 1: Voir l'Appendice.] Le congrès est un centre moral et intellectuel, bien plus, un centre national: ces congrès sont de véritables assises bretonnes; ils remplacent les anciens États: on y voit réunis, comme aux États, les trois ordres, le clergé, la noblesse et le tiers-état, le tiers-état plus nombreux qu'avant la Révolution, et de plus, mêlés aux nobles et aux bourgeois, les paysans. La Bretagne est une des provinces de France où les propriétaires vivent le plus sur leurs terres; beaucoup y passent l'année tout entière. De là une communauté d'habitudes, un échange de services, des relations plus familières et plus intimes, qui n'ôtent rien au respect d'une part, à la dignité de l'autre. Propriétaires et fermiers, réunis au congrès, sont soumis aux mêmes conditions et jugés par les mêmes lois; souvent le propriétaire concourt avec son fermier. Dans ces mêlées animées, où l'on se communique ses procédés, où l'on s'aide de ses conseils, où l'on distribue des prix et des encouragements, les riches propriétaires et les nobles traitent les paysans sur le pied de l'égalité; ici, la supériorité est au plus habile: c'est un paysan, Guévenoux, qui, en 1857, eut les honneurs du congrès de Redon. Voici quatorze ans que l'Association bretonne existe; l'ardeur a toujours été en croissant; les congrès sont devenus des solennités: on y vient de tous les points ~ Anonymous,
517:Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles—or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations—or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury—or an objective necessity? In the sorry record of the history of mankind’s ethics—with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions—moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention—others implicitly, by default. A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause. No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God. The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society.” This meant, in logic—and, today, in worldwide practice—that “society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And—since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men—this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires. This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics—in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals—man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith—instinct—intuition—revelation—feeling—taste—urge—wish—whim Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”)—and the battle is only over the question or whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason—mind—reality. If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason. If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics—and of all ethical ~ Anonymous,
518:Sicut Patribus, sit Deus Nobis)

The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.
And where they went on trade intent
They did what freeman can,
Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.
The world was made for honest trade,
To plant and eat be none afraid.
The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
"Like us be free and bold!"
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.
Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor;
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.
We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.
The wild rose and the barberry thorn
Hung out their summer pride
Where now on heated pavements worn
The feet of millions stride.
Fair rose the planted hills behind
The good town on the bay,
And where the western hills declined
The prairie stretched away.
What care though rival cities soar
Along the stormy coast:
Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore,
If Boston knew the most!
They laughed to know the world so wide;
The mountains said: "Good-day!
We greet you well, you Saxon men,
Up with your towns and stay!"
The world was made for honest trade,
To plant and eat be none afraid.
"For you," they said, "no barriers be,
For you no sluggard rest;
Each street leads downward to the sea,
Or landward to the West."
O happy town beside the sea,
Whose roads lead everywhere to all;
Than thine no deeper moat can be,
No stouter fence, no steeper wall!
Bad news from George on the English throne:
"You are thriving well," said he;
"Now by these presents be it known,
You shall pay us a tax on tea;
'Tis very small,no load at all,
Honor enough that we send the call."
"Not so," said Boston, "good my lord,
We pay your governors here
Abundant for their bed and board,
Six thousand pounds a year.
(Your highness knows our homely word,)
Millions for self-government,
But for tribute never a cent."
The cargo came! and who could blame
If Indians seized the tea,
And, chest by chest, let down the same
Into the laughing sea?
For what avail the plough or sail
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
The townsmen braved the English king,
Found friendship in the French,
And Honor joined the patriot ring
Low on their wooden bench.
O bounteous seas that never fail!
O day remembered yet!
O happy port that spied the sail
Which wafted Lafayette!
Pole-star of light in Europe's night,
That never faltered from the right.
Kings shook with fear, old empires crave
The secret force to find
Which fired the little State to save
The rights of all mankind.
But right is might through all the world;
Province to province faithful clung,
Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,
Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung.
The sea returning day by day
Restores the world-wide mart;
So let each dweller on the Bay
Fold Boston in his heart,
Till these echoes be choked with snows,
Or over the town blue ocean flows.
This poem was read in Faneuil Hall, on the Centennial Anniversary of the "Boston Tea-Party," at which a band of men disguised as Indians had quietly emptied into the sea the taxed tea-chests of three British ships. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston
,
519:At The Making Of Man
First all the host of Raphael
In liveries of gold,
Lifted the chorus on whose rhythm
The spinning spheres are rolled,–
The Seraphs of the morning calm
Whose hearts are never cold.
He shall be born a spirit,
Part of the soul that yearns,
The core of vital gladness
That suffers and discerns,
The stir that breaks the budding sheath
When the green spring returns,–
The gist of power and patience
Hid in the plasmic clay,
The calm behind the senses,
The passionate essay
To make his wise and lovely dream
Immortal on a day.
The soft Aprilian ardours
That warm the waiting loam
Shall whisper in his pulses
To bid him overcome,
And he shall learn the wonder-cry
Beneath the azure dome.
And though all-dying nature
Should teach him to deplore,
The ruddy fires of autumn
Shall lure him but the more
To pass from joy to stronger joy,
As through an open door.
He shall have hope and honour,
Proud trust and courage stark,
To hold him to his purpose
Through the unlighted dark,
49
And love that sees the moon's full orb
In the first silver arc.
And he shall live by kindness
And the heart's certitude,
Which moves without misgiving
In ways not understood,
Sure only of the vast event,–
The large and simple good.
Then Gabriel's host in silver gear
And vesture twilight blue,
The spirits of immortal mind,
The warders of the true,
Took up the theme that gives the world
Significance anew.
He shall be born to reason,
And have the primal need
To understand and follow
Wherever truth may lead,–
To grow in wisdom like a tree
Unfolding from a seed.
A watcher by the sheepfolds,
With wonder in his eyes,
He shall behold the seasons,
And mark the planets rise,
Till all the marching firmament
Shall rouse his vast surmise.
Beyond the sweep of vision,
Or utmost reach of sound,
This cunning fire-maker,
This tiller of the ground,
Shall learn the secrets of the suns
And fathom the profound.
For he must prove all being,
Sane, beauteous, benign,
And at the heart of nature
Discover the divine,–
50
Himself the type and symbol
Of the eternal trine.
He shall perceive the kindling
Of knowledge, far and dim,
As of the fire that brightens
Below the dark sea-rim,
When ray by ray the splendid sun
Floats to the world's wide brim.
And out of primal instinct,
The lore of lair and den,
He shall emerge to question
How, wherefore, whence, and when,
Till the last frontier of the truth
Shall lie within his ken.
Then Michael's scarlet-suited host
Took up the word and sang;
As though a trumpet had been loosed
In heaven, the arches rang;
For these were they who feel the thrill
Of beauty like a pang.
He shall be framed and balanced
For loveliness and power,
Lithe as the supple creatures,
And coloured as a flower,
Sustained by the all-feeding earth,
Nurtured by wind and shower,
To stand within the vortex
Where surging forces play,
A poised and pliant figure
Immutable as they,
Till time and space and energy
Surrender to his sway.
He shall be free to journey
Over the teeming earth,
An insatiable seeker,
A wanderer from his birth,
51
Clothed in the fragile veil of sense,
With fortitude for girth.
His hands shall have dominion
Of all created things,
To fashion in the likeness
Of his imaginings,
To make his will and thought survive
Unto a thousand springs.
The world shall be his province,
The princedom of his skill;
The tides shall wear his harness,
The winds obey his will;
Till neither flood, nor fire, nor frost,
Shall work to do him ill.
A creature fit to carry
The pure creative fire,
Whatever truth inform him,
Whatever good inspire,
He shall make lovely in all things
To the end of his desire.
~ Bliss William Carman,
520:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
521:The Lark’s Nest
'TRUST only to thyself;' the maxim's sound;
For, tho' life's choicest blessing be a friend,
Friends do not very much abound;
Or, where they happen to be found,
And greatly thou on friendship shouldst depend,
Thou'lt find it will not bear
Much wear and tear;
Nay ! that even kindred, cousin, uncle, brother,
Has each perhaps to mind his own affair;
Attend to thine then; lean not on another.
Esop assures us that the maxim's wise;
And by a tale illustrates his advice:
When April's bright and fickle beams
Saw every feather'd pair
In the green woodlands, or by willowy streams,
Busied in matrimonial schemes;
A Lark, amid the dewy air,
Woo'd, and soon won a favourite fair;
And, in a spot by springing rye protected,
Her labour sometimes shared;
While she, with bents, and wither'd grass collected,
Their humble domicile prepared;
Then, by her duty fix'd, the tender mate
Unwearied prest
Their future progeny beneath her breast;
And little slept, and little ate,
While her gay lover, with a careless heart,
As is the custom of his sex,
Full little recks
The coming family; but like a dart,
From his low homested, with the morning springs;
And far above the floating vapour, sings
At such an height,
That even the shepherd-lad upon the hill,
Hearing his matin note so shrill,
With shaded eyes against the lustre bright,
Scarce sees him twinkling in a flood of light.
185
But hunger, spite of all her perseverance,
Was one day urgent on his patient bride;
The truant made not his appearance,
That her fond care might be a while supplied,­
So, because hunger will not be denied,
She leaves her nest reluctant; and in haste
But just allows herself to taste,
A dew drop, and a few small seeds­
Ah ! how her fluttering bosom bleeds,
When the dear cradle she had fondly rear'd
All desolate appear'd !
And ranging wide about the field she saw
A setter huge, whose unrelenting jaw
Had crush'd her half-existing young;
Long o'er her ruin'd hopes the mother hung,
And vainly mourn'd,
Ere from the clouds her wanderer return'd:­
Tears justly shed by beauty, who can stand them ?
He heard her plaintive tale with unfeign'd sorrow,
But, as his motto was, 'Nil desperandum,'
Bade her hope better fortune for to-morrow;
Then from the fatal spot afar, they sought
A safer shelter, having bought
Experience, which is always rather dear;
And very near
A grassy headland, in a field of wheat,
They fix'd, with cautious care, their second seat­
But this took time; May was already past,
The white thorn had her silver blossoms cast,
And there the Nightingale, to lovely June,
Her last farewell had sung;
No longer reign'd July's intemperate noon,
And high in heaven the reaper's moon,
A little crescent hung,
Ere from their shells appear'd the plumeless young.
Oh ! then with how much tender care,
The busy pair,
Watch'd and provided for the panting brood !
For then, the vagrant of the air,
186
Soar'd not to meet the morning star,
But, never from the nestlings far,
Explor'd each furrow, every sod for food;
While his more anxious partner tried
From hostile eyes, the helpless group to hide;
Attempting now, with labouring bill, to guide
The enwreathing bindweed round the nest;
Now joy'd to see the cornflower's azure crest
Above it waving, and the cockle grow,
Or poppies throw
Their scarlet curtains round;
While the more humble children of the ground,
Freak'd pansies, fumitory, pimpernel,
Circled with arras light, the secret cell:­
But who against all evils can provide ?
Hid, and overshadow'd thus, and fortified,
By teasel, and the scabious' thready disk,
Corn-marygold, and thistles; too much risk
The little household still were doom'd to run,
For the same ardent sun,
Whose beams had drawn up many an idle flower,
To fence the lonely bower,
Had by his powerful heat,
Matured the wheat;
And chang'd of hue, it hung its heavy head,
While every rustling gale that blew along
From neighbouring uplands, brought the rustic song
Of harvest merriment: then full of dread,
Lest, not yet fully fledg'd, her race
The reaper's foot might crush, or reaper's dog might trace,
Or village child, too young to reap or bind,
Loitering around, her hidden treasure find;
The mother bird was bent
To move them, e'er the sickle came more near;
And therefore, when for food abroad she went,
(For now her mate again was on the ramble)
She bade her young report what they should hear:
So the next hour they cried, 'They'll all assemble,
'The farmer's neighbours, with the dawn of light,
'Therefore, dear mother, let us move to night.'
187
'Fear not, my loves,' said she, 'you need not tremble;
'Trust me, if only neighbours are in question,
'Eat what I bring, and spoil not your digestion
'Or sleep, for this.' Next day away she flew,
And that no neighbour came was very true;
But her returning wings the Larklings knew,
And quivering round her, told, their landlord said,
'Why, John ! the reaping must not be delay'd,
'By peep of day to-morrow we'll begin,
'Since now so many of our kin
'Have promis'd us their help to set about it.'
'Still,' quoth the bird, 'I doubt it;
'The corn will stand to-morrow.' So it prov'd;
The morning's dawn arriv'd­but never saw
Or uncle, cousin, brother, or brother-in-law;
And not a reap-hook mov'd !
Then to his son the angry farmer cried,
'Some folks are little known 'till they are tried;
'Who would have thought we had so few well-wishers !
'What ! neither neighbour Dawes, nor cousin Fishers,
'Nor uncle Betts, nor even my brother Delves,
'Will lend an hand, to help us get the corn in ?
'Well then, let you and me, to-morrow morning,
'E'en try what we can do with it ourselves.'
'Nay,' quoth the Lark, ''tis time then to be gone:
'What a man undertakes himself is done.'
Certes, she was a bird of observation;
For very true it is, that none,
Whatever be his station,
Lord of a province, tenant of a mead,
Whether he fill a cottage, or a throne,
Or guard a flock, or guide a nation,
Is very likely to succeed,
Who manages affairs by deputation.
~ Charlotte Smith,
522:The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 2
Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those:
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finney prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Th' advent'rous baron the bright locks admir'd;
He saw, he wish'd, and to the prize aspir'd.
Resolv'd to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
For when success a lover's toil attends,
Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends.
For this, ere Phœbus rose, he had implor'd
Propitious Heav'n, and ev'ry pow'r ador'd,
But chiefly love--to love an altar built,
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves;
225
And all the trophies of his former loves;
With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre,
And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire.
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:
The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r,
The rest, the winds dispers'd in empty air.
But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides,
While melting music steals upon the sky,
And soften'd sounds along the waters die.
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay.
All but the Sylph--with careful thoughts opprest,
Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast.
He summons strait his denizens of air;
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:
Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,
That seem'd but zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold.
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light,
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew;
Dipp'd in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,
While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.
Amid the circle, on the gilded mast,
Superior by the head, was Ariel plac'd;
His purple pinions op'ning to the sun,
He rais'd his azure wand, and thus begun.
"Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear!
Fays, Fairies, Genii, Elves, and Dæmons, hear!
Ye know the spheres and various tasks assign'd
By laws eternal to th' aerial kind.
Some in the fields of purest æther play,
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.
Some guide the course of wand'ring orbs on high,
226
Or roll the planets through the boundless sky.
Some less refin'd, beneath the moon's pale light
Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,
Or suck the mists in grosser air below,
Or dip their pinions in the painted bow,
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain.
Others on earth o'er human race preside,
Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide:
Of these the chief the care of nations own,
And guard with arms divine the British throne.
"Our humbler province is to tend the fair,
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care.
To save the powder from too rude a gale,
Nor let th' imprison'd essences exhale,
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs,
To steal from rainbows e'er they drop in show'rs
A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs;
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,
To change a flounce, or add a furbelow.
"This day, black omens threat the brightest fair
That e'er deserv'd a watchful spirit's care;
Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight,
But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw;
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,
Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade;
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball;
Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall.
Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair:
The flutt'ring fan be Zephyretta's care;
The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;
And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav'rite lock;
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
"To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note,
We trust th' important charge, the petticoat:
227
Oft have we known that sev'n-fold fence to fail,
Though stiff with hoops, and arm'd with ribs of whale.
Form a strong line about the silver bound,
And guard the wide circumference around.
"Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopp'd in vials, or transfix'd with pins;
Or plung'd in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedg'd whole ages in a bodkin's eye:
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogg'd he beats his silken wings in vain;
Or alum styptics with contracting pow'r
Shrink his thin essence like a rivell'd flow'r.
Or, as Ixion fix'd, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!"
He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend;
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend,
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair,
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear;
With beating hearts the dire event they wait,
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate.
~ Alexander Pope,
523:wrote a series of memorials in remonstrance.
As Governor of Hangzhou
Again, ~ Bai Juyi



was sent away from the court and the capital, but this time to the
important position of the thriving town of Hangzhou, which was at the southern
terminus of the Grand Canal and located in the scenic neighborhood of West
Lake. Fortunately for their friendship, Yuan Zhen at the time was serving an
assignment in nearby Ningbo, also in what is today Zhejiang, so the two could
occasionally get together, at least until ~ Bai Juyi



's term as Governor expired.
As governor of Hangzhou ~ Bai Juyi



realised that the farmland nearby depended on
the water of West Lake, but due to the negligence of previous governors, the old
dike had collapsed, and the lake so dried out that the local farmers were
suffering from severe drought. He ordered the construction of a stronger and
taller dike, with a dam to control the flow of water, thus providing water for
irrigation and so relieving the drought and improving the livelihood of the local
people over the following years. ~ Bai Juyi



used his leisure time to enjoy the
beauty of West Lake, visiting the lake almost every day. He ordered the
construction of a causeway connecting Broken Bridge with Solitary Hill to allow
walking on foot, instead of requiring the services of a boat. He then planted trees
along the dike, making it a beautiful landmark. Afterwards, this causeway was
named Bai Causeway, in ~ Bai Juyi



's honour.
Life Near Luoyang
In 824, ~ Bai Juyi



's commission as governor expired, and he received the nominal
rank of Imperial Tutor, which provided more in the way of official salary than
official duties, and he relocated his household to a suburb of the "eastern
capital", Luoyang. At this time, Luoyang was the known as the 'Eastern Capital'
of the empire and was a major metropolis with a population of around one
million, and a reputation as the "cultural capital", as opposed to the more
politically-oriented capital of Chang'an.
Governor of Suzhou
In 825, and fifty-three years old, ~ Bai Juyi



was given the position of Governor (or
Prefect) of Suzhou, on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores
of Taihu Lake. For the first two years he enjoyed himself with feasts and picnic
outings, but after a couple of years he became ill, and he was forced into a
period of retirement.
Later Career
After his time as Prefect of Hangzhou (822-824) and then Suzhou (825-827), Bai
Juyi returned to the capital. He then served in various official posts in the capital,
and then again as prefect/governor, this time of Henan province, which was the
province in which Luoyang was part of. It was in Henan that his first son was
born, though only to die prematurely the next year; and, in 831 Yuan Zhen died.
For the next thirteen years, ~ Bai Juyi



continued to hold various nominal posts, but
actually lived in retirement.
Retirement
In 832, ~ Bai Juyi



repaired an unused part of the Xiangshan Monastery, at
Longmen, about 7.5 miles south of Luoyang. ~ Bai Juyi



moved to this location, and
began to refer to himself as the "Hermit of Xianshang".This area, now a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, is famous for its tens of thousands of statues of Buddha and
his disciples carved out of the rock. In 839, he experienced a paralytic attack,
losing the use of his left leg, and became a bedridden invalid for several months.
After his partial recovery, he spent his final years arranging his Collected Works,
which he presented to the main monasteries of those localities in which he had
spent time.
Death
In 846, ~ Bai Juyi



died, leaving instructions for a simple burial in a grave at the
monastery, with a plain style funeral, and not to have a posthumous title
conferred upon him. He has a tomb monument, in Longmen, situated on
Xiangshan, across the Yi River from the Longmen cave temples in the vicinity of
Luoyang, Henan. It is a circular mound of earth 4 meters high, 52 meters in
circumference, and with a 2.80 meter high Monument inscribed "~ Bai Juyi



".
Works
~ Bai Juyi



has been known for his plain, direct, and easily comprehensible style of
verse, as well as for his social and political criticism. Besides his surviving poems,
several letters and essays are also extent.
History
One of the most prolific of the Tang poets, ~ Bai Juyi



wrote over 2,800 poems,
which he had copied and distributed to ensure their survival. They are notable for
their relative accessibility: it is said that he would rewrite any part of a poem if
one of his servants was unable to understand it. The accessibility of ~ Bai Juyi



's
poems made them extremely popular in his lifetime, in both China and Japan,
and they continue to be read in these countries today.
Famous Poems
Two of his most famous works are the long narrative poems The Song of
Everlasting Sorrow, which tells the story of Yang Guifei, and The Song of the Pipa
Player. Like Du Fu, he had a strong sense of social responsibility and is well
known for his satirical poems, such as The Elderly Charcoal Seller.
~ Bai Juyi



also wrote intensely romantic poems to fellow officials with whom he
studied and traveled. These speak of sharing wine, sleeping together, and
viewing the moon and mountains. One friend, Yu Shunzhi, sent Bai a bolt of cloth
as a gift from a far-off posting, and ~ Bai Juyi



debated on how best to use the
precious material:
About to cut it to make a mattress,
pitying the breaking of the leaves;
about to cut it to make a bag,
pitying the dividing of the flowers.
It is better to sew it,
making a coverlet of joined delight;
I think of you as if I'm with you,
day or night.

Technical Virtuosity
~ Bai Juyi



was known for his interest in the old yuefu form of poetry, which was a
typical form of Han poetry, namely folk ballad verses, collected or written by the
Music Bureau. These were often a form of social protest. And, in fact, writing
poetry to promote social progress was explicitly one of his objectives. He is also
known for his well-written poems in the regulated verse style.
A Foresaken Garden
I enter the court
Through the middle gate—
And my sleeve is wet with tears.
The flowers still grow
In the courtyard,
Though two springs have fled
Since last their master came.
The windows, porch, and bamboo screen
Are just as they always were,
But at the entrance to the house
Someone is missing—
You!
~ Bai Juyi,
524:The Character Of Holland
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th'Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand;
And so much Earth as was contributed
By English Pilots when they heav'd the Lead;
Or what by th' Oceans slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrackt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with mad labour fish'd the Land to Shoar;
And div'd as desperately for each piece
Of Earth, as if't had been of Ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small Loads of Clay,
Less then what building Swallows bear away;
Transfursing into them their Dunghil Soul.
How did they rivet, with Gigantick Piles,
Thorough the Center their new-catched Miles;
And to the stake a strugling Country bound,
Where barking Waves still bait the forced Ground;
Building their watry Babel far more high
To reach the Sea, then those to scale the Sky.
Yet still his claim the Injur'd Ocean laid,
And oft at Leap-frog ore their Steeples plaid:
As if on purpose it on Land had come
To shew them what's their Mare Liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boyl;
The Earth and Water play at Level-coyl;
The Fish oft-times the Burger dispossest,
And sat not as a Meat but as a Guest;
And oft the Tritons and the Sea-Nymphs saw
Whole sholes of Dutch serv'd up for Cabillan;
Or as they over the new Level rang'd
For pickled Herring, pickled Heeren chang'd.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at Duck and Drake.
Therefore Necessity, that first made Kings,
Something like Government among them brings.
For as with Pygmees who best kills the Crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures Grain,
120
Among the blind the one-ey'd blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that draines.
Not who first see the rising Sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising Lands.
Who best could know to pump an Earth so leak
Him they their Lord and Country's Father speak.
To make a Bank was a great Plot of State;
Invent a Shov'l and be a Magistrate.
Hence some small Dyke-grave unperceiv'd invades
The Pow'r, and grows as 'twere a King of Spades.
But for less envy some Joynt States endures,
Who look like a Commission of the Sewers.
For these Half-anders, half wet, and half dry,
Nor bear strict service, nor pure Liberty.
'Tis probable Religion after this
Came next in order; which they could not miss.
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
Th' Apostles were so many Fishermen?
Besides the Waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their Land, so them did re-baptise.
Though Herring for their God few voices mist,
And Poor-John to have been th' Evangelist.
Faith, that could never Twins conceive before,
Never so fertile, spawn'd upon this shore:
More pregnant then their Marg'ret, that laid down
For Hans-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.
Sure when Religion did it self imbark,
And from the east would Westward steer its Ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pillag'd the first piece he found:
Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew,
Staple of Sects and Mint of Schisme grew;
That Bank of Conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion but finds Credit, and Exchange.
In vain for Catholicks our selves we bear;
The Universal Church is onely there.
Nor can Civility there want for Tillage,
Where wisely for their Court they chose a Village.
How fit a Title clothes their Governours,
Themselves the Hogs as all their Subjects Bores
Let it suffice to give their Country Fame
That it had one Civilis call'd by Name,
121
Some Fifteen hundred and more years ago,
But surely never any that was so.
See but their Mairmaids with their Tails of Fish,
Reeking at Church over the Chafing-Dish.
A vestal Turf enshrin'd in Earthen Ware
Fumes through the loop-holes of wooden Square.
Each to the Temple with these Altars tend,
But still does place it at her Western End:
While the fat steam of Female Sacrifice
Fills the Priests Nostrils and puts out his Eyes.
Or what a Spectacle the Skipper gross,
A Water-Hercules Butter-Coloss,
Tunn'd up with all their sev'ral Towns of Beer;
When Stagg'ring upon some Land, Snick and Sneer,
They try, like Statuaries, if they can,
Cut out each others Athos to a Man:
And carve in their large Bodies, where they please,
The Armes of the United Provinces.
But when such Amity at home is show'd;
What then are their confederacies abroad?
Let this one court'sie witness all the rest;
When their hole Navy they together prest,
Not Christian Captives to redeem from Bands:
Or intercept the Western golden Sands:
No, but all ancient Rights and Leagues must vail,
Rather then to the English strike their sail;
to whom their weather-beaten Province ows
It self, when as some greater Vessal tows
A Cock-boat tost with the same wind and fate;
We buoy'd so often up their Sinking State.
Was this Jus Belli & Pacis; could this be
Cause why their Burgomaster of the Sea
Ram'd with Gun-powder, flaming with Brand wine,
Should raging hold his Linstock to the Mine?
While, with feign'd Treaties, they invade by stealth
Our sore new circumcised Common wealth.
Yet of his vain Attempt no more he sees
Then of Case-Butter shot and Bullet-Cheese.
And the torn Navy stagger'd with him home,
While the Sea laught it self into a foam,
'Tis true since that (as fortune kindly sports,)
A wholesome Danger drove us to our ports.
122
While half their banish'd keels the Tempest tost,
Half bound at home in Prison to the frost:
That ours mean time at leisure might careen,
In a calm Winter, under Skies Serene.
As the obsequious Air and waters rest,
Till the dear Halcyon hatch out all its nest.
The Common wealth doth by its losses grow;
And, like its own Seas, only Ebbs to flow.
Besides that very Agitation laves,
And purges out the corruptible waves.
And now again our armed Bucentore
Doth yearly their Sea-Nuptials restore.
And how the Hydra of seaven Provinces
Is strangled by our Infant Hercules.
Their Tortoise wants its vainly stretched neck;
Their Navy all our Conquest or our Wreck:
Or, what is left, their Carthage overcome
Would render fain unto our better Rome.
Unless our Senate, lest their Youth disuse,
The War, (but who would) Peace if begg'd refuse.
For now of nothing may our State despair,
Darling of Heaven, and of Men the Care;
Provided that they be what they have been,
Watchful abroad, and honest still within.
For while our Neptune doth a Trident shake, Blake,
Steel'd with those piercing Heads, Dean, Monck and
And while Jove governs in the highest Sphere,
Vainly in Hell let Pluto domineer.
~ Andrew Marvell,
525:Hymne A La Justice
A LA FRANCE
France! ô belle contrée, ô terre généreuse,
Que les dieux complaisants formaient pour être heureuse,
Tu ne sens point du nord les glaçantes horreurs,
Le midi de ses feux t'épargne les fureurs.
Tes arbres innocents n'ont point d'ombres mortelles;
Ni des poisons épars dans tes herbes nouvelles
Ne trompent une main crédule; ni tes bois
Des tigres frémissants ne redoutent la voix;
Ni les vastes serpents ne traînent sur tes plantes
En longs cercles hideux leurs écailles sonnantes.
Les chênes, les sapins et les ormes épais
En utiles rameaux ombragent tes sommets,
Et de Beaune et d'Aï les rives fortunées,
Et la riche Aquitaine, et les hauts Pyrénées,
Sous leurs bruyants pressoirs font couler en ruisseaux
Des vins délicieux mûris sur leurs coteaux.
La Provence odorante et de Zéphire aimée
Respire sur les mers une haleine embaumée,
Au bord des flots couvrant, délicieux trésor,
L'orange et le citron de leur tunique d'or,
Et plus loin, au penchant des collines pierreuses,
Forme la grasse olive aux liqueurs savoureuses,
Et ces réseaux légers, diaphanes habits,
Où la fraîche grenade enferme ses rubis.
Sur tes rochers touffus la chèvre se hérisse,
Tes prés enflent de lait la féconde génisse,
Et tu vois tes brebis, sur le jeune gazon,
Épaissir le tissu de leur blanche toison.
Dans les fertiles champs voisins de la Touraine,
Dans ceux où l'Océan boit l'urne de la Seine,
S'élèvent pour le frein des coursiers belliqueux.
Ajoutez cet amas de fleuves tortueux:
L'indomptable Garonne aux vagues insensées,
Le Rhône impétueux, fils des Alpes glacées,
La Seine au flot royal, la Loire dans son sein
Incertaine, et la Saône, et mille autres enfin
Qui, nourrissant partout, sur tes nobles rivages,
60
Fleurs, moissons et vergers, et bois et pâturages,
Rampent au pied des murs d'opulentes cités
Sous les arches de pierre à grand bruit emportés.
Dirai-je ces travaux, source de l'abondance,
Ces ports où des deux mers l'active bienfaisance
Amène les tributs du rivage lointain
Que visite Phoebus le soir ou le matin?
Dirai-je ces canaux, ces montagnes percées,
De bassins en bassins ces ondes amassées
Pour joindre au pied des monts l'une et l'autre Téthys,
Et ces vastes chemins en tous lieux départis,
Où l'étranger, à l'aise achevant son voyage,
Pense au nom des Trudaine et bénit leur ouvrage?
Ton peuple industrieux est né pour les combats.
Le glaive, le mousquet n'accablent point ses bras.
Il s'élance aux assauts, et son fer intrépide
Chassa l'impie Anglais, usurpateur avide.
Le ciel les fit humains, hospitaliers et bons,
Amis des doux plaisirs, des festins, des chansons;
Mais, faibles, opprimés, la tristesse inquiète
Glace ces chants joyeux sur leur bouche muette,
Pour les jeux, pour la danse appesantit leurs pas,
Renverse devant eux les tables des repas,
Flétrit de longs soucis, empreinte douloureuse,
Et leur front et leur âme. O France! trop heureuse
Si tu voyais tes biens, si tu profitais mieux
Des dons que tu reçus de la bonté des cieux!
Vois le superbe Anglais, l'Anglais dont le courage
Ne s'est sentais qu'aux lois d'un sénat libre et sage,
Qui t'épie, et, dans l'Inde éclipsant ta splendeur,
Sur tes fautes sans nombre élève sa grandeur.
Il triomphe, il t'insulte. Oh! combien tes collines
Tressailliraient de voir réparer tes ruines,
Et pour la liberté donneraient sans regrets
Et leur vin, et leur huile, et leurs belles forêts!
J'ai vu dans tes hameaux la plaintive misère,
La mendicité blême et la douleur amère.
Je t'ai vu dans tes biens, indigent laboureur,
D'un fisc avare et dur maudissant la rigueur,
Versant aux pieds des grands des larmes inutiles,
61
Tout trempé de sueurs pour toi-même infertiles,
Découragé de vivre, et plein d'un juste effroi
De mettre au jour des fils malheureux comme toi.
Tu vois sous les soldats les villes gémissantes;
Corvée, impôts rongeurs, tributs, taxes pesantes,
Le sel, fils de la terre, ou même l'eau des mers,
Sources d'oppression et de fléaux divers;
Mille brigands, couverts du nom sacré du prince,
S'unir à déchirer une triste province,
Et courir à l'envi, de son sang altérés,
Se partager entre eux ses membres déchirés!
O sainte Égalité! dissipe nos ténèbres,
Renverse les verrous, les bastilles funèbres.
Le riche indifférent, dans un char promené,
De ces gouffres secrets partout environné,
Rit avec les bourreaux, s'il n'est bourreau lui-même,
Près de ces noirs réduits de la misère extrême,
D'une maîtresse impure achète les transports,
Chante sur des tombeaux, et boit parmi des morts.
Malesherbes, Turgot, ô vous en qui la France
Vit luire, hélas! en vain, sa dernière espérance;
Ministres dont le coeur a connu la pitié,
Ministres dont le nom ne s'est point oublié,
Ah! si de telles mains, justement souveraines,
Toujours de cet empire avaient tenu les rênes!
L'équité clairvoyante aurait régné sur nous;
Le faible aurait osé respirer près de vous;
L'oppresseur, évitant d'armer d'injustes plaintes,
Sinon quelque pudeur, aurait ou quelques craintes;
Le délateur impie, opprimé par la faim,
Serait mort dans l'opprobre, et tant d'hommes enfin,
A l'insu de nos lois, à l'insu, du vulgaire,
Foudroyés sons les coups d'un pouvoir arbitraire,
De cris non entendus, de funèbres sanglots,
Ne feraient point gémir les voûtes des cachots.
Non, je ne veux plus vivre en ce séjour servile!
J'irai, j'irai bien loin me chercher un asile,
Un asile à ma vie en son paisible cours,
Une tombe à ma cendre à la fin de mes jours,
Où d'un grand au coeur dur l'opulence homicide
Du sang d'un peuple entier ne sera point avide,
62
Et ne me dira point, avec un rire affreux,
Qu'ils se plaignent sans cesse et qu'ils sont trop heureux;
Où, loin des ravisseurs, la main cultivatrice
Recueille les dons d'une terre propice;
Où mon coeur, respirant sous un ciel étranger,
Ne verra plus des maux qu'il ne peut soulager;
Où mes yeux, éloignés des publiques misères,
Ne verront plus partout les larmes de mes frères,
Et la pâle indigence à la mourante voix,
Et les crimes puissants qui font trembler les lois.
Toi donc, Équité sainte, ô toi, vierge adorée,
De nos tristes climats pour longtemps ignorée,
Daigne du haut des cieux goûter le libre encens
D'une lyre au coeur chaste, aux transports innocents,
Qui ne saura jamais, par des voeux mercenaires,
Flatter, à prix d'argent, des faveurs arbitraires,
Mais qui rendra toujours, par amour et par choix,
Un noble et pur hommage aux appuis de tes lois.
De voeux pour les humains tous ses chants retentissent:
La vérité l'enflamme, et ses cordes frémissent
Quand l'air qui l'environne auprès d'elle a porté
Le doux nom des vertus et de la liberté.
~ Andre Marie de Chenier,
526:was also renowned in Japan. Burton Watson says of ~ Bai Juyi



: "he worked to
develop a style that was simple and easy to understand, and posterity has
requited his efforts by making him one of the most well-loved and widely read of
all Chinese poets, both in his native land and in the other countries of the East
that participate in the appreciation of Chinese culture. He also, thanks to the
translations and biographical studies by Arthur Waley, one of the most accessible
to English readers". Today the fame of ~ Bai Juyi



is worldwide.
Name variants
Names
Pinyin: Bó Juyì or Bái Juyì
Wade-Giles: Po Chü-i or Pai Chü-i
Zì : Lètian
Hào : Xiangshan Jushì
Zuìyín Xiansheng
Shì Wén (hence referred
to as Bái Wéngong )
~ Bai Juyi



often referred to himself in life as Letian, the older English transcription
version being Lo-t'ien, meaning something like "happy-go-lucky". Later in life, he
referred to himself as the Hermit of Xiangshan.
Life
~ Bai Juyi



lived during the Middle Tang period. This was a period of rebuilding and
recovery for the Tang Empire, following the An Shi Rebellion, and following the
poetically flourishing era famous for Li Bo (701-762), Wang Wei (701-761), and
Du Fu (712-770). ~ Bai Juyi



lived through the reign of eight or nine emperors,
being born in the Dali regnal era (766-779) of Emperor Daizong of Tang. He had
a long and successful career both as a government official and a poet, although
these two facets of his career seemed to have come in conflict with each other at
certain points. ~ Bai Juyi



was also a devoted Chan Buddist.
Birth and childhood
~ Bai Juyi



was born in 772, in Taiyuan, Shanxi, which was then a few miles from
location of the modern city. Although he was in Zhengyang, Henan for most of
his childhood. His family was poor but scholarly, his father being an Assistant
Department Magistrate of the second-class. At the age of ten he was sent away
from his family to avoid a war that broke out in the north of China, and went to
live with relatives in the area known as Jiangnan, more specifically Xuzhou.
Early career
~ Bai Juyi



's official career was initially successful. He passed the jinshi
examinations in 800. ~ Bai Juyi



may have taken up residence in the western capital
city of Chang'an, in 801. Not long after this, ~ Bai Juyi



and formed a long
friendship with a scholar Yuan Zhen. ~ Bai Juyi



's father died in 804, and the young
Bai spent the traditional period of retirement mourning the death of his parent,
which he did along the Wei River, near to the capital. 806 was the first full year
of the reign of Emperor Xianzong of Tang. Also, 806 was the ~ Bai Juyi



was
appointed to a minor post as a government official, at Zhouzhi, which was not far
from the Chang'an (and also in Shaanxi province). He was made a member
(scholar) of the Hanlin Academy, in 807, and Reminder of the Left from 807 until
815, except in 811 when his mother died. He spent the traditional three year
mourning period again along the Wei River, and returned to court in the winter of
814, where he held the title of Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor. It was
not a high ranking position, but nevertheless one which he was soon to lose.
Exile
While serving as a minor palace official, 814, Bei Juyi managed to get himself in
official trouble. He made a few enemies at court and with certain individuals in
other positions. It was partly his written works which lead him into trouble. He
wrote two long memorials, translated by Arthur Waley as "On Stopping the War",
regarding what he considered to be an overly lengthy campaign against a minor
group of Tatars; and he wrote a series of poems, in which he satirized the actions
of greedy officials and highlighting the sufferings of the common folk.
At this time, one of the post-An Lushan warlords (jiedushi), Wu Yuanji in Henan,
had seized control of Zhangyi Circuit (centered in Zhumadian), an act for which
he sought reconciliation with the imperial government, trying to get an imperial
pardon as a necessary prerequisite. Despite the intercession of influential friends,
Wu was denied, thus officially putting him in the position of rebellion. Still
seeking a pardon, Wu turned to assassination, blaming the Prime Minister
(another Wu, Wu Yuanheng) and other officials: the imperial court generally
began by dawn, requiring the ministers to rise early in order to attend in a timely
manner; and, on July 13, 815, before dawn, the Tang Prime Minister Wu
Yuanheng was set to go to the palace for a meeting with Emperor Xianzong. As
he left his house, arrows were fired at his retinue. His servants all fled, and the
assassins seized Wu Yuanheng and his horse, and then decapitated him, taking
his head with them. The assassins also attacked another official who favored the
campaign against the rebellious warlords, Pei Du, but was unable to kill him. The
people at the capital were shocked and there was turmoil, with officials refusing
to leave their personal residences until after dawn.
In this context, ~ Bai Juyi



overstepped his minor position by memorializing the
emperor. As Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor, Bai's memorial was a
breach of protocol — he should have waited for those of censorial authority to
take the lead before offering his own criticism. This was not the only charge
which his opponents used against him. His mother had died, apparently caused
by falling into a well while looking at some flowers, and two poems written by Bai
Juyi — the titles of which Waley translates as "In Praise of Flowers" and "The
New Well" — were used against him as a sign of lack of Filial Piety, one of the
Confucian ideals. The result was exile: ~ Bai Juyi



was demoted to the rank of SubPrefect and banished from the court and the capital city to Jiujiang, then known
as Xun Yang on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi
Province, China. After three years he was sent as Governor of a remote place in
Sichuan. At the time, the main travel route there was up the Yangzi River. This
trip allowed ~ Bai Juyi



a few days to visit his friend Yuan Zhen, who was also in
exile and with whom he explored the rock caves located at Yichang. ~ Bai Juyi



was
delighted by the flowers and trees for which his new location was noted. In 819,
he was recalled back to the capital, ending his exile.
Return to the capital and a new emperor
In 819, ~ Bai Juyi



was recalled to the capital and given the position of second-class
Assistant Secretary. In 821, China got a new emperor, Muzong. After succeeding
to the throne, Muzong spent his time feasting and heavily drinking, and
neglecting his duties as emperor. Meanwhile, the temporarily subdued regional
military governors (jiedushi) began to challenge the central Tang government,
leading to the new de facto independence of three circuits north of the Yellow
River, which had been previously subdued by Emperor Xianzong. Furthermore,
Muzong's administration was characterized by massive corruption. Again, ~ Bai Juyi,
527:I.
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghis urn.

II.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...

...

III.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedoms foison.

IV.
In Pisas church a cup of sculptured gold
Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:
A Sacrament more holy neer of old
Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
Of moon-illumined forests, when...

V.
And reconciling factions wet their lips
With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
Undarkened by their countrys last eclipse...

...

VI.
Was Florence the liberticide? that band
Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,
A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faithswise, justdo they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants prey?

VII.
O foster-nurse of mans abandoned glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptors fearless souland as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wart among the false...was this thy crime?

IX.
Yes; and on Pisas marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlandedthe snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces;in thine
A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victims fate is as thine own.

X.
The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;--
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghis sake.

Xa.

[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;
If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine
The sights and sounds of home with lifes own life
Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent...

...

XI.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriots meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided nothe went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Wheneer he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--

XV.
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vados tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.

XVI.
Here the earths breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life--
Snakes and ill wormsendure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the climes victorious strife--
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolfs dark gray scalp who tracked him there.

XVII.
And at the utmost point...stood there
The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, 95
Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer
Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
When he was cold. The birds that were his grave
Fell dead after their feast in Vados wave.

XVIII.
There must have burned within Marenghis breast
That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon...
More joyous than free heavens majestic cope
To his oppressor), warring with decay,--
Or he could neer have lived years, day by day.

XIX.
Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
And every seagull which sailed down to drink
Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
And each one, with peculiar talk and play,
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

XX.
And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
In many entangled figures quaint and sweet
To some enchanted music they would dance--
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

XXI.
He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the woods remembered leaves.

XXII.
And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--
While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron
Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken
Of mountains and blue isles which did environ
With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--
And feel ... liberty.

XXIII.
And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean
Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,
Starting from dreams...
Communed with the immeasurable world;
And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,
Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.

XXIV.
His food was the wild fig and strawberry;
The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast
Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry
As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;
And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found
Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.

XXV.
And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made
His solitude less dark. When memory came
(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),
His spirit basked in its internal flame,--
As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.

XXVI.
Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
His couch...

...

XXVII.
And, when he saw beneath the sunsets planet
A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--
Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,
Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--

XXVIII.
The thought of his own kind who made the soul
Which sped that winged shape through night and day,--
The thought of his own country...

...
This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.--[MRS. SHELLEYS NOTE, 1824.]
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Marenghi
,
528:Ode To Silence
Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore, I seek in this great hall,
But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.
I seek her from afar,
I come from temples where her altars are,
From groves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,
Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,
And the inarticulate snow,
Leaving at last of her least signs and traces
None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.
"She will love well," I said,
"If love be of that heart inhabiter,
The flowers of the dead;
The red anemone that with no sound
93
Moves in the wind, and from another wound
That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam).
She will love well," I said,
"The flowers of the dead;
Where dark Persephone the winter round,
Uncomforted for home, uncomforted,
Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily,
With sullen pupils focussed on a dream,
Stares on the stagnant stream
That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell,
There, there will she be found,
She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound."
"I long for Silence as they long for breath
Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea;
What thing can be
So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death
What fury, what considerable rage, if only she,
Upon whose icy breast,
Unquestioned, uncaressed,
One time I lay,
And whom always I lack,
Even to this day,
Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,
If only she therewith be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
94
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,
Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went.
I paused at every grievous door,
And harked a moment, holding up my hand,—and for a space
A hush was on them, while they watched my face;
And then they fell a-whispering as before;
So that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there.
I sought her, too,
Among the upper gods, although I knew
She was not like to be where feasting is,
Nor near to Heaven's lord,
Being a thing abhorred
And shunned of him, although a child of his,
(Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath,
Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death).
Fearing to pass unvisited some place
And later learn, too late, how all the while,
With her still face,
She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile,
I sought her even to the sagging board whereat
The stout immortals sat;
But such a laughter shook the mighty hall
No one could hear me say:
Had she been seen upon the Hill that day?
And no one knew at all
How long I stood, or when at last I sighed and went away.
There is a garden lying in a lull
Between the mountains and the mountainous sea,
I know not where, but which a dream diurnal
Paints on my lids a moment till the hull
Be lifted from the kernel
And Slumber fed to me.
Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene,
Though it would seem a ruined place and after
Your lichenous heart, being full
Of broken columns, caryatides
Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees,
And urns funereal altered into dust
Minuter than the ashes of the dead,
And Psyche's lamp out of the earth up-thrust,
95
Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bed
Of Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead.
There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteria Fastens its fingers in the
strangling wall,
And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds;
There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds;
But never an echo of your daughters' laughter
Is there, nor any sign of you at all
Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria!
Only her shadow once upon a stone
I saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.
I tell you you have done her body an ill,
You chatterers, you noisy crew!
She is not anywhere!
I sought her in deep Hell;
And through the world as well;
I thought of Heaven and I sought her there;
Above nor under ground
Is Silence to be found,
That was the very warp and woof of you,
Lovely before your songs began and after they were through!
Oh, say if on this hill
Somewhere your sister's body lies in death,
So I may follow there, and make a wreath
Of my locked hands, that on her quiet breast
Shall lie till age has withered them!
(Ah, sweetly from the rest
I see
Turn and consider me
Compassionate Euterpe!)
"There is a gate beyond the gate of Death,
Beyond the gate of everlasting Life,
Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith,
"Whereon but to believe is horror!
Whereon to meditate engendereth
Even in deathless spirits such as I
A tumult in the breath,
96
A chilling of the inexhaustible blood
Even in my veins that never will be dry,
And in the austere, divine monotony
That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.
This is her province whom you lack and seek;
And seek her not elsewhere.
Hell is a thoroughfare
For pilgrims,—Herakles,
And he that loved Euridice too well,
Have walked therein; and many more than these;
And witnessed the desire and the despair
Of souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air;
You, too, have entered Hell,
And issued thence; but thence whereof I speak
None has returned;—for thither fury brings
Only the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things.
Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there."
Oh, radiant Song! Oh, gracious Memory!
Be long upon this height
I shall not climb again!
I know the way you mean,—the little night,
And the long empty day,—never to see
Again the angry light,
Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain!
Ah, but she,
Your other sister and my other soul,
She shall again be mine;
And I shall drink her from a silver bowl,
A chilly thin green wine,
Not bitter to the taste,
Not sweet,
Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,—
To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth—
But savoring faintly of the acid earth,
And trod by pensive feet
From perfect clusters ripened without haste
Out of the urgent heat
In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine
. Lift up your lyres! Sing on!
97
But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,
529:Phi Beta Kappa Poem
Harvard, 1914
SIR, friends, and scholars, we are here to serve
A high occasion. Our New England wears
All her unrivalled beauty as of old;
And June, with scent of bayberry and rose
And song of orioles— as she only comes
By Massachusetts Bay —is here once more,
Companioning our fête of fellowship.
The open trails, South, West, and North, lead back
From populous cities or from lonely plains,
Ranch, pulpit, office, factory, desk, or mill,
To this fair tribunal of ambitious youth,
The shadowy town beside the placid Charles,
Where Harvard waits us through the passing years,
Conserving and administering still
Her savor for the gladdening of the race.
Yearly, of all the sons she has sent forth,
And men her admiration would adopt,
She summons whom she will back to her side
As if to ask, 'How fares my cause of truth
In the great world beyond these studious walls?'
Here, from their store of life experience,
They must make answer as grace is given them,
And their plain creed, in verity, declare.
Among the many, there is sometimes called
One who, like Arnold's scholar gypsy poor,
Is but a seeker on the dusky way,
'Still waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.'
He must bethink him first of other days,
And that old scholar of the seraphic smile,
As we recall him in this very place
With all the sweetest culture of his age,
His gentle courtesy and friendliness,
A chivalry of soul now strangely rare,
And that ironic wit which made him, too,
The unflinching critic and most dreaded foe
Of all things mean, unlovely, and untrue.
What Mr. Norton said, with that slow smile,
Has put the fear of God in many a heart,
130
Even while his hand encouraged eager youth.
From such enheartening who would not dare speak—
Seeing no truth can be too small to serve,
And no word worthless that is born of love?
Within the noisy workshop of the world,
Where still the strife is upward out of gloom,
Men doubt the value of high teaching —cry,
'What use is learning? Man must have his will!
The élan of life alone is paramount!
Away with old traditions! We are free!'
So folly mocks at truth in Freedom's name.
Pale Anarchy leads on, with furious shriek,
Her envious horde of reckless malcontents
And mad destroyers of the Commonwealth,
While Privilege with indifference grows corrupt,
Till the Republic stands in jeopardy
From following false idols and ideals,
Though sane men cry for honesty once more,
Order and duty and self-sacrifice.
Our world and all it holds of good for us
Our fathers and unselfish mothers made,
With noble passion and enduring toil,
Strenuous, frugal, reverent, and elate,
Caring above all else to guard and save
The ampler life of the intelligence
And the fine honor of a scrupulous code —
Ideals of manhood touched with the divine.
For this they founded these great schools we serve,
Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale,
Amherst and Williams, trusting to our hands
The heritage of all they held most high,
Possessions of the spirit and the mind,
Investments in the provinces of joy.
Vast provinces are these! And fortunate they
Who at their will may go adventuring there,
Exploring all the boundaries of Truth,
Learning the roads that run through Beauty's realm,
Sighting the pinnacles where Good meets God,
Encompassed by the eternal unknown sea!
Even for a little to o'erlook those lands,
The kingdoms of Religion, Science, Art,
Is to be made forever happier
131
With blameless memories that shall bring content
And inspiration for all after days.
And fortunate they whom destiny allows
To rest within those provinces and serve
The dominion of ideals all their lives.
For whoso will, putting dull greed aside,
And holding fond allegiance to the best,
May dwell there and find fortitude and joy.
In the free fellowship of kindred minds,
One band of scholar gypsies I have known,
Whose purpose all unworldly was to find
An answer to the riddle of the Earth —
A key that should unlock the book of life
And secrets of its sorceries reveal.
This, they discovered, had long since been found
And laid aside forgotten and unused.
Our dark young poet who from Dartmouth came
Was told the secret by his gypsy bride,
Who had it from a master over seas,
And he it was first hinted to the band
The magic of that universal lore,
Before the great Mysteriarch summoned him.
It was the doctrine of the threefold life,
The beginning of the end of all their doubt.
In that Victorian age it has become
So much the fashion now to half despise,
Within the shadow of Cathedral walls
They had been schooled, and heard the mellow chimes
For Lenten litanies and daily prayers,
With a mild, eloquent, beloved voice
Exhorting to all virtue and that peace
Surpassing understanding —casting there
That 'last enchantment of the Middle Age,'
The spell of Oxford and her ritual.
So duteous youth was trained, until there grew
Restive outreaching in men's thought to find
Some certitude beyond the dusk of faith.
They cried on mysticism to be gone,
Mazed in the shadowy princedom of the soul.
Then as old creeds fell round them into dust,
They reached through science to belief in law,
Made reason paramount in man, and guessed
132
At reigning mind within the universe.
Piecing the fragments of a fair design
With reverent patience and courageous skill,
They saw the world from chaos step by step,
Under far-seeing guidance and restraint,
Emerge to order and to symmetry,
As logical and sure as music's own.
With Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall, and the rest,
Our band saw roads of knowledge open wide
Through the uncharted province of the truth,
As on they fared through that unfolding world.
Yet there they found no rest-house for the heart,
No wells sufficient for the spirit's thirst,
No shade nor glory for the senses starved. . . .
Turning— they fled by moonlit trails to seek
The magic principality of Art,
Where loveliness, not learning, rules supreme.
They stood intoxicated with delight before
The poised unanxious splendor of the Greek;
They mused upon the Gothic minsters gray,
Where mystic spirit took on mighty form,
Until their prayers to lovely churches turned —
(Like a remembrance of the Middle Age
They rose where Ralph or Bertram dreamed in stone);
Entranced they trod a painters' paradise,
Where color wasted by the Scituate shore
Between the changing marshes and the sea;
They heard the golden voice of poesie
Lulling the senses with its last caress
In Tennysonion accents pure and fine;
And all their laurels were for Beauty's brow,
Though toiling Reason went ungarlanded.
Then poisonous weeds of artifice sprang up,
Defiling Nature at her sacred source;
And there the questing World-soul could not stay,
Onward must journey with the changing time,
To come to this uncouth rebellious age,
Where not an ancient creed nor courtesy
Is underided, and each demagogue
Cries some new nostrum for the cure of ills.
To-day the unreasoning iconoclast
Would scoff at science and abolish art,
133
To let untutored impulse rule the world.
Let learning perish, and the race returns
To that first anarchy from which we came,
When spirit moved upon the deep and laid
The primal chaos under cosmic law.
And even now, in all our wilful might,
The satiated being cannot bide,
But to that austere country turns again,
The little province of the saints of God,
Where lofty peaks rise upward to the stars
From the gray twilight of Gethsemane,
And spirit dares to climb with wounded feet
Where justice, peace, and loving kindness are.
What says the lore of human power we hold
Through all these striving and tumultuous days?
'Why not accept each several bloom of good,
Without discarding good already gained,
As one might weed a garden overgrown —
Save the new shoots, yet not destroy the old?
Only the fool would root up his whole patch
Of fragrant flowers, to plant the newer seed.'
Ah, softly, brothers! Have we not the key,
Whose first fine luminous use Plotinus gave,
Teaching that ecstasy must lead the man?
Three things, we see, men in this life require,
(As they are needed in the universe):
First of all spirit, energy, or love,
The soul and mainspring of created things;
Next wisdom, knowledge, culture, discipline,
To guide impetuous spirit to its goal;
And lastly strength, the sound apt instrument,
Adjusted and controlled to lawful needs.
The next world-teacher must be one whose word
Shall reaffirm the primacy of soul,
Hold scholarship in her high guiding place,
And recognize the body's equal right
To culture such as it has never known,
In power and beauty serving soul and mind.
Inheritors of this divine ideal,
With courage to be fine as well as strong,
Shall know what common manhood may become,
Regain the gladness of the sons of morn,
134
The radiance of immortality.
Out of heroic wanderings of the past,
And all the wayward gropings of our time,
Unswerved by doubt, unconquered by despair,
The messengers of such a hope must go;
As one who hears far off before the dawn,
On some lone trail among the darkling hills,
The hermit thrushes in the paling dusk,
And at the omen lifts his eyes to see
Above him, with its silent shafts of light,
The sunrise kindling all the peaks with fire.
~ Bliss William Carman,
530:Bahaman
To T. B. M.
IN the crowd that thronged the pierhead, come to see their friends take ship
For new ventures in seafaring, when the hawsers were let slip
And we swung out in the current, with good-byes on every lip,
'Midst the waving caps and kisses, as we dropped down with the tide
And the faces blurred and faded, last of all your hand I spied
Signalling, Farewell, Good fortune! then my heart rose up and cried:
'While the world holds one such comrade, whose sweet durable regard
Would so speed my safe departure, lest home-leaving should be hard,
What care I who keeps the ferry, whether Charon or Cunard!'
Then we cleared the bar, and laid her on the course, the thousand miles
From the Hook to the Bahamas, from midwinter to the isles
Where frost never laid a finger, and eternal summer smiles.
Three days through the surly storm-beat, while the surf-heads threshed and
flew,
And the rolling mountains thundered to the trample of the screw,
The black liner heaved and scuffled and strained on, as if she knew.
On the fourth, the round blue morning sparkled there, all light and breeze,
Clean and tenuous as a bubble blown from two immensities,
Shot and coloured with sheer sunlight and the magic of those seas.
In that bright new world of wonder, it was life enough to laze
All day underneath the awnings, and through half-shut eyes to gaze
At the marvel of the sea-blue; and I faltered for a phrase
Should half give you the impression, tell you how the very tint
Justified your finest daring, as if Nature gave the hint,
'Plodders, see Imagination set his pallet without stint!'
Cobalt, gobelin, and azure, turquoise, sapphire, indigo,
Changing from the spectral bluish of a shadow upon snow
To the deep of Canton china,—one unfathomable glow.
And the flying-fish,—to see them in a scurry lift and flee,
Silvery as the foam they sprang from, fragile people of the sea,
Whom their heart's great aspiration for a moment had set free.
From the dim and cloudy ocean, thunder-centred, rosy-verged,
At the lord sun's Sursum Corda, as implicit impulse urged,
Frail as vapour, fine as music, these bright spirit-things emerged;
Like those flocks of small white snowbirds we have seen start up before
Our brisk walk in winter weather by the snowy Scituate shore;
And the tiny shining sea-folk brought you back to me once more.
So we ran down Abaco; and passing that tall sentinel
54
Black against the sundown, sighted, as the sudden twilight fell,
Nassau light; and the warm darkness breathed on us from breeze and swell.
Stand-by bell and stop of engine; clank of anchor going down;
And we're riding in the roadstead off a twinkling-lighted town,
Low dark shore with boom of breakers and white beach the palm-trees crown.
In the soft wash of the sea air, on the long swing of the tide,
Here for once the dream came true, the voyage ended close beside
The Hesperides in moonlight on mid-ocean where they ride!
And those Hesperidean joy-lands were not strange to you and me.
Just beyond the lost horizon, every time we looked to sea
From Testudo, there they floated, looming plain as plain could be.
Who believed us? 'Myth and fable are a science in our time.'
'Never saw the sea that colour. ''Never heard of such a rhyme.'
Well, we've proved it, prince of idlers,—knowledge wrong and faith sublime.
Right were you to follow fancy, give the vaguer instinct room
In a heaven of clear colour, where the spirit might assume
All her elemental beauty, past the fact of sky or bloom.
Paint the vision, not the view,—the touch that bids the sense good-bye,
Lifting spirit at a bound beyond the frontiers of the eye,
To suburb unguessed dominions of the soul's credulity.
Never yet was painter, poet, born content with things that are,—
Must divine from every beauty other beauties greater far,
Till the arc of truth be circled, and her lantern blaze, a star.
This alone is art's ambition, to arrest with form and hue
Dominant ungrasped ideals, known to credence, hid from view,
In a mimic of creation,—to the life, yet fairer too,—
Where the soul may take her pleasure, contemplate perfection's plan,
And returning bring the tidings of his heritage to man,—
News of continents uncharted she has stood tip-toe to scan.
So she fires his gorgeous fancy with a cadence, with a line,
Till the artist wakes within him, and the toiler grows divine,
Shaping the rough world about him nearer to some fair design.
Every heart must have its Indies,—an inheritance unclaimed
In the unsubstantial treasure of a province never named,
Loved and longed for through a lifetime, dull, laborious, and unfamed,
Never wholly disillusioned. Spiritus, read, haeres sit
Patriæ quæ tristia mescit. This alone the great king writ
O'er the tomb of her he cherished in this fair world she must quit.
Love in one farewell for ever, taking counsel to implore
Best of human benedictions on its dead, could ask no more.
The heart's country for a dwelling, this at last is all our lore.
But the fairies at your cradle gave you craft to build a home
55
In the wide bright world of colour, with the cunning of a gnome;
Blessed you so above your fellows of the tribe that still must roam.
Still across the world they go, tormented by a strange unrest,
And the unabiding spirit knocks for ever at their breast,
Bidding them away to fortune in some undiscovered West;
While at home you sit and call the Orient up at your command,
Master of the iris seas and Prospero of the purple land.
Listen, here was one world-corner matched the cunning of your hand.
Not, my friend, since we were children, and all wonder-tales were true,—
Jason, Hengest, Hiawatha, fairy prince or pirate crew—
Was there ever such a landing in a country strange and new?
Up the harbour where there gathered, fought and revelled many a year,
Swarthy Spaniard, lost Lucayan, Loyalist, and Buccaneer,
'Once upon a time' was now, and 'far across the sea' was here.
Tropic moonlight, in great floods and fathoms pouring through the trees
On a ground as white as sea-froth its fantastic traceries,
While the poincianas, rustling like the rain, moved in the breeze,
Showed a city, coral-streeted, melting in the mellow shine,
Built of creamstone and enchantment, fairy work in every line,
In a velvet atmosphere that bids the heart her haste resign.
Thanks to Julian Hospitator, saint of travellers by sea,
Roving minstrels and all boatmen,—just such vagabonds as we—
On the shaded wharf we landed, rich in leisure, hale and free.
What more would you for God's creatures, but the little tide of sleep?
In a clean white room I wakened, saw the careless sunlight peep
Through the roses at the window, lay and listened to the creep
Of the soft wind in the shutters, heard the palm-tops stirring high,
And that strange mysterious shuffle of the slipshod foot go by.
In a world all glad with colour, gladdest of all things was I;
In a quiet convent garden, tranquil as the day is long,
Here to sit without intrusion of the world or strife or wrong,—
Watch the lizards chase each other, and the green bird make his song;
Warmed and freshened, lulled yet quickened in that Paradisal air,
Motherly and uncapricious, healing every hurt or care,
Wooing body, mind, and spirit, firmly back to strong and fair;
By the Angelus reminded, silence waits the touch of sound,
As the soul waits her awaking to some Gloria profound;
Till the mighty Southern Cross is lighted at the day's last bound.
And if ever your fair fortune make you good Saint Vincent's guest,
At his door take leave of trouble, welcomed to his decent rest,
Of his ordered peace partaker, by his solace healed and blessed;
Where this flowered cloister garden, hidden from the passing view,
56
Lies behind its yellow walls in prayer the holy hours through:
And beyond, that fairy harbour, floored in malachite and blue.
In that old white-streeted city gladness has her way at last
Under burdens finely poised, and with a freedom unsurpassed,
Move the naked-footed bearers in the blue day deep and vast.
This is Bay Street broad and low-built, basking in its quiet trade;
Here the sponging fleet is anchored; here shell trinkets are displayed;
Here the cable news is posted daily; here the market's made,
With its oranges from Andros, heaps of yam and tamarind,
Red-juiced shadducks from the Current, ripened in the long trade-wind,
Gaudy fish from their sea-gardens, yellow-tailed and azure-tinned.
Here a group of diving boys in bronze and ivory, bright and slim,
Sparkling copper in the high noon, dripping loin-cloth, polished limb,
Poised a moment and then plunged in that deep daylight green and dim.
Here the great rich Spanish laurels spread across the public square
Their dense, solemn shade; and near by, half within the open glare,
Mannerly in their clean cottons, knots of blacks are waiting there
By the court-house, where a magistrate is hearing cases through,
Dealing justice prompt and level, as the sturdy English do,—
One more tent-peg of the Empire, holding that great shelter true.
Last the picture from the town's end, palmed and foam-fringed through the cane,
Where the gorgeous sunset yellows pour aloft and spill and stain
The pure amethystine sea and far faint islands of the main.
Loveliest of the Lucayas, peace be yours till time be done!
In the gray North I shall see you, with your white streets in the sun,
Old pink walls and purple gateways, where the lizards bask and run,
Where the great hibiscus blossoms in their scarlet loll and glow,
And the idling gay bandannas through the hot noons come and go,
While the ever-stirring sea-wind sways the palm-tops to and fro.
Far from stress and storm for ever, dream behind your jalousies,
While the long white lines of breakers crumble on your reefs and keys,
And the crimson oleanders burn against the peacock seas.
~ Bliss William Carman,
531:financially and employed him as his unofficial secretary.
In March 768, he began his journey again and got as far as Hunan province,
where he died in Tanzhou (now Changsha) in November or December 770, in his
58th year. He was survived by his wife and two sons, who remained in the area
for some years at least. His last known descendant is a grandson who requested
a grave inscription for the poet from Yuan Zhen in 813.
Hung summarises his life by concluding that, "He appeared to be a filial son, an
affectionate father, a generous brother, a faithful husband, a loyal friend, a
dutiful official, and a patriotic subject."
Works
Criticism of ~ Du Fu



's works has focused on his strong sense of history, his moral
engagement, and his technical excellence.
History
Since the Song dynasty, critics have called ~ Du Fu



the "poet historian". The most
directly historical of his poems are those commenting on military tactics or the
successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote
to the emperor. Indirectly, he wrote about the effect of the times in which he
lived on himself, and on the ordinary people of China. As Watson notes, this is
information "of a kind seldom found in the officially compiled histories of the
era".
~ Du Fu



's political comments are based on emotion rather than calculation: his
prescriptions have been paraphrased as, "Let us all be less selfish, let us all do
what we are supposed to do". Since his views were impossible to disagree with,
his forcefully expressed truisms enabled his installation as the central figure of
Chinese poetic history.
Moral engagement
A second favourite epithet of Chinese critics is that of "poet sage" (?? shi shèng),
a counterpart to the philosophical sage, Confucius. One of the earliest surviving
works, The Song of the Wagons (from around 750), gives voice to the sufferings
of a conscript soldier in the imperial army, even before the beginning of the
rebellion; this poem brings out the tension between the need of acceptance and
fulfilment of one's duties, and a clear-sighted consciousness of the suffering
which this can involve. These themes are continuously articulated in the poems
on the lives of both soldiers and civilians which ~ Du Fu



produced throughout his
life.
Although ~ Du Fu



's frequent references to his own difficulties can give the
impression of an all-consuming solipsism, Hawkes argues that his "famous
compassion in fact includes himself, viewed quite objectively and almost as an
afterthought". He therefore "lends grandeur" to the wider picture by comparing it
to "his own slightly comical triviality".
~ Du Fu



's compassion, for himself and for others, was part of his general
broadening of the scope of poetry: he devoted many works to topics which had
previously been considered unsuitable for poetic treatment. Zhang Jie wrote that
for ~ Du Fu



, "everything in this world is poetry", and he wrote extensively on
subjects such as domestic life, calligraphy, paintings, animals, and other poems.
Technical excellence
~ Du Fu



's work is notable above all for its range. Chinese critics traditionally used
the term txt (jídàchéng- "complete symphony"), a reference to Mencius'
description of Confucius. Yuan Zhen was the first to note the breadth of ~ Du Fu



's
achievement, writing in 813 that his predecessor, "united in his work traits which
previous men had displayed only singly". He mastered all the forms of Chinese
poetry: Chou says that in every form he "either made outstanding advances or
contributed outstanding examples". Furthermore, his poems use a wide range of
registers, from the direct and colloquial to the allusive and self-consciously
literary. This variety is manifested even within individual works: Owen identifies
the, "rapid stylistic and thematic shifts" in poems which enable the poet to
represent different facets of a situation, while Chou uses the term "juxtaposition"
as the major analytical tool in her work. ~ Du Fu



is noted for having written more
on poetics and painting than any other writer of his time. He wrote eighteen
poems on painting alone, more than any other Tang poet. ~ Du Fu



's seemingly
negative commentary on the prized horse paintings of Han Gan ignited a
controversy that has persisted to the present day.
The tenor of his work changed as he developed his style and adapted to his
surroundings ("chameleon-like" according to Watson): his earliest works are in a
relatively derivative, courtly style, but he came into his own in the years of the
rebellion. Owen comments on the "grim simplicity" of the Qinzhou poems, which
mirrors the desert landscape; the works from his Chengdu period are "light, often
finely observed"; while the poems from the late Kuizhou period have a "density
and power of vision".
Influence
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, ~ Du Fu



's writings are considered by
many literary critics to be among the greatest of all time, and it states "his
dense, compressed language makes use of all the connotative overtones of a
phrase and of all the intonational potentials of the individual word, qualities that
no translation can ever reveal."
In his lifetime and immediately following his death, ~ Du Fu



was not greatly
appreciated. In part this can be attributed to his stylistic and formal innovations,
some of which are still "considered extremely daring and bizarre by Chinese
critics." There are few contemporary references to him—only eleven poems from
six writers—and these describe him in terms of affection, but not as a paragon of
poetic or moral ideals. ~ Du Fu



is also poorly represented in contemporary
anthologies of poetry.
However, as Hung notes, he "is the only Chinese poet whose influence grew with
time", and his works began to increase in popularity in the ninth century. Early
positive comments came from Bai Juyi, who praised the moral sentiments of
some of ~ Du Fu



's works (although he found these in only a small fraction of the
poems), and from Han Yu, who wrote a piece defending ~ Du Fu



and Li Bai on
aesthetic grounds from attacks made against them. Both these writers showed
the influence of ~ Du Fu



in their own poetic work. By the beginning of the 10th
century, Wei Zhuang constructed the first replica of his thatched cottage in
Sichuan.
It was in the 11th century, during the Northern Song era that ~ Du Fu



's reputation
reached its peak. In this period a comprehensive re-evaluation of earlier poets
took place, in which Wang Wei, Li Bai and ~ Du Fu



came to be regarded as
representing respectively the Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian strands of Chinese
culture. At the same time, the development of Neo-Confucianism ensured that
~ Du Fu



, as its poetic exemplar, occupied the paramount position. Su Shi famously
expressed this reasoning when he wrote that ~ Du Fu



was "preeminent...
because... through all his vicissitudes, he never for the space of a meal forgot his
sovereign". His influence was helped by his ability to reconcile apparent
opposites: political conservatives were attracted by his loyalty to the established
order, while political radicals embraced his concern for the poor. Literary
conservatives could look to his technical mastery, while literary radicals were
inspired by his innovations. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of
China, ~ Du Fu



's loyalty to the state and concern for the poor have been
interpreted as embryonic nationalism and socialism, and he has been praised for
his use of simple, "people's language".
~ Du Fu



's popularity grew to such an extent that it is as hard to measure his
influence as that of Shakespeare in England: it was hard for any Chinese poet not
to be influenced by him. While there was never another ~ Du Fu



, individual poets
followed in the traditions of specific aspects of his work: Bai Juyi's concern for the
poor, Lu You's patriotism, and Mei Yaochen's reflections on the quotidian are a
few examples. More broadly, ~ Du Fu



's work in transforming the lushi from mere
word play into "a vehicle for serious poetic utterance" set the stage for every
subsequent writer in the genre.
~ Du Fu



has also been influential beyond China, although in common with the other
High Tang poets, his reception into the Japanese literary culture was relatively
late. It was not until the 17th century that he was accorded the same level of
fame in Japan as in China, but he then had a profound influence on poets such as
Matsuo Basho. In the 20th century, he was the favourite poet of Kenneth
Rexroth, who has described him as "the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet
who has survived in any language", and commented that, "he has made me a
better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism".
A Homeless Man's Departure
After the Rebellion of 755, all was silent wasteland,
gardens and cottages turned to grass and thorns.
My village had over a hundred households,
but the chaotic world scattered them east and west.
No information about the survivors;
the dead are dust and mud.
I, a humble soldier, was defeated in battle.
I ran back home to look for old roads
and walked a long time through the empty lanes.
The sun was thin, the air tragic and dismal.
I met only foxes and raccoons,
their hair on end as they snarled in rage.
Who remains in my neighborhood?
One or two old widows.
A returning bird loves its old branches,
how could I give up this poor nest?
In spring I carry my hoe all alone,
yet still water the land at sunset.
The county governor's clerk heard I'd returned
and summoned me to practice the war-drum.
This military service won't take me from my state.
I look around and have no one to worry about.
It's just me alone and the journey is short,
but I will end up lost if I travel too far.
Since my village has been washed away,
near or far makes no difference.
I will forever feel pain for my long-sick mother.
I abandoned her in this valley five years ago.
She gave birth to me, yet I could not help her.
We cry sour sobs till our lives end.
In my life I have no family to say farewell to,
so how can I be called a human being?
~ Du Fu,
532:was therefore under the complete governance of his mother, a strict Catholic,
who raised him and his older brother and younger sisters in a stern and religious
household. After her husband's departure, Mme Rimbaud became known as
"Widow Rimbaud".
Schooling and teen years (1862–1871)
Fearing that her children were spending too much time with and being overinfluenced by neighbouring children of the poor, Mme Rimbaud moved her family
to the Cours d'Orléans in 1862. This was a better neighborhood, and whereas the
boys were previously taught at home by their mother, they were then sent, at
the ages of nine and eight, to the Pension Rossat. For the five years that they
attended school, however, their formidable mother still imposed her will upon
them, pushing for scholastic success. She would punish her sons by making them
learn a hundred lines of Latin verse by heart and if they gave an inaccurate
recitation, she would deprive them of meals. When Arthur was nine, he wrote a
700-word essay objecting to his having to learn Latin in school. Vigorously
condemning a classical education as a mere gateway to a salaried position,
Rimbaud wrote repeatedly, "I will be a rentier (one who lives off his assets)". He
disliked schoolwork and his mother's continued control and constant supervision;
the children were not allowed to leave their mother's sight, and, until the boys
were sixteen and fifteen respectively, she would walk them home from the school
grounds.
As a boy, Arthur was small, brown-haired and pale with what a childhood friend
called "eyes of pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I've seen".
When he was eleven, Arthur had his First Communion; despite his intellectual
and individualistic nature, he was an ardent Catholic like his mother. For this
reason he was called "sale petit Cagot" ("snotty little prig") by his fellow
schoolboys. He and his brother were sent to the Collège de Charleville for school
that same year. Until this time, his reading was confined almost entirely to the
Bible, but he also enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels
of James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard. He became a highly successful
student and was head of his class in all subjects but sciences and mathematics.
Many of his schoolmasters remarked upon the young student's ability to absorb
great quantities of material. In 1869 he won eight first prizes in the school,
including the prize for Religious Education, and in 1870 he won seven firsts.
When he had reached the third class, Mme Rimbaud, hoping for a brilliant
scholastic future for her second son, hired a tutor, Father Ariste L'héritier, for
private lessons. Lhéritier succeeded in sparking the young scholar's love of Greek
and Latin as well as French classical literature. He was also the first person to
encourage the boy to write original verse in both French and Latin Rimbaud's first
poem to appear in print was "Les Étrennes des orphelins" ("The Orphans' New
Year's Gift"), which was published in the 2 January 1870 issue of Revue pour
tous. Two weeks after his poem was printed, a new teacher named Georges
Izambard arrived at the Collège de Charleville. Izambard became Rimbaud's
literary mentor and soon a close accord formed between professor and student
and Rimbaud for a short time saw Izambard as a kind of older brother figure. At
the age of fifteen, Rimbaud was showing maturity as a poet; the first poem he
showed Izambard, "Ophélie", would later be included in anthologies as one of
Rimbaud's three or four best poems. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out,
Izambard left Charleville and Rimbaud became despondent. He ran away to Paris
with no money for his ticket and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for a
week. After returning home, Rimbaud ran away to escape his mother's wrath.
From late October 1870, Rimbaud's behaviour became outwardly provocative; he
drank alcohol, spoke rudely, composed scatological poems, stole books from local
shops, and abandoned his hitherto characteristically neat appearance by allowing
his hair to grow long. At the same time he wrote to Izambard about his method
for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a "long,
intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings
are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized
myself as a poet." It is rumoured that he briefly joined the Paris Commune of
1871, which he portrayed in his poem L'orgie parisienne (ou : Paris se repeuple),
("The Parisian Orgy" or "Paris Repopulates"). Another poem, Le cœur volé ("The
Stolen Heart"), is often interpreted as a description of him being raped by
drunken Communard soldiers, but this is unlikely since Rimbaud continued to
support the Communards and wrote poems sympathetic to their aims.
Life with Verlaine (1871–1875)
Rimbaud was encouraged by friend and office employee Charles Auguste
Bretagne to write to
relationship between the two poets grew increasingly bitter.
By late June 1873, Verlaine grew frustrated with the relationship and returned to
Paris, where he quickly began to mourn Rimbaud's absence. On 8 July, he
telegraphed Rimbaud, instructing him to come to the Hotel Liège in Brussels;
Rimbaud complied at once. The Brussels reunion went badly: they argued
continuously and Verlaine took refuge in heavy drinking. On the morning of 10
July, Verlaine bought a revolver and ammunition. That afternoon, "in a drunken
rage," Verlaine fired two shots at Rimbaud, one of them wounding the 18-yearold in the left wrist.
Rimbaud dismissed the wound as superficial, and did not initially seek to file
charges against Verlaine. But shortly after the shooting, Verlaine (and his
mother) accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels railway station, where Verlaine
"behaved as if he were insane." His bizarre behavior induced Rimbaud to "fear
that he might give himself over to new excesses," so he turned and ran away. In
his words, "it was then I [Rimbaud] begged a police officer to arrest him
[Verlaine]." Verlaine was arrested for attempted murder and subjected to a
humiliating medico-legal examination. He was also interrogated with regard to
both his intimate correspondence with Rimbaud and his wife's accusations about
the nature of his relationship with Rimbaud. Rimbaud eventually withdrew the
complaint, but the judge nonetheless sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison.
Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his prose work Une Saison
en Enfer ("A Season in Hell")—still widely regarded as one of the pioneering
examples of modern Symbolist writing—which made various allusions to his life
with Verlaine, described as a drôle de ménage ("domestic farce") with his frère
pitoyable ("pitiful brother") and vierge folle ("mad virgin") to whom he was
l'époux infernal ("the infernal groom"). In 1874 he returned to London with the
poet

friend Paul Demeny, the letter expounded his revolutionary theories about poetry
and life, while also denouncing most poets that preceded him. Wishing for new
poetic forms and ideas, he wrote:
I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself
a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every
form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the
poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable
torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during
which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and
the great learned one! – among men. – For he arrives at the unknown! Because
he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any
other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing
the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging
through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come;
they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!

Rimbaud expounded the same ideas in his poem, "Le bateau ivre" ("The Drunken
Boat"). This hundred-line poem tells the tale of a boat that breaks free of human
society when its handlers are killed by "Redskins" (Peaux-Rouges). At first
thinking that it drifts where it pleases, it soon realizes that it is being guided by
and to the "poem of the sea". It sees visions both magnificent ("the blue and
yellow of singing phosphorescence", "l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores
chanteurs",) and disgusting ("nets where a whole Leviathan was rotting" "nasses
/ Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan). It ends floating and washed clean,
wishing only to sink and become one with the sea.
Archibald MacLeish has commented on this poem: "Anyone who doubts that
poetry can say what prose cannot has only to read the so-called Lettres du
Voyant and 'Bateau Ivre' together. What is pretentious and adolescent in the
Lettres is true in the poem—unanswerably true."
Rimbaud's poetry influenced the Symbolists, Dadaists and Surrealists, and later
writers adopted not only some of his themes, but also his inventive use of form
and language. French poet

A Winter Dream
In winter we’ll travel in a little pink carriage
With cushions of blue.
We’ll be fine. A nest of mad kisses waits
In each corner too.
You’ll shut your eyes, not to see, through the glass,
Grimacing shadows of evening,
Those snarling monsters, a crowd going past
Of black wolves and black demons.
Then you’ll feel your cheek tickled quite hard…
A little kiss, like a maddened spider,
Will run over your neck…
And you’ll say: “Catch it!” bowing your head,
– And we’ll take our time finding that creature
– Who travels so far…
~ Arthur Rimbaud,
533:He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.

Like (7) 2
Saul
I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
And he, ``Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,
``Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent
``Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,
``Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.
``For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,
``Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,
``To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,
``And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.

II.

``Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew
``On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue
``Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild beat
``Were now raging to torture the desert!''

III.

                     Then I, as was meet,
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,
That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid
But spoke, ``Here is David, thy servant!'' And no voice replied.
At the first I saw nought but the blackness but soon I descried
A something more black than the blackness-the vast, the upright
Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.
Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs
And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come
With the spring-time,-so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V.

Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its chords
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noon-tide-those sunbeams like swords!
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us,-so blue and so far!

VI.

-Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate
To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate
Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight
To set the quick jerboa amusing outside his sand house-
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.
VII.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.-And then, the last song
When the dead man is praised on his journey-``Bear, bear him along
``With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here
``To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.
``Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!''-And then, the glad chaunt
Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.-And then, the great march
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch
Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?-Then, the chorus intoned
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.
But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII.

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart
From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start,
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.
So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang,-

IX.

     ``Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,
``Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
``Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
``The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
``Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,
``And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
``And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
``And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
``And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
``That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
``How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
``All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!
``Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard
``When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?
``Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung
``The low song of the nearly-departed, and bear her faint tongue
``Joining in while it could to the witness, `Let one more attest,
`` `I have lived, seen God's hand thro'a lifetime, and all was for best'?
``Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.
``And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew
``Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true:
``And the friends of thy boyhood-that boyhood of wonder and hope,
``Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,-
``Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;
``And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine!
``On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe
``That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go)
``High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,-all
``Brought to blaze on the head of one creature-King Saul!''

X.

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,-heart, hand, harp and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for-as when, dare I say,
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array,
And up soareth the cherubim-chariot-``Saul!'' cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name.
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,-leaves grasp of the sheet?
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold-
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest-all hail, there they are!
-Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest
For their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilled
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse, 'twixt hope and despair;
Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right hand
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand
To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean-a sun's slow decline
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI.

                     What spell or what charm,
(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge
To sustain him where song had restored him?-Song filled to the verge
His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields,
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye
And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?
He saith, ``It is good;'' still he drinks not: he lets me praise life,
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

XII.

                      Then fancies grew rife
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep
Fed in silence-above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:
And I laughed-``Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks,
``Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,
``Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show
``Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!
``Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,
``And the prudence that keeps what men strive for.'' And now these old trains
Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus-

XIII.

                        ``Yea, my King,''
I began-``thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring
``From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:
``In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.
``Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,-how its stem trembled first
``Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler then safely outburst
``The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn
``Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn,
``E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight,
``When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight
``Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch
``Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch
``Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.
``Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!
``By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy
``More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.
``Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done
``Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun
``Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface,
``Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace
``The results of his past summer-prime'-so, each ray of thy will,
``Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill
``Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour, till they too give forth
``A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the North
``With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!
``But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last:
``As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height
``So with man-so his power and his beauty for ever take flight.
``No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years!
``Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
``Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb-bid arise
``A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies,
``Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know?
``Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go
``In great characters cut by the scribe,-Such was Saul, so he did;
``With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid,-
``For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,
``In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend
``(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record
``With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,-the statesman's great word
``Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave
``With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:
``So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part
``In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!''

XIV.

And behold while I sang but O Thou who didst grant me that day,
And before it not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,
Carry on and complete an adventure,-my shield and my sword
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,-
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavour
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever
On the new stretch of heaven above me-till, mighty to save,
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance-God's throne from man's grave!
Let me tell out my tale to its ending-my voice to my heart
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!
For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

XV.

                   I say then,-my song
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong
Made a proffer of good to console him-he slowly resumed
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right-hand replumed
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes
Of his turban, and see-the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,
He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.
He is Saul, ye remember in glory,-ere error had bent
The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.
So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile
Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,
And sat out my singing,-one arm round the tent-prop, to raise
His bent head, and the other hung slack-till I touched on the praise
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro' my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my bead, with kind power-
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine-
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned-``Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
``I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;
``I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
``As this moment,-had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!''

XVI.

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more-no song more! outbroke-

XVII.

``I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke:
``I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain
``And pronounced on the rest of his hand-work-returned him again
``His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw:
``I report, as a man may of God's work-all's love, yet all's law.
``Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked
``To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked.
``Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.
``Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
``Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?
``I but open my eyes,-and perfection, no more and no less,
``In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God
``In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
``And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
``(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
``The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
``As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.
``Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
``I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
``There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
``I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think)
``Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
``E'en the Giver in one gift.-Behold, I could love if I durst!
``But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
``God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake.
``-What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,
``Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal?
``In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?
``Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
``That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
``Here, the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what Began?
``Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
``And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
``Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
``To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower
``Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
``Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?
``And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)
``These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
``Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
``This perfection,-succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of night?
``Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
``Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,-and bid him awake
``From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
``Clear and safe in new light and new life,-a new harmony yet
``To be run, and continued, and ended-who knows?-or endure!
``The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make sure;
``By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
``And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII.

``I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
``In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.
``All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer
``As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
``From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:
``I will?-the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
``To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
``Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
``This;-'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
``See the King-I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.
``Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
``To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would-knowing which,
``I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
``Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-so wilt thou!
``So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown-
``And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
``One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
``Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
``As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
``Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
``He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
``'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
``In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
``A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
``Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
``Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!''

XIX.

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent,-he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices-``E'en so, it is so!''
The jumping hare.

One of the three cities of Refuge.
*
A brook in Jerusalem.


~ Robert Browning, Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris'
,
534:Custer: Book Second
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
183
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on,' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
184
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe,' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam).
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die,' quoth he, 'mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII
185
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
XIV
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
186
XVI
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here.
XIX
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
187
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
XXI
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
188
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
189
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
XXVIII
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
190
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV
191
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve.
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
192
XXXIX
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
193
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
194
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
XLVIII
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
195
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV
196
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
197
LVIII
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
198
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
535:A TRAGEDY
IN FIVE ACTS
DRAMATIS PERSONS
OTHO THE GREAT, Emperor of Germany.
LUDOLPH, his Son.
CONRAD, Duke of Franconia.
ALBERT, a Knight, favoured by Otho.
SIGIFRED, an Officer, friend of Ludolph.
THEODORE, an Officer
GONFRED, an Officer
ETHELBERT. an Abbot.
GERSA, Prince of Hungary.
An Hungarian Captain.
Physician.
Page.
Nobles, Knights, Attendants, and Soldiers.
ERMINIA, Niece of Otho.
AURANTHE, Conrad's Sister.
Ladies and Attendants.

SCENE. The Castle of Friedburg, its vicinity, and the Hungarian Camp.
TIME. One Day.
SCENE I. An Apartment in the Castle. Enter CONRAD.
Conrad. So, I am safe emerged from these broils!
Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole;
For every crime I have a laurel-wreath,
For every lie a lordship. Nor yet has
My ship of fortune furl'd her silken sails,
Let her glide on! This danger'd neck is saved,
By dexterous policy, from the rebel's axe;
And of my ducal palace not one stone
Is bruised by the Hungarian petards.
Toil hard, ye slaves, and from the miser-earth
Bring forth once more my bullion, treasured deep,
With ah my jewell'd salvers, silver and gold,
And precious goblets that make rich the wine.
But why do I stand babbling to myself?
Where is Auranthe? I have news for her
Shall-
Enter AURANTHE.
Auranthe. Conrad! what tidings? Good, if I may guess
From your alert eyes and high-lifted brows.
What tidings of the battle? Albert? Ludolph? Otho?
Conrad. You guess aright. And, sister, slurring o'er
Our by-gone quarrels, I confess my heart
Is beating with a child's anxiety,
To make our golden fortune known to you.
Auranthe. So serious?
Conrad. Yes, so serious, that before
I utter even the shadow of a hint
Concerning what will make that sin-worn cheek
Blush joyous blood through every lineament,
You must make here a solemn vow to me.
Auranthe. I prythee, Conrad, do not overact
The hypocrite what vow would you impose?
Conrad. Trust me for once, that you may be assured
'Tis not confiding to a broken reed,
A poor Court-bankrupt, outwitted and lost,
Revolve these facts in your acutest mood,
In such a mood as now you listen to me:
A few days since, I was an open rebel
Against the Emperor, had suborn'd his son,
Drawn off his nobles to revolt, and shown
Contented fools causes for discontent
Fresh hatch'd in my ambition's eagle nest
So thrived I as a rebel, and behold
Now I am Otho's favourite, his dear friend,
His right hand, his brave Conrad.
Auranthe. I confess
You have intrigued with these unsteady times
To admiration; but to be a favourite
Conrad. I saw my moment. The Hungarians,
Collected silently in holes and corners,
Appeared, a sudden host, in the open day.
I should have perish'd in our empire's wreck,
But, calling interest loyalty, swore faith
To most believing Otho; and so helped
His blood-stained ensigns to the victory
In yesterday's hard fight, that it has turn'd
The edge of his sharp wrath to eager kindness.
Auranthe. So far yourself. But what is this to me
More than that I am glad? I gratulate you.
Conrad. Yes, sister, but it does regard you greatly,
Nearly, momentously, aye, painfully!
Make me this vow
Auranthe. Concerning whom or what?
Conrad. Albert!
Auranthe. I would inquire somewhat of him:
You had a letter from me touching him?
No treason 'gainst his head in deed or word!
Surely you spar'd him at my earnest prayer?
Give me the letter it should not exist!
Conrad. At one pernicious charge of the enemy,
I, for a moment-whiles, was prisoner ta'en
And rifled, stuff! the horses' hoofs have minc'd it!
Auranthe. He is alive?
Conrad. He is! but here make oath
To alienate him from your scheming brain,
Divorce him from your solitary thoughts,
And cloud him in such utter banishment,
That when his person meets again your eye,
Your vision shall quite lose its memory,
And wander past him as through vacancy.
Auranthe. I'll not be perjured.
Conrad. No, nor great, nor mighty;
You would not wear a crown, or rule a kingdom.
To you it is indifferent.
Auranthe. What means this?
Conrad. You'll not be perjured! Go to Albert then,
That camp-mushroom dishonour of our house.
Go, page his dusty heels upon a march,
Furbish his jingling baldric while he sleeps,
And share his mouldy ration in a siege.
Yet stay, perhaps a charm may call you back,
And make the widening circlets of your eyes
Sparkle with healthy fevers. The Emperor
Hath given consent that you should marry Ludolph!
Auranthe. Can it be, brother? For a golden crown
With a queen's awful lips I doubly thank you!
This is to wake in Paradise ! Farewell
Thou clod of yesterday 'twas not myself!
Not till this moment did I ever feel
My spirit's faculties! I'll flatter you
For this, and be you ever proud of it;
Thou, Jove-like, struck'dst thy forehead,
And from the teeming marrow of thy brain
I spring complete Minerva! But the prince
His highness Ludolph where is he?
Conrad. I know not:
When, lackeying my counsel at a beck,
The rebel lords, on bended knees, received
The Emperor's pardon, Ludolph kept aloof,
Sole, in a stiff, fool-hardy, sulky pride;
Yet, for all this, I never saw a father
In such a sickly longing for his son.
We shall soon see him, for the Emperor
He will be here this morning.
Auranthe. That I heard
Among the midnight rumours from the camp.
Conrad. You give up Albert to me?
Auranthe. Harm him not!
E'en for his highness Ludolph's sceptry hand,
I would not Albert suffer any wrong.
Conrad. Have I not laboured, plotted ?
Auranthe. See you spare him:
Nor be pathetic, my kind benefactor,
On all the many bounties of your hand,
'Twas for yourself you laboured not for me!
Do you not count, when I am queen, to take
Advantage of your chance discoveries
Of my poor secrets, and so hold a rod
Over my life?
Conrad. Let not this slave this villain
Be cause of feud between us. See! he comes!
Look, woman, look, your Albert is quite safe!
In haste it seems. Now shall I be in the way,
And wish'd with silent curses in my grave,
Or side by side with 'whelmed mariners.
Enter ALBERT.
Albert. Fair on your graces fall this early morrow!
So it is like to do, without my prayers,
For your right noble names, like favourite tunes,
Have fallen full frequent from our Emperor's lips,
High commented with smiles.
Auranthe. Noble Albert!
Conrad (aside). Noble!
Auranthe. Such salutation argues a glad heart
In our prosperity. We thank you, sir.
Albert. Lady! O, would to Heaven your poor servant
Could do you better service than mere words!
But I have other greeting than mine own,
From no less man than Otho, who has sent
This ring as pledge of dearest amity;
'Tis chosen I hear from Hymen's jewel'ry,
And you will prize it, lady, I doubt not,
Beyond all pleasures past, and all to come.
To you great duke
Conrad. To me! What of me, ha?
Albert. What pleas'd your grace to say?
Conrad. Your message, sir!
Albert. You mean not this to me?
Conrad. Sister, this way;
For there shall be no '''gentle Alberts" now, [Aside.
No "sweet Auranthes!"
[Exeunt CONRAD and AURANTHE.
Albert (solus). The duke is out of temper; if he knows
More than a brother of a sister ought,
I should not quarrel with his peevishness.
Auranthe Heaven preserve her always fair!
Is in the heady, proud, ambitious vein;
I bicker not with her, bid her farewell!
She has taken flight from me, then let her soar,
He is a fool who stands at pining gaze!
But for poor Ludolph, he is food for sorrow:
No levelling bluster of my licens'd thoughts,
No military swagger of my mind,
Can smother from myself the wrong I've done him,
Without design, indeed, yet it is so,
And opiate for the conscience have I none! [Exit.

SCENE II. The Court-yard of the Castle.
Martial Music. Enter, from the outer gate, OTHO, Nobles, Knights, and
Attendants. The Soldiers halt at the gate, with Banners in sight.
Otho. Where is my noble herald?
Enter CONRAD, from the Castle, attended by two Knights and
Servants. ALBERT following.
Well, hast told
Auranthe our intent imperial?
Lest our rent banners, too o' the sudden shown,
Should fright her silken casements, and dismay
Her household to our lack of entertainment.
A victory!
Conrad. God save illustrious Otho!
Otho. Aye, Conrad, it will pluck out all grey hairs;
It is the best physician for the spleen;
The courtliest inviter to a feast;
The subtlest excuser of small faults;
And a nice judge in the age and smack of wine.
Enter, from the Castle, AURANTHE, followed by Pages holding
up her robes, and a tram of Women. She kneels.
Hail my sweet hostess! I do thank the stars,
Or my good soldiers, or their ladies' eyes,
That, after such a merry battle fought,
I can, all safe in body and in soul,
Kiss your fair hand and lady fortune's too.
My ring! now, on my life, it doth rejoice
These lips to feel 't on this soft ivory!
Keep it, my brightest daughter; it may prove
The little prologue to a line of kings.
I strove against thee and my hot-blood son,
Dull blockhead that I was to be so blind,
But now my sight is clear; forgive me, lady.
Auranthe. My lord, I was a vassal to your frown,
And now your favour makes me but more humble;
In wintry winds the simple snow is safe,
But fadeth at the greeting of the sun:
Unto thine anger I might well have spoken,
Taking on me a woman's privilege,
But this so sudden kindness makes me dumb.
Otho. What need of this? Enough, if you will be
A potent tutoress to my wayward boy,
And teach him, what it seems his nurse could not
To say, for once, I thank you. Sigifred!
Albert. He has not yet return'd, my gracious liege.
Otho. What then! No tidings of my friendly Arab?
Conrad. None, mighty Otho.
[To one of his Knights, who goes out.
Send forth instantly
An hundred horsemen from my honoured gates,
To scour the plains and search the cottages.
Cry a reward, to him who shall first bring
News of that vanished Arabian,
A full-heap'd helmet of the purest gold.
Otho. More thanks, good Conrad; for, except my son's,
There is no face I rather would behold
Than that same quick-eyed pagan's. By the saints,
This coming night of banquets must not light
Her dazzling torches; nor the music breathe
Smooth, without clashing cymbal, tones of peace
And in-door melodies; nor the ruddy wine
Ebb spouting to the lees; if I pledge not
In my first cup, that Arab!
Albert. Mighty Monarch,
I wonder not this stranger's victor-deeds
So, hang upon your spirit. Twice in the fight
It was my chance to meet his olive brow,
Triumphant in the enemy's shatter 'd rhomb;
And, to say truth, in any Christian arm
I never saw such prowess.
Otho. Did you ever?
O, 'tis a noble boy! tut! what do I say?
I mean a triple Saladin, whose eyes,
When in the glorious scuffle they met mine,
Seem'd to say "Sleep, old man, in safety sleep;
I am the victory!"
Conrad. Pity he's not here.
Otho. And my son too, pity he is not here.
Lady Auranthe, I would not make you blush,
But can you give a guess where Ludolph is?
Know you not of him?
Auranthe. Indeed, my liege, no secret
Otho. Nay, nay, without more words, dost know of him?
Auranthe. I would I were so over-fortunate,
Both for his sake and mine, and to make glad
A father's ears with tidings of his son.
Otho. I see 'tis like to be a tedious day.
Were Theodore and Gonfred and the rest
Sent forth with my commands?
Albert. Aye, my lord.
Otho. And no news! No news! 'Faith! 'tis very strange
He thus avoids us. Lady, is't not strange?
Will he be truant to you too? It is a shame.
Conrad. Will 't please your highness enter, and accept
The unworthy welcome of your servant's house?
Leaving your cares to one whose diligence
May in few hours make pleasures of them all.
Otho. Not so tedious, Conrad. No, no, no,
I must see Ludolph or the What's that shout!
Voices without. Huzza! huzza! Long live the Emperor!
Other Voices. Fall back! Away there!
Otho. Say, what noise is that?
[ALBERT advancing from the bark of the Stage, whither he had
hastened on hearing the cheers of the soldiery.
Albert. It is young Gersa, the Hungarian prince,
Pick'd like a red stag from the fallow herd
Of prisoners. Poor prince, forlorn he steps,
Slow, and demure, and proud in his despair.
If I may judge by his so tragic bearing,
His eye not downcast, and his folded arm,
He doth this moment wish himself asleep
Among his fallen captains on yon plains.
Enter GERSA, in chains, and guarded,
Otho. Well said, Sir Albert.
Gersa. Not a word of greeting.
No welcome to a princely visitor,
Most mighty Otho? Will not my great host
Vouchsafe a syllable, before he bids
His gentlemen conduct me with all care
To some securest lodgings? cold perhaps!
Otho. What mood is this? Hath fortune touch'd thy brain?
Gersa. kings and princes of this fev'rous world,
What abject things, what mockeries must ye be,
What nerveless minions of safe palaces!
When here, a monarch, whose proud foot is used
To fallen princes' necks, as to his stirrup,
Must needs exclaim that I am mad forsooth,
Because I cannot flatter with bent knees
My conqueror!
Otho. Gersa, I think you wrong me:
I think I have a better fame abroad.
Gersa. I prythee mock me not with gentle speech,
But, as a favour, bid me from thy presence;
Let me no longer be the wondering food
Of all these eyes; prythee command me hence!
Otho. Do not mistake me, Gersa. That you may not,
Come, fair Auranthe, try if your soft hands
Can manage those hard rivets to set free
So brave a prince and soldier.
Auranthe (sets him free). Welcome task!
Gersa. I am wound up in deep astonishment!
Thank you, fair lady. Otho! emperor!
You rob me of myself; my dignity
Is now your infant; I am a weak child.
Otho. Give me your hand, and let this kindly grasp
Live in our memories.
Gersa. In mine it will.
I blush to think of my unchasten'd tongue;
But I was haunted by the monstrous ghost
Of all our slain battalions. Sire, reflect,
And pardon you will grant, that, at this hour,
The bruised remnants of our stricken camp
Are huddling undistinguish'd my dear friends,
With common thousands, into shallow graves.
Otho. Enough, most noble Gersa. You are free
To cheer the brave remainder of your host
By your own healing presence, and that too,
Not as their leader merely, but their king;
For, as I hear, the wily enemy,
Who eas'd the crownet from your infant brows,
Bloody Taraxa, is among the dead.
Gersa. Then I retire, so generous Otho please,
Bearing with me a weight of benefits
Too heavy to be borne.
Otho. It is not so;
Still understand me, King of Hungary,
Nor judge my open purposes awry.
Though I did hold you high in my esteem
For your self's sake, I do not personate
The stage-play emperor to entrap applause,
To set the silly sort o' the world agape,
And make the politic smile; no, I have heard
How in the Council you condemn 'd this war,
Urging the perfidy of broken faith,
For that I am your friend.
Gersa. If ever, sire,
You are mine enemy, I dare here swear
'Twill not be Gersa's fault. Otho, farewell!
Otho. Will you return, Prince, to our banqueting?
Gersa. As to my father's board I will return.
Otho. Conrad, with all due ceremony, give
The prince a regal escort to his camp;
Albert, go thou and bear him company.
Gersa, farewell!
Gersa. All happiness attend you!
Otho. Return with what good speed you may; for soon
We must consult upon our terms of peace.
[Exeunt GERSA and ALBERT with others.
And thus a marble column do I build
To prop my empire's dome. Conrad, in thee
I have another stedfast one, to uphold
The portals of my state; and, for my own
Pre-eminence and safety, I will strive
To keep thy strength upon its pedestal.
For, without thee, this day I might have been
A show-monster about the streets of Prague,
In chains, as just now stood that noble prince:
And then to me no mercy had been shown,
For when the conquered lion is once dungeon'd,
Who lets him forth again? or dares to give
An old lion sugar-cates of mild reprieve?
Not to thine ear alone I make confession,
But to all here, as, by experience,
I know how the great basement of all power
Is frankness, and a true tongue to the world;
And how intriguing secrecy is proof
Of fear and weakness, and a hollow state.
Conrad, I owe thee much.
Conrad. To kiss that hand,
My emperor, is ample recompense,
For a mere act of duty.
Otho. Thou art wrong;
For what can any man on earth do more?
We will make trial of your house's welcome,
My bright Auranthe!
Conrad. How is Friedburg honoured!
Enter ETHELBERT and six Monks.
Ethelbert. The benison of heaven on your head,
Imperial Otho!
Otho. Who stays me? Speak! Quick!
Ethelbert. Pause but one moment, mighty conqueror
Upon the threshold of this house of joy.
Otho. Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak
What is your purpose.
Ethelbert. The restoration of some captive maids,
Devoted to Heaven's pious ministries,
Who, being driven from their religious cells,
And kept in thraldom by our enemy,
When late this province was a lawless spoil,
Still weep amid the wild Hungarian camp,
Though hemm'd around by thy victorious arms.
Otho. Demand the holy sisterhood in our name
From Gersa's tents. Farewell, old Ethelbert.
Ethelbert. The saints will bless you for this pious care.
Otho. Daughter, your hand; Ludolph's would fit it best.
Conrad. Ho ! let the music sound !
[Music. ETHELBERT raises his hands, as in benediction of OTHO.
Exeunt severally. The scene closes on them.

SCENE III. The Country, with the Castle in the distance.
Enter LUDOLPH and SIGIFRED.
Ludolph. You have my secret; let it not be breath 'd.
Sigifred. Still give me leave to wonder that the Prince
Ludolph and the swift Arab are the same ;
Still to rejoice that 'twas a German arm
Death doing in a turban'd masquerade.
Ludolph. The Emperor must not know it, Sigifred.
Sigifred. I prythee, why? What happier hour of time
Could thy pleasd star point down upon from heaven
With silver index, bidding thee make peace?
Ludolph. Still it must not be known, good Sigifred;
The star may point oblique.
Sigifred. If Otho knew
His son to be that unknown Mussulman
After whose spurring heels he sent me forth,
With one of his well-pleas'd Olympian oaths,
The charters of man's greatness, at this hour
He would be watching round the castle walls,
And, like an anxious warder, strain his sight
For the first glimpse of such a son return 'd
Ludolph, that blast of the Hungarians,
That Saracenic meteor of the fight,
That silent fury, whose fell Scymitar
Kept danger all aloof from Otho's head,
And left him space for wonder.
Ludolph. Say no more.
Not as a swordsman would I pardon claim,
But as a son. The bronz'd centurion,
Long toil'd in foreign wars, and whose high deeds
Are shaded in a forest of tall spears,
Known only to his troop, hath greater plea
Of favour with my sire than I can have.
Sigifred. My lord, forgive me that I cannot see
How this proud temper with clear reason squares.
What made you then, with such an anxious love,
Hover around that life, whose bitter days
You vext with bad revolt? Was 't opium,
Or the mad-fumed wine? Nay, do not frown,
I rather would grieve with you than upbraid.
Ludolph. I do believe you. No, 'twas not to make
A father his son's debtor, or to heal
His deep heart-sickness for a rebel child.
Twas done in memory of my boyish days,
Poor cancel for his kindness to my youth,
For all his calming of my childish griefs,
And all his smiles upon my merriment.
No, not a thousand foughten fields could sponge
Those days paternal from my memory,
Though now upon my head he heaps disgrace.
Sigifred. My Prince, you think too harshly
Ludolph. Can I so?
Hath he not gall'd my spirit to the quick?
And with a sullen rigour obstinate
Pour'd out a phial of wrath upon my faults?
Hunted me as the Tartar does the boar,
Driven me to the very edge o' the world,
And almost put a price upon my head?
Sigifred. Remember how he spar'd the rebel lords.
Ludolph. Yes, yes, I know he hath a noble nature
That cannot trample on the fallen. But his
Is not the only proud heart in his realm.
He hath wrong'd me, and I have done him wrong;
He hath lov'd me, and I have shown him kindness;
We should be almost equal.
Sigifred. Yet, for all this,
I would you had appear 'd among those lords,
And ta'en his favour.
Ludolph. Ha! till now I thought
My friend had held poor Ludolph's honour dear.
What ! would you have me sue before his throne
And kiss the courtier's missal, its silk steps?
Or hug the golden housings of his steed,
Amid a camp, whose steeled swarms I dar'd
But yesterday? And, at the trumpet sound,
Bow like some unknown mercenary's flag,
And lick the soiled grass? No, no, my friend,
I would not, I, be pardon'd in the heap,
And bless indemnity with all that scum,
Those men I mean, who on my shoulders propped
Their weak rebellion, winning me with lies,
And pitying forsooth my many wrongs;
Poor self-deceived wretches, who must think
Each one himself a king in embryo,
Because some dozen vassals cry'd my lord!
Cowards, who never knew their little hearts,
Till flurried danger held the mirror up,
And then they own'd themselves without a blush,
Curling, like spaniels, round my father's feet.
Such things deserted me and are forgiven,
While I, least guilty, am an outcast still,
And will be, for I love such fair disgrace.
Sigifred. I know the clear truth; so would Otho see,
For he is just and noble. Fain would I
Be pleader for you
Ludolph. He'll hear none of it;
You know his temper, hot, proud, obstinate;
Endanger not yourself so uselessly.
I will encounter his thwart spleen myself,
To-day, at the Duke Conrad's, where he keeps
His crowded state after the victory.
There will I be, a most unwelcome guest,
And parley with him, as a son should do,
Who doubly loathes a father's tyranny;
Tell him how feeble is that tyranny;
How the relationship of father and son
Is no more valid than a silken leash
Where lions tug adverse, if love grow not
From interchanged love through many years.
Aye, and those turreted Franconian walls,
Like to a jealous casket, hold my pearl
My fair Auranthe! Yes, I will be there.
Sigifred. Be not so rash; wait till his wrath shall pass,
Until his royal spirit softly ebbs
Self-influenced ; then, in his morning dreams
He will forgive thee, and awake in grief
To have not thy good morrow.
Ludolph. Yes, to-day
I must be there, while her young pulses beat
Among the new-plum'd minions of the war.
Have you seen her of late? No? Auranthe,
Franconia's fair sister, 'tis I mean.
She should be paler for my troublous days
And there it is my father's iron lips
Have sworn divorcement 'twixt me and my right.
Sigifred (aside). Auranthe! I had hop'd this whim had pass'd.
Ludolph. And, Sigifred, with all his love of justice,
When will he take that grandchild in his arms,
That, by my love I swear, shall soon be his?
This reconcilement is impossible,
For see but who are these?
Sigifred. They are messengers
From our great emperor; to you, I doubt not,
For couriers are abroad to seek you out.
Enter THEODORE and GONFRED.
Theodore. Seeing so many vigilant eyes explore
The province to invite your highness back
To your high dignities, we are too happy.
Gonfred. We have no eloquence to colour justly
The emperor's anxious wishes.
Ludolph. Go. I follow you.
[Exeunt THEODORE and GONFRED.
I play the prude : it is but venturing
Why should he be so earnest? Come, my friend,
Let us to Friedburg castle.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ John Keats, Otho The Great - Act I
,
536:The Four Monarchyes, The Assyrian Being The First,
Beginning Under Nimrod, 131. Years After The Floo
When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
But each one thought his petty Rule was high,
If of his house he held the Monarchy.
This was the golden Age, but after came
The boisterous son of Chus, Grand-Child to Ham,
That mighty Hunter, who in his strong toyles
Both Beasts and Men subjected to his spoyles:
The strong foundation of proud Babel laid,
Erech, Accad, and Culneh also made.
These were his first, all stood in Shinar land,
From thence he went Assyria to command,
And mighty Niniveh, he there begun,
Not finished till he his race had run.
Resen, Caleh, and Rehoboth likewise
By him to Cities eminent did rise.
Of Saturn, he was the Original,
Whom the succeeding times a God did call,
When thus with rule, he had been dignifi'd,
One hundred fourteen years he after dy'd.
Belus.
Great Nimrod dead, Belus the next his Son
Confirms the rule, his Father had begun;
Whose acts and power is not for certainty
Left to the world, by any History.
But yet this blot for ever on him lies,
He taught the people first to Idolize:
Titles Divine he to himself did take,
Alive and dead, a God they did him make.
This is that Bel the Chaldees worshiped,
Whose Priests in Stories oft are mentioned;
This is that Baal to whom the Israelites
So oft profanely offered sacred Rites:
This is Beelzebub God of Ekronites,
Likewise Baalpeor of the Mohabites,
His reign was short, for as I calculate,
At twenty five ended his Regal date.
101
Ninus.
His Father dead, Ninus begins his reign,
Transfers his seat to the Assyrian plain;
And mighty Nineveh more mighty made,
Whose Foundation was by his Grand-sire laid:
Four hundred forty Furlongs wall'd about,
On which stood fifteen hundred Towers stout.
The walls one hundred sixty foot upright,
So broad three Chariots run abrest there might.
Upon the pleasant banks of Tygris floud
This stately Seat of warlike Ninus stood:
This Ninus for a God his Father canonized,
To whom the sottish people sacrificed.
This Tyrant did his Neighbours all oppress,
Where e're he warr'd he had too good success.
Barzanes the great Armenian King
By force and fraud did under Tribute bring.
The Median Country he did also gain,
Thermus their King he caused to be slain;
An Army of three millions he led out
Against the Bactrians (but that I doubt)
Zoreaster their King he likewise slew,
And all the greater Asia did subdue.
Semiramis from Menon did he take
Then drown'd himself, did Menon for her sake.
Fifty two years he reign'd, (as we are told)
The world then was two thousand nineteen old.
Semiramis.
This great oppressing Ninus, dead and gone,
His wife Semiramis usurp'd the Throne;
She like a brave Virago played the Rex
And was both shame and glory of her Sex:
Her birth place was Philistines Ascolan,
Her mother Dorceta a Curtizan.
Others report she was a vestal Nun,
Adjudged to be drown'd for th'crime she'd done.
Transform'd into a Fish by Venus will,
Her beauteous face, (they feign) reteining still.
Sure from this Fiction Dagon first began,
Changing the womans face into a man:
But all agree that from no lawfull bed,
This great renowned Empress issued:
102
For which she was obscurely nourished,
Whence rose that Fable, she by birds was fed.
This gallant Dame unto the Bactrian warre,
Accompanying her husband Menon farr,
Taking a town, such valour she did show,
That Ninus amorous of her soon did grow,
And thought her fit to make a Monarchs wife,
Which was the cause poor Menon lost his life:
She flourishing with Ninus long did reign,
Till her Ambition caus'd him to be slain.
That having no Compeer, she might rule all,
Or else she sought revenge for Menon's fall.
Some think the Greeks this slander on her cast,
As on her life Licentious, and unchast,
That undeserv'd, they blur'd her name and fame
By their aspersions, cast upon the same:
But were her virtues more or less, or none,
She for her potency must go alone.
Her wealth she shew'd in building Babylon,
Admir'd of all, but equaliz'd of none;
The Walls so strong, and curiously was wrought,
That after Ages, Skill by them was taught:
With Towers and Bulwarks made of costly stone,
Quadrangle was the form it stood upon.
Each Square was fifteen thousand paces long,
An hundred gates it had of mettal strong:
Three hundred sixty foot the walls in height,
Almost incredible, they were in breadth
Some writers say, six Chariots might affront
With great facility, march safe upon't:
About the Wall a ditch so deep and wide,
That like a River long it did abide.
Three hundred thousand men here day by day
Bestow'd their labour, and receiv'd their pay.
And that which did all cost and Art excell,
The wondrous Temple was, she rear'd to Bell:
Which in the midst of this brave Town was plac'd,
Continuing till Xerxes it defac'd:
Whose stately top above the Clouds did rise,
From whence Astrologers oft view'd the Skies.
This to describe in each particular,
A structure rare I should but rudely marre.
103
Her Gardens, Bridges, Arches, mounts and spires
All eyes that saw, or Ears that hear admires,
In Shinar plain on the Euphratian flood
This wonder of the world, this Babel stood.
An expedition to the East she made
Staurobates, his Country to invade:
Her Army of four millions did consist,
Each may believe it as his fancy list.
Her Camels, Chariots, Gallyes in such number,
As puzzles best Historians to remember;
But this is wonderful, of all those men,
They say, but twenty e're came back agen.
The River Judas swept them half away,
The rest Staurobates in fight did slay;
This was last progress of this mighty Queen,
Who in her Country never more was seen.
The Poets feign'd her turn'd into a Dove,
Leaving the world to Venus soar'd above:
Which made the Assyrians many a day,
A Dove within their Ensigns to display:
Forty two years she reign'd, and then she di'd
But by what means we are not certifi'd.
Ninias or Zamies.
His Mother dead, Ninias obtains his right,
A Prince wedded to ease and to delight,
Or else was his obedience very great,
To sit thus long (obscure) rob'd of his Seat.
Some write his Mother put his habit on,
Which made the people think they serv'd her Son:
But much it is, in more then forty years
This fraud in war nor peace at all appears:
More like it is his lust with pleasures fed,
He sought no rule till she was gone and dead.
VVhat then he did of worth can no man tell,
But is suppos'd to be that Amraphel
VVho warr'd with Sodoms and Gomorrahs King,
'Gainst whom his trained bands Abram did bring,
But this is farre unlike, he being Son
Unto a Father, that all Countryes won
So suddenly should loose so great a state,
VVith petty Kings to joyne Confederate.
Nor can those Reasons which wise Raileih finds,
104
VVell satisfie the most considerate minds:
VVe may with learned Vsher better say,
He many Ages liv'd after that day.
And that Semiramis then flourished
VVhen famous Troy was so beleaguered:
VVhat e're he was, or did, or how it fell,
VVe may suggest our thoughts but cannot tell.
For Ninias and all his race are left
In deep oblivion, of acts bereft:
And many hundred years in silence sit,
Save a few Names a new Berosus writ.
And such as care not what befalls their fames,
May feign as many acts as he did Names;
It may suffice, if all be true that's past.
T'Sardanapalas next, we will make haste.
Sardanapalas
Sardanapalas, Son to Ocrazapes,
VVho wallowed in all voluptuousness,
That palliardizing sot that out of dores,
Ne're shew'd his face but revell'd with his whores
Did wear their garbs, their gestures imitate,
And in their kind, t'excel did emulate.
His baseness knowing, and the peoples hate
Kept close, fearing his well deserved fate;
It chanc'd Arbaces brave unwarily,
His Master like a Strumpet clad did spye.
His manly heart disdained (in the least)
Longer to serve this Metamorphos'd Beast;
Unto Belosus then he brake his mind,
Who sick of his disease, he soon did find
These two, rul'd Media and Babilon
Both for their King, held their Dominion;
Belosus promised Arbaces aid,
Arbaces him fully to be repayd.
The last: The Medes and Persians do invite
Against their monstrous King, to use their might.
Belosus, the Chaldeans doth require
And the Arabians, to further his desire:
These all agree, and forty thousand make
The Rule, from their unworthy Prince to take:
These Forces mustered. and in array
Sardanapalus leaves his Apish play.
105
And though of wars, he did abhor the sight;
Fear of his diadem did force him fight:
And either by his valour, or his fate,
Arbaces Courage he did so abate;
That in dispair, he left the Field and fled,
But with fresh hopes Belosus succoured,
From Bactria, an Army was at hand
Prest for this Service by the Kings Command:
These with celerity Arbaces meet,
And with all Terms of amity them greet.
With promises their necks now to unyoke,
And their Taxations sore all to revoke;
T'infranchise them, to grant what they could crave,
No priviledge to want, Subjects should have,
Only intreats them, to joyn their Force with his,
And win the Crown, which was the way to bliss.
Won by his loving looks, more by his speech,
T'accept of what they could, they all beseech:
Both sides their hearts their hands, & bands unite,
And set upon their Princes Camp that night;
Who revelling in Cups, sung care away,
For victory obtain'd the other day:
And now surpris'd, by this unlookt for fright,
Bereft of wits, were slaughtered down right.
The King his brother leavs, all to sustain,
And speeds himself to Niniveh amain.
But Salmeneus slain, the Army falls;
The King's pursu'd unto the City Walls,
But he once in, pursuers came to late,
The Walls and Gates their hast did terminate,
There with all store he was so well provided:
That what Arbaces did, was but derided:
Who there incamp'd, two years for little end,
But in the third, the River prov'd his friend,
For by the rain, was Tygris so o'reflown,
Part of that stately Wall was overthrown.
Arbaces marches in the Town he takes,
For few or none (it seems) resistance makes:
And now they saw fulfil'd a Prophesy,
That when the River prov'd their Enemy,
Their strong wal'd Town should suddenly be taken
By this accomplishment, their hearts were shaken.
106
Sardanapalas did not seek to fly,
This his inevitable destiny;
But all his wealth and friends together gets,
Then on himself, and them a fire he sets.
This was last Monarch of great Ninus race
That for twelve hundred years had held the place;
Twenty he reign'd same time, as Stories tell,
That Amaziah was King of Israel.
His Father was then King (as we suppose)
VVhen Jonah for their sins denounc'd those woes.
He did repent, the threatning was not done,
But now accomplish'd in his wicked Son.
Arbaces thus of all becoming Lord,
Ingeniously with all did keep his word.
Of Babylon Belosus he made King,
VVith overplus of all the wealth therein.
To Bactrians he gave their liberty,
Of Ninivites he caused none to dye.
But suffer'd with their goods, to go else where,
Not granting them now to inhabit there:
For he demolished that City great,
And unto Media transfer'd his Seat.
Such was his promise which he firmly made,
To Medes and Persians when he crav'd their aid:
A while he and his race aside must stand,
Not pertinent to what we have in hand;
And Belochus in's progeny pursue,
VVho did this Monarchy begin anew.
Belosus or Belochus.
Belosus setled in his new old Seat,
Not so content but aiming to be great,
Incroaching still upon the bordering lands,
Till Mesopotamia he got in's hands.
And either by compound or else by strength,
Assyria he gain'd also at length;
Then did rebuild, destroyed Nineveh,
A costly work which none could do but he,
VVho own'd the Treasures of proud Babylon,
And those that seem'd with Snrdanapal's gone;
For though his Palace did in ashes lye,
The fire those Mettals could not damnifie;
From these with diligence he rakes,
107
Arbaces suffers all, and all he takes,
He thus inricht by this new tryed gold.
Raises a Phænix new, from grave o'th' old;
And from this heap did after Ages see
As fair a Town, as the first Niniveh.
VVhen this was built, and matters all in peace
Molests poor Israel, his wealth t'increase.
A thousand Talents of Menahem had,
(Who to be rid of such a guest was glad
In sacrid writ he's known by name of Pul,
Which makes the world of difference so full.
That he and Belochus could not one be,
But Circumstance doth prove the verity;
And times of both computed so fall out,
That these two made but one, we need not doubt:
What else he did, his Empire to advance,
To rest content we must, in ignorance.
Forty eight years he reign'd, his race then run,
He left his new got Kingdome to his Son.
Tiglath Pulassar.
Belosus dead, Tiglath his warlike Son,
Next treads those steps, by which his Father won;
Damascus ancient Seat, of famous Kings
Under subjection, by his Sword he brings.
Resin their valiant King he also slew,
And Syria t'obedience did subdue.
Judas bad King occasioned this war,
When Resins force his Borders sore did marre,
And divers Cities by strong hand did seaze:
To Tiglath then, doth Ahaz send for ease,
The Temple robs, so to fulfil his ends,
And to Assyria's King a present sends.
I am thy Servant and thy Son, (quoth he)
From Resin, and from Pekah set me free,
Gladly doth Tiglath this advantage take,
And succours Ahaz, yet for Tiglath's sake.
Then Resin slain, his Army overthrown,
He Syria makes a Province of his own.
Unto Damascus then comes Judah's King,
His humble thankfulness (in haste) to bring,
Acknowledging th'Assyrians high desert,
To whom he ought all loyalty of heart.
108
But Tiglath having gain'd his wished end,
Proves unto Ahaz but a feigned friend;
All Israels lands beyond Jordan he takes,
In Galilee he woful havock makes.
Through Syria now he march'd none stopt his way,
And Ahaz open at his mercy lay;
Who still implor'd his love, but was distrest;
This was that Ahaz, who so high trans grest:
Thus Tiglath reign'd, & warr'd twenty seven years
Then by his death releas'd was Israels fears.
Salmanassar or Nabanassar.
Tiglath deceas'd, Salmanassar was next,
He Israelites, more then his Father vext;
Hoshea their last King he did invade,
And him six years his Tributary made;
But weary of his servitude, he sought
To Egypts King, which did avail him nought;
For Salmanassar with a mighty Host,
Besieg'd his Regal Town, and spoyl'd his Coast,
And did the people, nobles, and their King,
Into perpetual thraldome that time bring;
Those that from Joshuah's time had been a state,
Did Justice now by him eradicate:
This was that strange, degenerated brood,
On whom, nor threats, nor mercies could do good;
Laden with honour, prisoners, and with spoyle,
Returns triumphant Victor to his soyle;
He placed Israel there, where he thought best,
Then sent his Colonies, theirs to invest;
Thus Jacobs Sons in Exile must remain,
And pleasant Canaan never saw agaiu:
Where now those ten Tribes are, can no man tell,
Or how they fare, rich, poor, or ill, or well;
Whether the Indians of the East, or West,
Or wild Tartarians, as yet ne're blest,
Or else those Chinoes rare, whose wealth & arts
Hath bred more wonder then belief in hearts:
But what, or where they are; yet know we this,
They shall return, and Zion see with bliss.
Senacherib.
Senacherib Salmanasser succeeds,
Whose haughty heart is showne in words & deeds
109
His wars, none better then himself can boast,
On Henah, Arpad, and on Juahs coast;
On Hevahs and on Shepharvaims gods,
'Twixt them and Israels he knew no odds,
Untill the thundring hand of heaven he felt,
Which made his Army into nothing melt:
With shame then turn'd to Ninive again,
And by his sons in's Idols house was slain.
Essarhadon.
His Son, weak Essarhaddon reign'd in's place,
The fifth, and last of great Bellosus race.
Brave Merodach, the Son of Baladan,
In Babylon Lieftenant to this man
Of opportunity advantage takes,
And on his Masters ruines his house makes,
As Belosus his Soveraign did onthrone,
So he's now stil'd the King of Babilon.
After twelve years did Essarhaddon dye,
And Merodach assume the Monarchy.
Merodach Balladan.
All yield to him, but Niniveh kept free,
Untill his Grand-child made her bow the knee.
Ambassadors to Hezekiah sent,
His health congratulates with complement.
Ben Merodach.
Ben MERODACH Successor to this King,
Of whom is little said in any thing,
But by conjecture this, and none but he
Led King Manasseh to Captivity.
Nebulassar.
Brave Nebulassar to this King was son,
The famous Niniveh by him was won,
For fifty years, or more, it had been free,
Now yields her neck unto captivity:
A Vice-Roy from her foe she's glad to accept,
By whom in firm obedience she is kept.
This King's less fam'd for all the acts he's done,
Then being Father to so great a Son.
Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebopolassar.
The famous acts of this heroick King
Did neither Homer, Hesiod, Virgil sing:
Nor of his Wars have we the certainty
110
From some Thucidides grave history;
Nor's Metamorphosis from Ovids book,
Nor his restoriag from old Legends took:
But by the Prophets, Pen-men most divine,
This prince in's magnitude doth ever shine:
This was of Monarchyes that head of gold,
The richest and the dread fullest to behold:
This was that tree whose branches fill'd the earth,
Under whose shadow birds and beasts had birth:
This was that king of kings, did what he pleas'd,
Kil'd, sav'd, pul'd down, set up, or pain'd or eas'd;
And this was he, who when he fear'd the least
Was changed from a King into a beast.
This Prince the last year of his fathers reign
Against Jehojakim marcht with his train,
Judahs poor King besieg'd and succourless
Yields to his mercy, and the present 'stress;
His Vassal is, gives pledges for his truth,
Children of royal blood, unblemish'd youth:
Wise Daniel and his fellowes, mongst the rest,
By the victorious king to Babel's prest:
The Temple of rich ornaments defac'd,
And in his Idols house the vessels plac'd.
The next year he with unresisted hand
Quite vanguish'd Pharaoh Necho with his band:
By great Euphrates did his army fall,
Which was the loss of Syria withall.
Then into Egypt Necho did retire,
Which in few years proves the Assirians hire.
A mighty army next he doth prepare,
And unto wealthy Tyre in hast repair.
Such was the scituation of this place,
As might not him, but all the world out-face,
That in her pride she knew not which to boast
Whether her wealth, or yet her strength was most
How in all merchandize she did excel,
None but the true Ezekiel need to tell.
And for her strength, how hard she was to gain,
Can Babels tired souldiers tell with pain.
Within an Island had this city seat,
Divided from the Main by channel great:
Of costly ships and Gallyes she had store,
111
And Mariners to handle sail and oar:
But the Chaldeans had nor ships nor skill,
Their shoulders must their Masters mind fulfill,
Fetcht rubbish from the opposite old town,
And in the channel threw each burden down;
Where after many essayes, they made at last
The sea firm land, whereon the Army past,
And took the wealthy town; but all the gain,
Requited not the loss, the toyle and pain.
Full thirteen years in this strange work he spent
Before he could accomplish his intent:
And though a Victor home his Army leads,
With peeled shoulders, and with balded heads.
When in the Tyrian war this King was hot,
Jehojakim his oath had clean forgot,
Thinks this the fittest time to break his bands
Whilest Babels King thus deep engaged stands:
But he whose fortunes all were in the ebbe,
Had all his hopes like to a spiders web;
For this great King withdraws part of his force,
To Judah marches with a speedy course,
And unexpected finds the feeble Prince
Whom he chastis'd thus for his proud offence,
Fast bound, intends to Babel him to send,
But chang'd his mind, & caus'd his life there end,
Then cast him out like to a naked Ass,
For this is he for whom none said alas.
His son he suffered three months to reign,
Then from his throne he pluck'd him down again,
Whom with his mother he to Babel led,
And seven and thirty years in prison fed:
His Uncle he establish'd in his place
(Who was last King of holy Davids race)
But he as perjur'd as Jehojakim,
They lost more now then e're they lost by him.
Seven years he kept his faith, and safe he dwells;
But in the eighth against his Prince rebels:
The ninth came Nebuchadnezzar with power,
Besieg'd his city, temple, Zions tower,
And after eighteen months he took them all:
The Walls so strong, that stood so long, now fall.
The cursed King by flight could no wise fly
112
His well deserv'd and foretold misery:
But being caught to Babels wrathfull King
With children, wives and Nobles all they bring,
Where to the sword all but himself were put,
And with that wofull sight his eyes close shut.
Ah! hapless man, whose darksome contemplation
Was nothing but such gastly meditation.
In midst of Babel now till death he lyes;
Yet as was told ne're saw it with his eyes.
The Temple's burnt, the vessels had away.
The towres and palaces brought to decay:
Where late of harp and Lute were heard the noise
Now Zim & Jim lift up their scrieching voice.
All now of worth are Captive led with tears,
And sit bewailing Zion seventy years.
With all these conquests, Babels King rests not,
No not when Moab, Edom he had got,
Kedar and Hazar, the Arabians too,
All Vassals at his hands for Grace must sue.
A total conquest of rich Egypt makes,
All rule he from the ancient Phraohes takes,
Who had for sixteen hundred years born sway,
To Babilons proud King now yields the day.
Then Put and Lud do at his mercy stand.
VVhere e're he goes, he conquers every land.
His sumptuous buildings passes all conceit,
Which wealth and strong ambition made so great.
His Image Judahs Captives worship not,
Although the Furnace be seven times more hot.
His dreams wise Daniel doth expound full well,
And his unhappy chang with grief foretell.
Strange melancholy humours on him lay,
Which for seven years his reason took away,
VVhich from no natural causes did proceed,
But for his pride, so had the heavens decreed.
The time expir'd, bruitish remains no more,
But Government resumes as heretofore:
In splendor, and in Majesty he sits,
Contemplating those times he lost his witts.
And if by words we may ghess at the heart,
This king among the righteous had a part:
Fourty four years he reign'd, which being run,
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He left his wealth and conquests to his son.
Evilmerodach
Babel's great Monarch now laid in the dust,
His son possesses wealth and rule as just:
And in the first year of his Royalty
Easeth Jehojakims Captivity:
Poor forlorn Prince, who had all state forgot
In seven and thirty years had seen no jot.
Among the conquer'd Kings that there did ly
Is Judah's King now lifted up on high:
But yet in Babel he must still remain,
And native Canaan never see again:
Unlike his Father Evilmerodach,
Prudence and magnanimity did lack;
Fair Egypt is by his remisness lost,
Arabia, and all the bordering coast.
Warrs with the Medes unhappily he wag'd
(Within which broyles rich Croesus was ingag'd)
His Army routed, and himself there slain:
His Kingdome to Belshazzar did remain.
Belshazzar.
Unworthy Belshazzar next wears the crown,
Whose acts profane a sacred Pen sets down,
His lust and crueltyes in storyes find,
A royal State rul'd by a bruitish mind.
His life so base, and dissolute invites
The noble Persian to invade his rights.
Who with his own, and Uncles power anon,
Layes siedge to's Regal Seat, proud Babylon,
The coward King, whose strength lay in his walls,
To banquetting and revelling now falls,
To shew his little dread, but greater store,
To chear his friends, and scorn his foes the more.
The holy vessels thither brought long since,
They carrows'd in, and sacrilegious prince
Did praise his Gods of mettal, wood, and stone,
Protectors of his Crown, and Babylon,
But he above, his doings did deride,
And with a hand soon dashed all this pride.
The King upon the wall casting his eye,
The fingers of a hand writing did spy,
Which horrid sight, he fears must needs portend
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Destruction to his Crown, to's Person end.
With quaking knees, and heart appall'd he cries,
For the Soothsayers, and Magicians wise;
This language strange to read, and to unfold;
With gifts of Scarlet robe, and Chain of gold,
And highest dignity, next to the King,
To him that could interpret, clear this thing:
But dumb the gazing Astrologers stand,
Amazed at the writing, and the hand.
None answers the affrighted Kings intent,
Who still expects some fearful sad event;
As dead, alive he sits, as one undone:
In comes the Queen, to chear her heartless Son.
Of Daniel tells, who in his grand-sires dayes
VVas held in more account then now he was.
Daniel in haste is brought before the King,
VVho doth not flatter, nor once cloak the thing;
Reminds him of his Grand-Sires height and fall,
And of his own notorious sins withall:
His Drunkenness, and his profaness high,
His pride and sottish gross Idolatry.
The guilty King with colour pale and dead
Then hears his Mene and his Tekel read.
And one thing did worthy a King (though late)
Perform'd his word to him that told his fate.
That night victorious Cyrus took the town,
VVho soon did terminate his life and crown;
VVith him did end the race of Baladan:
And now the Persian Monarchy began.
The End of the Assyrian Monarchy.
~ Anne Bradstreet,
537:The Ancient Banner
In boundless mercy, the Redeemer left,
The bosom of his Father, and assumed
A servant's form, though he had reigned a king,
In realms of glory, ere the worlds were made,
Or the creating words, 'Let there be light'
In heaven were uttered. But though veiled in flesh,
His Deity and his Omnipotence,
Were manifest in miracles. Disease
Fled at his bidding, and the buried dead
Rose from the sepulchre, reanimate,
At his command, or, on the passing bier
Sat upright, when he touched it. But he came,
Not for this only, but to introduce
A glorious dispensation, in the place
Of types and shadows of the Jewish code.
Upon the mount, and round Jerusalem,
He taught a purer, and a holier law,—
His everlasting Gospel, which is yet
To fill the earth with gladness; for all climes
Shall feel its influence, and shall own its power.
He came to suffer, as a sacrifice
Acceptable to God. The sins of all
Were laid upon Him, when in agony
He bowed upon the cross. The temple's veil
Was rent asunder, and the mighty rocks,
Trembled, as the incarnate Deity,
By his atoning blood, opened that door,
Through which the soul, can have communion with
Its great Creator; and when purified,
From all defilements, find acceptance too,
Where it can finally partake of all
The joys of His salvation.
But the pure Church he planted,—the pure Church
Which his apostles watered,—and for which,
The blood of countless martyrs freely flowed,
In Roman Amphitheatres,—on racks,—
And in the dungeon's gloom,—this blessed Church,
Which grew in suffering, when it overspread
Surrounding nations, lost its purity.
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Its truth was hidden, and its light obscured
By gross corruption, and idolatry.
As things of worship, it had images,
And even painted canvas was adored.
It had a head and bishop, but this head
Was not the Saviour, but the Pope of Rome.
Religion was a traffic. Men defiled,
Professed to pardon sin, and even sell,
The joys of heaven for money,—and to raise
Souls out of darkness to eternal light,
For paltry silver lavished upon them.
And thus thick darkness, overspread the Church
As with a mantle.
At length the midnight of apostacy
Passed by, and in the horizon appeared,
Day dawning upon Christendom. The light,
Grew stronger, as the Reformation spread.
For Luther, and Melancthon, could not be
Silenced by papal bulls, nor by decrees
Of excommunication thundered forth
Out of the Vatican. And yet the light,
Of Luther's reformation, never reached
Beyond the morning's dawn. The noontide blaze
Of Truth's unclouded day, he never saw.
Yet after him, its rising sun displayed
More and more light upon the horizon.
Though thus enlightened, the professing Church,
Was far from many of the precious truths
Of the Redeemer's gospel; and as yet,
Owned not his Spirit's government therein.
But now the time approached, when he would pour
A larger measure of his light below;
And as he chose unlearned fishermen
To spread his gospel when first introduced,
So now he passed mere human learning by,
And chose an instrument, comparable
To the small stone the youthful David used,
To smite the champion who defied the Lord.
Apart from human dwellings, in a green
Rich pasturage of England, sat a youth,
Who seemed a shepherd, for around him there
A flock was feeding, and the sportive lambs
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Gambolled amid the herbage. But his face
Bore evidence of sadness. On his knee
The sacred book lay open, upon which
The youth looked long and earnestly, and then,
Closing the book, gazed upward, in deep thought
This was the instrument by whom the Lord
Designed to spread a clearer light below
And fuller reformation. He appeared,
Like ancient Samuel, to be set apart
For the Lord's service from his very birth.
Even in early childhood, he refrained
From youthful follies, and his mind was turned
To things of highest moment. He was filled
With awful feelings, by the wickedness
He saw around him. As he grew in years,
Horror of sin grew stronger; and his mind
Became so clothed with sadness, and so full
Of soul-felt longings, for the healing streams
Of heavenly consolation, that he left
His earthly kindred, seeking quietude
In solitary places, where he read
The book of inspiration, and in prayer,
Sought heavenly counsel.
In this deep-proving season he was told,
Of priests, whose reputation had spread wide
For sanctity and wisdom; and from these
He sought for consolation,—but in vain.
One of these ministers became enraged,
Because the youth had inadvertently
Misstepped within his garden; and a priest
Of greater reputation, counselled him
To use tobacco, and sing holy psalms!
And the inquirer found a third to be
But as an empty, hollow cask at best.
Finding no help in man, the youthful Fox,
Turned to a higher and a holier source,
For light and knowledge. In his Saviour's school,
He sat a scholar, and was clearly shown
The deep corruption, that had overspread
Professing Christendom. And one by one,
The doctrines of the Gospel, were unveiled,
To the attentive student,—doctrines, which,
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Though clearly written on the sacred page,
Had long been hidden, by the rubbish man's
Perversions and inventions heaped thereon.
He saw that colleges, could not confer,
A saving knowledge of the way of Truth,
Nor qualify a minister to preach
The everlasting Gospel; but that Christ,
Is the true Teacher, and that he alone
Has power to call, anoint, and qualify,
And send a Gospel minister to preach
Glad tidings of salvation. He was shown,
No outward building, made of wood and stone
Could be a holy place,—and that the Church—
The only true and living Church—must be
A holy people gathered to the Lord,
And to his teaching. He was clearly taught,
The nature of baptism, by which souls
Are purified and fitted for this Church;
That this was not, by being dipped into,
Or sprinkled with clear water, but it was
The one baptism of the Holy Ghost.
He saw the Supper was no outward food,
Made and administered by human hands,—
But the Lord's Table was within the heart;
Where in communion with him, holy bread
Was blessed and broken, and the heavenly wine,
Which cheers the fainting spirit, handed forth.
The Saviour showed him that all outward wars,
Are now forbidden,—that the warfare here,
Is to be waged within. Its weapons too,
Though mighty, even to the pulling down,
Of the strong holds of Satan, are yet all
The Spirit's weapons. He was shown, that oaths
Judicial or profane, are banished from
The Christian dispensation, which commands,
'Swear not at all.' He saw the compliments,—
Hat honour, and lip service of the world,
Sprang from pride's evil root, and were opposed
To the pure spirit of Christ's holy law.
And by His inward Light, was clearly seen
The perfect purity of heart and life
For which that Saviour calls, who never asked,
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Things unattainable.
These truths and others, being thus revealed,
Fox was prepared and qualified to preach,
The unveiled Gospel, to the sons of men.
Clothed with divine authority, he went
Abroad through Britain, and proclaimed that Light,
Which Christ's illuminating Spirit sheds,
In the dark heart of man. Some heard of this,
Who seemed prepared and waiting, to receive
His Gospel message, and were turned to Him,
Whose Holy Spirit sealed it on their hearts.
And not a few of these, were called upon,
To take the message, and themselves declare
The way of Truth to others. But the Priests,
Carnal professors, and some magistrates,
Heard of the inward light, and purity,
With indignation, and they seized upon,
And thrust the Preacher within prison walls.
Not once alone, but often was he found,
Amid the very dregs of wickedness—
With robbers, and with blood-stained criminals,
Locked up in loathsome jails. And when abroad
Upon his Master's service, he was still
Reviled and buffeted, and spit upon.
But none of these things moved him, for within
He felt that soul-sustaining evidence,
Which bore his spirit high above the waves,
Of bitter persecution.
But now the time approached, for his release
From suffering and from labour. He had spent,
Long years in travel for the cause of Truth,—
Not all in Britain,—for he preached its light,
And power in Holland,—the West Indian isles,
And North America. Far through the wild,
And trackless wilderness, this faithful man,
Carried his Master's message; he lived,
To see Truth's banner fearlessly displayed
Upon both continents. He lived to see,
Pure hearted men and women gathered to
The inward teaching of the Saviour's will,—
Banded together in the covenant,
Of light and life. But his allotted work,
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Was now accomplished, and his soul prepared,
For an inheritance with saints in light,
And with his loins all girded, he put off
His earthly shackles, triumphing in death,
That the Seed reigned, and Truth was over all!
Where the dark waters of the Delaware,
Roll onward to the ocean, sweeping by,
Primeval forests, where the red man still,
Built his rude wigwam, and the timid deer
Fled for concealment from the Indian's eye,
And the unerring arrow of his bow;
There, in the shadow of these ancient woods,
A sea-worn ship has anchored. On her deck,
Men of grave mien are gathered. One of whom,
Of noble figure, and quick searching eyes,
Surveys the scene, wrapt in the deepest thought.
And this is William Penn. He stands among,
Fellow believers, who have sought a home,
And place of refuge, in this wilderness.
Born of an ancient family, his sire
An English Admiral, the youthful Penn,
Might, with his talents, have soon ranked among
The proudest subjects of the British throne.
He chose the better part—to serve that King
Who is immortal and invisible.
While yet a student within college halls,
He heard Truth's message, and his heart was reached,
And fully owned it, though it came through one
Of that despised and persecuted class,
Called in derision Quakers. Thus convinced,
He left the college worship, to commune
In spirit with his Maker. And for this,
He was expelled from Oxford; and was soon
Maltreated by his father, who, enraged,
Because his only son, had turned away
From brilliant prospects, to pursue the path
Of self-denial, drove him harshly forth
From the paternal roof. But William Penn,
Had still a Father, who supported him,
With strength and courage to perform his will;
And he was called and qualified to preach,
And to bear witness of that blessed Light
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Which shines within. He suffered in the cause,
His share of trial. He was dragged before
Judges and juries, and was shut within
The walls of prisons.
Looking abroad through England, he was filled
With deep commiseration, for the jails—
The loathsome, filthy jails—were crowded with
His brethren in the Truth. For their relief,
He sought the ear of royalty, and plead
Their cruel sufferings; and their innocence;
And thus became the instrument through which
Some prison doors were opened. But he sought
A place of refuge from oppression's power,
That Friends might worship the Creator there,
Free from imprisonment and penalties.
And such a place soon opened to his view,
Far in the Western Wilderness, beyond
The Atlantic's wave.
And here is William Penn, and here a band
Of weary emigrants, who now behold
The promised land before them; but it is
The Indian's country, and the Indian's home.
Penn had indeed, received a royal grant,
To occupy it; but a grant from one
Who had no rightful ownership therein;
He therefore buys it honestly from those
Whose claims are aboriginal, and just.
With these inhabitants, behold, he stands
Beneath an ancient elm, whose spreading limbs
O'erhang the Delaware. The forest chiefs
Sit in grave silence, while the pipe of peace
Goes round the circle. They have made a league
With faithful Onas—a perpetual league,
And treaty of true friendship, to endure
While the sun shines, and while the waters run.
And here was founded in the wilderness,
A refuge from oppression, where all creeds
Found toleration, and where truth and right
Were the foundation of its government,
And its protection. In that early day,
The infant colony sought no defence
But that of justice and of righteousness;
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The only guarantees of peace on earth,
Because they ever breathe, good will to men.
His colony thus planted, William Penn
Sought his old field of labour, and again,
Both through the press and vocally, he plead
The right of conscience, and the rights of man;
And frequently, and forcibly he preached
Christ's universal and inshining Light.
His labour was incessant; and the cares,
And the perplexities connected with
His distant province, which he visited
A second time, bore heavily upon
His burdened spirit, which demanded rest;—
That rest was granted. In the midst of all
His labour and his trials, there was drawn
A veil, in mercy, round his active mind,
Which dimmed all outward things; but he still saw
The beauty and the loveliness of Truth,
And found sweet access to the Source of good.
And thus, shut out from the perplexities
And sorrows of the world, he was prepared
To hear the final summons, to put off
His tattered garments, and be clothed upon
With heavenly raiment.
Scotland, thou hadst a noble citizen,
In him of Ury! Born amid thy hills,
Though educated where enticing scenes,
Crowd giddy Paris, he rejected all
The world's allurements, and unlike the youth
Who talked with Jesus, Barclay turned away
From great possessions, and embraced the Truth.
He early dedicated all the powers
Of a well cultivated intellect
To the Redeemer and His holy cause.
He was a herald, to proclaim aloud,
Glad tidings of salvation; and his life
Preached a loud sermon by its purity.
Not only were his lips made eloquent,
By the live coal that touched them, but his pen,
Moved by a force from the same altar, poured
Light, truth, and wisdom. From it issued forth
The great Apology, which yet remains
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One of the best expositors of Truth
That man has published, since that sacred book
Anciently written. Seekers are still led
By its direction, to that blessed Light,
And inward Teacher, who is Jesus Christ.
But now, this noble servant of the Lord,
Rests from his faithful labour, while his works
Yet follow him.
Early believers in the light of Truth,
Dwelt not at ease in Zion. They endured
Conflicts and trials, and imprisonments.
Even the humble Penington, whose mind
Seemed purged and purified from all the dross
Of human nature—who appeared as meek
And harmless as an infant—was compelled
To dwell in loathsome prisons. But he had,
Though in the midst of wickedness, sublime
And holy visions of the purity,
And the true nature of Christ's living Church.
While Edmundson, the faithful pioneer
Of Truth in Ireland, was compelled to drink
Deeply of suffering for the blessed cause.
Dragged from his home, half naked, by a mob
Who laid that home in ashes, he endured
Heart-rending cruelties. But all of these,
Stars of the morning, felt oppression's hand,
And some endured it to the closing scene.
Burroughs, a noble servant of the Lord,
Whose lips and pen were eloquent for Truth,
Drew his last breath in prison. Parnel, too,
A young and valiant soldier of the Lamb,
Died, a true martyr in a dungeon's gloom.
Howgill and Hubberthorn, both ministers
Of Christ's ordaining, were released from all
Their earthly trials within prison walls.
And beside these, there was a multitude
Of faithful men, and noble women too,
Who past from scenes of conflict, to the joys
Of the Redeemer's kingdom, within jails,
And some in dungeons. But amid it all,
Light spread in Britain, and a living Church
Was greatly multiplied. The tender minds,
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Even of children, felt the power of Truth,
And showed the fruit and firmness it affords.
When persecution, rioted within
The town of Bristol, and all older Friends
Were locked in prison, little children met,
Within their place of worship, by themselves,
To offer praises, in the very place
From which their parents had been dragged to jail.
But let us turn from Britain, and look down,
Upon an inland sea whose swelling waves
Encircle Malta. There a cloudless sun,
In Eastern beauty, pours its light upon
The Inquisition. All without its walls
Seems calm and peaceful, let us look within.
There, stretched upon the floor, within a close,
Dark, narrow cell, inhaling from a crack
A breath of purer air, two women lie.
But who are these, and wherefore are they here?
These are two ministers of Christ, who left
Their homes in England, faithfully to bear,
The Saviour's message into eastern lands.
And here at Malta they were seized upon
By bigotted intolerance, and shut
Within this fearful engine of the Pope.
Priests and Inquisitor assail them here,
And urge the claims of popery. The rack,
And cruel deaths are threatened; and again
Sweet liberty is offered, as the price
Of their apostacy. All, all in vain!
For years these tender women have been thus,
Victims of cruelty. At times apart,
Confined in gloomy, solitary cells.
But all these efforts to convert them failed:
The Inquisition had not power enough
To shake their faith and confidence in Him,
Whose holy presence was seen anciently
To save his children from devouring flames;
He, from this furnace of affliction, brought
These persecuted women, who came forth
Out of the burning, with no smell of fire
Upon their garments, and again they trod,
Their native land rejoicing.
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In Hungary, two ministers of Christ,
Were stretched upon the rack. Their tortured limbs
Were almost torn asunder, but no force
Could tear them from their Master, and they came
Out of the furnace, well refined gold.
Nor were these all who suffered for the cause
Of truth and righteousness, in foreign lands.
For at Mequinez and Algiers, some toiled,
And died in slavery. But nothing could
Discourage faithful messengers of Christ
From his required service. They were found
Preaching repentance where the Israelites
Once toiled in Egypt, and the ancient Nile
Still rolls its waters. And the holy light
Of the eternal Gospel was proclaimed,
Where its great Author had first published it—
Where the rich temple of King Solomon,
Stood in its ancient glory. Even there,
The haughty Musselmen, were told of Him,
The one great Prophet, who now speaks within.
For their refusing to participate
In carnal warfare, many early Friends,
Were made to suffer. On a ship of war
Equipped for battle, Richard Sellers bore,
With a meek, Christian spirit, cruelties
The most atrocious, for obeying Him
Who was his heavenly Captain, and by whom,
War is forbidden. Sellers would not touch,
The instruments of carnage, nor could all
The cruelties inflicted, move his soul
From a reliance on that holy Arm,
Which had sustained him in the midst of all
His complicated trials; and he gained
A peaceful, but a greater victory
Than that of battle, for he wearied out
Oppression, by his constancy, and left
A holy savor, with that vessel's crew.
But let us turn from persecuting scenes,
That stain the annals of the older world,
To young America, whose virgin shores
Offer a refuge from oppression's power.
Here lies a harbour in the noble bay
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Of Massachusetts. Many little isles
Dot its expanding waters, and Nahant
Spreads its long beach and eminence beyond,
A barrier to the ocean. The whole scene,
Looks beautiful, in the clear northern air,
And loveliness of morning. On the heights
That overlook the harbour, there is seen
An infant settlement. Let us approach,
And anchor where the Puritans have sought,
For liberty of conscience. But there seems,
Disquietude in Boston. Men appear
Urged on by stormy passions, and some wear
A look of unrelenting bitterness.
But what is that now rising into view,
Where crowds are gathered on an eminence?
These are the Puritans. They now surround
A common gallows. On its platform, stands
A lovely woman in the simple garb
Worn by the early Quakers. Of the throng,
She only seems unmoved, although her blood
They madly thirst for.
The first professors of Christ's inward Light,
Who brought this message into Boston bay,
Were inoffensive women. They were searched
For signs of witchcraft, and their books were burned.
The captain who had brought them, was compelled
To carry them away. But others came,
Both men and women, zealous for the Truth.
These were received with varied cruelties—
By frequent whippings and imprisonments.
Law after law was made excluding them;
But all in vain, for still these faithful ones
Carried their Master's message undismayed
Among the Puritans, and still they found
Those who received it, and embraced the Truth,
And steadily maintained it, in the midst
Of whipping posts, and pillories, and jails!
A law was then enacted, by which all
The banished Quakers, who were found again
Within the province, were to suffer death.
But these, though ever ready to obey
All just enactments, when laws trespassed on
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The rights of conscience, and on God's command,
Could never for a moment hesitate,
Which to obey.—And soon there stood upon
A scaffold of New England, faithful friends,
Who, in obeying Christ, offended man!
Of these was Mary Dyer, who exclaimed,
While passing to this instrument of death,
'No eye can witness, and no ear can hear,
No tongue can utter, nor heart understand
The incomes and refreshings from the Lord
Which now I feel.' And in the spirit which
These words a little pictured, Robinson,
Past to the presence of that Holy One
For whom he laboured, and in whom he died.
Then Stevenson, another faithful steward
And servant of the Lamb, was ushered from
Deep scenes of suffering into scenes of joy.
But Mary Dyer, who was all prepared,
To join these martyrs in their heavenward flight,
Was left a little longer upon earth.
But a few fleeting months had rolled away,
Ere this devoted woman felt constrained,
Again to go among the Puritans,
In Massachusetts, and in Boston too.
And here she stands! the second time, upon
A gallows of New England. No reprieve
Arrests her sentence now. But still she feels
The same sweet incomes, and refreshing streams
From the Lord's Holy Spirit. In the midst
Of that excited multitude, she seems
The most resigned and peaceful.—But the deed
Is now accomplished, and the scene is closed!
Among the faithful martyrs of the Lamb,
Gathered forever round His Holy Throne,
She doubtless wears a pure and spotless robe,
And bears the palm of victory.
The blood of Leddra was soon after shed,
Which closed the scene of martyrdom among
The early Quakers in this colony,
But not the scene of suffering. Women were
Dragged through its towns half-naked, tied to carts,
While the lash fell upon their unclothed backs,
290
And bloody streets, showed where they past along.
And such inhuman treatment was bestowed
On the first female minister of Christ,
Who preached the doctrine of his inward Light.
But in New England, there was really found
A refuge from oppression, justice reigned
Upon Rhode Island. In that early day,
The rights of conscience were held sacred there,
And persecution was a thing unknown.
A bright example, as a governor,
Was William Coddington. He loved the law—
The perfect law of righteousness—and strove
To govern by it; and all faithful Friends
Felt him a brother in the blessed Truth.
In North America, the Puritans
Stood not alone in efforts to prevent
The introduction and the spread of light.
The Dutch plantation of New Amsterdam,
Sustained a measure of the evil work.
The savage cruelties inflicted on
The faithful Hodgson, have few parallels
In any age or country; but the Lord
Was with His servant in the midst of all,
And healed his tortured and his mangled frame.
The early Friends were bright and shining stars,
For they reflected the clear holy light
The Sun of Righteousness bestowed on them.
They followed no deceiving, transient glare—
No ignis fatuus of bewildered minds;
They followed Jesus in the holiness
Of His unchanging Gospel. They endured
Stripes and imprisonment and pillories,
Torture and slavery and banishment,
And even death; but they would not forsake
Their Holy Leader, or His blessed cause.
Their patient suffering, and firm steadfastness,
Secured a rich inheritance for those
Who have succeeded them. Do these now feel
That firm devotion to the cause of Truth—That
singleheartedness their fathers felt?
Do they appreciate the price and worth
Of the great legacy and precious trust
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Held for their children? The great cruelties
Borne by the fathers, have not been entailed
On their descendants, who now dwell at ease.
The world does not revile them. Do not some
Love it the more for this? and do they not
Make more alliance with it, and partake
More and more freely of its tempting baits,
Its fashions and its spirit? but are these
More pure and holy than they were of old,
When in the light of Truth, their fathers saw
That deep corruption overspread the world?
Other professors latterly have learned
To speak of Quakers with less bitterness
Than when the name reproachfully was cast
In ridicule upon them. Has not this
Drawn watchmen from the citadel of Truth?
Has it not opened doors that had been closed,
And should have been forever? And by these,
Has not an enemy been stealing in,
To spoil the goods of many; to assail,
And strive in secrecy to gather strength,
To overcome the citadel at last?
Is it not thought illiberal to refuse
Alliances with those who now profess
Respect and friendship? Must the Quaker then
Bow in the house of Rimmon, saying, Lord
Pardon in this thy servant? Do not some
Fail to resist encroachments, when they come
Clothed in enticing words, and wear the guise
Of charity and kindness, and are veiled,
Or sweetened to the taste, by courtesy?
But is a snare less certain, when concealed
By some enticing bait? or is a ball
Less sure and fatal, when it flies unheard,
Or, when the hand that sends it is unseen,
Or offers friendship? Did not Joab say,
'Art thou in health my brother?' and appeared
To kiss Amasa, while he thrust his sword
Into his life-blood? And when Jonas fled
From the Lord's service, and the stormy waves
Threatened the ship that bore him, was the cause
Not found within it? Was there not a calm
292
When he, whose disobedience to the Lord
Had raised the tempest, was no longer there?
Truth has a standard openly displayed,
Untorn—unsullied. Man indeed may change,
And may forsake it; but the Standard still
Remains immutable. May all who love
This Holy Banner, rally to it now!
May all whose dwellings are upon the sand,
Seek for a building on that living Rock,
Which stands forever;—for a storm has come—
A storm that tries foundations! Even now,
The flooding rains are falling, and the winds
Rapidly rising to a tempest, beat
Upon all dwellings. They alone can stand
Which have the Rock beneath them, and above
The Omnipresent and Omnipotent
Creator and Defender of His Church!
~ Anonymous Americas,
538:The Dunciad: Book Iv
Yet, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half veil, the deep intent.
Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restor'd I sing,
To whom time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.
Now flam'd the Dog Star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry brain, and wither'd every bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bow'r.
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.
She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,
In broad effulgence all below reveal'd;
('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.
Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic , gagg'd and bound,
There, stripp'd, fair Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality , by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle finds it square.
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye:
191
There to her heart sad Tragedy addres'd
The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,
And promised vengeance on a barb'rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:
Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse,
Thou weptst, and with thee wept each gentle Muse.
When lo! a harlot form soft sliding by,
With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye;
Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride
In patchwork flutt'ring, and her head aside:
By singing peers upheld on either hand,
She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke.
'O
Cara! Cara!
silence all that train:
Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign:
Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,
Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:
One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
And all thy yawning daughters cry,
encore
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon, Rebellion will commence,
If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense.
Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briarerus, with a hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums.
Arrest him, Empress, or you sleep no more-'
She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore.
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
192
And all the nations summoned to the throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head:
None want a place, for all their centre found
Hung to the Goddess, and coher'd around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglob'd are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky Queen.
The gath'ring number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,
Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her Vortex, and her pow'r confess.
Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate'er of dunce in college or in town
Sneers at another, in toupee or gown;
Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great;
Who false to Phoebus bow the knee to Baal;
Or, impious, preach his Word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head;
Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite.
There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side,
Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride.
Narcissus, prais'd with all a Parson's pow'r,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a show'r.
There mov'd Montalto with superior air;
His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair;
Courtiers and Patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side:
But as in graceful act, with awful eye
Compos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by:
193
On two unequal crutches propp'd he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.
The decent knight retir'd with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page.
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appear'd Apollo's mayor and aldermen,
On whom three hundred gold-capp'd youths await,
To lug the pond'rous volume off in state.
When Dulness, smiling-'Thus revive the Wits!
But murder first, and mince them all to bits;
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)
A new edition of old Aeson gave;
Let standard authors, thus, like trophies born,
Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn,
And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page, a grave, that they can call their own;
But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each bard an Alderman shall sit,
A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit,
And while on Fame's triumphal Car they ride,
Some Slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.'
Now crowds on crowds around the Goddess press,
Each eager to present their first address.
Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance,
When lo! a spector rose, whose index hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood, and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shud'ring horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbl'd, Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place:
The pale boy senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
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Then thus. 'Since man from beast by words is known,
Words are man's province, words we teach alone.
When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Plac'd at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain,
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A Poet the first day, he dips his quill;
And what the last? A very Poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pult'ney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, and All that mortal can;
And South beheld that Masterpiece of Man.'
'Oh' (cried the Goddess) 'for some pedant Reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the Doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar school!
For sure, if Dulness sees a grateful day,
'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.
O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;
That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which as it dies, or lives, we fall, or reign:
May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it long!
'The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong'.'
195
Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away.
Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick
On German Crousaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murm'ring fall
To lull the sons of Marg'ret and Clare Hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in Port.
Before them march'd that awful Aristarch;
Plow'd was his front with many a deep remark:
His hat, which never vail'd to human pride,
Walker with rev'rence took, and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest: He, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
'Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt-is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbl'd Milton's strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better:
Author of something yet more great than letter;
While tow'ring o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of
Me
or
Te
, of
aut
or
at
To sound or sink in
196
cano
, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply:
For Attic Phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before,
Or chew'd by blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a
Flea
'Ah, think not, Mistress! more true dulness lies
In Folly's cap, than Wisdom's grave disguise.
Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,
On learning's surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much Divinity without a Nous.
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it:
So spins the silkworm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.
'What tho' we let some better sort of fool
Thrid ev'ry science, run through ev'ry school?
Never by tumbler through the hoops was shown
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Such skill in passing all, and touching none.
He may indeed (if sober all this time)
Plague with dispute, or persecute with rhyme.
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse:
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a Genius to a Dunce:
Or set on metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level ev'ry mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
And hew the block off, and get out the man.
But wherefore waste I words? I see advance
Whore, pupil, and lac'd governor from France.
Walker! our hat' -nor more he deign'd to say,
But, stern as Ajax' spectre, strode away.
In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race,
And titt'ring push'd the Pedants off the place;
Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd
By the French horn, or by the op'ning hound.
The first came forwards, with as easy mien,
As if he saw St. James's and the Queen.
When thus th' attendant Orator begun,
Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd Son:
Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,
A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God.
The Sire saw, one by one, his Virtues wake:
The Mother begg'd the blessing of a Rake.
Thou gav'st that Ripeness, which so soon began,
And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was Boy, nor Man,
Thro' School and College, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unseen the young AEneas past:
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy Larum half the town.
Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew:
Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.
There all thy gifts and graces we display,
Thou, only thou, directing all our way!
To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,
Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons;
198
Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
Vain of Italian Arts, Italian Souls:
To happy Convents, bosom'd deep in vines,
Where slumber Abbots, purple as their wines:
To Isles of fragrance, lilly-silver'd vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales:
To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves,
Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.
But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,
And Cupids ride the Lyon of the Deeps;
Where, eas'd of Fleets, the Adriatic main
Wafts the smooth Eunuch and enamour'd swain.
Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round,
And gather'd ev'ry Vice on Christian ground;
Saw ev'ry Court, hear'd ev'ry King declare
His royal Sense, of Op'ra's or the Fair;
The Stews and Palace equally explor'd,
Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd;
Try'd all hors-d' uvres, all Liqueurs defin'd,
Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd;
Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store,
Spoil'd his own Language, and acquir'd no more;
All Classic learning lost on Classic ground;
And last turn'd Air, the Eccho of a Sound!
See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred,
With nothing but a Solo in his head;
As much Estate, and Principle, and Wit,
As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;
Stol'n from a Duel, follow'd by a Nun,
And, if a Borough chuse him, not undone;
See, to my country happy I restore
This glorious Youth, and add one Venus more.
Her too receive (for her my soul adores)
So may the sons of sons of sons of whores,
Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour Throne,
And make a long Posterity thy own.
Pleas'd, she accepts the Hero, and the Dame,
Wraps in her Veil, and frees from sense of Shame.
Then look'd, and saw a lazy, lolling sort,
Unseen at Church, at Senate, or at Court,
Of ever-listless Loit'rers, that attend
No Cause, no Trust, no Duty, and no Friend.
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Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.
She pity'd! but her Pity only shed
Benigner influence on thy nodding head.
But Annius, crafty Seer, with ebon wand,
And well-dissembl'd Em'rald on his hand,
False as his Gems and canker'd as his Coins,
Came, cramm'd with Capon, from where Pollio dines.
Soft, as the wily Fox is seen to creep,
Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep,
Walk round and round, now prying here, now there;
So he; but pious, whisper'd first his pray'r.
Grant, gracious Goddess! grant me still to cheat,
O may thy cloud still cover the deceit!
Thy choicer mists on this assembly shed,
But pour them thickest on the noble head.
So shall each youth, assisted by our eyes,
See other C‘sars, other Homers rise;
Thro' twilight ages hunt th'Athenian fowl,
Which Chalcis Gods, and mortals call an Owl,
Now see an Attys, now a Cecrops clear,
Nay, Mahomet! the Pigeon at thine ear;
Be rich in ancient brass, tho' not in gold,
And keep his Lares, tho' his house be sold;
To headless Ph be his fair bride postpone,
Honour a Syrian Prince above his own;
Lord of an Otho, if I vouch it true;
Blest in one Niger, till he knows of two.
Mummius o'erheard him; Mummius, Fool-renown'd,
Who like his Cheops stinks above the ground,
Fierce as a startled Adder, swell'd, and said,
Rattling an ancient Sistrum at his head.
Speak'st thou of Syrian Princes? Traitor base!
Mine, Goddess! mine is all the horned race.
True, he had wit, to make their value rise;
From foolish Greeks to steal them, was as wise;
More glorious yet, from barb'rous hands to keep,
When Sallee Rovers chac'd him on the deep.
Then taught by Hermes, and divinely bold,
Down his own throat he risqu'd the Grecian gold;
200
Receiv'd each Demi-God, with pious care,
Deep in his Entrails — I rever'd them there,
I bought them, shrouded in that living shrine,
And, at their second birth, they issue mine.
Witness great Ammon! by whose horns I swore,
(Reply'd soft Annius) this our paunch before
Still bears them, faithful; and that thus I eat,
Is to refund the Medals with the meat.
To prove me, Goddess! clear of all design,
Bid me with Pollio sup, as well as dine:
There all the Learn'd shall at the labour stand,
And Douglas lend his soft, obstetric hand.
The Goddess smiling seem'd to give consent;
So back to Pollio, hand in hand, they went.
Then thick as Locusts black'ning all the ground,
A tribe, with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd,
Each with some wond'rous gift approach'd the Pow'r,
A Nest, a Toad, a Fungus, or a Flow'r.
But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal,
And aspect ardent to the Throne appeal.
The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,
Great Queen, and common Mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this Flow'r,
Suckled, and chear'd, with air, and sun, and show'r,
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head,
Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline:
Each Maid cry'd, charming! and each Youth, divine!
Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze?
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline:
No Maid cries, charming! and no Youth, divine!
And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust
Lay'd this gay daughter of the Spring in dust.
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no Carnation fades.
He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien,
Th'Accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen.
Of all th'enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing
Waves to the tepid Zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,
Once brightest shin'd this child of Heat and Air.
201
I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r
The rising game, and chac'd from flow'r to flow'r.
It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd:
Rose or Carnation was below my care;
I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked fact without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but shew the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye,
Fair ev'n in death! this peerless Butterfly.
My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your parts:
Live happy both, and long promote our arts.
But hear a Mother, when she recommends
To your fraternal care, our sleeping friends.
The common Soul, of Heav'n's more frugal make,
Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake:
A drowzy Watchman, that just gives a knock,
And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock.
Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd;
The dull may waken to a Humming-bird;
The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find
Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind;
The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss,
May wander in a wilderness of Moss;
The head that turns at super-lunar things,
Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings.
'O! would the sons of men once think their eyes
And reason given them but to study flies !
See Nature in some partial narrow shape,
And let the Author of the Whole escape:
Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe,
To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.'
'Be that my task' (replies a gloomy clerk,
Sworn foe to Myst'ry, yet divinely dark;
Whose pious hope aspires to see the day
When Moral Evidence shall quite decay,
And damns implicit faith, and holy lies,
Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatize):
'Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,
On plain experience lay foundations low,
202
By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to Nature's Cause through Nature led.
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride!
We nobly take the high Priori Road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make Nature still encroach upon his plan;
And shove him off as far as e'er we can:
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place;
Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space.
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God man's image, man the final Cause,
Find virtue local, all relation scorn
See all in self , and but for self be born:
Of naught so certain as our reason still,
Of naught so doubtful as of soul and will .
Oh hide the God still more! and make us see
Such as Lucretius drew, a god like thee:
Wrapp'd up in self, a god without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.
Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw,
While through poetic scenes the Genius roves,
Or wanders wild in academic groves;
That Nature our society adores,
Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.'
Rous'd at his name up rose the bousy Sire,
And shook from out his pipe the seeds of fire;
Then snapp'd his box, and strok'd his belly down:
Rosy and rev'rend, though without a gown.
Bland and familiar to the throne he came,
Led up the youth, and call'd the Goddess Dame .
Then thus, 'From priestcraft happily set free,
Lo! ev'ry finished Son returns to thee:
First slave to words, then vassal to a name,
Then dupe to party; child and man the same;
Bounded by Nature, narrow'd still by art,
A trifling head, and a contracted heart.
Thus bred, thus taught, how many have I seen,
Smiling on all, and smil'd on by a queen.
Marked out for honours, honour'd for their birth,
203
To thee the most rebellious things on earth:
Now to thy gentle shadow all are shrunk,
All melted down, in pension, or in punk!
So K-- so B-- sneak'd into the grave,
A monarch's half, and half a harlot's slave.
Poor W-- nipp'd in Folly's broadest bloom,
Who praises now? his chaplain on his tomb.
Then take them all, oh take them to thy breast!
Thy Magus , Goddess! shall perform the rest.'
With that, a Wizard old his Cup extends;
Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends,
Sire, ancestors, himself. One casts his eyes
Up to a Star , and like Endymion dies:
A Feather , shooting from another's head,
Extracts his brain, and principle is fled,
Lost is his God, his country, ev'rything;
And nothing left but homage to a king!
The vulgar herd turn off to roll with hogs,
To run with horses, or to hunt with dogs;
But, sad example! never to escape
Their infamy, still keep the human shape.
But she, good Goddess, sent to ev'ry child
Firm impudence, or stupefaction mild;
And straight succeeded, leaving shame no room,
Cibberian forehead, or Cimmerian gloom.
Kind self-conceit to somewhere glass applies,
Which no one looks in with another's eyes:
But as the flatt'rer or dependant paint,
Beholds himself a patriot, chief, or saint.
On others Int'rest her gay liv'ry flings,
Int'rest that waves on party-colour'd wings:
Turn'd to the sun, she casts a thousand dyes,
And, as she turns, the colours fall or rise.
Others the siren sisters warble round,
And empty heads console with empty sound.
No more, Alas! the voice of Fame they hear,
The balm of Dulness trickling in their ear.
Great C--, H--, P--, R--, K--,
Why all your toils? your Sons have learn'd to sing.
How quick ambition hastes to ridicule!
The sire is made a peer, the son a fool.
204
On some, a Priest succinct in amice white
Attends; all flesh is nothing in his sight!
Beeves, at his touch, at once to jelly turn,
And the huge boar is shrunk into an urn:
The board with specious miracles he loads,
Turns hares to larks, and pigeons into toads.
Another (for in all what one can shine?)
Explains the
Seve
and
Verdeur
of the vine.
What cannot copious sacrifice atone?
Thy truffles, Perigord! thy hams, Bayonne!
With French libation, and Italian strain,
Wash Bladen white, and expiate Hays's stain.
Knight lifts the head, for what are crowds undone.
To three essential partridges in one?
Gone ev'ry blush, and silent all reproach,
Contending princes mount them in their coach.
Next, bidding all draw near on bended knees,
The Queen confers her Titles and Degrees .
Her children first of more distinguish'd sort,
Who study Shakespeare at the Inns of Court,
Impale a glowworm, or vertú profess,
Shine in the dignity of F.R.S.
Some, deep Freemasons, join the silent race
Worthy to fill Pythagoras's place:
Some botanists, or florists at the least,
Or issue members of an annual feast.
Nor pass'd the meanest unregarded, one
Rose a Gregorian, one a Gormogon.
The last, not least in honour or applause,
Isis and Cam made Doctors of her Laws.
Then, blessing all, 'Go, Children of my care!
To practice now from theory repair.
All my commands are easy, short, and full:
My sons! be proud, be selfish, and be dull.
Guard my prerogative, assert my throne:
This nod confirms each privilege your own.
The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace;
205
With staff and pumps the Marquis lead the race;
From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run,
Pair'd with his fellow charioteer the sun;
The learned Baron butterflies design,
Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line;
The Judge to dance his brother Sergeant call;
The Senator at cricket urge the ball;
The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!)
An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie;
The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop,
And drown his lands and manors in a soupe .
Others import yet nobler arts from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
Perhaps more high some daring son may soar,
Proud to my list to add one monarch more;
And nobly conscious, princes are but things
Born for first ministers, as slaves for kings,
Tyrant supreme! shall three Estates command,
And make one mighty Dunciad of the Land!
More she had spoke, but yawn'd-All Nature nods:
What mortal can resist the yawn of gods?
Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd;
(St. James's first, for leaden Gilbert preach'd)
Then catch'd the schools; the Hall scarce kept awake;
The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak:
Lost was the nation's sense, nor could be found,
While the long solemn unison went round:
Wide, and more wide, it spread o'er all the realm;
Even Palinurus nodded at the helm:
The vapour mild o'er each committee crept;
Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept;
And chiefless armies doz'd out the campaign;
And navies yawn'd for orders on the main.
O Muse! relate (for you can tell alone,
Wits have short memories, and Dunces none),
Relate, who first, who last resign'd to rest;
Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest;
What charms could faction, what ambition lull,
The venal quiet, and entrance the dull;
Till drown'd was sense, and shame, and right, and wrongO sing, and hush the nations with thy song!
206
In vain, in vain-the all-composing hour
Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppress'd,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.
~ Alexander Pope,
539:Custer
BOOK FIRST.
I.
ALL valor died not on the plains of Troy.
Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy
To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave
As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave.
Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man,
Dear to the heart of each American.
Sound forth his praise from sea to listening seaGreece her Achilles claimed, immortal Custer, we.
II.
Intrepid are earth's heroes now as when
The gods came down to measure strength with men.
Let danger threaten or let duty call,
And self surrenders to the needs of all;
Incurs vast perils, or, to save those dear,
Embraces death without one sigh or tear.
Life's martyrs still the endless drama play
Though no great Homer lives to chant their worth to-day.
III.
And if he chanted, who would list his songs,
So hurried now the world's gold-seeking throngs?
And yet shall silence mantle mighty deeds?
Awake, dear Muse, and sing though no ear heeds!
Extol the triumphs, and bemoan the end
Of that true hero, lover, son and friend
Whose faithful heart in his last choice was shownDeath with the comrades dear, refusing flight alone.
IV.
He who was born for battle and for strife
Like some caged eagle frets in peaceful life;
152
So Custer fretted when detained afar
From scenes of stirring action and of war.
And as the captive eagle in delight,
When freedom offers, plumes himself for flight
And soars away to thunder clouds on high,
With palpitating wings and wild exultant cry,
V.
So lion-hearted Custer sprang to arms,
And gloried in the conflict's loud alarms.
But one dark shadow marred his bounding joy;
And then the soldier vanished, and the boy,
The tender son, clung close, with sobbing breath,
To her from whom each parting was new death;
That mother who like goddesses of old,
Gave to the mighty Mars, three warriors brave and bold,
VI.
Yet who, unlike those martial dames of yore,
Grew pale and shuddered at the sight of gore.
A fragile being, born to grace the hearth,
Untroubled by the conflicts of the earth.
Some gentle dove who reared young eaglets, might,
In watching those bold birdlings take their flight,
Feel what that mother felt who saw her sons
Rush from her loving arms, to face death-dealing guns.
VII.
But ere thy lyre is strung to martial strains
Of wars which sent our hero o'er the plains,
To add the cypress to his laureled brow,
Be brave, my Muse, and darker truths avow.
Let Justice ask a preface to thy songs,
Before the Indian's crimes declare his wrongs;
Before effects, wherein all horrors blend,
Declare the shameful cause, precursor of the end.
VIII.
153
When first this soil the great Columbus trod,
He was less like the image of his God
Than those ingenuous souls, unspoiled by art,
Who lived so near to Mother Nature's heart;
Those simple children of the wood and wave,
As frank as trusting, and as true as brave;
Savage they were, when on some hostile raid
(For where is he so high, whom war does not degrade?) .
IX.
But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet,
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet;
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.
X.
And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian knows
His seeming benefactors are but foes.
His kinsmen kidnapped and his lands possessed,
The demon woke in that untutored breast.
Four hundred years have rolled upon their wayThe ruthless demon rules the red man to this day.
XI.
If, in the morning of success, that grand
Invincible discoverer of our land
Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate
To carry trophies to the proud and great;
If on our history's page there were no blot
Left by the cruel rapine of Cabot,
Of Verrazin, and Hudson, dare we claim
The Indian of the plains, to-day had been same?
154
XII.
For in this brief existence, not alone
Do our lives gather what our hands have sown,
But we reap, too, what others long ago
Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow.
Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls
Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls,
The history of nations yet to be;
Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from sea to sea,
XIII.
Or pave the way to peace. There is no past,
So deathless are events-results so vast.
And he who strives to make one act or hour
Stand separate and alone, needs first the power
To look upon the breaking wave and say,
'These drops were bosomed by a cloud to-day,
And those from far mid-ocean's crest were sent.'
So future, present, past, in one wide sea are blent.
BOOK SECOND.
I.
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II.
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
155
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III.
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV.
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
V.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI.
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
156
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII.
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on, ' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII.
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX.
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
X.
157
But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe, ' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI.
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam) .
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die, ' quoth he, ' mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII.
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII.
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
158
XIV.
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV.
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
XVI.
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII.
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
159
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII.
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here,
XIX.
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX.
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
160
XXI.
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII.
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII.
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV.
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
161
Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV.
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI.
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII.
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
162
XXVIII.
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX.
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX.
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI.
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
163
And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII.
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII.
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV.
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV.
164
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI.
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII.
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve,
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
165
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
XXXIX.
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII.
166
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII.
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV.
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
167
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI.
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII.
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
A row of six asterisks is on the page at this point
XLVIII.
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX.
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The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
L.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
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The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII.
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV.
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV.
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI.
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
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The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII.
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
LVIII.
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX.
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and, with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
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Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX.
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI.
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep.
BOOK THIRD.
There is an interval of eight years between Books Second and Third.
I.
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) ,
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
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II.
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III.
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
V.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot.
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The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold! ' the cry arose and ran
VI.
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII.
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII.
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring- hate.
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IX.
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
X.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI.
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII.
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
.Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
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Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII.
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV.
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV.
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
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XVI.
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII.
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX.
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
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Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX.
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI.
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII.
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
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XXIII.
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV.
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV.
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI.
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
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Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII.
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
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XXX.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI.
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII.
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth, '
Then shook his long locks in the face of death
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII.
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
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He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
540:Merlin And Vivien
A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.
For he that always bare in bitter grudge
The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark
The Cornish King, had heard a wandering voice,
A minstrel of Caerlon by strong storm
Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say
That out of naked knightlike purity
Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl
But the great Queen herself, fought in her name,
Sware by her--vows like theirs, that high in heaven
Love most, but neither marry, nor are given
In marriage, angels of our Lord's report.
He ceased, and then--for Vivien sweetly said
(She sat beside the banquet nearest Mark),
'And is the fair example followed, Sir,
In Arthur's household?'--answered innocently:
'Ay, by some few--ay, truly--youths that hold
It more beseems the perfect virgin knight
To worship woman as true wife beyond
All hopes of gaining, than as maiden girl.
They place their pride in Lancelot and the Queen.
So passionate for an utter purity
Beyond the limit of their bond, are these,
For Arthur bound them not to singleness.
Brave hearts and clean! and yet--God guide them--young.'
Then Mark was half in heart to hurl his cup
Straight at the speaker, but forbore: he rose
To leave the hall, and, Vivien following him,
Turned to her: 'Here are snakes within the grass;
And you methinks, O Vivien, save ye fear
The monkish manhood, and the mask of pure
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Worn by this court, can stir them till they sting.'
And Vivien answered, smiling scornfully,
'Why fear? because that fostered at THY court
I savour of thy--virtues? fear them? no.
As Love, if Love is perfect, casts out fear,
So Hate, if Hate is perfect, casts out fear.
My father died in battle against the King,
My mother on his corpse in open field;
She bore me there, for born from death was I
Among the dead and sown upon the wind-And then on thee! and shown the truth betimes,
That old true filth, and bottom of the well
Where Truth is hidden. Gracious lessons thine
And maxims of the mud! "This Arthur pure!
Great Nature through the flesh herself hath made
Gives him the lie! There is no being pure,
My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the same?"-If I were Arthur, I would have thy blood.
Thy blessing, stainless King! I bring thee back,
When I have ferreted out their burrowings,
The hearts of all this Order in mine hand-Ay--so that fate and craft and folly close,
Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden beard.
To me this narrow grizzled fork of thine
Is cleaner-fashioned--Well, I loved thee first,
That warps the wit.'
Loud laughed the graceless Mark,
But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged
Low in the city, and on a festal day
When Guinevere was crossing the great hall
Cast herself down, knelt to the Queen, and wailed.
'Why kneel ye there? What evil hath ye wrought?
Rise!' and the damsel bidden rise arose
And stood with folded hands and downward eyes
Of glancing corner, and all meekly said,
'None wrought, but suffered much, an orphan maid!
My father died in battle for thy King,
My mother on his corpse--in open field,
The sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse--
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Poor wretch--no friend!--and now by Mark the King
For that small charm of feature mine, pursued-If any such be mine--I fly to thee.
Save, save me thou--Woman of women--thine
The wreath of beauty, thine the crown of power,
Be thine the balm of pity, O Heaven's own white
Earth-angel, stainless bride of stainless King-Help, for he follows! take me to thyself!
O yield me shelter for mine innocency
Among thy maidens!
Here her slow sweet eyes
Fear-tremulous, but humbly hopeful, rose
Fixt on her hearer's, while the Queen who stood
All glittering like May sunshine on May leaves
In green and gold, and plumed with green replied,
'Peace, child! of overpraise and overblame
We choose the last. Our noble Arthur, him
Ye scarce can overpraise, will hear and know.
Nay--we believe all evil of thy Mark-Well, we shall test thee farther; but this hour
We ride a-hawking with Sir Lancelot.
He hath given us a fair falcon which he trained;
We go to prove it. Bide ye here the while.'
She past; and Vivien murmured after 'Go!
I bide the while.' Then through the portal-arch
Peering askance, and muttering broken-wise,
As one that labours with an evil dream,
Beheld the Queen and Lancelot get to horse.
'Is that the Lancelot? goodly--ay, but gaunt:
Courteous--amends for gauntness--takes her hand-That glance of theirs, but for the street, had been
A clinging kiss--how hand lingers in hand!
Let go at last!--they ride away--to hawk
For waterfowl. Royaller game is mine.
For such a supersensual sensual bond
As that gray cricket chirpt of at our hearth-Touch flax with flame--a glance will serve--the liars!
Ah little rat that borest in the dyke
Thy hole by night to let the boundless deep
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Down upon far-off cities while they dance-Or dream--of thee they dreamed not--nor of me
These--ay, but each of either: ride, and dream
The mortal dream that never yet was mine-Ride, ride and dream until ye wake--to me!
Then, narrow court and lubber King, farewell!
For Lancelot will be gracious to the rat,
And our wise Queen, if knowing that I know,
Will hate, loathe, fear--but honour me the more.'
Yet while they rode together down the plain,
Their talk was all of training, terms of art,
Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure.
'She is too noble' he said 'to check at pies,
Nor will she rake: there is no baseness in her.'
Here when the Queen demanded as by chance
'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let her be,'
Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off
The goodly falcon free; she towered; her bells,
Tone under tone, shrilled; and they lifted up
Their eager faces, wondering at the strength,
Boldness and royal knighthood of the bird
Who pounced her quarry and slew it. Many a time
As once--of old--among the flowers--they rode.
But Vivien half-forgotten of the Queen
Among her damsels broidering sat, heard, watched
And whispered: through the peaceful court she crept
And whispered: then as Arthur in the highest
Leavened the world, so Vivien in the lowest,
Arriving at a time of golden rest,
And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear,
While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet,
And no quest came, but all was joust and play,
Leavened his hall. They heard and let her be.
Thereafter as an enemy that has left
Death in the living waters, and withdrawn,
The wily Vivien stole from Arthur's court.
She hated all the knights, and heard in thought
Their lavish comment when her name was named.
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For once, when Arthur walking all alone,
Vext at a rumour issued from herself
Of some corruption crept among his knights,
Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,
Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood
With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,
And fluttered adoration, and at last
With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more
Than who should prize him most; at which the King
Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:
But one had watched, and had not held his peace:
It made the laughter of an afternoon
That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;
The people called him Wizard; whom at first
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly-venomed points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;
And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer
Would watch her at her petulance, and play,
Even when they seemed unloveable, and laugh
As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew
Tolerant of what he half disdained, and she,
Perceiving that she was but half disdained,
Began to break her sports with graver fits,
Turn red or pale, would often when they met
Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him
With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,
Though doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times
Would flatter his own wish in age for love,
And half believe her true: for thus at times
He wavered; but that other clung to him,
Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.
Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy;
He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found
A doom that ever poised itself to fall,
An ever-moaning battle in the mist,
369
World-war of dying flesh against the life,
Death in all life and lying in all love,
The meanest having power upon the highest,
And the high purpose broken by the worm.
So leaving Arthur's court he gained the beach;
There found a little boat, and stept into it;
And Vivien followed, but he marked her not.
She took the helm and he the sail; the boat
Drave with a sudden wind across the deeps,
And touching Breton sands, they disembarked.
And then she followed Merlin all the way,
Even to the wild woods of Broceliande.
For Merlin once had told her of a charm,
The which if any wrought on anyone
With woven paces and with waving arms,
The man so wrought on ever seemed to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
From which was no escape for evermore;
And none could find that man for evermore,
Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm
Coming and going, and he lay as dead
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
And Vivien ever sought to work the charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to his greatness whom she quenched.
There lay she all her length and kissed his feet,
As if in deepest reverence and in love.
A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe
Of samite without price, that more exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm
On sallows in the windy gleams of March:
And while she kissed them, crying, 'Trample me,
Dear feet, that I have followed through the world,
And I will pay you worship; tread me down
And I will kiss you for it;' he was mute:
So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
370
In silence: wherefore, when she lifted up
A face of sad appeal, and spake and said,
'O Merlin, do ye love me?' and again,
'O Merlin, do ye love me?' and once more,
'Great Master, do ye love me?' he was mute.
And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat,
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand
Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf,
Made with her right a comb of pearl to part
The lists of such a board as youth gone out
Had left in ashes: then he spoke and said,
Not looking at her, 'Who are wise in love
Love most, say least,' and Vivien answered quick,
'I saw the little elf-god eyeless once
In Arthur's arras hall at Camelot:
But neither eyes nor tongue--O stupid child!
Yet you are wise who say it; let me think
Silence is wisdom: I am silent then,
And ask no kiss;' then adding all at once,
'And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom,' drew
The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard
Across her neck and bosom to her knee,
And called herself a gilded summer fly
Caught in a great old tyrant spider's web,
Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood
Without one word. So Vivien called herself,
But rather seemed a lovely baleful star
Veiled in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled:
'To what request for what strange boon,' he said,
'Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries,
O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks,
For these have broken up my melancholy.'
And Vivien answered smiling saucily,
'What, O my Master, have ye found your voice?
I bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at last!
But yesterday you never opened lip,
Except indeed to drink: no cup had we:
In mine own lady palms I culled the spring
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That gathered trickling dropwise from the cleft,
And made a pretty cup of both my hands
And offered you it kneeling: then you drank
And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word;
O no more thanks than might a goat have given
With no more sign of reverence than a beard.
And when we halted at that other well,
And I was faint to swooning, and you lay
Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those
Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know
That Vivien bathed your feet before her own?
And yet no thanks: and all through this wild wood
And all this morning when I fondled you:
Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not so strange-How had I wronged you? surely ye are wise,
But such a silence is more wise than kind.'
And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said:
'O did ye never lie upon the shore,
And watch the curled white of the coming wave
Glassed in the slippery sand before it breaks?
Even such a wave, but not so pleasurable,
Dark in the glass of some presageful mood,
Had I for three days seen, ready to fall.
And then I rose and fled from Arthur's court
To break the mood. You followed me unasked;
And when I looked, and saw you following me still,
My mind involved yourself the nearest thing
In that mind-mist: for shall I tell you truth?
You seemed that wave about to break upon me
And sweep me from my hold upon the world,
My use and name and fame. Your pardon, child.
Your pretty sports have brightened all again.
And ask your boon, for boon I owe you thrice,
Once for wrong done you by confusion, next
For thanks it seems till now neglected, last
For these your dainty gambols: wherefore ask;
And take this boon so strange and not so strange.'
And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
'O not so strange as my long asking it,
Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange,
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Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours.
I ever feared ye were not wholly mine;
And see, yourself have owned ye did me wrong.
The people call you prophet: let it be:
But not of those that can expound themselves.
Take Vivien for expounder; she will call
That three-days-long presageful gloom of yours
No presage, but the same mistrustful mood
That makes you seem less noble than yourself,
Whenever I have asked this very boon,
Now asked again: for see you not, dear love,
That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed
Your fancy when ye saw me following you,
Must make me fear still more you are not mine,
Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine,
And make me wish still more to learn this charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me.
The charm so taught will charm us both to rest.
For, grant me some slight power upon your fate,
I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust,
Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine.
And therefore be as great as ye are named,
Not muffled round with selfish reticence.
How hard you look and how denyingly!
O, if you think this wickedness in me,
That I should prove it on you unawares,
That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond
Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not,
By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth,
As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk:
O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I,
If these unwitty wandering wits of mine,
Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream,
Have tript on such conjectural treachery-May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell
Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat,
If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon,
Till which I scarce can yield you all I am;
And grant my re-reiterated wish,
The great proof of your love: because I think,
However wise, ye hardly know me yet.'
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And Merlin loosed his hand from hers and said,
'I never was less wise, however wise,
Too curious Vivien, though you talk of trust,
Than when I told you first of such a charm.
Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this,
Too much I trusted when I told you that,
And stirred this vice in you which ruined man
Through woman the first hour; for howsoe'er
In children a great curiousness be well,
Who have to learn themselves and all the world,
In you, that are no child, for still I find
Your face is practised when I spell the lines,
I call it,--well, I will not call it vice:
But since you name yourself the summer fly,
I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat,
That settles, beaten back, and beaten back
Settles, till one could yield for weariness:
But since I will not yield to give you power
Upon my life and use and name and fame,
Why will ye never ask some other boon?
Yea, by God's rood, I trusted you too much.'
And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid
That ever bided tryst at village stile,
Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears:
'Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your maid;
Caress her: let her feel herself forgiven
Who feels no heart to ask another boon.
I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme
Of "trust me not at all or all in all."
I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once,
And it shall answer for me. Listen to it.
"In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
"It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
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"The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
"It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all."
O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme?'
And Merlin looked and half believed her true,
So tender was her voice, so fair her face,
So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears
Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower:
And yet he answered half indignantly:
'Far other was the song that once I heard
By this huge oak, sung nearly where we sit:
For here we met, some ten or twelve of us,
To chase a creature that was current then
In these wild woods, the hart with golden horns.
It was the time when first the question rose
About the founding of a Table Round,
That was to be, for love of God and men
And noble deeds, the flower of all the world.
And each incited each to noble deeds.
And while we waited, one, the youngest of us,
We could not keep him silent, out he flashed,
And into such a song, such fire for fame,
Such trumpet-glowings in it, coming down
To such a stern and iron-clashing close,
That when he stopt we longed to hurl together,
And should have done it; but the beauteous beast
Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet,
And like a silver shadow slipt away
Through the dim land; and all day long we rode
Through the dim land against a rushing wind,
That glorious roundel echoing in our ears,
And chased the flashes of his golden horns
Till they vanished by the fairy well
That laughs at iron--as our warriors did-Where children cast their pins and nails, and cry,
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"Laugh, little well!" but touch it with a sword,
It buzzes fiercely round the point; and there
We lost him: such a noble song was that.
But, Vivien, when you sang me that sweet rhyme,
I felt as though you knew this cursd charm,
Were proving it on me, and that I lay
And felt them slowly ebbing, name and fame.'
And Vivien answered smiling mournfully:
'O mine have ebbed away for evermore,
And all through following you to this wild wood,
Because I saw you sad, to comfort you.
Lo now, what hearts have men! they never mount
As high as woman in her selfless mood.
And touching fame, howe'er ye scorn my song,
Take one verse more--the lady speaks it--this:
'"My name, once mine, now thine, is closelier mine,
For fame, could fame be mine, that fame were thine,
And shame, could shame be thine, that shame were mine.
So trust me not at all or all in all."
'Says she not well? and there is more--this rhyme
Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen,
That burst in dancing, and the pearls were spilt;
Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept.
But nevermore the same two sister pearls
Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other
On her white neck--so is it with this rhyme:
It lives dispersedly in many hands,
And every minstrel sings it differently;
Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
"Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love."
Yea! Love, though Love were of the grossest, carves
A portion from the solid present, eats
And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame,
The Fame that follows death is nothing to us;
And what is Fame in life but half-disfame,
And counterchanged with darkness? ye yourself
Know well that Envy calls you Devil's son,
And since ye seem the Master of all Art,
They fain would make you Master of all vice.'
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And Merlin locked his hand in hers and said,
'I once was looking for a magic weed,
And found a fair young squire who sat alone,
Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood,
And then was painting on it fancied arms,
Azure, an Eagle rising or, the Sun
In dexter chief; the scroll "I follow fame."
And speaking not, but leaning over him
I took his brush and blotted out the bird,
And made a Gardener putting in a graff,
With this for motto, "Rather use than fame."
You should have seen him blush; but afterwards
He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien,
For you, methinks you think you love me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
But work as vassal to the larger love,
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame again
Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my boon!
What other? for men sought to prove me vile,
Because I fain had given them greater wits:
And then did Envy call me Devil's son:
The sick weak beast seeking to help herself
By striking at her better, missed, and brought
Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart.
Sweet were the days when I was all unknown,
But when my name was lifted up, the storm
Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it.
Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame,
Yet needs must work my work. That other fame,
To one at least, who hath not children, vague,
The cackle of the unborn about the grave,
I cared not for it: a single misty star,
Which is the second in a line of stars
That seem a sword beneath a belt of three,
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I never gazed upon it but I dreamt
Of some vast charm concluded in that star
To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear,
Giving you power upon me through this charm,
That you might play me falsely, having power,
However well ye think ye love me now
(As sons of kings loving in pupilage
Have turned to tyrants when they came to power)
I rather dread the loss of use than fame;
If you--and not so much from wickedness,
As some wild turn of anger, or a mood
Of overstrained affection, it may be,
To keep me all to your own self,--or else
A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy,-Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love.'
And Vivien answered smiling as in wrath:
'Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good!
Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;
And being found take heed of Vivien.
A woman and not trusted, doubtless I
Might feel some sudden turn of anger born
Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet
Is accurate too, for this full love of mine
Without the full heart back may merit well
Your term of overstrained. So used as I,
My daily wonder is, I love at all.
And as to woman's jealousy, O why not?
O to what end, except a jealous one,
And one to make me jealous if I love,
Was this fair charm invented by yourself?
I well believe that all about this world
Ye cage a buxom captive here and there,
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower
From which is no escape for evermore.'
Then the great Master merrily answered her:
'Full many a love in loving youth was mine;
I needed then no charm to keep them mine
But youth and love; and that full heart of yours
Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine;
So live uncharmed. For those who wrought it first,
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The wrist is parted from the hand that waved,
The feet unmortised from their ankle-bones
Who paced it, ages back: but will ye hear
The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme?
'There lived a king in the most Eastern East,
Less old than I, yet older, for my blood
Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.
A tawny pirate anchored in his port,
Whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;
And passing one, at the high peep of dawn,
He saw two cities in a thousand boats
All fighting for a woman on the sea.
And pushing his black craft among them all,
He lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,
With loss of half his people arrow-slain;
A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
They said a light came from her when she moved:
And since the pirate would not yield her up,
The King impaled him for his piracy;
Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes
Waged such unwilling though successful war
On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,
And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew
The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts;
And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt
Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back
That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees
Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,
To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.
What wonder, being jealous, that he sent
His horns of proclamation out through all
The hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed
To find a wizard who might teach the King
Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen
Might keep her all his own: to such a one
He promised more than ever king has given,
A league of mountain full of golden mines,
A province with a hundred miles of coast,
A palace and a princess, all for him:
But on all those who tried and failed, the King
Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it
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To keep the list low and pretenders back,
Or like a king, not to be trifled with-Their heads should moulder on the city gates.
And many tried and failed, because the charm
Of nature in her overbore their own:
And many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:
And many weeks a troop of carrion crows
Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.'
And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:
'I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,
Thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.
The lady never made UNWILLING war
With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,
And made her good man jealous with good cause.
And lived there neither dame nor damsel then
Wroth at a lover's loss? were all as tame,
I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?
Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,
Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,
Or make her paler with a poisoned rose?
Well, those were not our days: but did they find
A wizard? Tell me, was he like to thee?
She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck
Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes
Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's
On her new lord, her own, the first of men.
He answered laughing, 'Nay, not like to me.
At last they found--his foragers for charms-A little glassy-headed hairless man,
Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;
Read but one book, and ever reading grew
So grated down and filed away with thought,
So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin
Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.
And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,
Nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,
Nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall
That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men
Became a crystal, and he saw them through it,
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And heard their voices talk behind the wall,
And learnt their elemental secrets, powers
And forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye
Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,
And lashed it at the base with slanting storm;
Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,
When the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,
And the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned
The world to peace again: here was the man.
And so by force they dragged him to the King.
And then he taught the King to charm the Queen
In such-wise, that no man could see her more,
Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,
Coming and going, and she lay as dead,
And lost all use of life: but when the King
Made proffer of the league of golden mines,
The province with a hundred miles of coast,
The palace and the princess, that old man
Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,
And vanished, and his book came down to me.'
And Vivien answered smiling saucily:
'Ye have the book: the charm is written in it:
Good: take my counsel: let me know it at once:
For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest,
With each chest locked and padlocked thirty-fold,
And whelm all this beneath as vast a mound
As after furious battle turfs the slain
On some wild down above the windy deep,
I yet should strike upon a sudden means
To dig, pick, open, find and read the charm:
Then, if I tried it, who should blame me then?'
And smiling as a master smiles at one
That is not of his school, nor any school
But that where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long, he answered her:
'Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien!
O ay, it is but twenty pages long,
But every page having an ample marge,
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And every marge enclosing in the midst
A square of text that looks a little blot,
The text no larger than the limbs of fleas;
And every square of text an awful charm,
Writ in a language that has long gone by.
So long, that mountains have arisen since
With cities on their flanks--thou read the book!
And ever margin scribbled, crost, and crammed
With comment, densest condensation, hard
To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights
Of my long life have made it easy to me.
And none can read the text, not even I;
And none can read the comment but myself;
And in the comment did I find the charm.
O, the results are simple; a mere child
Might use it to the harm of anyone,
And never could undo it: ask no more:
For though you should not prove it upon me,
But keep that oath ye sware, ye might, perchance,
Assay it on some one of the Table Round,
And all because ye dream they babble of you.'
And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said:
'What dare the full-fed liars say of me?
THEY ride abroad redressing human wrongs!
They sit with knife in meat and wine in horn!
THEY bound to holy vows of chastity!
Were I not woman, I could tell a tale.
But you are man, you well can understand
The shame that cannot be explained for shame.
Not one of all the drove should touch me: swine!'
Then answered Merlin careless of her words:
'You breathe but accusation vast and vague,
Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If ye know,
Set up the charge ye know, to stand or fall!'
And Vivien answered frowning wrathfully:
'O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him
Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife
And two fair babes, and went to distant lands;
Was one year gone, and on returning found
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Not two but three? there lay the reckling, one
But one hour old! What said the happy sire?'
A seven-months' babe had been a truer gift.
Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.'
Then answered Merlin, 'Nay, I know the tale.
Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame:
Some cause had kept him sundered from his wife:
One child they had: it lived with her: she died:
His kinsman travelling on his own affair
Was charged by Valence to bring home the child.
He brought, not found it therefore: take the truth.'
'O ay,' said Vivien, 'overtrue a tale.
What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,
That ardent man? "to pluck the flower in season,"
So says the song, "I trow it is no treason."
O Master, shall we call him overquick
To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?'
And Merlin answered, 'Overquick art thou
To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing
Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey
Is man's good name: he never wronged his bride.
I know the tale. An angry gust of wind
Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed
And many-corridored complexities
Of Arthur's palace: then he found a door,
And darkling felt the sculptured ornament
That wreathen round it made it seem his own;
And wearied out made for the couch and slept,
A stainless man beside a stainless maid;
And either slept, nor knew of other there;
Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose
In Arthur's casement glimmered chastely down,
Blushing upon them blushing, and at once
He rose without a word and parted from her:
But when the thing was blazed about the court,
The brute world howling forced them into bonds,
And as it chanced they are happy, being pure.'
'O ay,' said Vivien, 'that were likely too.
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What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale
And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,
The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of Christ,
Or some black wether of St Satan's fold.
What, in the precincts of the chapel-yard,
Among the knightly brasses of the graves,
And by the cold Hic Jacets of the dead!'
And Merlin answered careless of her charge,
'A sober man is Percivale and pure;
But once in life was flustered with new wine,
Then paced for coolness in the chapel-yard;
Where one of Satan's shepherdesses caught
And meant to stamp him with her master's mark;
And that he sinned is not believable;
For, look upon his face!--but if he sinned,
The sin that practice burns into the blood,
And not the one dark hour which brings remorse,
Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be:
Or else were he, the holy king, whose hymns
Are chanted in the minster, worse than all.
But is your spleen frothed out, or have ye more?'
And Vivien answered frowning yet in wrath:
'O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend
Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen,
I ask you, is it clamoured by the child,
Or whispered in the corner? do ye know it?'
To which he answered sadly, 'Yea, I know it.
Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first,
To fetch her, and she watched him from her walls.
A rumour runs, she took him for the King,
So fixt her fancy on him: let them be.
But have ye no one word of loyal praise
For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man?'
She answered with a low and chuckling laugh:
'Man! is he man at all, who knows and winks?
Sees what his fair bride is and does, and winks?
By which the good King means to blind himself,
And blinds himself and all the Table Round
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To all the foulness that they work. Myself
Could call him (were it not for womanhood)
The pretty, popular cause such manhood earns,
Could call him the main cause of all their crime;
Yea, were he not crowned King, coward, and fool.'
Then Merlin to his own heart, loathing, said:
'O true and tender! O my liege and King!
O selfless man and stainless gentleman,
Who wouldst against thine own eye-witness fain
Have all men true and leal, all women pure;
How, in the mouths of base interpreters,
From over-fineness not intelligible
To things with every sense as false and foul
As the poached filth that floods the middle street,
Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame!'
But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne
By instance, recommenced, and let her tongue
Rage like a fire among the noblest names,
Polluting, and imputing her whole self,
Defaming and defacing, till she left
Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.
Her words had issue other than she willed.
He dragged his eyebrow bushes down, and made
A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes,
And muttered in himself, 'Tell HER the charm!
So, if she had it, would she rail on me
To snare the next, and if she have it not
So will she rail. What did the wanton say?
"Not mount as high;" we scarce can sink as low:
For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
I know the Table Round, my friends of old;
All brave, and many generous, and some chaste.
She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies;
I well believe she tempted them and failed,
Being so bitter: for fine plots may fail,
Though harlots paint their talk as well as face
With colours of the heart that are not theirs.
I will not let her know: nine tithes of times
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Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,
Wanting the mental range; or low desire
Not to feel lowest makes them level all;
Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain,
To leave an equal baseness; and in this
Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crowned with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.'
He spoke in words part heard, in whispers part,
Half-suffocated in the hoary fell
And many-wintered fleece of throat and chin.
But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood,
And hearing 'harlot' muttered twice or thrice,
Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood
Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love,
Flashed the bare-grinning skeleton of death!
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puffed
Her fairy nostril out; her hand half-clenched
Went faltering sideways downward to her belt,
And feeling; had she found a dagger there
(For in a wink the false love turns to hate)
She would have stabbed him; but she found it not:
His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs:
'O crueller than was ever told in tale,
Or sung in song! O vainly lavished love!
O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,
Or seeming shameful--for what shame in love,
So love be true, and not as yours is--nothing
Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust
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Who called her what he called her--all her crime,
All--all--the wish to prove him wholly hers.'
She mused a little, and then clapt her hands
Together with a wailing shriek, and said:
'Stabbed through the heart's affections to the heart!
Seethed like the kid in its own mother's milk!
Killed with a word worse than a life of blows!
I thought that he was gentle, being great:
O God, that I had loved a smaller man!
I should have found in him a greater heart.
O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw
The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light,
Who loved to make men darker than they are,
Because of that high pleasure which I had
To seat you sole upon my pedestal
Of worship--I am answered, and henceforth
The course of life that seemed so flowery to me
With you for guide and master, only you,
Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken short,
And ending in a ruin--nothing left,
But into some low cave to crawl, and there,
If the wolf spare me, weep my life away,
Killed with inutterable unkindliness.'
She paused, she turned away, she hung her head,
The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid
Slipt and uncoiled itself, she wept afresh,
And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm
In silence, while his anger slowly died
Within him, till he let his wisdom go
For ease of heart, and half believed her true:
Called her to shelter in the hollow oak,
'Come from the storm,' and having no reply,
Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the face
Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or shame;
Then thrice essayed, by tenderest-touching terms,
To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in vain.
At last she let herself be conquered by him,
And as the cageling newly flown returns,
The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing
Came to her old perch back, and settled there.
387
There while she sat, half-falling from his knees,
Half-nestled at his heart, and since he saw
The slow tear creep from her closed eyelid yet,
About her, more in kindness than in love,
The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm.
But she dislinked herself at once and rose,
Her arms upon her breast across, and stood,
A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wronged,
Upright and flushed before him: then she said:
'There must now be no passages of love
Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore;
Since, if I be what I am grossly called,
What should be granted which your own gross heart
Would reckon worth the taking? I will go.
In truth, but one thing now--better have died
Thrice than have asked it once--could make me stay-That proof of trust--so often asked in vain!
How justly, after that vile term of yours,
I find with grief! I might believe you then,
Who knows? once more. Lo! what was once to me
Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown
The vast necessity of heart and life.
Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear
My fate or folly, passing gayer youth
For one so old, must be to love thee still.
But ere I leave thee let me swear once more
That if I schemed against thy peace in this,
May yon just heaven, that darkens o'er me, send
One flash, that, missing all things else, may make
My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie.'
Scarce had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt
(For now the storm was close above them) struck,
Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining
With darted spikes and splinters of the wood
The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw
The tree that shone white-listed through the gloom.
But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath,
And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork,
And deafened with the stammering cracks and claps
That followed, flying back and crying out,
388
'O Merlin, though you do not love me, save,
Yet save me!' clung to him and hugged him close;
And called him dear protector in her fright,
Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright,
But wrought upon his mood and hugged him close.
The pale blood of the wizard at her touch
Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed.
She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales:
She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept
Of petulancy; she called him lord and liege,
Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve,
Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love
Of her whole life; and ever overhead
Bellowed the tempest, and the rotten branch
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain
Above them; and in change of glare and gloom
Her eyes and neck glittering went and came;
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent,
Moaning and calling out of other lands,
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more
To peace; and what should not have been had been,
For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,
Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.
Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
Then crying 'I have made his glory mine,'
And shrieking out 'O fool!' the harlot leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echoed 'fool.'
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
541:Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case;
The lady-city, for whose sole embrace
Her pair of suitors struggled, felt their arms
A brawny mischief to the fragile charms
They tugged forone discovering that to twist
Her tresses twice or thrice about his wrist
Secured a point of vantageone, how best
He 'd parry that by planting in her breast
His elbow spikeeach party too intent
For noticing, howe'er the battle went,
The conqueror would but have a corpse to kiss.
"May Boniface be duly damned for this!"
Howled some old Ghibellin, as up he turned,
From the wet heap of rubbish where they burned
His house, a little skull with dazzling teeth:
"A boon, sweet Christlet Salinguerra seethe
"In hell for ever, Christ, and let myself
"Be there to laugh at him!"moaned some young Guelf
Stumbling upon a shrivelled hand nailed fast
To the charred lintel of the doorway, last
His father stood within to bid him speed.
The thoroughfares were overrun with weed
Docks, quitchgrass, loathy mallows no man plants.
The stranger, none of its inhabitants
Crept out of doors to taste fresh air again,
And ask the purpose of a splendid train
Admitted on a morning; every town
Of the East League was come by envoy down
To treat for Richard's ransom: here you saw
The Vicentine, here snowy oxen draw
The Paduan carroch, its vermilion cross
On its white field. A-tiptoe o'er the fosse
Looked Legate Montelungo wistfully
After the flock of steeples he might spy
In Este's time, gone (doubts he) long ago
To mend the ramparts: sure the laggards know
The Pope's as good as here! They paced the streets
More soberly. At last, "Taurello greets
"The League," announced a pursuivant,"will match
"Its courtesy, and labours to dispatch
"At earliest Tito, Friedrich's Pretor, sent
"On pressing matters from his post at Trent,
"With Mainard Count of Tyrol,simply waits
"Their going to receive the delegates."
"Tito!" Our delegates exchanged a glance,
And, keeping the main way, admired askance
The lazy engines of outlandish birth,
Couched like a king each on its bank of earth
Arbalist, manganel and catapult;
While stationed by, as waiting a result,
Lean silent gangs of mercenaries ceased
Working to watch the strangers. "This, at least,
"Were better spared; he scarce presumes gainsay
"The League's decision! Get our friend away
"And profit for the future: how else teach
"Fools 't is not safe to stray within claw's reach
"Ere Salinguerra's final gasp be blown?
"Those mere convulsive scratches find the bone.
"Who bade him bloody the spent osprey's nare?"
The carrochs halted in the public square.
Pennons of every blazon once a-flaunt,
Men prattled, freelier than the crested gaunt
White ostrich with a horse-shoe in her beak
Was missing, and whoever chose might speak
"Ecelin" boldly out: so,"Ecelin
"Needed his wife to swallow half the sin
"And sickens by himself: the devil's whelp,
"He styles his son, dwindles away, no help
"From conserves, your fine triple-curded froth
"Of virgin's blood, your Venice viper-broth
"Eh? Jubilate!""Peace! no little word
"You utter here that 's not distinctly heard
"Up at Oliero: he was absent sick
"When we besieged Bassanowho, i' the thick
"O' the work, perceived the progress Azzo made,
"Like Ecelin, through his witch Adelaide?
"She managed it so well that, night by night
"At their bed-foot stood up a soldier-sprite,
"First fresh, pale by-and-by without a wound,
"And, when it came with eyes filmed as in swound,
"They knew the place was taken.""Ominous
"That Ghibellins should get what cautelous
"Old Redbeard sought from Azzo's sire to wrench
"Vainly; Saint George contrived his town a trench
"O' the marshes, an impermeable bar."
"Young Ecelin is meant the tutelar
"Of Padua, rather; veins embrace upon
"His hand like Brenta and Bacchiglion."
What now?"The founts! God's bread, touch not a plank!
"A crawling hell of carrionevery tank
"Choke-full!found out just now to Cino's cost
"The same who gave Taurello up for lost,
"And, making no account of fortune's freaks,
"Refused to budge from Padua then, but sneaks
"Back now with Concorezzi: 'faith! they drag
"Their carroch to San Vitale, plant the flag
"On his own palace, so adroitly razed
"He knew it not; a sort of Guelf folk gazed
"And laughed apart; Cino disliked their air
"Must pluck up spirit, show he does not care
"Seats himself on the tank's edgewill begin
"To hum, za, za, Cavaler Ecelin
"A silence; he gets warmer, clinks to chime,
"Now both feet plough the ground, deeper each time,
"At last, za, za and up with a fierce kick
"Comes his own mother's face caught by the thick
"Grey hair about his spur!"
               Which means, they lift
The covering, Salinguerra made a shift
To stretch upon the truth; as well avoid
Further disclosures; leave them thus employed.
Our dropping Autumn morning clears apace,
And poor Ferrara puts a softened face
On her misfortunes. Let us scale this tall
Huge foursquare line of red brick garden-wall
Bastioned within by trees of every sort
On three sides, slender, spreading, long and short;
Each grew as it contrived, the poplar ramped,
The fig-tree reared itself,but stark and cramped,
Made fools of, like tamed lions: whence, on the edge,
Running 'twixt trunk and trunk to smooth one ledge
Of shade, were shrubs inserted, warp and woof,
Which smothered up that variance. Scale the roof
Of solid tops, and o'er the slope you slide
Down to a grassy space level and wide,
Here and there dotted with a tree, but trees
Of rarer leaf, each foreigner at ease,
Set by itself: and in the centre spreads,
Borne upon three uneasy leopards' heads,
A laver, broad and shallow, one bright spirt
Of water bubbles in. The walls begirt
With trees leave off on either hand; pursue
Your path along a wondrous avenue
Those walls abut on, heaped of gleamy stone,
With aloes leering everywhere, grey-grown
From many a Moorish summer: how they wind
Out of the fissures! likelier to bind
The building than those rusted cramps which drop
Already in the eating sunshine. Stop,
You fleeting shapes above there! Ah, the pride
Or else despair of the whole country-side!
A range of statues, swarming o'er with wasps,
God, goddess, woman, man, the Greek rough-rasps
In crumbling Naples marblemeant to look
Like those Messina marbles Constance took
Delight in, or Taurello's self conveyed
To Mantua for his mistress, Adelaide,
A certain font with caryatides
Since cloistered at Goito; only, these
Are up and doing, not abashed, a troop
Able to right themselveswho see you, stoop
Their arms o' the instant after you! Unplucked
By this or that, you pass; for they conduct
To terrace raised on terrace, and, between,
Creatures of brighter mould and braver mien
Than any yet, the choicest of the Isle
No doubt. Here, left a sullen breathing-while,
Up-gathered on himself the Fighter stood
For his last fight, and, wiping treacherous blood
Out of the eyelids just held ope beneath
Those shading fingers in their iron sheath,
Steadied his strengths amid the buzz and stir
Of the dusk hideous amphitheatre
At the announcement of his over-match
To wind the day's diversion up, dispatch
The pertinactious Gaul: while, limbs one heap,
The Slave, no breath in her round mouth, watched leap
Dart after dart forth, as her hero's car
Clove dizzily the solid of the war
Let coil about his knees for pride in him.
We reach the farthest terrace, and the grim
San Pietro Palace stops us.
               Such the state
Of Salinguerra's plan to emulate
Sicilian marvels, that his girlish wife
Retrude still might lead her ancient life
In her new home: whereat enlarged so much
Neighbours upon the novel princely touch
He took,who here imprisons Boniface.
Here must the Envoys come to sue for grace;
And here, emerging from the labyrinth
Below, Sordello paused beside the plinth
Of the door-pillar.
          He had really left
Verona for the cornfields (a poor theft
From the morass) where Este's camp was made;
The Envoys' march, the Legate's cavalcade
All had been seen by him, but scarce as when,
Eager for cause to stand aloof from men
At every point save the fantastic tie
Acknowledged in his boyish sophistry,
He made account of such. A crowd,he meant
To task the whole of it; each part's intent
Concerned him therefore: and, the more he pried,
The less became Sordello satisfied
With his own figure at the moment. Sought
He respite from his task? Descried he aught
Novel in the anticipated sight
Of all these livers upon all delight?
This phalanx, as of myriad points combined,
Whereby he still had imaged the mankind
His youth was passed in dreams of rivalling,
His agein plans to prove at least such thing
Had been so dreamed,which now he must impress
With his own will, effect a happiness
By theirs,supply a body to his soul
Thence, and become eventually whole
With them as he had hoped to be without
Made these the mankind he once raved about?
Because a few of them were notable,
Should all be figured worthy note? As well
Expect to find Taurello's triple line
Of trees a single and prodigious pine.
Real pines rose here and there; but, close among,
Thrust into and mixed up with pines, a throng
Of shrubs, he saw,a nameless common sort
O'erpast in dreams, left out of the report
And hurried into corners, or at best
Admitted to be fancied like the rest.
Reckon that morning's proper chiefshow few!
And yet the people grew, the people grew,
Grew ever, as if the many there indeed,
More left behind and most who should succeed,
Simply in virtue of their mouths and eyes,
Petty enjoyments and huge miseries,
Mingled with, and made veritably great
Those chiefs: he overlooked not Mainard's state
Nor Concorezzi's station, but instead
Of stopping there, each dwindled to be head
Of infinite and absent Tyrolese
Or Paduans; startling all the more, that these
Seemed passive and disposed of, uncared for,
Yet doubtless on the whole (like Eglamor)
Smiling; for if a wealthy man decays
And out of store of robes must wear, all days,
One tattered suit, alike in sun and shade,
'T is commonly some tarnished gay brocade
Fit for a feast-night's flourish and no more:
Nor otherwise poor Misery from her store
Of looks is fain upgather, keep unfurled
For common wear as she goes through the world,
The faint remainder of some worn-out smile
Meant for a feast-night's service merely. While
Crowd upon crowd rose on Sordello thus,
(Crowds no way interfering to discuss,
Much less dispute, life's joys with one employed
In envying them,or, if they aught enjoyed,
Where lingered something indefinable
In every look and tone, the mirth as well
As woe, that fixed at once his estimate
Of the result, their good or bad estate)
Old memories returned with new effect:
And the new body, ere he could suspect,
Cohered, mankind and he were really fused,
The new self seemed impatient to be used
By him, but utterly another way
Than that anticipated: strange to say,
They were too much below him, more in thrall
Than he, the adjunct than the principal.
What booted scattered units?here a mind
And there, which might repay his own to find,
And stamp, and use?a few, howe'er august,
If all the rest were grovelling in the dust?
No: first a mighty equilibrium, sure,
Should he establish, privilege procure
For all, the few had long possessed! He felt
An error, an exceeding error melt:
While he was occupied with Mantuan chants,
Behoved him think of men, and take their wants,
Such as he now distinguished every side,
As his own want which might be satisfied,
And, after that, think of rare qualities
Of his own soul demanding exercise.
It followed naturally, through no claim
On their part, which made virtue of the aim
At serving them, on his,that, past retrieve,
He felt now in their toils, theirsnor could leave
Wonder how, in the eagerness to rule,
Impress his will on mankind, he (the fool!)
Had never even entertained the thought
That this his last arrangement might be fraught
with incidental good to them as well,
And that mankind's delight would help to swell
His own. So, if he sighed, as formerly
Because the merry time of life must fleet,
'T was deeplier now,for could the crowds repeat
Their poor experiences? His hand that shook
Was twice to be deplored. "The Legate, look!
"With eyes, like fresh-blown thrush-eggs on a thread,
"Faint-blue and loosely floating in his head,
"Large tongue, moist open mouth; and this long while
"That owner of the idiotic smile
"Serves them!"
       He fortunately saw in time
His fault however, and since the office prime
Includes the secondarybest accept
Both offices; Taurello, its adept,
Could teach him the preparatory one,
And how to do what he had fancied done
Long previously, ere take the greater task.
How render first these people happy? Ask
The people's friends: for there must be one good
One way to itthe Cause! He understood
The meaning now of Palma; why the jar
Else, the ado, the trouble wide and far
Of Guelfs and Ghibellins, the Lombard hope
And Rome's despair?'twixt Emperor and Pope
The confused shifting sort of Eden tale
Hardihood still recurring, still to fail
That foreign interloping fiend, this free
And native overbrooding deity:
Yet a dire fascination o'er the palms
The Kaiser ruined, troubling even the calms
Of paradise; or, on the other hand,
The Pontiff, as the Kaisers understand,
One snake-like cursed of God to love the ground,
Whose heavy length breaks in the noon profound
Some saving treewhich needs the Kaiser, dressed
As the dislodging angel of that pest:
Yet flames that pest bedropped, flat head, full fold,
With coruscating dower of dyes. "Behold
"The secret, so to speak, and master-spring
"O' the contest!which of the two Powers shall bring
"Men good, perchance the most good: ay, it may
"Be that!the question, which best knows the way."
And hereupon Count Mainard strutted past
Out of San Pietro; never seemed the last
Of archers, slingers: and our friend began
To recollect strange modes of serving man
Arbalist, catapult, brake, manganel,
And more. "This way of theirs may,who can tell?
"Need perfecting," said he: "let all be solved
"At once! Taurello 't is, the task devolved
"On late: confront Taurello!"
               And at last
He did confront him. Scarce an hour had past
When forth Sordello came, older by years
Than at his entry. Unexampled fears
Oppressed him, and he staggered off, blind, mute
And deaf, like some fresh-mutilated brute,
Into Ferraranot the empty town
That morning witnessed: he went up and down
Streets whence the veil had been stript shred by shred,
So that, in place of huddling with their dead
Indoors, to answer Salinguerra's ends,
Townsfolk make shift to crawl forth, sit like friends
With any one. A woman gave him choice
Of her two daughters, the infantile voice
Or the dimpled knee, for half a chain, his throat
Was clasped with; but an archer knew the coat
Its blue cross and eight lilies,bade beware
One dogging him in concert with the pair
Though thrumming on the sleeve that hid his knife.
Night set in early, autumn dews were rife,
They kindled great fires while the Leaguers' mass
Began at every carroch: he must pass
Between the kneeling people. Presently
The carroch of Verona caught his eye
With purple trappings; silently he bent
Over its fire, when voices violent
Began, "Affirm not whom the youth was like
"That struck me from the porch: I did not strike
"Again: I too have chestnut hair; my kin
"Hate Azzo and stand up for Ecelin.
"Here, minstrel, drive bad thoughts away! Sing! Take
"My glove for guerdon!" And for that man's sake
He turned: "A song of Eglamor's!"scarce named,
When, "Our Sordello's rather!"all exclaimed;
"Is not Sordello famousest for rhyme?"
He had been happy to deny, this time,
Profess as heretofore the aching head
And failing heart,suspect that in his stead
Some true Apollo had the charge of them,
Was champion to reward or to condemn,
So his intolerable risk might shift
Or share itself; but Naddo's precious gift
Of gifts, he owned, be certain! At the close
"I made that," said he to a youth who rose
As if to hear: 't was Palma through the band
Conducted him in silence by her hand.
Back now for Salinguerra. Tito of Trent
Gave place to Palma and her friend, who went
In turn at Montelungo's visit: one
After the other were they come and gone,
These spokesmen for the Kaiser and the Pope,
This incarnation of the People's hope,
Sordello,all the say of each was said;
And Salinguerra sat,himself instead
Of these to talk with, lingered musing yet.
'T was a drear vast presence-chamber roughly set
In order for the morning's use; full face,
The Kaiser's ominous sign-mark had first place,
The crowned grim twy-necked eagle, coarsely-blacked
With ochre on the naked wall; nor lacked
Romano's green and yellow either side;
But the new token Tito brought had tried
The Legate's patiencenay, if Palma knew
What Salinguerra almost meant to do
Until the sight of her restored his lip
A certain half-smile, three months' chieftainship
Had banished! Afterward, the Legate found
No change in him, nor asked what badge he wound
And unwound carelessly. Now sat the Chief
Silent as when our couple left, whose brief
Encounter wrought so opportune effect
In thoughts he summoned not, nor would reject,
Though time 't was now if ever, to pausefix
On any sort of ending: wiles and tricks
Exhausted, judge! his charge, the crazy town,
Just managed to be hindered crashing down
His last sound troops rangedcare observed to post
His best of the maimed soldiers innermost
So much was plain enough, but somehow struck
Him not before. And now with this strange luck
Of Tito's news, rewarding his address
So well, what thought he of?how the success
With Friedrich's rescript there, would either hush
Old Ecelin's scruples, bring the manly flush
To his young son's white cheek, or, last, exempt
Himself from telling what there was to tempt?
No: that this minstrel was Romano's last
Servanthimself the first! Could he contrast
The whole!that minstrel's thirty years just spent
In doing nought, their notablest event
This morning's journey hither, as I told
Who yet was lean, outworn and really old,
A stammering awkward man that scarce dared raise
His eye before the magisterial gaze
And Salinguerra with his fears and hopes
Of sixty years, his Emperors and Popes,
Cares and contrivances, yet, you would say,
'T was a youth nonchalantly looked away
Through the embrasure northward o'er the sick
Expostulating treesso agile, quick
And graceful turned the head on the broad chest
Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest,
Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire
Across the room; and, loosened of its tire
Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown
Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown
Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where
A sharp white line divided clean the hair;
Glossy above, glossy below, it swept
Curling and fine about a brow thus kept
Calm, laid coat upon coat, marble and sound:
This was the mystic mark the Tuscan found,
Mused of, turned over books about. Square-faced,
No lion more; two vivid eyes, enchased
In hollows filled with many a shade and streak
Settling from the bold nose and bearded cheek.
Nor might the half-smile reach them that deformed
A lip supremely perfect elseunwarmed,
Unwidened, less or more; indifferent
Whether on trees or men his thoughts were bent,
Thoughts rarely, after all, in trim and train
As now a period was fulfilled again:
Of such, a series made his life, compressed
In each, one story serving for the rest
How his life-streams rolling arrived at last
At the barrier, whence, were it once overpast,
They would emerge, a river to the end,
Gathered themselves up, paused, bade fate befriend,
Took the leap, hung a minute at the height,
Then fell back to oblivion infinite:
Therefore he smiled. Beyond stretched garden-grounds
Where late the adversary, breaking bounds,
Had gained him an occasion, That above,
That eagle, testified he could improve
Effectually. The Kaiser's symbol lay
Beside his rescript, a new badge by way
Of baldric; while,another thing that marred
Alike emprise, achievement and reward,
Ecelin's missive was conspicuous too.
What past life did those flying thoughts pursue?
As his, few names in Mantua half so old;
But at Ferrara, where his sires enrolled
It latterly, the Adelardi spared
No pains to rival them: both factions shared
Ferrara, so that, counted out, 't would yield
A product very like the city's shield,
Half black and white, or Ghibellin and Guelf
As after Salinguerra styled himself
And Este who, till Marchesalla died,
(Last of the Adelardi)never tried
His fortune there: with Marchesalla's child
Would pass,could Blacks and Whites be reconciled
And young Taurello wed Linguetta,wealth
And sway to a sole grasp. Each treats by stealth
Already: when the Guelfs, the Ravennese
Arrive, assault the Pietro quarter, seize
Linguetta, and are gone! Men's first dismay
Abated somewhat, hurries down, to lay
The after indignation, Boniface,
This Richard's father. "Learn the full disgrace
"Averted, ere you blame us Guelfs, who rate
"Your Salinguerra, your sole potentate
"That might have been, 'mongst Este's valvassors
"Ay, Azzo'swho, not privy to, abhors
"Our step; but we were zealous." Azzo then
To do with! Straight a meeting of old men:
"Old Salinguerra dead, his heir a boy,
"What if we change our ruler and decoy
"The Lombard Eagle of the azure sphere
"With Italy to build in, fix him here,
"Settle the city's troubles in a trice?
"For private wrong, let public good suffice!"
In fine, young Salinguerra's staunchest friends
Talked of the townsmen making him amends,
Gave him a goshawk, and affirmed there was
Rare sport, one morning, over the green grass
A mile or so. He sauntered through the plain,
Was restless, fell to thinking, turned again
In time for Azzo's entry with the bride;
Count Boniface rode smirking at their side;
"She brings him half Ferrara," whispers flew,
"And all Ancona! If the stripling knew!"
Anon the stripling was in Sicily
Where Heinrich ruled in right of Constance; he
Was gracious nor his guest incapable;
Each understood the other. So it fell,
One Spring, when Azzo, thoroughly at ease,
Had near forgotten by what precise degrees
He crept at first to such a downy seat,
The Count trudged over in a special heat
To bid him of God's love dislodge from each
Of Salinguerra's palaces,a breach
Might yawn else, not so readily to shut,
For who was just arrived at Mantua but
The youngster, sword on thigh and tuft on chin,
With tokens for Celano, Ecelin,
Pistore, and the like! Next news,no whit
Do any of Ferrara's domes befit
His wife of Heinrich's very blood: a band
Of foreigners assemble, understand
Garden-constructing, level and surround,
Build up and bury in. A last news crowned
The consternation: since his infant's birth,
He only waits they end his wondrous girth
Of trees that link San Pietro with Tom,
To visit Mantua. When the Podest
Ecelin, at Vicenza, called his friend
Taurello thither, what could be their end
But to restore the Ghibellins' late Head,
The Kaiser helping? He with most to dread
From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, there
With Boniface beforehand, as aware
Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled
Both plotters: but the Guelfs in triumph yelled
Too hastily. The burning and the flight,
And how Taurello, occupied that night
With Ecelin, lost wife and son, I told:
Not how he bore the blow, retained his hold,
Got friends safe through, left enemies the worst
O' the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first:
But afterward men heard not constantly
Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be!
Though Azzo simply gained by the event
A shifting of his plaguesthe first, content
To fall behind the second and estrange
So far his nature, suffer such a change
That in Romano sought he wife and child,
And for Romano's sake seemed reconciled
To losing individual life, which shrunk
As the other prosperedmortised in his trunk;
Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil
Of bearing its own proper wine and oil,
By grafting into it the stranger-vine,
Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine,
Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root,
And red drops moisten the insipid fruit.
Once Adelaide set on,the subtle mate
Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate
The Church's valiant women deed for deed,
And paragon her namesake, win the meed
O' the great Matilda,soon they overbore
The rest of Lombardy,not as before
By an instinctive truculence, but patched
The Kaiser's strategy until it matched
The Pontiff's, sought old ends by novel means.
"Only, why is it Salinguerra screens
"Himself behind Romano?him we bade
"Enjoy our shine i' the front, not seek the shade!"
Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the tardiest
To comprehend. Nor Philip acquiesced
At once in the arrangement; reasoned, plied
His friend with offers of another bride,
A statelier functionfruitlessly: 't was plain
Taurello through some weakness must remain
Obscure. And Otho, free to judge of both
Ecelin the unready, harsh and loth,
And this more plausible and facile wight
With every point a-sparklechose the right,
Admiring how his predecessors harped
On the wrong man: "thus," quoth he, "wits are warped
"By outsides!" Carelessly, meanwhile, his life
Suffered its many turns of peace and strife
In many landsyou hardly could surprise
The man; who shamed Sordello (recognize!)
In this as much beside, that, unconcerned
What qualities were natural or earned,
With no ideal of graces, as they came
He took them, singularly well the same
Speaking the Greek's own language, just because
Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws
In contracts with him; while, since Arab lore
Holds the stars' secrettake one trouble more
And master it! 'T is done, and now deter
Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her,
From Friedrich's path!Friedrich, whose pilgrimage
The same man puts aside, whom he 'll engage
To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch,
Come to Bassano, see Saint Francis' church
And judge of Guido the Bolognian's piece
Which,lend Taurello credit,rivals Greece
Angels, with aureoles like golden quoits
Pitched home, applauding Ecelin's exploits.
For elegance, he strung the angelot,
Made rhymes thereto; for prowess, clove he not
Tiso, last siege, from crest to crupper? Why
Detail you thus a varied mastery
But to show how Taurello, on the watch
For men, to read their hearts and thereby catch
Their capabilities and purposes,
Displayed himself so far as displayed these:
While our Sordello only cared to know
About men as a means whereby he 'd show
Himself, and men had much or little worth
According as they kept in or drew forth
That self; the other's choicest instruments
Surmised him shallow.
           Meantime, malcontents
Dropped off, town after town grew wiser. "How
"Change the world's face?" asked people; "as 't is now
"It has been, will be ever: very fine
"Subjecting things profane to things divine,
"In talk! This contumacy will fatigue
"The vigilance of Este and the League!
"The Ghibellins gain on us!"as it happed.
Old Azzo and old Boniface, entrapped
By Ponte Alto, both in one month's space
Slept at Verona: either left a brace
Of sonsbut, three years after, either's pair
Lost Guglielm and Aldobrand its heir:
Azzo remained and Richardall the stay
Of Este and Saint Boniface, at bay
As 't were. Then, either Ecelin grew old
Or his brain alterednot o' the proper mould
For new applianceshis old palm-stock
Endured no influx of strange strengths. He 'd rock
As in a drunkenness, or chuckle low
As proud of the completeness of his woe,
Then weep real tears;now make some mad onslaught
On Este, heedless of the lesson taught
So painfully,now cringe for peace, sue peace
At price of past gain, bar of fresh increase
To the fortunes of Romano. Up at last
Rose Este, down Romano sank as fast.
And men remarked these freaks of peace and war
Happened while Salinguerra was afar:
Whence every friend besought him, all in vain,
To use his old adherent's wits again.
Not he!"who had advisers in his sons,
"Could plot himself, nor needed any one's
"Advice." 'T was Adelaide's remaining staunch
Prevented his destruction root and branch
Forthwith; but when she died, doom fell, for gay
He made alliances, gave lands away
To whom it pleased accept them, and withdrew
For ever from the world. Taurello, who
Was summoned to the convent, then refused
A word at the wicket, patience thus abused,
Promptly threw off alike his imbecile
Ally's yoke, and his own frank, foolish smile.
Soon a few movements of the happier sort
Changed matters, put himself in men's report
As heretofore; he had to fight, beside,
And that became him ever. So, in pride
And flushing of this kind of second youth,
He dealt a good-will blow. Este in truth
Lay proneand men remembered, somewhat late,
A laughing old outrageous stifled hate
He bore to Estehow it would outbreak
At times spite of disguise, like an earthquake
In sunny weatheras that noted day
When with his hundred friends he tried to slay
Azzo before the Kaiser's face: and how,
On Azzo's calm refusal to allow
A liegeman's challenge, straight he too was calmed:
As if his hate could bear to lie embalmed,
Bricked up, the moody Pharaoh, and survive
All intermediate crumblings, to arrive
At earth's catastrophe't was Este's crash
Not Azzo's he demanded, so, no rash
Procedure! Este's true antagonist
Rose out of Ecelin: all voices whist,
All eyes were sharpened, wits predicted. He
'T was, leaned in the embrasure absently,
Amused with his own efforts, now, to trace
With his steel-sheathed forefinger Friedrich's face
I' the dust: but as the trees waved sere, his smile
Deepened, and words expressed its thought erewhile.
"Ay, fairly housed at last, my old compeer?
"That we should stick together, all the year
"I kept Vicenza!How old Boniface,
"Old Azzo caught us in its market-place,
"He by that pillar, I at this,caught each
"In mid swing, more than fury of his speech,
"Egging the rabble on to disavow
"Allegiance to their MarquisBacchus, how
"They boasted! Ecelin must turn their drudge,
"Nor, if released, will Salinguerra grudge
"Paying arrears of tribute due long since
"Bacchus! My man could promise then, nor wince
"The bones-and-muscles! Sound of wind and limb,
"Spoke he the set excuse I framed for him:
"And now he sits me, slavering and mute,
"Intent on chafing each starved purple foot
"Benumbed past aching with the altar slab:
"Will no vein throb there when some monk shall blab
"Spitefully to the circle of bald scalps,
"'Friedrich 's affirmed to be our side the Alps'
"Eh, brother Lactance, brother Anaclet?
"Sworn to abjure the world, its fume and fret,
"God's own now? Drop the dormitory bar,
"Enfold the scanty grey serge scapular
"Twice o'er the cowl to muffle memories out!
"So! But the midnight whisper turns a shout,
"Eyes wink, mouths open, pulses circulate
"In the stone walls: the past, the world you hate
"Is with you, ambush, open fieldor see
"The surging flamewe fire Vicenzaglee!
"Follow, let Pilio and Bernardo chafe!
"Bring up the Mantuansthrough San Biagiosafe!
"Ah, the mad people waken? Ah, they writhe
"And reach us? If they block the gate? No tithe
"Can passkeep back, you Bassanese! The edge,
"Use the edgeshear, thrust, hew, melt down the wedge,
"Let out the black of those black upturned eyes!
"Hellare they sprinkling fire too? The blood fries
"And hisses on your brass gloves as they tear
"Those upturned faces choking with despair.
"Brave! Slidder through the reeking gate! `How now?
"'You six had charge of her?' And then the vow
"Comes, and the foam spirts, hair's plucked, till one shriek
"(I hear it) and you flingyou cannot speak
"Your gold-flowered basnet to a man who haled
"The Adelaide he dared scarce view unveiled
"This morn, naked across the fire: how crown
"The archer that exhausted lays you down
"Your infant, smiling at the flame, and dies?
"While one, while mine . . .
               "Bacchus! I think there lies
"More than one corpse there" (and he paced the room)
"Another cinder somewhere: 't was my doom
"Beside, my doom! If Adelaide is dead,
"I live the same, this Azzo lives instead
"Of that to me, and we pull, any how,
"Este into a heap: the matter 's now
"At the true juncture slipping us so oft.
"Ay, Heinrich died and Otho, please you, doffed
"His crown at such a juncture! Still, if hold
"Our Friedrich's purpose, if this chain enfold
"The neck of . . . who but this same Ecelin
"That must recoil when the best days begin!
"Recoil? that 's nought; if the recoiler leaves
"His name for me to fight with, no one grieves:
"But he must interfere, forsooth, unlock
"His cloister to become my stumbling-block
"Just as of old! Ay, ay, there 't is again
"The land's inevitable Headexplain
"The reverences that subject us! Count
"These Ecelins now! Not to say as fount,
"Originating power of thought,from twelve
"That drop i' the trenches they joined hands to delve,
"Six shall surpass him, but . . . why men must twine
"Somehow with something! Ecelin 's a fine
"Clear name! 'Twere simpler, doubtless, twine with me
"At once: our cloistered friend's capacity
"Was of a sort! I had to share myself
"In fifty portions, like an o'ertasked elf
"That 's forced illume in fifty points the vast
"Rare vapour he 's environed by. At last
"My strengths, though sorely frittered, e'en converge
"And crown . . . no, Bacchus, they have yet to urge
"The man be crowned!
           "That aloe, an he durst,
"Would climb! Just such a bloated sprawler first
"I noted in Messina's castle-court
"The day I came, when Heinrich asked in sport
"If I would pledge my faith to win him back
"His right in Lombardy: 'for, once bid pack
"Marauders,' he continued, `in my stead
"'You rule, Taurello!' and upon this head
`Laid the silk glove of ConstanceI see her
"Too, mantled head to foot in miniver,
"Retrude following!
          "I am absolved
"From further toil: the empery devolved
"On me, 't was Tito's word: I have to lay
"For once my plan, pursue my plan my way,
"Prompt nobody, and render an account
"Taurello to Taurello! Nay, I mount
"To Friedrich: he conceives the post I kept,
"Who did true service, able or inept,
"Who 's worthy guerdon, Ecelin or I.
"Me guerdoned, counsel follows: would he vie
"With the Pope really? Azzo, Boniface
"Compose a right-arm Hohenstauffen's race
"Must break ere govern Lombardy. I point
"How easy 't were to twist, once out of joint,
"The socket from the bone: my Azzo's stare
"Meanwhile! for I, this idle strap to wear,
"Shallfret myself abundantly, what end
"To serve? There 's left me twenty years to spend
"How better than my old way? Had I one
"Who laboured overthrow my worka son
"Hatching with Azzo superb treachery,
"To root my pines up and then poison me,
"Suppose't were worth while frustrate that! Beside,
"Another life's ordained me: the world's tide
"Rolls, and what hope of parting from the press
"Of waves, a single wave though weariness
"Gently lifted aside, laid upon shore?
"My life must be lived out in foam and roar,
"No question. Fifty years the province held
"Taurello; troubles raised, and troubles quelled,
"He in the midstwho leaves this quaint stone place,
"These trees a year or two, then not a trace
"Of him! How obtain hold, fetter men's tongues
"Like this poor minstrel with the foolish songs
"To which, despite our bustle, he is linked?
"Flowers one may teaze, that never grow extinct.
"Ay, that patch, surely, green as ever, where
"I set Her Moorish lentisk, by the stair,
"To overawe the aloes; and we trod
"Those flowers, how call you such?into the sod;
"A stately foreignera world of pain
"To make it thrive, arrest rough windsall vain!
"It would decline; these would not be destroyed:
"And now, where is it? where can you avoid
"The flowers? I frighten children twenty years
"Longer!which way, too, Ecelin appears
"To thwart me, for his son's besotted youth
"Gives promise of the proper tigertooth:
"They feel it at Vicenza! Fate, fate, fate,
"My fine Taurello! Go you, promulgate
"Friedrich's decree, and here 's shall aggrandise
"Young Ecelinyour Prefect's badge! a prize
"Too precious, certainly.
             "How now? Compete
"With my old comrade? shuffle from their seat
"His children? Paltry dealing! Do n't I know
"Ecelin? now, I think, and years ago!
"What 's changedthe weakness? did not I compound
"For that, and undertake to keep him sound
"Despite it? Here 's Taurello hankering
"After a boy's prefermentthis plaything
"To carry, Bacchus!" And he laughed.
                   Remark
Why schemes wherein cold-blooded men embark
Prosper, when your enthusiastic sort
Fail: while these last are ever stopping short
(So much they shouldso little they can do!)
The careless tribe see nothing to pursue
If they desist; meantime their scheme succeeds.
Thoughts were caprices in the course of deeds
Methodic with Taurello; so, he turned,
Enough amused by fancies fairly earned
Of Este's horror-struck submitted neck,
And Richard, the cowed braggart, at his beck,
To his own petty but immediate doubt
If he could pacify the League without
Conceding Richard; just to this was brought
That interval of vain discursive thought!
As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit
Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot
Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black
Enormous watercourse which guides him back
To his own tribe again, where he is king;
And laughs because he guesses, numbering
The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch
Of the first lizard wrested from its couch
Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips
To cure his nostril with, and festered lips,
And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert-blast)
That he has reached its boundary, at last
May breathe;thinks o'er enchantments of the South
Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth,
Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried
In fancy, puts them soberly aside
For truth, projects a cool return with friends,
The likelihood of winning mere amends
Ere long; thinks that, takes comfort silently,
Then, from the river's brink, his wrongs and he,
Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon
Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon.
Midnight: the watcher nodded on his spear,
Since clouds dispersing left a passage clear
For any meagre and discoloured moon
To venture forth; and such was peering soon
Above the harassed cityher close lanes
Closer, not half so tapering her fanes,
As though she shrunk into herself to keep
What little life was saved, more safely. Heap
By heap the watch-fires mouldered, and beside
The blackest spoke Sordello and replied
Palma with none to listen. "'T is your cause:
"What makes a Ghibellin? There should be laws
"(Remember how my youth escaped! I trust
"To you for manhood, Palma! tell me just
"As any child)there must be laws at work
"Explaining this. Assure me, good may lurk
"Under the bad,my multitude has part
"In your designs, their welfare is at heart
"With Salinguerra, to their interest
"Refer the deeds he dwelt on,so divest
"Our conference of much that scared me. Why
"Affect that heartless tone to Tito? I
"Esteemed myself, yes, in my inmost mind
"This morn, a recreant to my racemankind
"O'erlooked till now: why boast my spirit's force,
"Such force denied its object? why divorce
"These, then admire my spirit's flight the same
"As though it bore up, helped some half-orbed flame
"Else quenched in the dead void, to living space?
"That orb cast off to chaos and disgrace,
"Why vaunt so much my unencumbered dance,
"Making a feat's facilities enhance
"Its marvel? But I front Taurello, one
"Of happier fate, and all I should have done,
"He does; the people's good being paramount
"With him, their progress may perhaps account
"For his abiding still; whereas you heard
"The talk with Titothe excuse preferred
"For burning those five hostages,and broached
"By way of blind, as you and I approached,
"I do believe."
        She spoke: then he, "My thought
"Plainlier expressed! All to your profitnought
"Meantime of these, of conquests to achieve
"For them, of wretchedness he might relieve
"While profiting your party. Azzo, too,
"Supports a cause: what cause? Do Guelfs pursue
"Their ends by means like yours, or better?"
                       When
The Guelfs were proved alike, men weighed with men,
And deed with deed, blaze, blood, with blood and blaze,
Morn broke: "Once more, Sordello, meet its gaze
"Proudlythe people's charge against thee fails
"In every point, while either party quails!
"These are the busy ones: be silent thou!
"Two parties take the world up, and allow
"No third, yet have one principle, subsist
"By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist
"With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.
"So there is one less quarrel to compose:
"The Guelf, the Ghibellin may be to curse
"I have done nothing, but both sides do worse
"Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft
"Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left
"The notion of a serviceha? What lured
"Me here, what mighty aim was I assured
"Must move Taurello? What if there remained
"A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained
"For me, its true discoverer?"
                Some one pressed
Before them here, a watcher, to suggest
The subject for a ballad: "They must know
"The tale of the dead worthy, long ago
"Consul of Romethat 's long ago for us,
"Minstrels and bowmen, idly squabbling thus
`In the world's cornerbut too late no doubt,
"For the brave time he sought to bring about.
"Not know Crescentius Nomentanus?" Then
He cast about for terms to tell him, when
Sordello disavowed it, how they used
Whenever their Superior introduced
A novice to the Brotherhood("for I
"Was just a brown-sleeve brother, merrily
"Appointed too," quoth he, "till Innocent
"Bade me relinquish, to my small content,
"My wife or my brown sleeves")some brother spoke
Ere nocturns of Crescentius, to revoke
The edict issued, after his demise,
Which blotted fame alike and effigies,
All out except a floating power, a name
Including, tending to produce the same
Great act. Rome, dead, forgotten, lived at least
Within that brain, though to a vulgar priest
And a vile stranger,two not worth a slave
Of Rome's, Pope John, King Otho,fortune gave
The rule there: so, Crescentius, haply dressed
In white, called Roman Consul for a jest,
Taking the people at their word, forth stepped
As upon Brutus' heel, nor ever kept
Rome waiting,stood erect, and from his brain
Gave Rome out on its ancient place again,
Ay, bade proceed with Brutus' Rome, Kings styled
Themselves mere citizens of, and, beguiled
Into great thoughts thereby, would choose the gem
Out of a lapfull, spoil their diadem
The Senate's cypher was so hard to scratch
He flashes like a phanal, all men catch
The flame, Rome 's just accomplished! when returned
Otho, with John, the Consul's step had spurned,
And Hugo Lord of Este, to redress
The wrongs of each. Crescentius in the stress
Of adverse fortune bent. "They crucified
"Their Consul in the Forum; and abide
"E'er since such slaves at Rome, that I(for I
"Was once a brown-sleeve brother, merrily
"Appointed)I had option to keep wife
"Or keep brown sleeves, and managed in the strife
"Lose both. A song of Rome!"
               And Rome, indeed,
Robed at Goito in fantastic weed,
The Mother-City of his Mantuan days,
Looked an established point of light whence rays
Traversed the world; for, all the clustered homes
Beside of men, seemed bent on being Romes
In their degree; the question was, how each
Should most resemble Rome, clean out of reach.
Nor, of the Two, did either principle
Struggle to change, but to possess Rome,still
Guelf Rome or Ghibellin Rome.
               Let Rome advance!
Rome, as she struck Sordello's ignorance
How could he doubt one moment? Rome 's the Cause!
Rome of the Pandects, all the world's new laws
Of the Capitol, of Castle Angelo;
New structures, that inordinately glow,
Subdued, brought back to harmony, made ripe
By many a relic of the archetype
Extant for wonder; every upstart church
That hoped to leave old temples in the lurch,
Corrected by the Theatre forlorn
That,as a mundane shell, its world late born,
Lay and o'ershadowed it. These hints combined,
Rome typifies the scheme to put mankind
Once more in full possession of their rights.
"Let us have Rome again! On me it lights
"To build up Romeon me, the first and last:
"For such a future was endured the past!"
And thus, in the grey twilight, forth he sprung
To give his thought consistency among
The very Peoplelet their facts avail
Finish the dream grown from the archer's tale.


~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Fourth
,
542: Ilion

Book I: The Book of the Herald



Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals,
Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending,
Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine.
Earth in the dawn-fire delivered from starry and shadowy vastness
Woke to the wonder of life and its passion and sorrow and beauty,
All on her bosom sustaining, the patient compassionate Mother.
Out of the formless vision of Night with its look on things hidden
Given to the gaze of the azure she lay in her garment of greenness,
Wearing light on her brow. In the dawn-ray lofty and voiceless
Ida climbed with her god-haunted peaks into diamond lustres,
Ida first of the hills with the ranges silent beyond her
Watching the dawn in their giant companies, as since the ages
First began they had watched her, upbearing Time on their summits.
Troas cold on her plain awaited the boon of the sunshine.
There, like a hope through an emerald dream sole-pacing for ever,
Stealing to wideness beyond, crept Simois lame in his currents,
Guiding his argent thread mid the green of the reeds and the grasses.
Headlong, impatient of Space and its boundaries, Time and its slowness,
Xanthus clamoured aloud as he ran to the far-surging waters,
Joining his call to the many-voiced roar of the mighty Aegean,
Answering Oceans limitless cry like a whelp to its parent.
Forests looked up through their rifts, the ravines grew aware of their shadows.
Closer now gliding glimmered the golden feet of the goddess.
Over the hills and the headlands spreading her garment of splendour,
Fateful she came with her eyes impartial looking on all things,
Bringer to man of the day of his fortune and day of his downfall.
Full of her luminous errand, careless of eve and its weeping,
Fateful she paused unconcerned above Ilions mysteried greatness,
Domes like shimmering tongues of the crystal flames of the morning,
Opalesque rhythm-line of tower-tops, notes of the lyre of the sungod.
High over all that a nation had built and its love and its laughter,
Lighting the last time highway and homestead, market and temple,
Looking on men who must die and women destined to sorrow,
Looking on beauty fire must lay low and the sickle of slaughter,
Fateful she lifted the doom-scroll red with the script of the Immortals,
Deep in the invisible air that folds in the race and its morrows
Fixed it, and passed on smiling the smile of the griefless and deathless,
Dealers of death though death they know not, who in the morning
Scatter the seed of the event for the reaping ready at nightfall.
Over the brooding of plains and the agelong trance of the summits
Out of the sun and its spaces she came, pausing tranquil and fatal,
And, at a distance followed by the golden herds of the sungod,
Carried the burden of Light and its riddle and danger to Hellas.
Even as fleets on a chariot divine through the gold streets of ether,
Swiftly when Life fleets, invisibly changing the arc of the soul-drift,
And, with the choice that has chanced or the fate man has called and now suffers
Weighted, the moment travels driving the past towards the future,
Only its face and its feet are seen, not the burden it carries.
Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden.
Earth sees not; lifes clamour deafens the ear of the spirit:
Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons.
Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his hearts ignorant whisper,
Whistle of winds in the tree-tops of Time and the rustle of Nature.
Now too the messenger hastened driving the car of the errand:
Even while dawn was a gleam in the east, he had cried to his coursers.
Half yet awake in lights turrets started the scouts of the morning
Hearing the jar of the wheels and the throb of the hooves exultation,
Hooves of the horses of Greece as they galloped to Phrygian Troya.
Proudly they trampled through Xanthus thwarting the foam of his anger,
Whinnying high as in scorn crossed Simois tangled currents,
Xanthus reed-girdled twin, the gentle and sluggard river.
One and unarmed in the car was the driver; grey was he, shrunken,
Worn with his decades. To Pergama cinctured with strength Cyclopean
Old and alone he arrived, insignificant, feeblest of mortals,
Carrying Fate in his helpless hands and the doom of an empire.
Ilion, couchant, saw him arrive from the sea and the darkness.
Heard mid the faint slow stirrings of life in the sleep of the city,
Rapid there neared a running of feet, and the cry of the summons
Beat round the doors that guarded the domes of the splendour of Priam.
Wardens charged with the night, ye who stand in Laomedons gateway,
Waken the Ilian kings. Talthybius, herald of Argos,
Parleying stands at the portals of Troy in the grey of the dawning.
High and insistent the call. In the dimness and hush of his chamber
Charioted far in his dreams amid visions of glory and terror,
Scenes of a vivider world,though blurred and deformed in the brain-cells,
Vague and inconsequent, there full of colour and beauty and greatness,
Suddenly drawn by the pull of the conscious thread of the earth-bond
And of the needs of Time and the travail assigned in the transience
Warned by his body, Deiphobus, reached in that splendid remoteness,
Touched through the nerve-ways of life that branch to the brain of the dreamer,
Heard the terrestrial call and slumber startled receded
Sliding like dew from the mane of a lion. Reluctant he travelled
Back from the light of the fields beyond death, from the wonderful kingdoms
Where he had wandered a soul among souls in the countries beyond us,
Free from the toil and incertitude, free from the struggle and danger:
Now, compelled, he returned from the respite given to the time-born,
Called to the strife and the wounds of the earth and the burden of daylight.
He from the carven couch upreared his giant stature.
Haste-spurred he laved his eyes and regained earths memories, haste-spurred
Donning apparel and armour strode through the town of his fathers,
Watched by her gods on his way to his fate, towards Pergamas portals.
Nine long years had passed and the tenth now was wearily ending,
Years of the wrath of the gods, and the leaguer still threatened the ramparts
Since through a tranquil morn the ships came past Tenedos sailing
And the first Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches;
Still the assailants attacked, still fought back the stubborn defenders.
When the reward is withheld and endlessly leng thens the labour,
Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal.
Weary of battle the invaders warring hearthless and homeless
Prayed to the gods for release and return to the land of their fathers:
Weary of battle the Phrygians beset in their beautiful city
Prayed to the gods for an end of the danger and mortal encounter.
Long had the high-beached ships forgotten their measureless ocean.
Greece seemed old and strange to her children camped on the beaches,
Old like a life long past one remembers hardly believing
But as a dream that has happened, but as the tale of another.
Time with his tardy touch and Nature changing our substance
Slowly had dimmed the faces loved and the scenes once cherished:
Yet was the dream still dear to them longing for wife and for children,
Longing for hearth and glebe in the far-off valleys of Hellas.
Always like waves that swallow the shingles, lapsing, returning,
Tide of the battle, race of the onset relentlessly thundered
Over the Phrygian corn-fields. Trojan wrestled with Argive,
Caria, Lycia, Thrace and the war-lord mighty Achaia
Joined in the clasp of the fight. Death, panic and wounds and disaster,
Glory of conquest and glory of fall, and the empty hearth-side,
Weeping and fortitude, terror and hope and the pang of remembrance,
Anguish of hearts, the lives of the warriors, the strength of the nations
Thrown were like weights into Destinys scales, but the balance wavered
Pressed by invisible hands. For not only the mortal fighters,
Heroes half divine whose names are like stars in remoteness,
Triumphed and failed and were winds or were weeds on the dance of the surges,
But from the peaks of Olympus and shimmering summits of Ida
Gleaming and clanging the gods of the antique ages descended.
Hidden from human knowledge the brilliant shapes of Immortals
Mingled unseen in the mellay, or sometimes, marvellous, maskless,
Forms of undying beauty and power that made tremble the heart-strings
Parting their deathless secrecy crossed through the borders of vision,
Plain as of old to the demigods out of their glory emerging,
Heard by mortal ears and seen by the eyeballs that perish.
Mighty they came from their spaces of freedom and sorrowless splendour.
Sea-vast, trailing the azure hem of his clamorous waters,
Blue-lidded, maned with the Night, Poseidon smote for the future,
Earth-shaker who with his trident releases the coils of the Dragon,
Freeing the forces unborn that are locked in the caverns of Nature.
Calm and unmoved, upholding the Word that is Fate and the order
Fixed in the sight of a Will foreknowing and silent and changeless,
Hera sent by Zeus and Athene lifting his aegis
Guarded the hidden decree. But for Ilion, loud as the surges,
Ares impetuous called to the fire in mens hearts, and his passion
Woke in the shadowy depths the forms of the Titan and demon;
Dumb and coerced by the grip of the gods in the abyss of the being,
Formidable, veiled they sit in the grey subconscient darkness
Watching the sleep of the snake-haired Erinnys. Miracled, haloed,
Seer and magician and prophet who beholds what the thought cannot witness,
Lifting the godhead within us to more than a human endeavour,
Slayer and saviour, thinker and mystic, leaped from his sun-peaks
Guarding in Ilion the wall of his mysteries Delphic Apollo.
Heavens strengths divided swayed in the whirl of the Earth-force.
All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages;
Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure;
Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams;
Evil once ended renews and no issue comes out of living:
Only an Eye unseen can distinguish the thread of its workings.
Such seemed the rule of the pastime of Fate on the plains of the Troad;
All went backwards and forwards tossed in the swing of the death-game.
Vain was the toil of the heroes, the blood of the mighty was squandered,
Spray as of surf on the cliffs when it moans unappeased, unrequited
Age after fruitless age. Day hunted the steps of the nightfall;
Joy succeeded to grief; defeat only greatened the vanquished,
Victory offered an empty delight without guerdon or profit.
End there was none of the effort and end there was none of the failure.
Triumph and agony changing hands in a desperate measure
Faced and turned as a man and a maiden trampling the grasses
Face and turn and they laugh in their joy of the dance and each other.
These were gods and they trampled lives. But though Time is immortal,
Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture.
Artists of Nature content with their work in the plan of the transience,
Beautiful, deathless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage,
Leaving the battle already decided, leaving the heroes
Slain in their minds, Troy burned, Greece left to her glory and downfall.
Into their heavens they rose up mighty like eagles ascending
Fanning the world with their wings. As the great to their luminous mansions
Turn from the cry and the strife, forgetting the wounded and fallen,
Calm they repose from their toil and incline to the joy of the banquet,
Watching the feet of the wine-bearers rosily placed on the marble,
Filling their hearts with ease, so they to their sorrowless ether
Passed from the wounded earth and its air that is ploughed with mens anguish;
Calm they reposed and their hearts inclined to the joy and the silence.
Lifted was the burden laid on our wills by their starry presence:
Man was restored to his smallness, the world to its inconscient labour.
Life felt a respite from height, the winds breathed freer delivered;
Light was released from their blaze and the earth was released from their greatness.
But their immortal content from the struggle titanic departed.
Vacant the noise of the battle roared like the sea on the shingles;
Wearily hunted the spears their quarry; strength was disheartened;
Silence increased with the march of the months on the tents of the leaguer.
But not alone on the Achaians the steps of the moments fell heavy;
Slowly the shadow deepened on Ilion mighty and scornful:
Dragging her days went by; in the rear of the hearts of her people
Something that knew what they dared not know and the mind would not utter,
Something that smote at her soul of defiance and beauty and laughter,
Darkened the hours. For Doom in her sombre and giant uprising
Neared, assailing the skies: the sense of her lived in all pastimes;
Time was pursued by unease and a terror woke in the midnight:
Even the ramparts felt her, stones that the gods had erected.
Now no longer she dallied and played, but bounded and hastened,
Seeing before her the end and, imagining massacre calmly,
Laughed and admired the flames and rejoiced in the cry of the captives.
Under her, dead to the watching immortals, Deiphobus hastened
Clanging in arms through the streets of the beautiful insolent city,
Brilliant, a gleaming husk but empty and left by the daemon.
Even as a star long extinguished whose light still travels the spaces,
Seen in its form by men, but itself goes phantom-like fleeting
Void and null and dark through the uncaring infinite vastness,
So now he seemed to the sight that sees all things from the Real.
Timeless its vision of Time creates the hour by things coming.
Borne on a force from the past and no more by a power for the future
Mighty and bright was his body, but shadowy the shape of his spirit
Only an eidolon seemed of the being that had lived in him, fleeting
Vague like a phantom seen by the dim Acherontian waters.
But to the guardian towers that watched over Pergamas gateway
Out of the waking city Deiphobus swiftly arriving
Called, and swinging back the huge gates slowly, reluctant,
Flung Troy wide to the entering Argive. Ilions portals
Parted admitting her destiny, then with a sullen and iron
Cry they closed. Mute, staring, grey like a wolf descended
Old Talthybius, propping his steps on the staff of his errand;
Feeble his body, but fierce still his glance with the fire within him;
Speechless and brooding he gazed on the hated and coveted city.
Suddenly, seeking heaven with her buildings hewn as for Titans,
Marvellous, rhythmic, a child of the gods with marble for raiment,
Smiting the vision with harmony, splendid and mighty and golden,
Ilion stood up around him entrenched in her giant defences.
Strength was uplifted on strength and grandeur supported by grandeur;
Beauty lay in her lap. Remote, hieratic and changeless,
Filled with her deeds and her dreams her gods looked out on the Argive,
Helpless and dumb with his hate as he gazed on her, they too like mortals
Knowing their centuries past, not knowing the morrow before them.
Dire were his eyes upon Troya the beautiful, his face like a doom-mask:
All Greece gazed in them, hated, admired, grew afraid, grew relentless.
But to the Greek Deiphobus cried and he turned from his passion
Fixing his ominous eyes with the god in them straight on the Trojan:
Messenger, voice of Achaia, wherefore confronting the daybreak
Comest thou driving thy car from the sleep of the tents that besiege us?
Fateful, I deem, was the thought that, conceived in the silence of midnight,
Raised up thy aged limbs from the couch of their rest in the stillness,
Thoughts of a mortal but forged by the Will that uses our members
And of its promptings our speech and our acts are the tools and the image.
Oft from the veil and the shadow they leap out like stars in their brightness,
Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters,
Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret.
What in the dawning bringst thou to Troya the mighty and dateless
Now in the ending of Time when the gods are weary of struggle?
Sends Agamemnon challenge or courtesy, Greek, to the Trojans?
High like the northwind answered the voice of the doom from Achaia:
Trojan Deiphobus, daybreak, silence of night and the evening
Sink and arise and even the strong sun rests from his splendour.
Not for the servant is rest nor Time is his, only his death-pyre.
I have not come from the monarch of men or the armoured assembly
Held on the wind-swept marge of the thunder and laughter of ocean.
One in his singleness greater than kings and multitudes sends me.
I am a voice out of Phthia, I am the will of the Hellene.
Peace in my right I bring to you, death in my left hand. Trojan,
Proudly receive them, honour the gifts of the mighty Achilles.
Death accept, if Ate deceives you and Doom is your lover,
Peace if your fate can turn and the god in you chooses to hearken.
Full is my heart and my lips are impatient of speech undelivered.
It was not made for the streets or the market, nor to be uttered
Meanly to common ears, but where counsel and majesty harbour
Far from the crowd in the halls of the great and to wisdom and foresight
Secrecy whispers, there I will speak among Ilions princes.
Envoy, answered the Laomedontian, voice of Achilles,
Vain is the offer of peace that sets out with a threat for its prelude.
Yet will we hear thee. Arise who are fleetest of foot in the gateway,
Thou, Thrasymachus, haste. Let the domes of the mansion of Ilus
Wake to the bruit of the Hellene challenge. Summon Aeneas.
Even as the word sank back into stillness, doffing his mantle
Started to run at the bidding a swift-footed youth of the Trojans
First in the race and the battle, Thrasymachus son of Aretes.
He in the dawn disappeared into swiftness. Deiphobus slowly,
Measuring Fate with his thoughts in the troubled vasts of his spirit,
Back through the stir of the city returned to the house of his fathers,
Taming his mighty stride to the pace infirm of the Argive.
But with the god in his feet Thrasymachus rapidly running
Came to the halls in the youth of the wonderful city by Ilus
Built for the joy of the eye; for he rested from war and, triumphant,
Reigned adored by the prostrate nations. Now when all ended,
Last of its mortal possessors to walk in its flowering gardens,
Great Anchises lay in that luminous house of the ancients
Soothing his restful age, the far-warring victor Anchises,
High Bucoleons son and the father of Rome by a goddess;
Lonely and vagrant once in his boyhood divine upon Ida
White Aphrodite ensnared him and she loosed her ambrosial girdle
Seeking a mortals love. On the threshold Thrasymachus halted
Looking for servant or guard, but felt only a loneness of slumber
Drawing the souls sight within away from its life and things human;
Soundless, unheeding, the vacant corridors fled into darkness.
He to the shades of the house and the dreams of the echoing rafters
Trusted his high-voiced call, and from chambers still dim in their twilight
Strong Aeneas armoured and mantled, leonine striding,
Came, Anchises son; for the dawn had not found him reposing,
But in the night he had left his couch and the clasp of Cresa,
Rising from sleep at the call of his spirit that turned to the waters
Prompted by Fate and his mother who guided him, white Aphrodite.
Still with the impulse of speed Thrasymachus greeted Aeneas:
Hero Aeneas, swift be thy stride to the Ilian hill-top.
Dardanid, haste! for the gods are at work; they have risen with the morning,
Each from his starry couch, and they labour. Doom, we can see it,
Glows on their anvils of destiny, clang we can hear of their hammers.
Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal,
Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are masters
Calm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices.
Troy is their stage and Argos their background; we are their puppets.
Always our voices are prompted to speech for an end that we know not,
Always we think that we drive, but are driven. Action and impulse,
Yearning and thought are their engines, our will is their shadow and helper.
Now too, deeming he comes with a purpose framed by a mortal,
Shaft of their will they have shot from the bow of the Grecian leaguer,
Lashing themselves at his steeds, Talthybius sent by Achilles.
Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes,
Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrow
Are but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber,
Frame but the dance of their shuttle. What eye unamazed by their workings
Ever can pierce where they dwell and uncover their far-stretching purpose?
Silent they toil, they are hid in the clouds, they are wrapped with the midnight.
Yet to Apollo I pray, the Archer friendly to mortals,
Yet to the rider on Fate I abase myself, wielder of thunder,
Evil and doom to avert from my fatherland. All night Morpheus,
He who with shadowy hands heaps error and truth upon mortals,
Stood at my pillow with images. Dreaming I erred like a phantom
Helpless in Ilions streets with the fire and the foeman around me.
Red was the smoke as it mounted triumphant the house-top of Priam,
Clang of the arms of the Greeks was in Troya, and thwarting the clangour
Voices were crying and calling me over the violent Ocean
Borne by the winds of the West from a land where Hesperus harbours.
Brooding they ceased, for their thoughts grew heavy upon them and voiceless.
Then, in a farewell brief and unthought and unconscious of meaning,
Parting they turned to their tasks and their lives now close but soon severed:
Destined to perish even before his perishing nation,
Back to his watch at the gate sped Thrasymachus rapidly running;
Large of pace and swift, but with eyes absorbed and unseeing,
Driven like a car of the gods by the whip of his thoughts through the highways,
Turned to his mighty future the hero born of a goddess.
One was he chosen to ascend into greatness through fall and disaster,
Loser of his world by the will of a heaven that seemed ruthless and adverse,
Founder of a newer and greater world by daring adventure.
Now, from the citadels rise with the townships crowding below it
High towards a pondering of domes and the mystic Palladium climbing,
Fronted with the morning ray and joined by the winds of the ocean,
Fate-weighed up Troys slope strode musing strong Aeneas.
Under him silent the slumbering roofs of the city of Ilus
Dreamed in the light of the dawn; above watched the citadel, sleepless
Lonely and strong like a goddess white-limbed and bright on a hill-top,
Looking far out at the sea and the foe and the prowling of danger.
Over the brow he mounted and saw the palace of Priam,
Home of the gods of the earth, Laomedons marvellous vision
Held in the thought that accustomed his will to unearthly achievement
And in the blaze of his spirit compelling heaven with its greatness,
Dreamed by the harp of Apollo, a melody caught into marble.
Out of his mind it arose like an epic canto by canto;
Each of its halls was a strophe, its chambers lines of an epode,
Victor chant of Ilions destiny. Absent he entered,
Voiceless with thought, the brilliant megaron crowded with paintings,
Paved with a splendour of marble, and saw Deiphobus seated,
Son of the ancient house by the opulent hearth of his fathers,
And at his side like a shadow the grey and ominous Argive.
Happy of light like a lustrous star when it welcomes the morning,
Brilliant, beautiful, glamoured with gold and a fillet of gem-fire,
Paris, plucked from the song and the lyre by the Grecian challenge,
Came with the joy in his face and his eyes that Fate could not alter.
Ever a child of the dawn at play near a turn of the sun-roads,
Facing destinys look with the careless laugh of a comrade,
He with his vision of delight and beauty brightening the earth-field
Passed through its peril and grief on his way to the ambiguous Shadow.
Last from her chamber of sleep where she lay in the Ilian mansion
Far in the heart of the house with the deep-bosomed daughters of Priam,
Noble and tall and erect in a nimbus of youth and of glory,
Claiming the world and life as a fief of her strength and her courage,
Dawned through a doorway that opened to distant murmurs and laughter,
Capturing the eye like a smile or a sunbeam, Penthesilea.
She from the threshold cried to the herald, crossing the marble,
Regal and fleet, with her voice that was mighty and dire in its sweetness.
What with such speed has impelled from the wind-haunted beaches of Troas,
Herald, thy car though the sun yet hesitates under the mountains?
Comest thou humbler to Troy, Talthybius, now than thou camest
Once when the streams of my East sang low to my ear, not this Ocean
Loud, and I roamed in my mountains uncalled by the voice of Apollo?
Bringest thou dulcet-eyed peace or, sweeter to Penthesilea,
Challenge of war when the spears fall thick on the shields of the fighters,
Lightly the wheels leap onward chanting the anthem of Ares,
Death is at work in his fields and the heart is enamoured of danger?
What says Odysseus, the baffled Ithacan? what Agamemnon?
Are they then weary of war who were rapid and bold and triumphant,
Now that their gods are reluctant, now victory darts not from heaven
Down from the clouds above Ida directing the luminous legions
Armed by Fate, now Pallas forgets, now Poseidon slumbers?
Bronze were their throats to the battle like bugles blaring in chorus;
Mercy they knew not, but shouted and ravened and ran to the slaughter
Eager as hounds when they chase, till a woman met them and stayed them,
Loud my war-shout rang by Scamander. Herald of Argos,
What say the vaunters of Greece to the virgin Penthesilea?
High was the Argives answer confronting the mighty in Troya.
Princes of Pergama, whelps of the lion who roar for the mellay,
Suffer my speech! It shall ring like a spear on the hearts of the mighty.
Blame not the herald; his voice is an impulse, an echo, a channel
Now for the timbrels of peace and now for the drums of the battle.
And I have come from no cautious strength, from no half-hearted speaker,
But from the Phthian. All know him! Proud is his soul as his fortunes,
Swift as his sword and his spear are the speech and the wrath from his bosom.
I am his envoy, herald am I of the conquering Argives.
Has not one heard in the night when the breezes whisper and shudder,
Dire, the voice of a lion unsatisfied, gnawed by his hunger,
Seeking his prey from the gods? For he prowls through the glens of the mountains,
Errs a dangerous gleam in the woodlands, fatal and silent.
So for a while he endures, for a while he seeks and he suffers
Patient yet in his terrible grace as assured of his banquet;
But he has lacked too long and he lifts his head and to heaven
Roars in his wonder, incensed, impatiently. Startled the valleys
Shrink from the dreadful alarum, the cattle gallop to shelter.
Arming the herdsmen cry to each other for comfort and courage.
So Talthybius spoke, as a harper voicing his prelude
Touches his strings to a varied music, seeks for a concord;
Long his strain he prepares. But one broke in on the speaker,
Sweet was his voice like a harps though heard in the front of the onset,
One of the sons of Fate by the people loved whom he ruined,
Leader in counsel and battle, the Priamid, he in his beauty
Carelessly walking who scattered the seeds of Titanic disaster.
Surely thou dreamedst at night and awaking thy dreams have not left thee!
Hast thou not woven thy words to intimidate children in Argos
Sitting alarmed in the shadows who listen pale to their nurses?
Greek, thou art standing in Ilion now and thou facest her princes.
Use not thy words but thy kings. If friendship their honey-breathed burden,
Friendship we clasp from Achilles, but challenge outpace with our challenge
Meeting the foe ere he moves in his will to the clash of encounter.
Such is the way of the Trojans since Phryx by the Hellespont halting
Seated Troy on her hill with the Ocean for comrade and sister.
Shaking in wrath his filleted head Talthybius answered:
Princes, ye speak their words who drive you! Thus said Achilles:
Rise, Talthybius, meet in her spaces the car of the morning;
Challenge her coursers divine as they bound through the plains of the Troad.
Hasten, let not the day wear gold ere thou stand in her ramparts.
Herald charged with my will to a haughty and obstinate nation,
Speak in the palace of Priam the word of the Phthian Achilles.
Freely and not as his vassal who leads, Agamemnon, the Argive,
But as a ruler in Hellas I send thee, king of my nations.
Long I have walked apart from the mellay of gods in the Troad,
Long has my listless spear leaned back on the peace of my tent-side,
Deaf to the talk of the trumpets, the whine of the chariots speeding;
Sole with my heart I have lived, unheeding the Hellene murmur,
Chid when it roared for the hunt the lion pack of the war-god,
Day after day I walked at dawn and in blush of the sunset,
Far by the call of the seas and alone with the gods and my dreaming,
Leaned to the unsatisfied chant of my heart and the rhythms of ocean,
Sung to by hopes that were sweet-lipped and vain. For Polyxenas brothers
Still are the brood of the Titan Laomedon slain in his greatness,
Engines of God unable to bear all the might that they harbour.
Awe they have chid from their hearts, nor our common humanity binds them,
Stay have they none in the gods who approve, giving calmness to mortals:
But like the Titans of old they have hugged to them grandeur and ruin.
Seek then the race self-doomed, the leaders blinded by heaven
Not in the agora swept by the winds of debate and the shoutings
Lion-voiced, huge of the people! In Troyas high-crested mansion
Speak out my word to the hero Deiphobus, head of the mellay,
Paris the racer of doom and the stubborn strength of Aeneas.
Herald of Greece, when thy feet shall be pressed on the gold and the marble,
Rise in the Ilian megaron, curb not the cry of the challenge.
Thus shalt thou say to them striking the ground with the staff of defiance,
Fronting the tempests of war, the insensate, the gamblers with downfall.
Princes of Troy, I have sat in your halls, I have slept in your chambers;
Not in the battle alone as a warrior glad of his foemen,
Glad of the strength that mates with his own, in peace we encountered.
Marvelling I sat in the halls of my enemies, close to the bosoms
Scarred by the dints of my sword and the eyes I had seen through the battle,
Ate rejoicing the food of the East at the tables of Priam
Served by the delicatest hands in the world, by Hecubas daughter,
Or with our souls reconciled in some careless and rapturous midnight
Drank of the sweetness of Phrygian wine, admiring your bodies
Shaped by the gods indeed, and my spirit revolted from hatred,
Softening it yearned in its strings to the beauty and joy of its foemen,
Yearned from the death that oertakes and the flame that cries and desires
Even at the end to save and even on the verge to deliver
Troy and her wonderful works and her sons and her deep-bosomed daughters.
Warned by the gods who reveal to the heart what the mind cannot hearken
Deaf with its thoughts, I offered you friendship, I offered you bridal,
Hellas for comrade, Achilles for brother, the world for enjoyment
Won by my spear. And one heard my call and one turned to my seeking.
Why is it then that the war-cry sinks not to rest by the Xanthus?
We are not voices from Argolis, Lacedaemonian tricksters,
Splendid and subtle and false; we are speakers of truth, we are Hellenes,
Men of the northl and faithful in friendship and noble in anger,
Strong like our fathers of old. But you answered my truth with evasion
Hoping to seize what I will not yield and you flattered your people.
Long have I waited for wisdom to dawn on your violent natures.
Lonely I paced oer the sands by the thousand-throated waters
Praying to Pallas the wise that the doom might turn from your mansions,
Buildings delightful, gracious as rhythms, lyrics in marble,
Works of the transient gods, and I yearned for the end of the war-din
Hoping that Death might relent to the beautiful sons of the Trojans.
Far from the cry of the spears, from the speed and the laughter of axles,
Heavy upon me like iron the intolerable yoke of inaction
Weighed like a load on a runner. The war-cry rose by Scamander;
Xanthus was crossed on a bridge of the fallen, not by Achilles.
Often I stretched out my hand to the spear, for the Trojan beaches
Rang with the voice of Deiphobus shouting and slaying the Argives;
Often my heart like an anxious mother for Greece and her children
Leaped, for the air was full of the leonine roar of Aeneas.
Always the evening fell or the gods protected the Argives.
Then by the moat of the ships, on the hither plain of the Xanthus
New was the voice that climbed through the din and sailed on the breezes,
High, insistent, clear, and it shouted an unknown war-cry
Threatening doom to the peoples. A woman had come in to aid you,
Regal and insolent, fair as the morning and fell as the northwind,
Freed from the distaff who grasps at the sword and she spurns at subjection
Breaking the rule of the gods. She is turbulent, swift in the battle.
Clanging her voice of the swan as a summons to death and disaster,
Fleet-footed, happy and pitiless, laughing she runs to the slaughter;
Strong with the gait that allures she leaps from her car to the slaying,
Dabbles in blood smooth hands like lilies. Europe astonished
Reels from her shock to the Ocean. She is the panic and mellay,
War is her paean, the chariots thunder of Penthesilea.
Doom was her coming, it seems, to the men of the West and their legions;
Ajax sleeps for ever, Meriones lies on the beaches.
One by one they are falling before you, the great in Achaia.
Ever the wounded are borne like the stream of the ants when they forage
Past my ships, and they hush their moans as they near and in silence
Gaze at the legions inactive accusing the fame of Achilles.
Still have I borne with you, waited a little, looked for a summons,
Longing for bridal torches, not flame on the Ilian housetops,
Blood in the chambers of sweetness, the golden amorous city
Swallowed by doom. Not broken I turned from the wrestle Titanic,
Hopeless, weary of toil in the ebb of my glorious spirit,
But from my stress of compassion for doom of the kindred nations,
But for her sake whom my soul desires, for the daughter of Priam.
And for Polyxenas sake I will speak to you yet as your lover
Once ere the Fury, abrupt from Erebus, deaf to your crying,
Mad with the joy of the massacre, seizes on wealth and on women
Calling to Fire as it strides and Ilion sinks into ashes.
Yield; for your doom is impatient. No longer your helpers hasten,
Legions swift to your call; the yoke of your pride and your splendour
Lies not now on the nations of earth as when Fortune desired you,
Strength was your slave and Troya the lioness hungrily roaring
Threatened the western world from her ramparts built by Apollo.
Gladly released from the thraldom they hated, the insolent shackles
Curbing their manhood the peoples arise and they pray for your ruin;
Piled are their altars with gifts; their blessings help the Achaians.
Memnon came, but he sleeps, and the faces swart of his nation
Darken no more like a cloud over thunder and surge of the onset.
Wearily Lycia fights; far fled are the Carian levies.
Thrace retreats to her plains preferring the whistle of stormwinds
Or on the banks of the Strymon to wheel in her Orphean measure,
Not in the revel of swords and fronting the spears of the Hellenes.
Princes of Pergama, open your gates to our Peace who would enter,
Life in her gracious clasp and forgetfulness, grave of earths passions,
Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic,
Asia join with Greece, one world from the frozen rivers
Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges.
Tyndarid Helen resign, the desirable cause of your danger,
Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements.
Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves and the waggons
Endlessly groaning with gold that arrive with the ransom of nations.
So shall the Fury be pacified, she who exultant from Sparta
Breathed in the sails of the Trojan ravisher helping his oarsmen.
So shall the gods be appeased and the thoughts of their wrath shall be cancelled,
Justice contented trace back her steps and for brands of the burning
Torches delightful shall break into Troy with the swords of the bridal.
I like a bridegroom will seize on your city and clasp and defend her
Safe from the envy of Argos, from Lacedaemonian hatred,
Safe from the hunger of Crete and the Locrians violent rapine.
But if you turn from my voice and you hearken only to Ares
Crying for battle within you deluded by Hera and Pallas,
Swiftly the fierce deaths surges shall close over Troy and her ramparts
Built by the gods shall be stubble and earth to the tread of the Hellene.
For to my tents I return not, I swear it by Zeus and Apollo,
Master of Truth who sits within Delphi fathomless brooding
Sole in the caverns of Nature and hearkens her underground murmur,
Giving my oath to his keeping mute and stern who forgets not,
Not from the panting of Ares toil to repose, from the wrestle
Locked of hope and death in the ruthless clasp of the mellay
Leaving again the Trojan ramparts unmounted, leaving
Greece unavenged, the Aegean a lake and Europe a province.
Choosing from Hellas exile, from Peleus and Deidamia,
Choosing the field for my chamber of sleep and the battle for hearthside
I shall go warring on till Asia enslaved to my footsteps
Feels the tread of the God in my sandal pressed on her bosom.
Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with the Ganges;
Thus shall the past pay its Titan ransom and, Fate her balance
Changing, a continent ravished suffer the fortune of Helen.
This I have sworn allying my will to Zeus and Ananke.
So was it spoken, the Phthian challenge. Silent the heroes
Looked back amazed on their past and into the night of their future.
Silent their hearts felt a grasp from gods and had hints of the heavens.
Hush was awhile in the room, as if Fate were trying her balance
Poised on the thoughts of her mortals. At length with a musical laughter
Sweet as the jangling of bells upon anklets leaping in measure
Answered aloud to the gods the virgin Penthesilea.
Long I had heard in my distant realms of the fame of Achilles,
Ignorant still while I played with the ball and ran in the dances
Thinking not ever to war; but I dreamed of the shock of the hero.
So might a poet inland who imagines the rumour of Ocean,
Yearn with his lust for the giant upheaval, the dance as of hill-tops,
Toss of the yellow mane and the tawny march and the voices
Lionlike claiming earth as a prey for the clamorous waters.
So have I longed as I came for the cry and the speed of Achilles.
But he has lurked in his ships, he has sulked like a boy that is angry.
Glad am I now of his soul that arises hungry for battle,
Glad, whether victor I live or defeated travel the shadows.
Once shall my spear have rung on the shield of the Phthian Achilles.
Peace I desire not. I came to a haughty and resolute nation,
Honour and fame they cherish, not life by the gift of a foeman.
Sons of the ancient house on whom Ilion looks as on Titans,
Chiefs whom the world admires, do you fear then the shock of the Phthian?
Gods, it is said, have decided your doom. Are you less in your greatness?
Are you not gods to reverse their decrees or unshaken to suffer?
Memnon is dead and the Carians leave you? Lycia lingers?
But from the streams of my East I have come to you, Penthesilea.
Virgin of Asia, answered Talthybius, doom of a nation
Brought thee to Troy and her haters Olympian shielded thy coming,
Vainly who feedest mens hearts with a hope that the gods have rejected.
Doom in thy sweet voice utters her counsels robed like a woman.
Answered the virgin disdainfully, wroth at the words of the Argive:
Hast thou not ended the errand they gave thee, envoy of Hellas?
Not, do I think, as our counsellor camst thou elected from Argos,
Nor as a lover to Troy hast thou hastened with amorous footing
Hurting thy heart with her frowardness. Hatred and rapine sent thee,
Greed of the Ilian gold and lust of the Phrygian women,
Voice of Achaian aggression! Doom am I truly; let Gnossus
Witness it, Salamis speak of my fatal arrival and Argos
Silent remember her wounds. But the Argive answered the virgin:
Hearken then to the words of the Hellene, Penthesilea.
Virgin to whom earths strongest are corn in the sweep of thy sickle,
Lioness vain of thy bruit who besiegest the paths of the battle!
Art thou not satiate yet? hast thou drunk then so little of slaughter?
Death has ascended thy car; he has chosen thy hand for his harvest.
But I have heard of thy pride and disdain, how thou scornest the Argives
And of thy fate thou complainest that ever averse to thy wishes
Cloisters the Phthian and matches with weaklings Penthesilea.
Not of the Ithacan boar nor the wild-cat littered in Locris
Nor of the sleek-coat Argive wild-bulls sates me the hunting;
So hast thou said, I would bury my spear in the lion of Hellas.
Blind and infatuate, art thou not beautiful, bright as the lightning?
Were not thy limbs made cunningly linking sweetness to sweetness?
Is not thy laughter an arrow surprising hearts imprudent?
Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. Distaff and girdle,
Work of the jar at the well and the hush of our innermost chambers,
These were appointed thee, but thou hast scorned them, O Titaness, grasping
Rather the shield and the spear. Thou, obeying thy turbulent nature,
Tramplest oer laws that are old to the pleasure thy heart has demanded.
Rather bow to the ancient Gods who are seated and constant.
But for thyself thou passest and what hast thou gained for the aeons
Mingled with men in their works and depriving the age of thy beauty?
Fair art thou, woman, but fair with a bitter and opposite sweetness
Clanging in war when thou matchest thy voice with the shout of assemblies.
Not to this end was thy sweetness made and the joy of thy members,
Not to this rhythm Heaven tuned its pipe in thy throat of enchantment,
Armoured like men to go warring forth and with hardness and fierceness
Mix in the strife and the hate while the varied meaning of Nature
Perishes hurt in its heart and life is emptied of music.
Long have I marked in your world a madness. Monarchs descending
Court the imperious mob of their slaves and their suppliant gesture
Shameless and venal offends the majestic tradition of ages:
Princes plead in the agora; spurred by the tongue of a coward,
Heroes march to an impious war at a priestly bidding.
Gold is sought by the great with the chaffering heart of the trader.
Asia fails and the Gods are abandoning Ida for Hellas.
Why must thou come here to perish, O noble and exquisite virgin,
Here in a cause not thine, in a quarrel remote from thy beauty,
Leaving a land that is lovely and far to be slain among strangers?
Girl, to thy rivers go back and thy hills where the grapes are aspirant.
Trust not a fate that indulges; for all things, Penthesilea,
Break with excess and he is the wisest who walks by a measure.
Yet, if thou wilt, thou shalt meet me today in the shock of the battle:
There will I give thee the fame thou desirest; captive in Hellas,
Men shall point to thee always, smiling and whispering, saying,
This is the woman who fought with the Greeks, overthrowing their heroes;
This is the slayer of Ajax, this is the slave of Achilles.
Then with her musical laughter the fearless Penthesilea:
Well do I hope that Achilles enslaved shall taste of that glory
Or on the Phrygian fields lie slain by the spear of a woman.
But to the herald Achaian the Priamid, leader of Troya:
Rest in the halls of thy foes and ease thy fatigue and thy winters.
Herald, abide till the people have heard and reply to Achilles.
Not as the kings of the West are Ilions princes and archons,
Monarchs of men who drive their nations dumb to the battle.
Not in the palace of Priam and not in the halls of the mighty
Whispered councils prevail and the few dispose of the millions;
But with their nation consulting, feeling the hearts of the commons
Ilions princes march to the war or give peace to their foemen.
Lightning departs from her kings and the thunder returns from her people
Met in the ancient assembly where Ilus founded his columns
And since her famous centuries, names that the ages remember
Leading her, Troya proclaims her decrees to obedient nations.
Ceasing he cried to the thralls of his house and they tended the Argive.
Brought to a chamber of rest in the luminous peace of the mansion,
Grey he sat and endured the food and the wine of his foemen,
Chiding his spirit that murmured within him and gazed undelighted,
Vexed with the endless pomps of Laomedon. Far from those glories
Memory winged it back to a sward half-forgotten, a village
Nestling in leaves and low hills watching it crowned with the sunset.
So for his hour he abode in earths palace of lordliest beauty,
But in its caverns his heart was weary and, hurt by the splendours,
Longed for Greece and the smoke-darkened roof of a cottage in Argos,
Eyes of a woman faded and children crowding the hearthside.
Joyless he rose and eastward expected the sunrise on Ida.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 1 - The Book of the Herald
,
543:BOOK THE SECOND

The Story of Phaeton

The Sun's bright palace, on high columns rais'd,
With burnish'd gold and flaming jewels blaz'd;
The folding gates diffus'd a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refresh'd the sight;
Of polish'd iv'ry was the cov'ring wrought:
The matter vied not with the sculptor's thought,
For in the portal was display'd on high
(The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky;
A waving sea th' inferiour Earth embrac'd,
And Gods and Goddesses the waters grac'd.
Aegeon here a mighty whale bestrode;
Triton, and Proteus (the deceiving God)
With Doris here were carv'd, and all her train,
Some loosely swimming in the figur'd main,
While some on rocks their dropping hair divide,
And some on fishes through the waters glide:
Tho' various features did the sisters grace,
A sister's likeness was in ev'ry face.
On Earth a diff'rent landskip courts the eyes,
Men, towns, and beasts in distant prospects rise,
And nymphs, and streams, and woods, and rural deities.
O'er all, the Heav'n's refulgent image shines;
On either gate were six engraven signs.

Here Phaeton still gaining on th' ascent,
To his suspected father's palace went,
'Till pressing forward through the bright abode,
He saw at distance the illustrious God:
He saw at distance, or the dazling light
Had flash'd too strongly on his aking sight.

The God sits high, exalted on a throne
Of blazing gems, with purple garments on;
The Hours, in order rang'd on either hand,
And Days, and Months, and Years, and Ages stand.
Here Spring appears with flow'ry chaplets bound;
Here Summer in her wheaten garl and crown'd;
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear;
And hoary Winter shivers in the reer.

Phoebus beheld the youth from off his throne;
That eye, which looks on all, was fix'd in one.
He saw the boy's confusion in his face,
Surpriz'd at all the wonders of the place;
And cries aloud, "What wants my son? for know
My son thou art, and I must call thee so."
"Light of the world," the trembling youth replies,
"Illustrious parent! since you don't despise
The parent's name, some certain token give,
That I may Clymene's proud boast believe,
Nor longer under false reproaches grieve."

The tender sire was touch'd with what he said,
And flung the blaze of glories from his head,
And bid the youth advance: "My son," said he,
"Come to thy father's arms! for Clymene
Has told thee true; a parent's name I own,
And deem thee worthy to be called my son.
As a sure proof, make some request, and I,
Whate'er it be, with that request comply;
By Styx I swear, whose waves are hid in night,
And roul impervious to my piercing sight."
The youth transported, asks, without delay,
To guide the sun's bright chariot for a day.

The God repented of the oath he took,
For anguish thrice his radiant head he shook;
"My son," says he, "some other proof require,
Rash was my promise, rash is thy desire.
I'd fain deny this wish, which thou hast made,
Or, what I can't deny, wou'd fain disswade.
Too vast and hazardous the task appears,
Nor suited to thy strength, nor to thy years.
Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly
Beyond the province of mortality:
There is not one of all the Gods that dares
(However skill'd in other great affairs)
To mount the burning axle-tree, but I;
Not Jove himself, the ruler of the sky,
That hurles the three-fork'd thunder from above,
Dares try his strength: yet who so strong as Jove?
The steeds climb up the first ascent with pain,
And when the middle firmament they gain,
If downward from the Heav'ns my head I bow,
And see the Earth and Ocean hang below,
Ev'n I am seiz'd with horror and affright,
And my own heart misgives me at the sight.
A mighty downfal steeps the ev'ning stage,
And steddy reins must curb the horses' rage.
Tethys herself has fear'd to see me driv'n
Down headlong from the precipice of Heav'n.
Besides, consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a diff'rent course.
I steer against their motions; nor am I
Born back by all the current of the sky.
But how cou'd you resist the orbs that roul
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?
But you perhaps may hope for pleasing woods,
And stately dooms, and cities fill'd with Gods;
While through a thousand snares your progress lies,
Where forms of starry monsters stock the skies:
For, shou'd you hit the doubtful way aright,
The bull with stooping horns stands opposite;
Next him the bright Haemonian bow is strung,
And next, the lion's grinning visage hung:
The scorpion's claws, here clasp a wide extent;
And here the crab's in lesser clasps are bent.
Nor wou'd you find it easie to compose
The mettled steeds, when from their nostrils flows
The scorching fire, that in their entrails glows.
Ev'n I their head-strong fury scarce restrain,
When they grow warm and restif to the rein.
Let not my son a fatal gift require,
But, O! in time, recall your rash desire;
You ask a gift that may your parent tell,
Let these my fears your parentage reveal;
And learn a father from a father's care:
Look on my face; or if my heart lay bare,
Cou'd you but look, you'd read the father there.
Chuse out a gift from seas, or Earth, or skies,
For open to your wish all Nature lies,
Only decline this one unequal task,
For 'tis a mischief, not a gift, you ask.
You ask a real mischief, Phaeton:
Nay hang not thus about my neck, my son:
I grant your wish, and Styx has heard my voice,
Chuse what you will, but make a wiser choice."

Thus did the God th' unwary youth advise;
But he still longs to travel through the skies.
When the fond father (for in vain he pleads)
At length to the Vulcanian Chariot leads.
A golden axle did the work uphold,
Gold was the beam, the wheels were orb'd with gold.
The spokes in rows of silver pleas'd the sight,
The seat with party-colour'd gems was bright;
Apollo shin'd amid the glare of light.
The youth with secret joy the work surveys,
When now the moon disclos'd her purple rays;
The stars were fled, for Lucifer had chased
The stars away, and fled himself at last.
Soon as the father saw the rosy morn,
And the moon shining with a blunter horn,
He bid the nimble Hours, without delay,
Bring forth the steeds; the nimble Hours obey:
From their full racks the gen'rous steeds retire,
Dropping ambrosial foams, and snorting fire.
Still anxious for his son, the God of day,
To make him proof against the burning ray,
His temples with celestial ointment wet,
Of sov'reign virtue to repel the heat;
Then fix'd the beamy circle on his head,
And fetch'd a deep foreboding sigh, and said,
"Take this at least, this last advice, my son,
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast,
Your art must be to moderate their haste.
Drive 'em not on directly through the skies,
But where the Zodiac's winding circle lies,
Along the midmost Zone; but sally forth
Nor to the distant south, nor stormy north.
The horses' hoofs a beaten track will show,
But neither mount too high, nor sink too low.
That no new fires, or Heav'n or Earth infest;
Keep the mid way, the middle way is best.
Nor, where in radiant folds the serpent twines,
Direct your course, nor where the altar shines.
Shun both extreams; the rest let Fortune guide,
And better for thee than thy self provide!
See, while I speak, the shades disperse away,
Aurora gives the promise of a day;
I'm call'd, nor can I make a longer stay.
Snatch up the reins; or still th' attempt forsake,
And not my chariot, but my counsel, take,
While yet securely on the Earth you stand;
Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand.
Let me alone to light the world, while you
Enjoy those beams which you may safely view."
He spoke in vain; the youth with active heat
And sprightly vigour vaults into the seat;
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.

Mean-while the restless horses neigh'd aloud,
Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood.
Tethys, not knowing what had past, gave way,
And all the waste of Heav'n before 'em lay.
They spring together out, and swiftly bear
The flying youth thro' clouds and yielding air;
With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind,
And leave the breezes of the morn behind.
The youth was light, nor cou'd he fill the seat,
Or poise the chariot with its wonted weight:
But as at sea th' unballass'd vessel rides,
Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides;
So in the bounding chariot toss'd on high,
The youth is hurry'd headlong through the sky.
Soon as the steeds perceive it, they forsake
Their stated course, and leave the beaten track.
The youth was in a maze, nor did he know
Which way to turn the reins, or where to go;
Nor wou'd the horses, had he known, obey.
Then the sev'n stars first felt Apollo's ray,
And wish'd to dip in the forbidden sea.
The folded serpent next the frozen pole,
Stiff and benum'd before, began to rowle,
And raged with inward heat, and threaten'd war,
And shot a redder light from ev'ry star;
Nay, and 'tis said Bootes too, that fain
Thou woud'st have fled, tho' cumber'd with thy wane.

Th' unhappy youth then, bending down his head,
Saw Earth and Ocean far beneath him spread.
His colour chang'd, he startled at the sight,
And his eyes darken'd by too great a light.
Now cou'd he wish the fiery steeds untry'd,
His birth obscure, and his request deny'd:
Now wou'd he Merops for his father own,
And quit his boasted kindred to the sun.

So fares the pilot, when his ship is tost
In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost,
He gives her to the winds, and in despair
Seeks his last refuge in the Gods and pray'r.

What cou'd he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
Find a long path he had already past;
If forward, still a longer path they find:
Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
And sometimes looks on the forbidden west,
The horses' names he knew not in the fright,
Nor wou'd he loose the reins, nor cou'd he hold 'em right.

Now all the horrors of the Heav'ns he spies,
And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
That, deck'd with stars, lye scatter'd o'er the skies.
There is a place above, where Scorpio bent
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent;
In a wide circuit of the Heav'ns he shines,
And fills the space of two coelestial signs.
Soon as the youth beheld him vex'd with heat
Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the reins;
The horses felt 'em loose upon their mains,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran uncontroul'd where-e're their fury drove;
Rush'd on the stars, and through a pathless way
Of unknown regions hurry'd on the day.
And now above, and now below they flew,
And near the Earth the burning chariot drew.

The clouds disperse in fumes, the wond'ring Moon
Beholds her brother's steeds beneath her own;
The highlands smoak, cleft by the piercing rays,
Or, clad with woods, in their own fewel blaze.
Next o'er the plains, where ripen'd harvests grow,
The running conflagration spreads below.
But these are trivial ills: whole cities burn,
And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn.

The mountains kindle as the car draws near,
Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
Oeagrian Haemus (then a single name)
And virgin Helicon increase the flame;
Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky,
And Ida, spight of all her fountains, dry.
Eryx and Othrys, and Cithaeron, glow,
And Rhodope, no longer cloath'd in snow;
High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus, sweat,
And Aetna rages with redoubled heat.
Ev'n Scythia, through her hoary regions warm'd,
In vain with all her native frost was arm'd.
Cover'd with flames the tow'ring Appennine,
And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
And, where the long-extended Alpes aspire,
Now stands a huge continu'd range of fire.

Th' astonisht youth, where-e'er his eyes cou'd turn,
Beheld the universe around him burn:
The world was in a blaze; nor cou'd he bear
The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
Which from below, as from a furnace, flow'd;
And now the axle-tree beneath him glow'd:
Lost in the whirling clouds that round him broke,
And white with ashes, hov'ring in the smoke.
He flew where-e'er the horses drove, nor knew
Whither the horses drove, or where he flew.

'Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun
To change his hue, and blacken in the sun.
Then Libya first, of all her moisture drain'd,
Became a barren waste, a wild of sand.
The water-nymphs lament their empty urns,
Boeotia, robb's of silve Dirce, mourns,
Corinth Pyrene's wasted spring bewails,
And Argos grieves whilst Amymone fails.

The floods are drain'd from ev'ry distant coast,
Ev'n Tanais, tho' fix'd in ice, was lost.
Enrag'd Caicus and Lycormas roar,
And Xanthus, fated to be burnt once more.
The fam'd Maeander, that unweary'd strays
Through mazy windings, smoaks in ev'ry maze.
From his lov'd Babylon Euphrates flies;
The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise
In thick'ning fumes, and darken half the skies.
In flames Ismenos and the Phasis roul'd,
And Tagus floating in his melted gold.
The swans, that on Cayster often try'd
Their tuneful songs, now sung their last and dy'd.
The frighted Nile ran off, and under ground
Conceal'd his head, nor can it yet be found:
His sev'n divided currents all are dry,
And where they row'ld, sev'n gaping trenches lye:
No more the Rhine or Rhone their course maintain,
Nor Tiber, of his promis'd empire vain.

The ground, deep-cleft, admits the dazling ray,
And startles Pluto with the flash of day.
The seas shrink in, and to the sight disclose
Wide naked plains, where once their billows rose;
Their rocks are all discover'd, and increase
The number of the scatter'd Cyclades.
The fish in sholes about the bottom creep,
Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap
Gasping for breath, th' unshapen Phocae die,
And on the boiling wave extended lye.
Nereus, and Doris with her virgin train,
Seek out the last recesses of the main;
Beneath unfathomable depths they faint,
And secret in their gloomy caverns pant.
Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld
His face, and thrice was by the flames repell'd.

The Earth at length, on ev'ry side embrac'd
With scalding seas that floated round her waste,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
And crowd within the hollow of her womb,
Up-lifted to the Heav'ns her blasted head,
And clapt her hand upon her brows, and said
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat):
"If you, great king of Gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove;
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfix'd with thunder-bolts expire.
See, whilst I speak, my breath the vapours choak
(For now her face lay wrapt in clouds of smoak),
See my singe'd hair, behold my faded eye,
And wither'd face, where heaps of cinders lye!
And does the plow for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortur'd with rakes, and harrass'd all the year?
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for Man, and frankincense for you?
But grant me guilty; what has Neptune done?
Why are his waters boiling in the sun?
The wavy empire, which by lot was giv'n,
Why does it waste, and further shrink from Heav'n?
If I nor he your pity can provoke,
See your own Heav'ns, the Heav'ns begin to smoke!
Shou'd once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the Heav'ns and Gods;
Atlas becomes unequal to his freight,
And almost faints beneath the glowing weight.
If Heav'n, and Earth, and sea, together burn,
All must again into their chaos turn.
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour Nature, ere it be too late."
She cea'sd, for choak'd with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.

Jove call'd to witness ev'ry Pow'r above,
And ev'n the God, whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compell'd to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
Strait he ascends the high aetherial throne,
From whence he us'd to dart his thunder down,
From whence his show'rs and storms he us'd to pour,
But now cou'd meet with neither storm nor show'r.
Then, aiming at the youth, with lifted hand,
Full at his head he hurl'd the forky brand,
In dreadful thund'rings. Thus th' almighty sire
Suppress'd the raging of the fires with fire.

At once from life and from the chariot driv'n,
Th' ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from Heav'n.
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
The studded harness from their necks they broke,
Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away;
And, scatter'd o'er the Earth, the shining fragments lay.

The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot, like a falling star,
That in a summer's ev'ning from the top
Of Heav'n drops down, or seems at least to drop;
'Till on the Po his blasted corps was hurl'd,
Far from his country, in the western world.

Phaeton's Sisters transform'd into Trees

The Latian nymphs came round him, and, amaz'd,
On the dead youth, transfix'd with thunder, gaz'd;
And, whilst yet smoaking from the bolt he lay,
His shatter'd body to a tomb convey,
And o'er the tomb an epitaph devise:
"Here he, who drove the sun's bright chariot, lies;
His father's fiery steeds he cou'd not guide,
But in the glorious enterprize he dy'd."

Apollo hid his face, and pin'd for grief,
And, if the story may deserve belief,
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted ev'n, without a sun:
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day, that still did Nature's face disclose:
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.

But Clymene, enrag'd with grief, laments,
And as her grief inspires, her passion vents:
Wild for her son, and frantick in her woes,
With hair dishevel'd round the world she goes,
To seek where-e'er his body might be cast;
'Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscrib'd on the new tomb appears.
The dear dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o'er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.

Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn
(A fruitless tri bute to their brother's urn),
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaeton in vain:
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb, and weep.

Four times, revolving, the full moon return'd;
So long the mother and the daughters mourn'd:
When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia wou'd have help'd her, but she found
Her self with-held, and rooted to the ground:
A third in wild affliction, as she grieves,
Wou'd rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves;
One sees her thighs transform'd, another views
Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs.
And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies stood
Crusted with bark, and hard'ning into wood;
But still above were female heads display'd,
And mouths, that call'd the mother to their aid.
What cou'd, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kiss'd her sprouting daughters as they grew.
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves,
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves:
The blood came trickling, where she tore away
The leaves and bark: the maids were heard to say,
"Forbear, mistaken parent, oh! forbear;
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever." Here the bark encreas'd,
Clos'd on their faces, and their words suppress'd.

The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, harden'd into value by the sun,
Distill for ever on the streams below:
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show,
Mixt in the sand; whence the rich drops convey'd
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.

The Transformation of Cycnus into a Swan

Cycnus beheld the nymphs transform'd, ally'd
To their dead brother on the mortal side,
In friendship and affection nearer bound;
He left the cities and the realms he own'd,
Thro' pathless fields and lonely shores to range,
And woods made thicker by the sisters' change.
Whilst here, within the dismal gloom, alone,
The melancholy monarch made his moan,
His voice was lessen'd, as he try'd to speak,
And issu'd through a long-extended neck;
His hair transforms to down, his fingers meet
In skinny films, and shape his oary feet;
From both his sides the wings and feathers break;
And from his mouth proceeds a blunted beak:
All Cycnus now into a Swan was turn'd,
Who, still remembring how his kinsman burn'd,
To solitary pools and lakes retires,
And loves the waters as oppos'd to fires.

Mean-while Apollo in a gloomy shade
(The native lustre of his brows decay'd)
Indulging sorrow, sickens at the sight
Of his own sun-shine, and abhors the light;
The hidden griefs, that in his bosom rise,
Sadden his looks and over-cast his eyes,
As when some dusky orb obstructs his ray,
And sullies in a dim eclipse the day.

Now secretly with inward griefs he pin'd,
Now warm resentments to his griefs he joyn'd,
And now renounc'd his office to mankind.
"Ere since the birth of time," said he, "I've born
A long ungrateful toil, without return;
Let now some other manage, if he dare,
The fiery steeds, and mount the burning carr;
Or, if none else, let Jove his fortune try,
And learn to lay his murd'ring thunder by;
Then will he own, perhaps, but own too late,
My son deserv'd not so severe a fate."

The Gods stand round him, as he mourns, and pray
He would resume the conduct of the day,
Nor let the world be lost in endless night:
Jove too himself descending from his height,
Excuses what had happen'd, and intreats,
Majestically mixing pray'rs and threats.
Prevail'd upon at length, again he took
The harness'd steeds, that still with horror shook,
And plies 'em with the lash, and whips 'em on,
And, as he whips, upbraids 'em with his son.

The Story of Calisto

The day was settled in its course; and Jove
Walk'd the wide circuit of the Heavens above,
To search if any cracks or flaws were made;
But all was safe: the Earth he then survey'd,
And cast an eye on ev'ry diff'rent coast,
And ev'ry land; but on Arcadia most.
Her fields he cloath'd, and chear'd her blasted face
With running fountains, and with springing grass.
No tracks of Heav'n's destructive fire remain,
The fields and woods revive, and Nature smiles again.

But as the God walk'd to and fro the Earth,
And rais'd the plants, and gave the spring its birth,
By chance a fair Arcadian nymph he view'd,
And felt the lovely charmer in his blood.
The nymph nor spun, nor dress'd with artful pride,
Her vest was gather'd up, her hair was ty'd;
Now in her hand a slender spear she bore,
Now a light quiver on her shoulders wore;
To chaste Diana from her youth inclin'd,
The sprightly warriors of the wood she joyn'd.
Diana too the gentle huntress lov'd,
Nor was there one of all the nymphs that rov'd
O'er Maenalus, amid the maiden throng,
More favour'd once; but favour lasts not long.

The sun now shone in all its strength, and drove
The heated virgin panting to a grove;
The grove around a grateful shadow cast:
She dropt her arrows, and her bow unbrac'd;
She flung her self on the cool grassy bed;
And on the painted quiver rais'd her head,
Jove saw the charming huntress unprepar'd,
Stretch'd on the verdant turf, without a guard.
"Here I am safe," he cries, "from Juno's eye;
Or shou'd my jealous queen the theft descry,
Yet wou'd I venture on a theft like this,
And stand her rage for such, for such a bliss!"
Diana's shape and habit strait he took,
Soften'd his brows, and smooth'd his awful look,
And mildly in a female accent spoke.
"How fares my girl? How went the morning chase?"
To whom the virgin, starting from the grass,
"All hail, bright deity, whom I prefer
To Jove himself, tho' Jove himself were here."
The God was nearer than she thought, and heard
Well-pleas'd himself before himself preferr'd.

He then salutes her with a warm embrace;
And, e're she half had told the morning chase,
With love enflam'd, and eager on his bliss,
Smother'd her words, and stop'd her with a kiss;
His kisses with unwonted ardour glow'd,
Nor cou'd Diana's shape conceal the God.
The virgin did whate'er a virgin cou'd
(Sure Juno must have pardon'd, had she view'd);
With all her might against his force she strove;
But how can mortal maids contend with Jove?

Possest at length of what his heart desir'd,
Back to his Heav'ns, th' exulting God retir'd.
The lovely huntress, rising from the grass,
With down-cast eyes, and with a blushing face,
By shame confounded, and by fear dismay'd,
Flew from the covert of the guilty shade,
And almost, in the tumult of her mind,
Left her forgotten bow and shafts behind.

But now Diana, with a sprightly train
Of quiver'd virgins, bounding o'er the plain,
Call'd to the nymph; the nymph began to fear
A second fraud, a Jove disguis'd in her;
But, when she saw the sister nymphs, suppress'd
Her rising fears, and mingled with the rest.

How in the look does conscious guilt appear!
Slowly she mov'd, and loiter'd in the rear;
Nor lightly tripp'd, nor by the Goddess ran,
As once she us'd, the foremost of the train.
Her looks were flush'd, and sullen was her mien,
That sure the virgin Goddess (had she been
Aught but a virgin) must the guilt have seen.
'Tis said the nymphs saw all, and guess'd aright:
And now the moon had nine times lost her light,
When Dian, fainting in the mid-day beams,
Found a cool covert, and refreshing streams
That in soft murmurs through the forest flow'd,
And a smooth bed of shining gravel show'd.

A covert so obscure, and streams so clear,
The Goddess prais'd: "And now no spies are near
Let's strip, my gentle maids, and wash," she cries.
Pleas'd with the motion, every maid complies;
Only the blushing huntress stood confus'd,
And form'd delays, and her delays excus'd;
In vain excus'd: her fellows round her press'd,
And the reluctant nymph by force undress'd,
The naked huntress all her shame reveal'd,
In vain her hands the pregnant womb conceal'd;
"Begone!" the Goddess cries with stern disdain,
"Begone! nor dare the hallow'd stream to stain":
She fled, for ever banish'd from the train.

This Juno heard, who long had watch'd her time
To punish the detested rival's crime;
The time was come; for, to enrage her more,
A lovely boy the teeming rival bore.

The Goddess cast a furious look, and cry'd,
"It is enough! I'm fully satisfy'd!
This boy shall stand a living mark, to prove
My husband's baseness and the strumpet's love:
But vengeance shall awake: those guilty charms
That drew the Thunderer from Juno's arms,
No longer shall their wonted force retain,
Nor please the God, nor make the mortal vain."

This said, her hand within her hair she wound,
Swung her to Earth, and drag'd her on the ground:
The prostrate wretch lifts up her arms in pray'r;
Her arms grow shaggy, and deform'd with hair,
Her nails are sharpen'd into pointed claws,
Her hands bear half her weight, and turn to paws;
Her lips, that once cou'd tempt a God, begin
To grow distorted in an ugly grin.
And, lest the supplicating brute might reach
The ears of Jove, she was depriv'd of speech:
Her surly voice thro' a hoarse passage came
In savage sounds: her mind was still the same,
The furry monster fix'd her eyes above,
And heav'd her new unwieldy paws to Jove,
And beg'd his aid with inward groans; and tho'
She could not call him false, she thought him so.

How did she fear to lodge in woods alone,
And haunt the fields and meadows, once her own!
How often wou'd the deep-mouth'd dogs pursue,
Whilst from her hounds the frighted huntress flew!
How did she fear her fellow-brutes, and shun
The shaggy bear, tho' now her self was one!
How from the sight of rugged wolves retire,
Although the grim Lycaon was her sire!

But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanc'd to rouze his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gaz'd: the boy was in a fright,
And aim'd a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbad, and snatch'd 'em through the air
In whirlwinds up to Heav'n, and fix'd 'em there!
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.

When Juno saw the rival in her height,
Spangled with stars, and circled round with light,
She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,
And Tethys, both rever'd among the Gods.
They ask what brings her there: "Ne'er ask," says she,
"What brings me here, Heav'n is no place for me.
You'll see, when night has cover'd all things o'er,
Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore
Usurp the Heav'ns; you'll see 'em proudly rowle
And who shall now on Juno's altars wait,
When those she hates grow greater by her hate?
I on the nymph a brutal form impress'd,
Jove to a goddess has transform'd the beast;
This, this was all my weak revenge could do:
But let the God his chaste amours pursue,
And, as he acted after Io's rape,
Restore th' adultress to her former shape;
Then may he cast his Juno off, and lead
The great Lycaon's offspring to his bed.
But you, ye venerable Pow'rs, be kind,
And, if my wrongs a due resentment find,
Receive not in your waves their setting beams,
Nor let the glaring strumpet taint your streams."

The Goddess ended, and her wish was giv'n.
Back she return'd in triumph up to Heav'n;
Her gawdy peacocks drew her through the skies.
Their tails were spotted with a thousand eyes;
The eyes of Argus on their tails were rang'd,
At the same time the raven's colour chang'd.

The Story of Coronis, and Birth of Aesculapius

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove's unsully'd breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl;
His tongue, his prating tongue had chang'd him quite
To sooty blackness, from the purest white.

The story of his change shall here be told;
In Thessaly there liv'd a nymph of old,
Coronis nam'd; a peerless maid she shin'd,
Confest the fairest of the fairer kind.
Apollo lov'd her, 'till her guilt he knew,
While true she was, or whilst he thought her true.
But his own bird the raven chanc'd to find
The false one with a secret rival joyn'd.
Coronis begg'd him to suppress the tale,
But could not with repeated pray'rs prevail.
His milk-white pinions to the God he ply'd;
The busy daw flew with him, side by side,
And by a thousand teizing questions drew
Th' important secret from him as they flew.
The daw gave honest counsel, tho' despis'd,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advis'd:
"Stay, silly bird, th' ill-natur'd task refuse,
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warn'd by my example: you discern
What now I am, and what I was shall learn.
My foolish honesty was all my crime;
Then hear my story. Once upon a time,
The two-shap'd Ericthonius had his birth
(Without a mother) from the teeming Earth;
Minerva nurs'd him, and the infant laid
Within a chest, of twining osiers made.
The daughters of king Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within. I stood to see
The charge obey'd, perch'd on a neighb'ring tree.
The sisters Pandrosos and Herse keep
The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
And saw the monstrous infant, in a fright,
And call'd her sisters to the hideous sight:
A boy's soft shape did to the waste prevail,
But the boy ended in a dragon's tail.
I told the stern Minerva all that pass'd;
But for my pains, discarded and disgrac'd,
The frowning Goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her fav'rite chose the bird of night.
Be then no tell-tale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.

But you, perhaps, may think I was remov'd,
As never by the heav'nly maid belov'd:
But I was lov'd; ask Pallas if I lye;
Tho' Pallas hate me now, she won't deny:
For I, whom in a feather'd shape you view,
Was once a maid (by Heav'n the story's true)
A blooming maid, and a king's daughter too.
A crowd of lovers own'd my beauty's charms;
My beauty was the cause of all my harms;
Neptune, as on his shores I wont to rove,
Observ'd me in my walks, and fell in love.
He made his courtship, he confess'd his pain,
And offer'd force, when all his arts were vain;
Swift he pursu'd: I ran along the strand,
'Till, spent and weary'd on the sinking sand,
I shriek'd aloud, with cries I fill'd the air
To Gods and men; nor God nor man was there:
A virgin Goddess heard a virgin's pray'r.
For, as my arms I lifted to the skies,
I saw black feathers from my fingers rise;
I strove to fling my garment on the ground;
My garment turn'd to plumes, and girt me round:
My hands to beat my naked bosom try;
Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I:
Lightly I tript, nor weary as before
Sunk in the sand, but skim'd along the shore;
'Till, rising on my wings, I was preferr'd
To be the chaste Minerva's virgin bird:
Preferr'd in vain! I am now in disgrace:
Nyctimene the owl enjoys my place.

On her incestuous life I need not dwell
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell),
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird,
That conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy cov'ring of the night;
The birds, where-e'er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day."

The raven, urg'd by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And curst the harmless daw; the daw withdrew:
The raven to her injur'd patron flew,
And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis and the favour'd youth.

The God was wroth, the colour left his look,
The wreath his head, the harp his hand forsook:
His silver bow and feather'd shafts he took,
And lodg'd an arrow in the tender breast,
That had so often to his own been prest.
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groan'd,
And pull'd his arrow reeking from the wound;
And weltring in her blood, thus faintly cry'd,
"Ah cruel God! tho' I have justly dy'd,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one?"
This said, in agonies she fetch'd her breath.

The God dissolves in pity at her death;
He hates the bird that made her falshood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feather'd shaft, that sent her to the Fates,
And his own hand, that sent the shaft, he hates.
Fain would he heal the wound, and ease her pain,
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire.
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
And, if a God could weep, the God had wept.
Her corps he kiss'd, and heav'nly incense brought,
And solemniz'd the death himself had wrought.

But lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spight of th' immortal mixture in his make,
He ript her womb, and set the child at large,
And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge:
Then in his fury black'd the raven o'er,
And bid him prate in his white plumes no more.

Ocyrrhoe transform'd into a Mare

Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Charicle to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevel'd on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
She knew her father's arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
Once, as the sacred infant she survey'd,
The God was kindled in the raving maid,
And thus she utter'd her prophetick tale:
"Hail, great physician of the world, all-hail;
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the tomb;
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfin'd!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
Then shalt thou dye, but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a God.
And thou, my sire, not destin'd by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to dye,
And quit thy claim to immortality;
When thou shalt feel, enrag'd with inward pains,
The Hydra's venom rankling in thy veins?
The Gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the pow'r of Fate."

Thus entring into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray'd:
More had she still to say; but now appears
Oppress'd with sobs and sighs, and drown'd in tears.
"My voice," says she, "is gone, my language fails;
Through ev'ry limb my kindred shape prevails:
Why did the God this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetick raptures swell my heart!
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O'er flow'ry meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more;
But why, alas! am I transform'd all o'er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserve the man."

Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
But in shrill accents and mis-shapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare:
'Till by degrees accomplish'd in the beast,
She neigh'd outright, and all the steed exprest.
Her stooping body on her hands is born,
Her hands are turn'd to hoofs, and shod in horn,
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train,
The mare was finish'd in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.

The Transformation of Battus to a Touch stone

Sore wept the centuar, and to Phoebus pray'd;
But how could Phoebus give the centaur aid?
Degraded of his pow'r by angry Jove,
In Elis then a herd of beeves he drove;
And wielded in his hand a staff of oak,
And o'er his shoulders threw the shepherd's cloak;
On sev'n compacted reeds he us'd to play,
And on his rural pipe to waste the day.

As once attentive to his pipe he play'd,
The crafty Hermes from the God convey'd
A drove, that sep'rate from their fellows stray'd.
The theft an old insidious peasant view'd
(They call'd him Battus in the neighbourhood),
Hir'd by a vealthy Pylian prince to feed
His fav'rite mares, and watch the gen'rous breed.
The thievish God suspected him, and took
The hind aside, and thus in whispers spoke:
"Discover not the theft, whoe'er thou be,
And take that milk-white heifer for thy fee."
"Go, stranger," cries the clown, "securely on,
That stone shall sooner tell," and show'd a stone.

The God withdrew, but strait return'd again,
In speech and habit like a country swain;
And cries out, "Neighbour, hast thou seen a stray
Of bullocks and of heifers pass this way?
In the recov'ry of my cattle join,
A bullock and a heifer shall be thine."
The peasant quick replies, "You'll find 'em there
In yon dark vale"; and in the vale they were.
The double bribe had his false heart beguil'd:
The God, successful in the tryal, smil'd;
"And dost thou thus betray my self to me?
Me to my self dost thou betray?" says he:
Then to a Touch stone turns the faithless spy;
And in his name records his infamy.

The Story of Aglauros, transform'd into a Statue

This done, the God flew up on high, and pass'd
O'er lofty Athens, by Minerva grac'd,
And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey
All the vast region that beneath him lay.

'Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid
Her yearly homage to Minerva paid;
In canisters, with garlands cover'd o'er,
High on their heads, their mystick gifts they bore:
And now, returning in a solemn train,
The troop of shining virgins fill'd the plain.

The God well pleas'd beheld the pompous show,
And saw the bright procession pass below;
Then veer'd about, and took a wheeling flight,
And hover'd o'er them: as the spreading kite,
That smells the slaughter'd victim from on high,
Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,
And sails around, and keeps it in her eye:
So kept the God the virgin quire in view,
And in slow winding circles round them flew.

As Lucifer excells the meanest star,
Or, as the full-orb'd Phoebe, Lucifer;
So much did Herse all the rest outvy,
And gave a grace to the solemnity.
Hermes was fir'd, as in the clouds he hung:
So the cold bullet, that with fury slung
From Balearick engines mounts on high,
Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky.
At length he pitch'd upon the ground, and show'd
The form divine, the features of a God.
He knew their vertue o'er a female heart,
And yet he strives to better them by art.
He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show
The golden edging on the seam below;
Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand
Waves, with an air, the sleep-procuring wand;
The glitt'ring sandals to his feet applies,
And to each heel the well-trim'd pinion ties.

His ornaments with nicest art display'd,
He seeks th' apartment of the royal maid.
The roof was all with polish'd iv'ry lin'd,
That richly mix'd, in clouds of tortoise shin'd.
Three rooms, contiguous, in a range were plac'd,
The midmost by the beauteous Herse grac'd;
Her virgin sisters lodg'd on either side.
Aglauros first th' approaching God descry'd,
And, as he cross'd her chamber, ask'd his name,
And what his business was, and whence he came.
"I come," reply'd the God, "from Heav'n, to woo
Your sister, and to make an aunt of you;
I am the son and messenger of Jove;
My name is Mercury, my bus'ness love;
Do you, kind damsel, take a lover's part,
And gain admittance to your sister's heart."

She star'd him in the face with looks amaz'd,
As when she on Minerva's secret gaz'd,
And asks a mighty treasure for her hire;
And, 'till he brings it, makes the God retire.
Minerva griev'd to see the nymph succeed;
And now remembring the late impious deed,
When, disobedient to her strict command,
She touch'd the chest with an unhallow'd hand;
In big-swoln sighs her inward rage express'd,
That heav'd the rising Aegis on her breast;
Then sought out Envy in her dark abode,
Defil'd with ropy gore and clots of blood:
Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies,
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.

Directly to the cave her course she steer'd;
Against the gates her martial lance she rear'd;
The gates flew open, and the fiend appear'd.
A pois'nous morsel in her teeth she chew'd,
And gorg'd the flesh of vipers for her food.
Minerva loathing turn'd away her eye;
The hideous monster, rising heavily,
Came stalking forward with a sullen pace,
And left her mangled offals on the place.
Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright,
She fetch'd a groan at such a chearful sight.
Livid and meagre were her looks, her eye
In foul distorted glances turn'd awry;
A hoard of gall her inward parts possess'd,
And spread a greenness o'er her canker'd breast;
Her teeth were brown with rust, and from her tongue,
In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung.
She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
Nor lulls her malice with a moment's sleep,
Restless in spite: while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another's joy;
Foe to her self, distressing and distrest,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.
The Goddess gave (for she abhorr'd her sight)
A short command: "To Athens speed thy flight;
On curst Aglauros try thy utmost art,
And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart."
This said, her spear she push'd against the ground,
And mounting from it with an active bound,
Flew off to Heav'n: the hag with eyes askew
Look'd up, and mutter'd curses as she flew;
For sore she fretted, and began to grieve
At the success which she her self must give.
Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths of thorn,
And sails along, in a black whirlwind born,
O'er fields and flow'ry meadows: where she steers
Her baneful course, a mighty blast appears,
Mildews and blights; the meadows are defac'd,
The fields, the flow'rs, and the whole years laid waste:

On mortals next, and peopled towns she falls,
And breathes a burning plague among their walls.

When Athens she beheld, for arts renown'd,
With peace made happy, and with plenty crown'd,
Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear,
To find out nothing that deserv'd a tear.
Th' apartment now she enter'd, where at rest
Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep opprest.
To execute Minerva's dire command,
She stroak'd the virgin with her canker'd hand,
Then prickly thorns into her breast convey'd,
That stung to madness the devoted maid:
Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart.

To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
And plac'd before the dreaming virgin's view
Her sister's marriage, and her glorious fate:
Th' imaginary bride appears in state;
The bride-groom with unwonted beauty glows:
For envy magnifies what-e'er she shows.

Full of the dream, Aglauros pin'd away
In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
Consum'd like ice, that just begins to run,
When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
Or like unwholsome weeds, that set on fire
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
Giv'n up to envy (for in ev'ry thought
The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought)
Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
Rather than see her sister's wish succeed,
To tell her awfull father what had past:
At length before the door her self she cast;
And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride,
A passage to the love-sick God deny'd.
The God caress'd, and for admission pray'd,
And sooth'd in softest words th' envenom'd maid.
In vain he sooth'd: "Begone!" the maid replies,
"Or here I keep my seat, and never rise."
"Then keep thy seat for ever," cries the God,
And touch'd the door, wide op'ning to his rod.
Fain would she rise, and stop him, but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
Her joynts are all benum'd, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in ev'ry nail.
As when a cancer in the body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds;
So does the chilness to each vital parte
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart;
'Till hard'ning ev'ry where, and speechless grown,
She sits unmov'd, and freezes to a stone.
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in the sedentary figure seen.

Europa's Rape

When now the God his fury had allay'd,
And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid,
From where the bright Athenian turrets rise
He mounts aloft, and re-ascends the skies.
Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes,
And, as he mix'd among the crowd of Gods,
Beckon'd him out, and drew him from the rest,
And in soft whispers thus his will exprest.

"My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid
Thy sire's commands are through the world convey'd.
Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force,
And to the walls of Sidon speed thy course;
There find a herd of heifers wand'ring o'er
The neighb'ring hill, and drive 'em to the shore."

Thus spoke the God, concealing his intent.
The trusty Hermes, on his message went,
And found the herd of heifers wand'ring o'er
A neighb'ring hill, and drove 'em to the shore;
Where the king's daughter, with a lovely train
Of fellow-nymphs, was sporting on the plain.

The dignity of empire laid aside,
(For love but ill agrees with kingly pride)
The ruler of the skies, the thund'ring God,
Who shakes the world's foundations with a nod,
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran,
Frisk'd in a bull, and bellow'd o'er the plain.
Large rowles of fat about his shoulders clung,
And from his neck the double dewlap hung.
His skin was whiter than the snow that lies
Unsully'd by the breath of southern skies;
Small shining horns on his curl'd forehead stand,
As turn'd and polish'd by the work-man's hand;
His eye-balls rowl'd, not formidably bright,
But gaz'd and languish'd with a gentle light.
His ev'ry look was peaceful, and exprest
The softness of the lover in the beast.

Agenor's royal daughter, as she plaid
Among the fields, the milk-white bull survey'd,
And view'd his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
At length she pluck'd the rising flow'rs, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroak'd his head.
He stood well-pleas'd to touch the charming fair,
But hardly could confine his pleasure there.
And now he wantons o'er the neighb'ring strand,
Now rowls his body on the yellow sand;
And, now perceiving all her fears decay'd,
Comes tossing forward to the royal maid;
Gives her his breast to stroke, and downward turns
His grizly brow, and gently stoops his horns.
In flow'ry wreaths the royal virgin drest
His bending horns, and kindly clapt his breast.
'Till now grown wanton and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she prest the Thunderer,
She plac'd her self upon his back, and rode
O'er fields and meadows, seated on the God.

He gently march'd along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approach'd the seas;
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.
The frighted nymph looks backward on the shoar,
And hears the tumbling billows round her roar;
But still she holds him fast: one hand is born
Upon his back; the other grasps a horn:
Her train of ruffling garments flies behind,
Swells in the air, and hovers in the wind.

Through storms and tempests he the virgin bore,
And lands her safe on the Dictean shore;
Where now, in his divinest form array'd,
In his true shape he captivates the maid;
Who gazes on him, and with wond'ring eyes
Beholds the new majestick figure rise,
His glowing features, and celestial light,
And all the God discover'd to her sight.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
~ Ovid, BOOK THE SECOND

,
544:class:Classics

BOOK THE THIRTEENTH

The Speeches of Ajax and Ulysses

The chiefs were set; the soldiers crown'd the field:
To these the master of the seven-fold shield
Upstarted fierce: and kindled with disdain.
Eager to speak, unable to contain
His boiling rage, he rowl'd his eyes around
The shore, and Graecian gallies hall'd a-ground.
Then stretching out his hands, O Jove, he cry'd,
Must then our cause before the fleet be try'd?
And dares Ulysses for the prize contend,
In sight of what he durst not once defend?
But basely fled that memorable day,
When I from Hector's hands redeem'd the flaming prey.
So much 'tis safer at the noisie bar
With words to flourish, than ingage in war.
By diff'rent methods we maintain our right,
Nor am I made to talk, nor he to fight.
In bloody fields I labour to be great;
His arms are a smooth tongue, and soft deceit:
Nor need I speak my deeds, for those you see,
The sun, and day are witnesses for me.
Let him who fights unseen, relate his own,
And vouch the silent stars, and conscious moon.
Great is the prize demanded, I confess,
But such an abject rival makes it less;
That gift, those honours, he but hop'd to gain,
Can leave no room for Ajax to be vain:
Losing he wins, because his name will be
Ennobled by defeat, who durst contend with me.
Were my known valour question'd, yet my blood
Without that plea wou'd make my title good:
My sire was Telamon, whose arms, employ'd
With Hercules, these Trojan walls destroy'd;
And who before with Jason sent from Greece,
In the first ship brought home the golden fleece.
Great Telamon from Aeacus derives
His birth (th' inquisitor of guilty lives
In shades below; where Sisyphus, whose son
This thief is thought, rouls up the restless heavy stone),

Just Aeacus, the king of Gods above
Begot: thus Ajax is the third from Jove.
Nor shou'd I seek advantage from my line,
Unless (Achilles) it was mix'd with thine:
As next of kin, Achilles' arms I claim;
This fellow wou'd ingraft a foreign name
Upon our stock, and the Sisyphian seed
By fraud, and theft asserts his father's breed:
Then must I lose these arms, because I came
To fight uncall'd, a voluntary name,
Nor shunn'd the cause, but offer'd you my aid?
While he long lurking was to war betray'd:
Forc'd to the field he came, but in the reer;
And feign'd distraction to conceal his fear:
'Till one more cunning caught him in the snare
(Ill for himself); and dragg'd him into war.
Now let a hero's arms a coward vest,
And he who shunn'd all honours, gain the best:
And let me stand excluded from my right,
Robb'd of my kinsman's arms, who first appear'd in fight,

Better for us, at home had he remain'd,
Had it been true the madness which he feign'd,
Or so believ'd; the less had been our shame,
The less his counsell'd crime, which brands the Grecian name;

Nor Philoctetes had been left inclos'd
In a bare isle, to wants and pains expos'd,
Where to the rocks, with solitary groans,
His suff'rings, and our baseness he bemoans:
And wishes (so may Heav'n his wish fulfill)
The due reward to him, who caus'd his ill.
Now he, with us to Troy's destruction sworn,
Our brother of the war, by whom are born
Alcides' arrows, pent in narrow bounds,
With cold and hunger pinch'd, and pain'd with wounds,
To find him food and cloathing, must employ
Against the birds the shafts due to the fate of Troy.
Yet still he lives, and lives from treason free,
Because he left Ulysses' company;
Poor Palamede might wish, so void of aid,
Rather to have been left, than so to death betray'd.
The coward bore the man immortal spight,
Who sham'd him out of madness into fight:
Nor daring otherwise to vent his hate,
Accus'd him first of treason to the state;
And then for proof produc'd the golden store,
Himself had hidden in his tent before:
Thus of two champions he depriv'd our host,
By exile one, and one by treason lost.
Thus fights Ulysses, thus his fame extends,
A formidable man, but to his friends:
Great, for what greatness is in words, and sound,
Ev'n faithful Nestor less in both is found:
But that he might without a rival reign,
He left this faithful Nestor on the plain;
Forsook his friend ev'n at his utmost need,
Who tir'd, and tardy with his wounded steed,
Cry'd out for aid, and call'd him by his name;
But cowardice has neither ears nor shame;
Thus fled the good old man, bereft of aid,
And, for as much as lay in him, betray'd:
That this is not a fable forg'd by me,
Like one of his, an Ulyssean lie,
I vouch ev'n Diomede, who tho' his friend,
Cannot that act excuse, much less defend:
He call'd him back aloud, and tax'd his fear;
And sure enough he heard, but durst not hear.

The Gods with equal eyes on mortal look,
He justly was forsaken, who forsook:
Wanted that succour, he refus'd to lend,
Found ev'ry fellow such another friend:
No wonder, if he roar'd that all might hear;
His elocution was increas'd by fear:
I heard, I ran, I found him out of breath,
Pale, trembling, and half dead with fear of death.
Though he had judg'd himself by his own laws,
And stood condemn'd, I help'd the common cause:
With my broad buckler hid him from the foe
(Ev'n the shield trembled as he lay below);
And from impending Fate the coward freed:
Good Heav'n forgive me for so bad a deed!
If still he will persist, and urge the strife,
First let him give me back his forfeit life:
Let him return to that opprobrious field;
Again creep under my protecting shield:
Let him lie wounded, let the foe be near,
And let his quiv'ring heart confess his fear;
There put him in the very jaws of Fate;
And let him plead his cause in that estate:
And yet when snatch'd from death, when from below
My lifted shield I loos'd, and let him go;
Good Heav'ns, how light he rose, with what a bound
He sprung from earth, forgetful of his wound;
How fresh, how eager then his feet to ply;
Who had not strength to stand, had speed to fly!

Hector came on, and brought the Gods along;
Fear seiz'd alike the feeble, and the strong:
Each Greek was an Ulysses; such a dread
Th' approach, and ev'n the sound of Hector bred:
Him, flesh'd with slaughter, and with conquest crown'd,
I met, and over-turn'd him to the ground;
When after, matchless as he deem'd in might,
He challeng'd all our host to single fight;
All eyes were fix'd on me: the lots were thrown;
But for your champion I was wish'd alone:
Your vows were heard; we fought, and neither yield;
Yet I return'd unvanquish'd from the field.
With Jove to friend, th' insulting Trojan came,
And menac'd us with force, our fleet with flame.
Was it the strength of this tongue-valiant lord,
In that black hour, that sav'd you from the sword?
Or was my breast expos'd alone, to brave
A thousand swords, a thousand ships to save?
The hopes of your return! And can you yield,
For a sav'd fleet, less than a single shield?
Think it no boast, o Grecians, if I deem
These arms want Ajax, more than Ajax them:
Or, I with them an equal honour share;
They honour'd to be worn, and I to wear.
Will he compare my courage with his sleight?
As well he may compare the day with night.
Night is indeed the province of his reign:
Yet all his dark exploits no more contain
Than a spy taken, and a sleeper slain;
A priest made pris'ner, Pallas made a prey:
But none of all these actions done by day:
Nor ought of these was done, and Diomede away.
If on such petty merits you confer
So vast a prize, let each his portion share;
Make a just dividend; and if not all,
The greater part to Diomede will fall.
But why for Ithacus such arms as those,
Who naked, and by night invades his foes?
The glitt'ring helm by moonlight will proclaim
The latent robber, and prevent his game:
Nor cou'd he hold his tott'ring head upright
Beneath that morion, or sustain the weight;
Nor that right arm cou'd toss the beamy lance;
Much less the left that ampler shield advance;
Pond'rous with precious weight, and rough with cost
Of the round world in rising gold emboss'd.
That orb would ill become his hand to wield,
And look as for the gold he stole the shield;
Which, shou'd your error on the wretch bestow,
It would not frighten, but allure the foe:
Why asks he, what avails him not in fight,
And wou'd but cumber, and retard his flight,
In which his only excellence is plac'd?
You give him death, that intercept his haste.
Add, that his own is yet a maiden-shield,
Nor the least dint has suffer'd in the field,
Guiltless of fight: mine batter'd, hew'd, and bor'd,
Worn out of service, must forsake his lord,
What farther need of words our right to scan?
My arguments are deeds, let action speak the man.
Since from a champion's arms the strife arose,
Go cast the glorious prize amid the foes;
Then send us to redeem both arms, and shield,
And let him wear, who wins 'em in the field.

He said: a murmur from a multitude,
Or somewhat like a stifled shout, ensu'd:
'Till from his seat arose Laertes' son,
Look'd down a while, and paus'd, e'er he begun;
Then, to th' expecting audience, rais'd his look,
And not without prepar'd attention spoke:
Soft was his tone, and sober was his face;
Action his words, and words his action grace.

If Heav'n, my lords, had heard our common pray'r,
These arms had caus'd no quarrel for an heir;
Still great Achilles had his own possess'd,
And we with great Achilles had been bless'd;
But since hard Fate, and Heav'n's severe decree,
Have ravish'd him away from you, and me
(At this he sigh'd, and wip'd his eyes, and drew,
Or seem'd to draw, some drops of kindly dew),
Who better can succeed Achilles lost,
Than he, who gave Achilles to your hoast?
This only I request, that neither he
May gain, by being what he seems to be,
A stupid thing; nor I may lose the prize,
By having sense, which Heav'n to him denies:
Since great or small, the talent I enjoy'd
Was ever in the common cause employ'd;
Nor let my wit, and wonted eloquence,
Which often has been us'd in your defense,
And in my own, this only time be brought
To bear against my self, and deem'd a fault.
Make not a crime, where Nature made it none;
For ev'ry man may freely use his own.
The deeds of long-descended ancestors
Are but by grace of imputation ours,
Theirs in effect; but since he draws his line
From Jove, and seems to plead a right divine;
From Jove, like him, I claim my pedigree,
And am descended in the same degree:
My sire Laertes was Arcesius' heir,
Arcesius was the son of Jupiter:
No parricide, no banish'd man, is known
In all my line: let him excuse his own.
Hermes ennobles too my mother's side,
By both my parents to the Gods ally'd.
But not because that on the female part
My blood is better, dare I claim desert,
Or that my sire from parricide is free;
But judge by merit betwixt him, and me:
The prize be to the best; provided yet
That Ajax for a while his kin forget,
And his great sire, and greater uncle's name,
To fortifie by them his feeble claim:
Be kindred and relation laid aside,
And honour's cause by laws of honour try'd:
For if he plead proximity of blood;
That empty title is with ease withstood.
Peleus, the hero's sire, more nigh than he,
And Pyrrhus, his undoubted progeny,
Inherit first these trophies of the field;
To Scyros, or to Pthia, send the shield:
And Teucer has an uncle's right; yet he
Waves his pretensions, nor contends with me.

Then since the cause on pure desert is plac'd,
Whence shall I take my rise, what reckon last?
I not presume on ev'ry act to dwell,
But take these few, in order as they fell.

Thetis, who knew the Fates, apply'd her care
To keep Achilles in disguise from war;
And 'till the threatning influence was past,
A woman's habit on the hero cast:
All eyes were cozen'd by the borrow'd vest,
And Ajax (never wiser than the rest)
Found no Pelides there: at length I came
With proffer'd wares to this pretended dame;
She, not discover'd by her mien, or voice,
Betray'd her manhood by her manly choice;
And while on female toys her fellows look,
Grasp'd in her warlike hand, a javelin shook;
Whom, by this act reveal'd, I thus bespoke:
O Goddess-born! resist not Heav'n's decree,
The fall of Ilium is reserv'd for thee;
Then seiz'd him, and produc'd in open light,
Sent blushing to the field the fatal knight.
Mine then are all his actions of the war;
Great Telephus was conquer'd by my spear,
And after cur'd: to me the Thebans owe,
Lesbos, and Tenedos, their overthrow;
Syros and Cylla: not on all to dwell,
By me Lyrnesus, and strong Chrysa fell:
And since I sent the man who Hector slew,
To me the noble Hector's death is due:
Those arms I put into his living hand,
Those arms, Pelides dead, I now demand.

When Greece was injur'd in the Spartan prince,
And met at Aulis to avenge th' offence,
'Twas a dead calm, or adverse blasts, that reign'd,
And in the port the wind-bound fleet detain'd:
Bad signs were seen, and oracles severe
Were daily thunder'd in our gen'ral's ear;
That by his daughter's blood we must appease
Diana's kindled wrath, and free the seas.
Affection, int'rest, fame, his heart assail'd:
But soon the father o'er the king prevail'd:
Bold, on himself he took the pious crime,
As angry with the Gods, as they with him.
No subject cou'd sustain their sov'reign's look,
'Till this hard enterprize I undertook:
I only durst th' imperial pow'r controul,
And undermin'd the parent in his soul;
Forc'd him t' exert the king for common good,
And pay our ransom with his daughter's blood.
Never was cause more difficult to plead,
Than where the judge against himself decreed:
Yet this I won by dint of argument;
The wrongs his injur'd brother underwent,
And his own office, sham'd him to consent.

'Tis harder yet to move the mother's mind,
And to this heavy task was I design'd:
Reasons against her love I knew were vain;
I circumvented whom I could not gain:
Had Ajax been employ'd, our slacken'd sails
Had still at Aulis waited happy gales.

Arriv'd at Troy, your choice was fix'd on me,
A fearless envoy, fit for a bold embassy:
Secure, I enter'd through the hostile court,
Glitt'ring with steel, and crowded with resort:
There, in the midst of arms, I plead our cause,
Urge the foul rape, and violated laws;
Accuse the foes, as authors of the strife,
Reproach the ravisher, demand the wife.
Priam, Antenor, and the wiser few,
I mov'd; but Paris, and his lawless crew
Scarce held their hands, and lifted swords; but stood
In act to quench their impious thirst of blood:
This Menelaus knows; expos'd to share
With me the rough preludium of the war.

Endless it were to tell, what I have done,
In arms, or council, since the siege begun:
The first encounter's past, the foe repell'd,
They skulk'd within the town, we kept the field.
War seem'd asleep for nine long years; at length
Both sides resolv'd to push, we try'd our strength
Now what did Ajax, while our arms took breath,
Vers'd only in the gross mechanick trade of death?
If you require my deeds, with ambush'd arms
I trapp'd the foe, or tir'd with false alarms;
Secur'd the ships, drew lines along the plain,
The fainting chear'd, chastis'd the rebel-train,
Provided forage, our spent arms renew'd;
Employ'd at home, or sent abroad, the common cause pursu'd.

The king, deluded in a dream by Jove,
Despair'd to take the town, and order'd to remove.
What subject durst arraign the Pow'r supream,
Producing Jove to justifie his dream?
Ajax might wish the soldiers to retain
From shameful flight, but wishes were in vain:
As wanting of effect had been his words,
Such as of course his thundring tongue affords.
But did this boaster threaten, did he pray,
Or by his own example urge their stay?
None, none of these: but ran himself away.
I saw him run, and was asham'd to see;
Who ply'd his feet so fast to get aboard, as he?
Then speeding through the place, I made a stand,
And loudly cry'd, O base degenerate band,
To leave a town already in your hand!
After so long expence of blood, for fame,
To bring home nothing, but perpetual shame!
These words, or what I have forgotten since
(For grief inspir'd me then with eloquence),
Reduc'd their minds; they leave the crowded port,
And to their late forsaken camp resort:
Dismay'd the council met: this man was there,
But mute, and not recover'd of his fear:
Thersites tax'd the king, and loudly rail'd,
But his wide opening mouth with blows I seal'd.
Then, rising, I excite their souls to fame,
And kindle sleeping virtue into flame.
From thence, whatever he perform'd in fight
Is justly mine, who drew him back from flight.

Which of the Grecian chiefs consorts with thee?
But Diomede desires my company,
And still communicates his praise with me.
As guided by a God, secure he goes,
Arm'd with my fellowship, amid the foes:
And sure no little merit I may boast,
Whom such a man selects from such an hoast;
Unforc'd by lots I went without affright,
To dare with him the dangers of the night:
On the same errand sent, we met the spy
Of Hector, double-tongu'd, and us'd to lie;
Him I dispatch'd, but not 'till undermin'd,
I drew him first to tell, what treach'rous Troy design'd:

My task perform'd, with praise I had retir'd,
But not content with this, to greater praise aspir'd:
Invaded Rhesus, and his Thracian crew,
And him, and his, in their own strength I slew;
Return'd a victor, all my vows compleat,
With the king's chariot, in his royal seat:
Refuse me now his arms, whose fiery steeds
Were promis'd to the spy for his nocturnal deeds:
Yet let dull Ajax bear away my right,
When all his days out-balance this one night.

Nor fought I darkling still: the sun beheld
With slaughter'd Lycians when I strew'd the field:
You saw, and counted as I pass'd along,
Alastor, Chromius, Ceranos the strong,
Alcander, Prytanis, and Halius,
Noemon, Charopes, and Ennomus;
Coon, Chersidamas; and five beside,
Men of obscure descent, but courage try'd:
All these this hand laid breathless on the ground;
Nor want I proofs of many a manly wound:
All honest, all before: believe not me;
Words may deceive, but credit what you see.

At this he bar'd his breast, and show'd his scars,
As of a furrow'd field, well plow'd with wars;
Nor is this part unexercis'd, said he;
That gyant-bulk of his from wounds is free:
Safe in his shield he fears no foe to try,
And better manages his blood, than I:
But this avails me not; our boaster strove
Not with our foes alone, but partial Jove,
To save the fleet: this I confess is true
(Nor will I take from any man his due):
But thus assuming all, he robs from you.
Some part of honour to your share will fall,
He did the best indeed, but did not all.
Patroclus in Achilles' arms, and thought
The chief he seem'd, with equal ardour fought;
Preserv'd the fleet, repell'd the raging fire,
And forc'd the fearful Trojans to retire.

But Ajax boasts, that he was only thought
A match for Hector, who the combat sought:
Sure he forgets the king, the chiefs, and me:
All were as eager for the fight, as he:
He but the ninth, and not by publick voice,
Or ours preferr'd, was only Fortune's choice:
They fought; nor can our hero boast th' event,
For Hector from the field unwounded went.

Why am I forc'd to name that fatal day,
That snatch'd the prop and pride of Greece away?
I saw Pelides sink, with pious grief,
And ran in vain, alas! to his relief;
For the brave soul was fled: full of my friend
I rush'd amid the war, his relicks to defend:
Nor ceas'd my toil, 'till I redeem'd the prey,
And, loaded with Achilles, march'd away:
Those arms, which on these shoulders then I bore,
'Tis just you to these shoulders should restore.
You see I want not nerves, who cou'd sustain
The pond'rous ruins of so great a man:
Or if in others equal force you find,
None is endu'd with a more grateful mind.

Did Thetis then, ambitious in her care,
These arms thus labour'd for her son prepare;
That Ajax after him the heav'nly gift shou'd wear!
For that dull soul to stare with stupid eyes,
On the learn'd unintelligible prize!
What are to him the sculptures of the shield,
Heav'n's planets, Earth, and Ocean's watry field?
The Pleiads, Hyads; less, and greater Bear,
Undipp'd in seas; Orion's angry star;
Two diff'ring cities, grav'd on either hand;
Would he wear arms he cannot understand?

Beside, what wise objections he prepares
Against my late accession to the wars?
Does not the fool perceive his argument
Is with more force against Achilles bent?
For if dissembling be so great a crime,
The fault is common, and the same in him:
And if he taxes both of long delay,
My guilt is less, who sooner came away.
His pious mother, anxious for his life,
Detain'd her son; and me, my pious wife.
To them the blossoms of our youth were due,
Our riper manhood we reserv'd for you.
But grant me guilty, 'tis not much my care,
When with so great a man my guilt I share:
My wit to war the matchless hero brought,
But by this fool I never had been caught.

Nor need I wonder, that on me he threw
Such foul aspersions, when he spares not you:
If Palamede unjustly fell by me,
Your honour suffer'd in th' unjust decree:
I but accus'd, you doom'd: and yet he dy'd,
Convinc'd of treason, and was fairly try'd:
You heard not he was false; your eyes beheld
The traytor manifest; the bribe reveal'd.

That Philoctetes is on Lemnos left,
Wounded, forlorn, of human aid bereft,
Is not my crime, or not my crime alone;
Defend your justice, for the fact's your own:
'Tis true, th' advice was mine; that staying there
He might his weary limbs with rest repair,
From a long voyage free, and from a longer war.
He took the counsl, and he lives at least;
Th' event declares I counsell'd for the best:
Though faith is all in ministers of state;
For who can promise to be fortunate?
Now since his arrows are the Fate of Troy,
Do not my wit, or weak address, employ;
Send Ajax there, with his persuasive sense,
To mollifie the man, and draw him thence:
But Xanthus shall run backward; Ida stand
A leafless mountain; and the Grecian band
Shall fight for Troy; if, when my councils fail,
The wit of heavy Ajax can prevail.

Hard Philoctetes, exercise thy spleen
Against thy fellows, and the king of men;
Curse my devoted head, above the rest,
And wish in arms to meet me breast to breast:
Yet I the dang'rous task will undertake,
And either die my self, or bring thee back.

Nor doubt the same success, as when before
The Phrygian prophet to these tents I bore,
Surpriz'd by night, and forc'd him to declare
In what was plac'd the fortune of the war,
Heav'n's dark decrees, and answers to display,
And how to take the town, and where the secret lay:
Yet this I compass'd, and from Troy convey'd
The fatal image of their guardian-maid;
That work was mine; for Pallas, though our friend,
Yet while she was in Troy, did Troy defend.
Now what has Ajax done, or what design'd?
A noisie nothing, and an empty wind.
If he be what he promises in show,
Why was I sent, and why fear'd he to go?
Our boasting champion thought the task not light
To pass the guards, commit himself to night;
Not only through a hostile town to pass,
But scale, with steep ascent, the sacred place;
With wand'ring steps to search the cittadel,
And from the priests their patroness to steal:
Then through surrounding foes to force my way,
And bear in triumph home the heavn'ly prey;
Which had I not, Ajax in vain had held,
Before that monst'rous bulk, his sev'nfold shield.
That night to conquer Troy I might be said,
When Troy was liable to conquest made.

Why point'st thou to my partner of the war?
Tydides had indeed a worthy share
In all my toil, and praise; but when thy might
Our ships protected, did'st thou singly fight?
All join'd, and thou of many wert but one;
I ask'd no friend, nor had, but him alone:
Who, had he not been well assur'd, that art,
And conduct were of war the better part,
And more avail'd than strength, my valiant friend
Had urg'd a better right, than Ajax can pretend:
As good at least Eurypilus may claim,
And the more mod'rate Ajax of the name:
The Cretan king, and his brave charioteer,
And Menelaus bold with sword, and spear:
All these had been my rivals in the shield,
And yet all these to my pretensions yield.
Thy boist'rous hands are then of use, when I
With this directing head those hands apply.
Brawn without brain is thine: my prudent care
Foresees, provides, administers the war:
Thy province is to fight; but when shall be
The time to fight, the king consults with me:
No dram of judgment with thy force is join'd:
Thy body is of profit, and my mind.
By how much more the ship her safety owes
To him who steers, than him that only rows;
By how much more the captain merits praise,
Than he who fights, and fighting but obeys;
By so much greater is my worth than thine,
Who canst but execute, what I design.
What gain'st thou, brutal man, if I confess
Thy strength superior, when thy wit is less?
Mind is the man: I claim my whole desert,
From the mind's vigour, and th' immortal part.

But you, o Grecian chiefs, reward my care,
Be grateful to your watchman of the war:
For all my labours in so long a space,
Sure I may plead a title to your grace:
Enter the town, I then unbarr'd the gates,
When I remov'd their tutelary Fates.
By all our common hopes, if hopes they be
Which I have now reduc'd to certainty;
By falling Troy, by yonder tott'ring tow'rs,
And by their taken Gods, which now are ours;
Or if there yet a farther task remains,
To be perform'd by prudence, or by pains;
If yet some desp'rate action rests behind,
That asks high conduct, and a dauntless mind;
If ought be wanting to the Trojan doom,
Which none but I can manage, and o'ercome,
Award, those arms I ask, by your decree:
Or give to this, what you refuse to me.

He ceas'd: and ceasing with respect he bow'd,
And with his hand at once the fatal statue show'd.
Heav'n, air and ocean rung, with loud applause,
And by the gen'ral vote he gain'd his cause.
Thus conduct won the prize, when courage fail'd,
And eloquence o'er brutal force prevail'd.

The Death of Ajax

He who cou'd often, and alone, withstand
The foe, the fire, and Jove's own partial hand,
Now cannot his unmaster'd grief sustain,
But yields to rage, to madness, and disdain;
Then snatching out his fauchion, Thou, said he,
Art mine; Ulysses lays no claim to thee.
O often try'd, and ever-trusty sword,
Now do thy last kind office to thy lord:
'Tis Ajax who requests thy aid, to show
None but himself, himself cou'd overthrow:
He said, and with so good a will to die,
Did to his breast the fatal point apply,
It found his heart, a way 'till then unknown,
Where never weapon enter'd, but his own.
No hands cou'd force it thence, so fix'd it stood,
'Till out it rush'd, expell'd by streams of spouting blood.

The fruitful blood produc'd a flow'r, which grew
On a green stem; and of a purple hue:
Like his, whom unaware Apollo slew:
Inscrib'd in both, the letters are the same,
But those express the grief, and these the name.

The Story of Polyxena and Hecuba

The victor with full sails for Lemnos stood
(Once stain'd by matrons with their husbands' blood),
Thence great Alcides' fatal shafts to bear,
Assign'd to Philoctetes' secret care.
These with their guardian to the Greeks convey'd,
Their ten years' toil with wish'd success repaid.
With Troy old Priam falls: his queen survives;
'Till all her woes compleat, transform'd she grieves
In borrow'd sounds, nor with an human face,
Barking tremendous o'er the plains of Thrace.
Still Ilium's flames their pointed columns raise,
And the red Hellespont reflects the blaze.
Shed on Jove's altar are the poor remains
Of blood, which trickl'd from old Priam's veins.
Cassandra lifts her hands to Heav'n in vain,
Drag'd by her sacred hair; the trembling train
Of matrons to their burning temples fly:
There to their Gods for kind protection cry;
And to their statues cling 'till forc'd away,
The victor Greeks bear off th' invidious prey.
From those high tow'rs Astyanax is thrown,
Whence he was wont with pleasure to look down.
When oft his mother with a fond delight
Pointed to view his father's rage in fight,
To win renown, and guard his country's right.

The winds now call to sea; brisk northern gales
Sing in the shrowds, and court the spreading sails.
Farewel, dear Troy, the captive matrons cry;
Yes, we must leave our long-lov'd native sky.
Then prostrate on the shore they kiss the sand,
And quit the smoking ruines of the land.
Last Hecuba on board, sad sight! appears;
Found weeping o'er her children's sepulchres:
Drag'd by Ulysses from her slaughter'd sons,
Whilst yet she graspt their tombs, and kist their mouldring bones.

Yet Hector's ashes from his urn she bore,
And in her bosom the sad relique wore:
Then scatter'd on his tomb her hoary hairs,
A poor oblation mingled with her tears.

Oppos'd to Ilium lye the Thracian plains,
Where Polymestor safe in plenty reigns.
King Priam to his care commits his son,
Young Polydore, the chance of war to shun.
A wise precaution! had not gold, consign'd
For the child's use, debauch'd the tyrant's mind.
When sinking Troy to its last period drew,
With impious hands his royal charge he slew;
Then in the sea the lifeless coarse is thrown;
As with the body he the guilt could drown.

The Greeks now riding on the Thracian shore,
'Till kinder gales invite, their vessels moor.
Here the wide-op'ning Earth to sudden view
Disclos'd Achilles, great as when he drew
The vital air, but fierce with proud disdain,
As when he sought Briseis to regain;
When stern debate, and rash injurious strife
Unsheath'd his sword, to reach Atrides' life.
And will ye go? he said. Is then the name
Of the once great Achilles lost to fame?
Yet stay, ungrateful Greeks; nor let me sue
In vain for honours to my Manes due.
For this just end, Polyxena I doom
With victim-rites to grace my slighted tomb.

The phantom spoke; the ready Greeks obey'd,
And to the tomb led the devoted maid
Snatch'd from her mother, who with pious care
Cherish'd this last relief of her despair.
Superior to her sex, the fearless maid,
Approach'd the altar, and around survey'd
The cruel rites, and consecrated knife,
Which Pyrrhus pointed at her guiltless life,
Then as with stern amaze intent he stood,
"Now strike," she said; "now spill my genr'ous blood;
Deep in my breast, or throat, your dagger sheath,
Whilst thus I stand prepar'd to meet my death.
For life on terms of slav'ry I despise:
Yet sure no God approves this sacrifice.
O cou'd I but conceal this dire event
From my sad mother, I should dye content.
Yet should she not with tears my death deplore,
Since her own wretched life demands them more.
But let not the rude touch of man pollute
A virgin-victim; 'tis a modest suit.
It best will please, whoe'er demands my blood,
That I untainted reach the Stygian flood.
Yet let one short, last, dying prayer be heard;
To Priam's daughter pay this last regard;
'Tis Priam's daughter, not a captive, sues;
Do not the rites of sepulture refuse.
To my afflicted mother, I implore,
Free without ransom my dead corpse restore:
Nor barter me for gain, when I am cold;
But be her tears the price, if I am sold:
Time was she could have ransom'd me with gold".

Thus as she pray'd, one common shower of tears
Burst forth, and stream'd from ev'ry eye but hers.
Ev'n the priest wept, and with a rude remorse
Plung'd in her heart the steel's resistless force.
Her slacken'd limbs sunk gently to the ground,
Dauntless her looks, unalter'd by the wound.
And as she fell, she strove with decent pride
To hide, what suits a virgin's care to hide.
The Trojan matrons the pale corpse receive,
And the whole slaughter'd race of Priam grieve,
Sad they recount the long disastrous tale;
Then with fresh tears, thee, royal maid, bewail;
Thy widow'd mother too, who flourish'd late
The royal pride of Asia's happier state:
A captive lot now to Ulysses born;
Whom yet the victor would reject with scorn,
Were she not Hector's mother: Hector's fame
Scarce can a master for his mother claim!
With strict embrace the lifeless coarse she view'd;
And her fresh grief that flood of tears renew'd,
With which she lately mourn'd so many dead;
Tears for her country, sons, and husb and shed.
With the thick gushing stream she bath'd the wound;
Kiss'd her pale lips; then weltring on the ground,
With wonted rage her frantick bosom tore;
Sweeping her hair amidst the clotted gore;
Whilst her sad accents thus her loss deplore.

"Behold a mother's last dear pledge of woe!
Yes, 'tis the last I have to suffer now.
Thou, my Polyxena, my ills must crown:
Already in thy Fate, I feel my own.
'Tis thus, lest haply of my numerous seed
One should unslaughter'd fall, even thou must bleed:
And yet I hop'd thy sex had been thy guard;
But neither has thy tender sex been spar'd.
The same Achilles, by whose deadly hate
Thy brothers fell, urg'd thy untimely fate!
The same Achilles, whose destructive rage
Laid waste my realms, has robb'd my childless age.
When Paris' shafts with Phoebus' certain aid
At length had pierc'd this dreaded chief, I said,
Secure of future ills, he can no more:
But see, he still pursues me as before.
With rage rekindled his dead ashes burn;
And his yet murd'ring ghost my wretched house must mourn.

This tyrant's lust of slaughter I have fed
With large supplies from my too-fruitful bed.
Troy's tow'rs lye waste; and the wide ruin ends
The publick woe; but me fresh woe attends.
Troy still survives to me; to none but me;
And from its ills I never must be free.
I, who so late had power, and wealth, and ease,
Bless'd with my husband, and a large encrease,
Must now in poverty an exile mourn;
Ev'n from the tombs of my dead offspring torn:
Giv'n to Penelope, who proud of spoil,
Allots me to the loom's ungrateful toil;
Points to her dames, and crys with scorning mien:
See Hector's mother, and great Priam's queen!
And thou, my child, sole hope of all that's lost,
Thou now art slain, to sooth this hostile ghost.
Yes, my child falls an offering to my foe!
Then what am I, who still survive this woe?
Say, cruel Gods! for what new scenes of death
Must a poor aged wretch prolong this hated breath?
Troy fal'n, to whom could Priam happy seem?
Yet was he so; and happy must I deem
His death; for O! my child, he saw not thine,
When he his life did with his Troy resign.
Yet sure due obsequies thy tomb might grace;
And thou shalt sleep amidst thy kingly race.
Alas! my child, such fortune does not wait
Our suffering house in this abandon'd state.
A foreign grave, and thy poor mother's tears
Are all the honours that attend thy herse.
All now is lost!- Yet no; one comfort more
Of life remains, my much-lov'd Polydore.
My youngest hope: here on this coast he lives,
Nurs'd by the guardian-king, he still survives.
Then let me hasten to the cleansing flood,
And wash away these stains of guiltless blood."

Streit to the shore her feeble steps repair
With limping pace, and torn dishevell'd hair
Silver'd with age. "Give me an urn," she cry'd,
"To bear back water from this swelling tide":
When on the banks her son in ghastly hue
Transfix'd with Thracian arrows strikes her view.
The matrons shriek'd; her big-swoln grief surpast
The pow'r of utterance; she stood aghast;
She had nor speech, nor tears to give relief;
Excess of woe suppress'd the rising grief.
Lifeless as stone, on Earth she fix'd her eyes;
And then look'd up to Heav'n with wild surprise.
Now she contemplates o'er with sad delight
Her son's pale visage; then her aking sight
Dwells on his wounds: she varys thus by turns,
Wild as the mother-lion, when among
The haunts of prey she seeks her ravish'd young:
Swift flies the ravisher; she marks his trace,
And by the print directs her anxious chase.
So Hecuba with mingled grief, and rage
Pursues the king, regardless of her age.
She greets the murd'rer with dissembled joy
Of secret treasure hoarded for her boy.
The specious tale th' unwary king betray'd.
Fir'd with the hopes of prey: "Give quick," he said
With soft enticing speech, "the promis'd store:
Whate'er you give, you give to Polydore.
Your son, by the immortal Gods I swear,
Shall this with all your former bounty share."
She stands attentive to his soothing lyes,
And darts avenging horrour from her eyes.
Then full resentment fires her boyling blood:
She springs upon him, 'midst the captive crowd
(Her thirst of vengeance want of strength supplies):
Fastens her forky fingers in his eyes:
Tears out the rooted balls; her rage pursues,
And in the hollow orbs her hand imbrews.

The Thracians, fir'd, at this inhuman scene,
With darts, and stones assail the frantick queen.
She snarls, and growls, nor in an human tone;
Then bites impatient at the bounding stone;
Extends her jaws, as she her voice would raise
To keen invectives in her wonted phrase;
But barks, and thence the yelping brute betrays.
Still a sad monument the place remains,
And from this monstrous change its name obtains:
Where she, in long remembrance of her ills,
With plaintive howlings the wide desart fills.

Greeks, Trojans, friends, and foes, and Gods above
Her num'rous wrongs to just compassion move.
Ev'n Juno's self forgets her ancient hate,
And owns, she had deserv'd a milder fate.

The Funeral of Memnon

Yet bright Aurora, partial as she was
To Troy, and those that lov'd the Trojan cause,
Nor Troy, nor Hecuba can now bemoan,
But weeps a sad misfortune, more her own.
Her offspring Memnon, by Achilles slain,
She saw extended on the Phrygian plain:
She saw, and strait the purple beams, that grace
The rosie morning, vanish'd from her face;
A deadly pale her wonted bloom invades,
And veils the lowring skies with mournful shades.
But when his limbs upon the pile were laid,
The last kind duty that by friends is paid,
His mother to the skies directs her flight,
Nor cou'd sustain to view the doleful sight:
But frantick, with her loose neglected hair,
Hastens to Jove, and falls a suppliant there.
O king of Heav'n, o father of the skies,
The weeping Goddess passionately cries,
Tho' I the meanest of immortals am,
And fewest temples celebrate my fame,
Yet still a Goddess, I presume to come
Within the verge of your etherial dome:
Yet still may plead some merit, if my light
With purple dawn controuls the Pow'rs of night;
If from a female hand that virtue springs,
Which to the Gods, and men such pleasure brings.
Yet I nor honours seek, nor rites divine,
Nor for more altars, or more fanes repine;
Oh! that such trifles were the only cause,
From whence Aurora's mind its anguish draws!
For Memnon lost, my dearest only child,
With weightier grief my heavy heart is fill'd;
My warrior son! that liv'd but half his time,
Nipt in the bud, and blasted in his prime;
Who for his uncle early took the field,
And by Achilles' fatal spear was kill'd.
To whom but Jove shou'd I for succour come?
For Jove alone cou'd fix his cruel doom.
O sov'reign of the Gods accept my pray'r,
Grant my request, and sooth a mother's care;
On the deceas'd some solemn boon bestow,
To expiate the loss, and ease my woe.

Jove, with a nod, comply'd with her desire;
Around the body flam'd the fun'ral fire;
The pile decreas'd, that lately seem'd so high,
And sheets of smoak roll'd upward to the sky:
As humid vapours from a marshy bog,
Rise by degrees, condensing into fog,
That intercept the sun's enliv'ning ray,
And with a cloud infect the chearful day.
The sooty ashes wafted by the air,
Whirl round, and thicken in a body there;
Then take a form, which their own heat, and fire
With active life, and energy inspire.
Its lightness makes it seem to fly, and soon
It skims on real wings, that are its own;
A real bird, it beats the breezy wind,
Mix'd with a thousand sisters of the kind,
That, from the same formation newly sprung,
Up-born aloft on plumy pinions hung.
Thrice round the pile advanc'd the circling throng.
Thrice, with their wings, a whizzing consort rung.
In the fourth flight their squadron they divide,
Rank'd in two diff'rent troops, on either side:
Then two, and two, inspir'd with martial rage,
From either troop in equal pairs engage.
Each combatant with beak, and pounces press'd,
In wrathful ire, his adversary's breast;
Each falls a victim, to preserve the fame
Of that great hero, whence their being came.
From him their courage, and their name they take,
And, as they liv'd, they dye for Memnon's sake.
Punctual to time, with each revolving year,
In fresh array the champion birds appear;
Again, prepar'd with vengeful minds, they come
To bleed, in honour of the souldier's tomb.

Therefore in others it appear'd not strange,
To grieve for Hecuba's unhappy change:
But poor Aurora had enough to do
With her own loss, to mind another's woe;
Who still in tears, her tender nature shews,
Besprinkling all the world with pearly dews.

The Voyage of Aeneas

Troy thus destroy'd, 'twas still deny'd by Fate,
The hopes of Troy should perish with the state.
His sire, the son of Cytherea bore,
And household-Gods from burning Ilium's shore,
The pious prince (a double duty paid)
Each sacred bur then thro' the flames convey'd.
With young Ascanius, and this only prize,
Of heaps of wealth, he from Antandros flies;
But struck with horror, left the Thracian shore,
Stain'd with the blood of murder'd Polydore.
The Delian isle receives the banish'd train,
Driv'n by kind gales, and favour'd by the main.

Here pious Anius, priest, and monarch reign'd,
And either charge, with equal care sustain'd,
His subjects rul'd, to Phoebus homage pay'd,
His God obeying, and by those obey'd.

The priest displays his hospitable gate,
And shows the riches of his church, and state
The sacred shrubs, which eas'd Latona's pain,
The palm, and olive, and the votive fane.
Here grateful flames with fuming incense fed,
And mingled wine, ambrosial odours shed;
Of slaughter'd steers the crackling entrails burn'd:
And then the strangers to the court return'd.

On beds of tap'stry plac'd aloft, they dine
With Ceres' gift, and flowing bowls of wine;
When thus Anchises spoke, amidst the feast:
Say, mitred monarch, Phoebus' chosen priest,
Or (e'er from Troy by cruel Fate expell'd)
When first mine eyes these sacred walls beheld,
A son, and twice two daughters crown'd thy bliss?
Or errs my mem'ry, and I judge amiss?

The royal prophet shook his hoary head,
With snowy fillets bound, and sighing, said:
Thy mem'ry errs not, prince; thou saw'st me then,
The happy father of so large a train;
Behold me now (such turns of chance befall
The race of man!), almost bereft of all.
For (ah!) what comfort can my son bestow,
What help afford, to mitigate my woe!
While far from hence, in Andros' isle he reigns,
(From him so nam'd) and there my place sustains.
Him Delius praescience gave; the twice-born God
A boon more wond'rous on the maids bestow'd.
Whate'er they touch'd, he gave them to transmute
(A gift past credit, and above their suit)
To Ceres, Bacchus, and Minerva's fruit.
How great their value, and how rich their use,
Whose only touch such treasures could produce!

The dire destroyer of the Trojan reign,
Fierce Agamemnon, such a prize to gain
(A proof we also were design'd by Fate
To feel the tempest, that o'erturn'd your state),
With force superior, and a ruffian crew,
From these weak arms, the helpless virgins drew:
And sternly bad them use the grant divine,
To keep the fleet in corn, and oil, and wine.
Each, as they could, escap'd: two strove to gain
Euboea's isle, and two their brother's reign.
The soldier follows, and demands the dames;
If held by force, immediate war proclaims.
Fear conquer'd Nature in their brother's mind,
And gave them up to punishment assign'd.
Forgive the deed; nor Hector's arm was there,
Nor thine, Aeneas, to maintain the war;
Whose only force upheld your Ilium's tow'rs,
For ten long years, against the Grecian pow'rs.
Prepar'd to bind their captive arms in bands,
To Heav'n they rear'd their yet unfetter'd hands,
Help, Bacchus, author of the gift, they pray'd;
The gift's great author gave immediate aid;
If such destruction of their human frame
By ways so wond'rous, may deserve the name;
Nor could I hear, nor can I now relate
Exact, the manner of their alter'd state;
But this in gen'ral of my loss I knew,
Transform'd to doves, on milky plumes they flew,
Such as on Ida's mount thy consort's chariot drew.

With such discourse, they entertain'd the feast;
Then rose from table, and withdrew to rest.
The following morn, ere Sol was seen to shine,
Th' inquiring Trojans sought the sacred shrine;
The mystick Pow'r commands them to explore
Their ancient mother, and a kindred shore.
Attending to the sea, the gen'rous prince
Dismiss'd his guests with rich munificence,
In old Anchises' hand a sceptre plac'd,
A vest, and quiver young Ascanius grac'd,
His sire, a cup; which from th' Aonian coast,
Ismenian Therses sent his royal host.
Alcon of Myle made what Therses sent,
And carv'd thereon this ample argument.

A town with sev'n distinguish'd gates was shown,
Which spoke its name, and made the city known;
Before it, piles, and tombs, and rising flames,
The rites of death, and quires of mourning dames,
Who bar'd their breasts, and gave their hair to flow,
The signs of grief, and marks of publick woe.
Their fountains dry'd, the weeping Naiads mourn'd,
The trees stood bare, with searing cankers burn'd,
No herbage cloath'd the ground, a ragged flock
Of goats half-famish'd, lick'd the naked rock,
Of manly courage, and with mind serene,
Orion's daughters in the town were seen;
One heav'd her chest to meet the lifted knife,
One plung'd the poyniard thro' the seat of life,
Their country's victims; mourns the rescu'd state,
The bodies burns, and celebrates their Fate.
To save the failure of th' illustrious line,
From the pale ashes rose, of form divine,
Two gen'rous youths; these, fame Coronae calls,
Who join the pomp, and mourn their mother's falls.

These burnish'd figures form'd of antique mold,
Shone on the brass, with rising sculpture bold;
A wreath of gilt Acanthus round the brim was roll'd.

Nor less expence the Trojan gifts express'd;
A fuming censer for the royal priest,
A chalice, and a crown of princely cost,
With ruddy gold, and sparkling gems emboss'd.

Now hoisting sail, to Crete the Trojans stood,
Themselves remembring sprung from Teucer's blood;
But Heav'n forbids, and pestilential Jove
From noxious skies, the wand'ring navy drove.
Her hundred cities left, from Crete they bore,
And sought the destin'd land, Ausonia's shore;
But toss'd by storms at either Strophas lay,
'Till scar'd by Harpies from the faithless bay.
Then passing onward with a prosp'rous wind,
Left sly Ulysses' spacious realms behind;
Ambracia's state, in former ages known.
The strife of Gods, the judge transform'd to stone
They saw; for Actian Phoebus since renown'd,
Who Caesar's arms with naval conquest crown'd;
Next pass'd Dodona, wont of old to boast
Her vocal forest; and Chaonia's coast,
Where king Molossus' sons on wings aspir'd,
And saw secure the harmless fewel fir'd.

Now to Phaeacia's happy isle they came,
For fertile orchards known to early fame;
Epirus past, they next beheld with joy
A second Ilium, and fictitious Troy;
Here Trojan Helenus the sceptre sway'd,
Who show'd their fate and mystick truths display'd.
By him confirm'd Sicilia's isle they reach'd,
Whose sides to sea three promontories stretch'd,
Pachynos to the stormy south is plac'd,
On Lilybaeum blows the gentle west,
Peloro's cliffs the northern bear survey,
Who rolls above, and dreads to touch the sea.
By this they steer, and favour'd by the tide,
Secure by night in Zancle's harbour ride.

Here cruel Scylla guards the rocky shore,
And there the waves of loud Charybdis roar:
This sucks, and vomits ships, and bodies drown'd;
And rav'nous dogs the womb of that surround,
In face a virgin; and (if ought be true
By bards recorded) once a virgin too.

A train of youths in vain desir'd her bed;
By sea-nymphs lov'd, to nymphs of seas she fled;
The maid to these, with female pride, display'd
Their baffled courtship, and their love betray'd.

When Galatea thus bespoke the fair
(But first she sigh'd), while Scylla comb'd her hair:
You, lovely maid, a gen'rous race pursues,
Whom safe you may (as now you do) refuse;
To me, tho' pow'rful in a num'rous train
Of sisters, sprung from Gods, who rule the main,
My native seas could scarce a refuge prove,
To shun the fury of the Cyclops' love,

Tears choak'd her utt'rance here; the pity'ng maid
With marble fingers wip'd them off, and said:

My dearest Goddess, let thy Scylla know,
(For I am faithful) whence these sorrows flow.

The maid's intreaties o'er the nymph prevail,
Who thus to Scylla tells the mournful tale.

The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea

Acis, the lovely youth, whose loss I mourn,
From Faunus, and the nymph Symethis born,
Was both his parents' pleasure; but, to me
Was all that love could make a lover be.
The Gods our minds in mutual bands did join:
I was his only joy, and he was mine.
Now sixteen summers the sweet youth had seen;
And doubtful down began to shade his chin:
When Polyphemus first disturb'd our joy;
And lov'd me fiercely, as I lov'd the boy.
Ask not which passion in my soul was high'r,
My last aversion, or my first desire:
Nor this the greater was, nor that the less;
Both were alike, for both were in excess.
Thee, Venus, thee both Heav'n, and Earth obey;
Immense thy pow'r, and boundless is thy sway.
The Cyclops, who defy'd th' aetherial throne,
And thought no thunder louder than his own,
The terror of the woods, and wilder far
Than wolves in plains, or bears in forests are,
Th' inhuman host, who made his bloody feasts
On mangl'd members of his butcher'd guests,
Yet felt the force of love, and fierce desire,
And burnt for me, with unrelenting fire.
Forgot his caverns, and his woolly care,
Assum'd the softness of a lover's air;
And comb'd, with teeth of rakes, his rugged hair.
Now with a crooked scy the his beard he sleeks;
And mows the stubborn stubble of his cheeks:
Now in the crystal stream he looks, to try
His simagres, and rowls his glaring eye.
His cruelty, and thirst of blood are lost;
And ships securely sail along the coast.

The prophet Telemus (arriv'd by chance
Where Aetna's summets to the seas advance,
Who mark'd the tracts of every bird that flew,
And sure presages from their flying drew)
Foretold the Cyclops, that Ulysses' hand
In his broad eye shou'd thrust a flaming brand.
The giant, with a scornful grin, reply'd,
Vain augur, thou hast falsely prophesy'd;
Already love his flaming brand has tost;
Looking on two fair eyes, my sight I lost,
Thus, warn'd in vain, with stalking pace he strode,
And stamp'd the margin of the briny flood
With heavy steps; and weary, sought agen
The cool retirement of his gloomy den.

A promontory, sharp'ning by degrees,
Ends in a wedge, and overlooks the seas:
On either side, below, the water flows;
This airy walk the giant lover chose.
Here on the midst he sate; his flocks, unled,
Their shepherd follow'd, and securely fed.
A pine so burly, and of length so vast,
That sailing ships requir'd it for a mast,
He wielded for a staff, his steps to guide:
But laid it by, his whistle while he try'd.
A hundred reeds of a prodigious growth,
Scarce made a pipe, proportion'd to his mouth:
Which when he gave it wind, the rocks around,
And watry plains, the dreadful hiss resound.
I heard the ruffian-shepherd rudely blow,
Where, in a hollow cave, I sat below;
On Acis' bosom I my head reclin'd:
And still preserve the poem in my mind.

Oh lovely Galatea, whiter far
Than falling snows, and rising lillies are;
More flowry than the meads, as chrystal bright:
Erect as alders, and of equal height:
More wanton than a kid, more sleek thy skin,
Than orient shells, that on the shores are seen,
Than apples fairer, when the boughs they lade;
Pleasing, as winter suns, or summer shade:
More grateful to the sight, than goodly plains;
And softer to the touch, than down of swans;
Or curds new turn'd; and sweeter to the taste
Than swelling grapes, that to the vintage haste:
More clear than ice, or running streams, that stray
Through garden plots, but ah! more swift than they.

Yet, Galatea, harder to be broke
Than bullocks, unreclaim'd, to bear the yoke,
And far more stubborn, than the knotted oak:
Like sliding streams, impossible to hold;
Like them, fallacious, like their fountains, cold.
More warping, than the willow, to decline
My warm embrace, more brittle, than the vine;
Immovable, and fixt in thy disdain:
Tough, as these rocks, and of a harder grain.
More violent, than is the rising flood;
And the prais'd peacock is not half so proud.
Fierce, as the fire, and sharp, as thistles are,
And more outragious, than a mother-bear:
Deaf, as the billows to the vows I make;
And more revengeful, than a trodden snake.
In swiftness fleeter, than the flying hind,
Or driven tempests, or the driving wind.
All other faults, with patience I can bear;
But swiftness is the vice I only fear.

Yet if you knew me well, you wou'd not shun
My love, but to my wish'd embraces run:
Wou'd languish in your turn, and court my stay;
And much repent of your unwise delay.

My palace, in the living rock, is made
By Nature's hand; a spacious pleasing shade:
Which neither heat can pierce, nor cold invade.
My garden fill'd with fruits you may behold,
And grapes in clusters, imitating gold;
Some blushing bunches of a purple hue:
And these, and those, are all reserv'd for you.
Red strawberries, in shades, expecting stand,
Proud to be gather'd by so white a hand.
Autumnal cornels latter fruit provide;
And plumbs, to tempt you, turn their glossy side:
Not those of common kinds; but such alone,
As in Phaeacian orchards might have grown:
Nor chestnuts shall be wanting to your food,
Nor garden-fruits, nor wildings of the wood;
The laden boughs for you alone shall bear;
And yours shall be the product of the year.

The flocks you see, are all my own; beside
The rest that woods, and winding vallies hide;
And those that folded in the caves abide.
Ask not the numbers of my growing store;
Who knows how many, knows he has no more.
Nor will I praise my cattle; trust not me,
But judge your self, and pass your own decree:
Behold their swelling dugs; the sweepy weight
Of ewes, that sink beneath the milky freight;
In the warm folds their tender lambkins lye;
Apart from kids, that call with human cry.
New milk in nut-brown bowls is duely serv'd
For daily drink; the rest for cheese reserv'd.
Nor are these household dainties all my store:
The fields, and forests will afford us more;
The deer, the hare, the goat, the savage boar.
All sorts of ven'son; and of birds the best;
A pair of turtles taken from the nest.
I walk'd the mountains, and two cubs I found
(Whose dam had left 'em on the naked ground),
So like, that no distinction could be seen:
So pretty, they were presents for a queen;
And so they shall; I took them both away;
And keep, to be companions of your play.

Oh raise, fair nymph, your beauteous face above
The waves; nor scorn my presents, and my love.
Come, Galatea, come, and view my face;
I late beheld it, in the watry glass;
And found it lovelier, than I fear'd it was.
Survey my towring stature, and my size:
Not Jove, the Jove you dream, that rules the skies,
Bears such a bulk, or is so largely spread:
My locks (the plenteous harvest of my head)
Hang o'er my manly face; and dangling down,
As with a shady grove, my shoulders crown.
Nor think, because my limbs and body bear
A thick-set underwood of bristling hair,
My shape deform'd; what fouler sight can be,
Than the bald branches of a leafless tree?
Foul is the steed without a flowing mane:
And birds, without their feathers, and their train.
Wool decks the sheep; and Man receives a grace
From bushy limbs, and from a bearded face.
My forehead with a single eye is fill'd,
Round, as a ball, and ample, as a shield.
The glorious lamp of Heav'n, the radiant sun,
Is Nature's eye; and she's content with one.
Add, that my father sways your seas, and I,
Like you, am of the watry family.
I make you his, in making you my own;
You I adore; and kneel to you alone:
Jove, with his fabled thunder, I despise,
And only fear the lightning of your eyes.
Frown not, fair nymph; yet I cou'd bear to be
Disdain'd, if others were disdain'd with me.
But to repulse the Cyclops, and prefer
The love of Acis (Heav'ns!) I cannot bear.
But let the stripling please himself; nay more,
Please you, tho' that's the thing I most abhor;
The boy shall find, if e'er we cope in fight,
These giant limbs, endu'd with giant might.
His living bowels from his belly torn,
And scatter'd limbs shall on the flood be born:
Thy flood, ungrateful nymph; and fate shall find,
That way for thee, and Acis to be join'd.
For oh! I burn with love, and thy disdain
Augments at once my passion, and my pain.
Translated Aetna flames within my heart,
And thou, inhuman, wilt not ease my smart.

Lamenting thus in vain, he rose, and strode
With furious paces to the neighb'ring wood:
Restless his feet, distracted was his walk;
Mad were his motions, and confus'd his talk.
Mad, as the vanquish'd bull, when forc'd to yield
His lovely mistress, and forsake the field.

Thus far unseen I saw: when fatal chance,
His looks directing, with a sudden glance,
Acis and I were to his sight betray'd;
Where, nought suspecting, we securely play'd.
From his wide mouth a bellowing cry he cast,
I see, I see; but this shall be your last:
A roar so loud made Aetna to rebound:
And all the Cyclops labour'd in the sound.
Affrighted with his monstrous voice, I fled,
And in the neighbouring ocean plung'd my head.
Poor Acis turn'd his back, and Help, he cry'd,
Help, Galatea, help, my parent Gods,
And take me dying to your deep abodes.
The Cyclops follow'd; but he sent before
A rib, which from the living rock he tore:
Though but an angle reach'd him of the stone,
The mighty fragment was enough alone,
To crush all Acis; 'twas too late to save,
But what the Fates allow'd to give, I gave:
That Acis to his lineage should return;
And rowl, among the river Gods, his urn.
Straight issu'd from the stone a stream of blood;
Which lost the purple, mingling with the flood,
Then, like a troubled torrent, it appear'd:
The torrent too, in little space, was clear'd.
The stone was cleft, and through the yawning chink
New reeds arose, on the new river's brink.
The rock, from out its hollow womb, disclos'd
A sound like water in its course oppos'd,
When (wond'rous to behold), full in the flood,
Up starts a youth, and navel high he stood.
Horns from his temples rise; and either horn
Thick wreaths of reeds (his native growth) adorn.
Were not his stature taller than before,
His bulk augmented, and his beauty more,
His colour blue; for Acis he might pass:
And Acis chang'd into a stream he was,
But mine no more; he rowls along the plains
With rapid motion, and his name retains.

The Story of Glaucus and Scylla

Here ceas'd the nymph; the fair assembly broke,
The sea-green Nereids to the waves betook:
While Scylla, fearful of the wide-spread main,
Swift to the safer shore returns again.
There o'er the sandy margin, unarray'd,
With printless footsteps flies the bounding maid;
Or in some winding creek's secure retreat
She baths her weary limbs, and shuns the noonday's heat.

Her Glaucus saw, as o'er the deep he rode,
New to the seas, and late receiv'd a God.
He saw, and languish'd for the virgin's love;
With many an artful blandishment he strove
Her flight to hinder, and her fears remove.
The more he sues, the more she wings her flight,
And nimbly gains a neighb'ring mountain's height.
Steep shelving to the margin of the flood,
A neighb'ring mountain bare, and woodless stood;
Here, by the place secur'd, her steps she stay'd,
And, trembling still, her lover's form survey'd.
His shape, his hue, her troubled sense appall,
And dropping locks that o'er his shoulders fall;
She sees his face divine, and manly brow,
End in a fish's wreathy tail below:
She sees, and doubts within her anxious mind,
Whether he comes of God, or monster kind.
This Glaucus soon perceiv'd; and, Oh! forbear
(His hand supporting on a rock lay near),
Forbear, he cry'd, fond maid, this needless fear.
Nor fish am I, nor monster of the main,
But equal with the watry Gods I reign;
Nor Proteus, nor Palaemon me excell,
Nor he whose breath inspires the sounding shell.
My birth, 'tis true, I owe to mortal race,
And I my self but late a mortal was:
Ev'n then in seas, and seas alone, I joy'd;
The seas my hours, and all my cares employ'd,
In meshes now the twinkling prey I drew;
Now skilfully the slender line I threw,
And silent sat the moving float to view.
Not far from shore, there lies a verdant mead,
With herbage half, and half with water spread:
There, nor the horned heifers browsing stray,
Nor shaggy kids, nor wanton lambkins play;
There, nor the sounding bees their nectar cull,
Nor rural swains their genial chaplets pull,
Nor flocks, nor herds, nor mowers haunt the place,
To crop the flow'rs, or cut the bushy grass:
Thither, sure first of living race came I,
And sat by chance, my dropping nets to dry.
My scaly prize, in order all display'd,
By number on the greensward there I lay'd,
My captives, whom or in my nets I took,
Or hung unwary on my wily hook.
Strange to behold! yet what avails a lye?
I saw 'em bite the grass, as I sate by;
Then sudden darting o'er the verdant plain,
They spread their finns, as in their native main:
I paus'd, with wonder struck, while all my prey
Left their new master, and regain'd the sea.
Amaz'd, within my secret self I sought,
What God, what herb the miracle had wrought:
But sure no herbs have pow'r like this, I cry'd;
And strait I pluck'd some neighb'ring herbs, and try'd.
Scarce had I bit, and prov'd the wond'rous taste,
When strong convulsions shook my troubled breast;
I felt my heart grow fond of something strange,
And my whole Nature lab'ring with a change.
Restless I grew, and ev'ry place forsook,
And still upon the seas I bent my look.
Farewel for ever! farewel, land! I said;
And plung'd amidst the waves my sinking head.
The gentle Pow'rs, who that low empire keep,
Receiv'd me as a brother of the deep;
To Tethys, and to Ocean old, they pray
To purge my mortal earthy parts away.
The watry parents to their suit agreed,
And thrice nine times a secret charm they read,
Then with lustrations purify my limbs,
And bid me ba the beneath a hundred streams:
A hundred streams from various fountains run,
And on my head at once come rushing down.
Thus far each passage I remember well,
And faithfully thus far the tale I tell;
But then oblivion dark, on all my senses fell.
Again at length my thought reviving came,
When I no longer found my self the same;
Then first this sea-green beard I felt to grow,
And these large honours on my spreading brow;
My long-descending locks the billows sweep,
And my broad shoulders cleave the yielding deep;
My fishy tail, my arms of azure hue,
And ev'ry part divinely chang'd, I view.
But what avail these useless honours now?
What joys can immortality bestow?
What, tho' our Nereids all my form approve?
What boots it, while fair Scylla scorns my love?

Thus far the God; and more he wou'd have said;
When from his presence flew the ruthless maid.
Stung with repulse, in such disdainful sort,
He seeks Titanian Circe's horrid court.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
~ Ovid, BOOK THE THIRTEENTH

,
545:The Third Monarchy, Being The Grecian, Beginning
Under Alexander The Great In The 112. Olympiad.
Great Alexander was wise Philips son,
He to Amyntas, Kings of Macedon;
The cruel proud Olympias was his Mother,
She to Epirus warlike King was daughter.
This Prince (his father by Pausanias slain)
The twenty first of's age began to reign.
Great were the Gifts of nature which he had,
His education much to those did adde:
By art and nature both he was made fit,
To 'complish that which long before was writ.
The very day of his Nativity
To ground was burnt Dianaes Temple high:
An Omen to their near approaching woe,
Whose glory to the earth this king did throw.
His Rule to Greece he scorn'd should be confin'd,
The Universe scarce bound his proud vast mind.
This is the He-Goat which from Grecia came,
That ran in Choler on the Persian Ram,
That brake his horns, that threw him on the ground
To save him from his might no man was found:
Philip on this great Conquest had an eye,
But death did terminate those thoughts so high.
The Greeks had chose him Captain General,
Which honour to his Son did now befall.
(For as Worlds Monarch now we speak not on,
But as the King of little Macedon)
Restless both day and night his heart then was,
His high resolves which way to bring to pass;
Yet for a while in Greece is forc'd to stay,
Which makes each moment seem more then a day.
Thebes and stiff Athens both 'gainst him rebel,
Their mutinies by valour doth he quell.
This done against both right and natures Laws,
His kinsmen put to death, who gave no cause;
That no rebellion in in his absence be,
Nor making Title unto Sovereignty.
And all whom he suspects or fears will climbe,
129
Now taste of death least they deserv'd in time,
Nor wonder is t if he in blood begin,
For Cruelty was his parental sin,
Thus eased now of troubles and of fears,
Next spring his course to Asia he steers;
Leavs Sage Antipater, at home to sway,
And through the Hellispont his Ships made way.
Coming to Land, his dart on shore he throws,
Then with alacrity he after goes;
And with a bount'ous heart and courage brave,
His little wealth among his Souldiers gave.
And being ask'd what for himself was left,
Reply'd, enough, sith only hope he kept.
Thirty two thousand made up his Foot force,
To which were joyn'd five thousand goodly horse.
Then on he marcht, in's way he view'd old Troy,
And on Achilles tomb with wondrous joy
He offer'd, and for good success did pray
To him, his Mothers Ancestors, (men say)
When news of Alexander came to Court,
To scorn at him Darius had good sport;
Sends him a frothy and contemptuous Letter,
Stiles him disloyal servant, and no better;
Reproves him for his proud audacity
To lift his hand 'gainst such a Monarchy.
Then to's Lieftenant he in Asia sends
That he be ta'ne alive, for he intends
To whip him well with rods, and so to bring
That boy so mallipert before the King.
Ah! fond vain man, whose pen ere while
In lower terms was taught a higher stile.
To River Granick Alexander hyes
Which in Phrygia near Propontike lyes.
The Persians ready for encounter stand,
And strive to keep his men from off the land;
Those banks so steep the Greeks yet scramble up,
And beat the coward Persians from the top,
And twenty thousand of their lives bereave,
Who in their backs did all their wounds receive.
This victory did Alexander gain,
With loss of thirty four of his there slain;
Then Sardis he, and Ephesus did gain,
130
VVhere stood of late, Diana's wondrous Phane,
And by Parmenio (of renowned Fame,)
Miletus and Pamphilia overcame.
Hallicarnassus and Pisidia
He for his Master takes with Lycia.
Next Alexander marcht towards the black Sea,
And easily takes old Gordium in his way;
Of Ass ear'd Midas, once the Regal Seat,
VVhose touch turn'd all to gold, yea even his meat
VVhere the Prophetick knot he cuts in twain,
VVhich who so doth, must Lord of all remain.
Now news of Memnon's death (the Kings Viceroy)
To Alexanders heart's no little joy,
For in that Peer, more valour did abide,
Then in Darius multitude beside:
In's stead, was Arses plac'd, but durst not stay,
Yet set one in his room, and ran away;
His substitute as fearfull as his master,
Runs after two, and leaves all to Disaster.
Then Alexander all Cilicia takes,
No stroke for it he struck, their hearts so quakes.
To Greece he thirty thousand talents sends,
To raise more Force to further his intends:
Then o're he goes Darius now to meet,
Who came with thousand thousands at his feet.
Though some there be (perhaps) more likely write
He but four hundred thousand had to fight,
The rest Attendants, which made up no less,
Both Sexes there was almost numberless.
For this wise King had brought to see the sport,
With him the greatest Ladyes of the Court,
His mother, his beauteous Queen and daughters,
It seems to see the Macedonian slaughters.
Its much beyond my time and little art,
To shew how great Darius plaid his part;
The splendor and the pomp he marched in,
For since the world was no such Pageant seen.
Sure 'twas a goodly sight there to behold,
The Persians clad in silk, and glistering gold,
The stately horses trapt, the lances gilt,
As if addrest now all to run a tilt.
The holy fire was borne before the host,
131
(For Sun and Fire the Persians worship most)
The Priests in their strange habit follow after,
An object, not so much of fear as laughter.
The King sate in a chariot made of gold,
With crown and Robes most glorious to behold,
And o're his head his golden Gods on high,
Support a party coloured Canopy.
A number of spare horses next were led,
Lest he should need them in his Chariots stead;
But those that saw him in this state to lye,
Suppos'd he neither meant to fight nor flye.
He fifteen hundred had like women drest;
For thus to fright the Greeks he judg'd was best.
Their golden ornaments how to set forth,
Would ask more time then was their bodies worth
Great Sysigambis she brought up the Reer,
Then such a world of waggons did appear,
Like several houses moving upon wheels,
As if she'd drawn whole Shushan at her heels:
This brave Virago to the King was mother,
And as much good she did as any other.
Now lest this gold, and all this goodly stuff
Had not been spoyle and booty rich enough
A thousand mules and Camels ready wait
Loaden with gold, with jewels and with plate:
For sure Darius thought at the first sight,
The Greeks would all adore, but none would fight
But when both Armies met, he might behold
That valour was more worth then pearls or gold,
And that his wealth serv'd but for baits to 'lure
To make his overthrow more fierce and sure.
The Greeks came on and with a gallant grace
Let fly their arrows in the Persians face.
The cowards feeling this sharp stinging charge
Most basely ran, and left their king at large:
Who from his golden coach is glad to 'light,
And cast away his crown for swifter flight:
Of late like some immoveable he lay,
Now finds both legs and horse to run away.
Two hundred thousand men that day were slain,
And forty thousand prisoners also tane,
Besides the Queens and Ladies of the court,
132
If Curtius be true in his report.
The Regal Ornaments were lost, the treasure
Divided at the Macedonians pleasure;
Yet all this grief, this loss, this overthrow,
Was but beginning of his future woe.
The royal Captives brought to Alexander
T'ward them demean'd himself like a Commander
For though their beauties were unparaled,
Conquer'd himself now he had conquered,
Preserv'd their honour, us'd them bounteously,
Commands no man should doe them injury:
And this to Alexander is more fame
Then that the Persian King he overcame.
Two hundred eighty Greeks he lost in fight,
By too much heat, not wounds (as authors write)
No sooner had this Victor won the field,
But all Phenicia to his pleasure yield,
Of which the Goverment he doth commit
Unto Parmenio of all most fit.
Darius now less lofty then before,
To Alexander writes he would restore
Those mournfull Ladies from Captivity,
For whom he offers him a ransome high:
But down his haughty stomach could not bring,
To give this Conquerour the Stile of King.
This Letter Alexander doth disdain,
And in short terms sends this reply again,
A King he was, and that not only so,
But of Darius King, as he should know.
Next Alexander unto Tyre doth goe,
His valour and his victoryes they know:
To gain his love the Tyrians intend,
Therefore a crown and great Provision send,
Their present he receives with thankfullness,
Desires to offer unto Hercules,
Protector of their town, by whom defended,
And from whom he lineally descended.
But they accept not this in any wise,
Lest he intend more fraud then sacrifice,
Sent word that Hercules his temple stood
In the old town, (which then lay like a wood)
With this reply he was so deep enrag'd,
133
To win the town, his honour he ingag'd:
And now as Babels King did once before,
He leaves not till he made the sea firm shore,
But far less time and cost he did expend,
The former Ruines forwarded his end:
Moreover had a Navy at command,
The other by his men fetcht all by land.
In seven months time he took that wealthy town,
Whose glory now a second time's brought down.
Two thousand of the chief he crucifi'd,
Eight thousand by the sword then also di'd,
And thirteen thousand Gally slaves he made,
And thus the Tyrians for mistrust were paid.
The rule of this he to Philotas gave
Who was the son of that Parmenio brave.
Cilicia to Socrates doth give,
For now's the time Captains like Kings may live.
Zidon he on Ephestion bestowes;
(For that which freely comes, as freely goes)
He scorns to have one worse then had the other,
So gives his little Lordship to another.
Ephestion having chief command of th'Fleet,
At Gaza now must Alexander meet.
Darius finding troubles still increase,
By his Ambassadors now sues for peace,
And layes before great Alexanders eyes
The dangers difficultyes like to rise,
First at Euphrates what he's like to 'bide,
And then at Tygris and Araxis side,
These he may scape, and if he so desire,
A league of friendship make firm and entire.
His eldest daughter he in mariage profers,
And a most princely dowry with her offers.
All those rich Kingdomes large that do abide
Betwixt the Hellespont and Halys side.
But he with scorn his courtesie rejects,
And the distressed King no whit respects,
Tells him, these proffers great, in truth were none
For all he offers now was but his own.
But quoth Parmenio that brave Commander,
Was I as great, as is great Alexander,
Darius offers I would not reject,
134
But th'kingdomes and the Lady soon accept.
To which proud Alexander made reply,
And so if I Parmenio was, would I.
He now to Gaza goes, and there doth meet,
His Favorite Ephestion with his Fleet,
Where valiant Betis stoutly keeps the town,
(A loyal Subject to Darius Crown)
For more repulse the Grecians here abide
Then in the Persian Monarchy beside;
And by these walls so many men were slain,
That Greece was forc'd to yield supply again.
But yet this well defended Town was taken,
For 'twas decree'd, that Empire should be shaken;
Thus Betis ta'en had holes bor'd through his feet,
And by command was drawn through every street
To imitate Achilles in his shame,
Who did the like to Hector (of more fame)
What hast thou lost thy magnimity,
Can Alexander deal thus cruelly?
Sith valour with Heroicks is renown'd,
Though in an Enemy it should be found;
If of thy future fame thou hadst regard,
Why didst not heap up honours and reward?
From Gaza to Jerusalem he goes,
But in no hostile way, (as I suppose)
Him in his Priestly Robes high Jaddus meets,
Whom with great reverence Alexander greets;
The Priest shews him good Daniel's Prophesy,
How he should overthrow this Monarchy,
By which he was so much encouraged,
No future dangers he did ever dread.
From thence to fruitful Egypt marcht with speed,
Where happily in's wars he did succeed;
To see how fast he gain'd was no small wonder,
For in few dayes he brought that Kingdome under.
Then to the Phane of Jupiter he went,
To be install'd a God, was his intent.
The Pagan Priest through hire, or else mistake,
The Son of Jupiter did streight him make:
He Diobolical must needs remain,
That his humanity will not retain.
Thence back to Egypt goes, and in few dayes;
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Fair Alexandria from the ground doth raise;
Then setling all things in less Asia;
In Syria, Egypt, and Phenicia,
Unto Euphrates marcht and overgoes,
For no man's there his Army to oppose;
Had Betis now been there but with his band,
Great Alexander had been kept from Land.
But as the King, so is the multitude,
And now of valour both are destitute.
Yet he (poor prince) another Host doth muster,
Of Persians, Scythians, Indians in a cluster;
Men but in shape and name, of valour none
Most fit, to blunt the Swords of Macedon.
Two hundred fifty thousand by account,
Of Horse and Foot his Army did amount;
For in his multitudes his trust still lay,
But on their fortitude he had small stay;
Yet had some hope that on the spacious plain,
His numbers might the victory obtain.
About this time Darius beautious Queen,
Who had sore travail and much sorrow seen,
Now bids the world adue, with pain being spent,
Whose death her Lord full sadly did lament.
Great Alexander mourns as well as he,
The more because not set at liberty;
When this sad news (at first Darius hears,
Some injury was offered he fears:
But when inform'd how royally the King,
Had used her, and hers, in every thing,
He prays the immortal Gods they would reward
Great Alexander for this good regard;
And if they down his Monarchy will throw,
Let them on him this dignity bestow.
And now for peace he sues as once before,
And offers all he did and Kingdomes more;
His eldest daughter for his princely bride,
(Nor was such match in all the world beside)
And all those Countryes which (betwixt) did lye
Phanisian Sea, and great Euphrates high:
With fertile Egypt and rich Syria,
And all those Kingdomes in less Asia.
With thirty thousand Talents to be paid,
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For the Queen Mother, and the royal maid;
And till all this be well perform'd, and sure,
Ochus his Son for Hostage should endure.
To this stout Alexander gives no ear,
No though Parmenio plead, yet will not hear;
Which had he done. (perhaps) his fame he'd kept,
Nor Infamy had wak'd, when he had slept,
For his unlimited prosperity
Him boundless made in vice and Cruelty.
Thus to Darius he writes back again,
The Firmament, two Suns cannot contain.
Two Monarchyes on Earth cannot abide,
Nor yet two Monarchs in one world reside;
The afflicted King finding him set to jar,
Prepares against to morrow, for the war,
Parmenio, Alexander, wisht that night,
To force his Camp, so vanquish them by flight.
For tumult in the night doth cause most dread,
And weakness of a Foe is covered,
But he disdain'd to steal a victory:
The Sun should witness of his valour be,
And careless in his bed, next morne he lyes,
By Captains twice is call'd before hee'l rise,
The Armyes joyn'd a while, the Persians fight,
And spilt the Greeks some bloud before their flight
But long they stood not e're they're forc'd to run,
So made an end, As soon as well begun.
Forty five thousand Alexander had,
But is not known what slaughter here was made,
Some write th'other had a million, some more,
But Quintus Curtius as before.
At Arbela this victory was gain'd,
Together with the Town also obtain'd;
Darius stript of all to Media came,
Accompan'ed with sorrow, fear, and shame,
At Arbela left his Ornaments and Treasure,
Which Alexander deals as suits his pleasure.
This conqueror to Babylon then goes,
Is entertain'd with joy and pompous showes,
With showrs of flours the streets along are strown,
And incense burnt the silver Altars on.
The glory of the Castle he admires,
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The strong Foundation and the lofty Spires,
In this, a world of gold and Treasure lay,
Which in few hours was carried all away.
With greedy eyes he views this City round,
Whose fame throughout the world was so renownd
And to possess he counts no little bliss
The towres and bowres of proud Semiramis,
Though worne by time, and rac'd by foes full sore,
Yet old foundations shew'd and somewhat more.
With all the pleasures that on earth are found,
This city did abundantly abound,
Where four and thirty dayes he now did stay,
And gave himself to banqueting and play:
He and his souldiers wax effeminate,
And former discipline begin to hate.
Whilst revelling at Babylon he lyes,
Antipater from Greece sends fresh supplyes.
He then to Shushan goes with his new bands,
But needs no force, tis rendred to his hands.
He likewise here a world of treasure found;
For 'twas the seat of Persian Kings renownd.
Here stood the royal Houses of delight,
Where Kings have shown their glory wealth and might
The sumptuous palace of Queen Esther here,
And of good Mordicai, her kinsman dear,
Those purple hangings, mixt with green and white
Those beds of gold, and couches of delight.
And furniture the richest in all lands,
Now fall into the Macedonians hands.
From Shushan to Persipolis he goes,
Which news doth still augment Darius woes.
In his approach the governour sends word,
For his receipt with joy they all accord,
With open gates the wealthy town did stand,
And all in it was at his high command.
Of all the Cities that on earth was found,
None like to this in riches did abound:
Though Babylon was rich and Shushan too
Yet to compare with this they might not doe:
Here lay the bulk of all those precious things
That did pertain unto the Persian Kings:
For when the souldiers rifled had their pleasure,
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And taken money plate and golden treasure,
Statues some gold, and silver numberless,
Yet after all, as storyes do express
The share of Alexander did amount
To an hundred thousand talents by account.
Here of his own he sets a Garison,
(As first at Shushan and at Babylon)
On their old Governours titles he laid,
But on their faithfulness he never staid,
Their place gave to his Captains (as was just)
For such revolters false, what King can trust?
The riches and the pleasures of this town
Now makes this King his virtues all to drown,
That wallowing in all licentiousness,
In pride and cruelty to high excess.
Being inflam'd with wine upon a season,
Filled with madness, and quite void of reason,
He at a bold proud strumpets leud desire,
Commands to set this goodly town on fire.
Parmenio wise intreats him to desist
And layes before his eyes if he persist
His fames dishonour, loss unto his state,
And just procuring of the Persians hate:
But deaf to reason, bent to have his will,
Those stately streets with raging flame did fill.
Then to Darius he directs his way,
Who was retir'd as far as Media,
And there with sorrows, fears & cares surrounded
Had now his army fourth and last compounded.
Which forty thousand made, but his intent
Was these in Bactria soon to augment:
But hearing Alexander was so near,
Thought now this once to try his fortunes here,
And rather chose an honourable death,
Then still with infamy to draw his breath:
But Bessus false, who was his chief Commander
Perswades him not to fight with Alexander.
With sage advice he sets before his eyes
The little hope of profit like to rise:
If when he'd multitudes the day he lost,
Then with so few, how likely to be crost.
This counsel for his safety he pretended,
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But to deliver him to's foe intended.
Next day this treason to Darius known
Transported sore with grief and passion,
Grinding his teeth, and plucking off his hair,
Sate overwhelm'd with sorrow and dispair:
Then bids his servant Artabasus true,
Look to himself, and leave him to that crew,
Who was of hopes and comforts quite bereft,
And by his guard and Servitors all left.
Straight Bessus comes, & with his trait'rous hands
Layes hold on's Lord, and binding him with bands
Throws him into a Cart, covered with hides,
Who wanting means t'resist these wrongs abides,
Then draws the cart along with chains of gold,
In more despight the thraled prince to hold,
And thus t'ward Alexander on he goes,
Great recompence for this, he did propose:
But some detesting this his wicked fact,
To Alexander flyes and tells this act,
Who doubling of his march, posts on amain,
Darius from that traitors hands to gain.
Bessus gets knowledg his disloyalty
Had Alexanders wrath incensed high,
Whose army now was almost within sight,
His hopes being dasht prepares himself for flight:
Unto Darius first he brings a horse,
And bids him save himself by speedy course:
The wofull King his courtesie refuses,
Whom thus the execrable wretch abuses,
By throwing darts gave him his mortal wound,
Then slew his Servants that were faithfull found,
Yea wounds the beasts that drew him unto death,
And leaves him thus to gasp out his last breath.
Bessus his partner in this tragedy,
Was the false Governour of Media.
This done, they with their host soon speed away,
To hide themselves remote in Bactria.
Darius bath'd in blood, sends out his groans,
Invokes the heav'ns and earth to hear his moans:
His lost felicity did grieve him sore,
But this unheard of treachery much more:
But above all, that neither Ear nor Eye
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Should hear nor see his dying misery;
As thus he lay, Polistrates a Greek,
Wearied with his long march, did water seek,
So chanc'd these bloudy Horses to espy,
Whose wounds had made their skins of purple dye
To them repairs then looking in the Cart,
Finds poor Darius pierced to the heart,
Who not a little chear'd to have some eye,
The witness of this horrid Tragedy;
Prays him to Alexander to commend
The just revenge of this his woful end:
And not to pardon such disloyalty,
Of Treason, Murther, and base Cruelty.
If not, because Darius thus did pray,
Yet that succeeding Kings in safety may
Their lives enjoy, their Crowns and dignity,
And not by Traitors hands untimely dye.
He also sends his humble thankfulness,
For all the Kingly grace he did express;
To's Mother, Children dear, and wife now gone.
Which made their long restraint seem to be none:
Praying the immortal Gods, that Sea and Land
Might be subjected to his royal hand,
And that his Rule as far extended be,
As men the rising, setting Sun shall see,
This said, the Greek for water doth intreat,
To quench his thirst, and to allay his heat:
Of all good things (quoth he) once in my power,
I've nothing left, at this my dying hour;
Thy service and compassion to reward,
But Alexander will, for this regard.
This said, his fainting breath did fleet away,
And though a Monarch late, now lyes like clay;
And thus must every Son of Adam lye,
Though Gods on Earth like Sons of men they dye.
Now to the East, great Alexander goes,
To see if any dare his might oppose,
For scarce the world or any bounds thereon,
Could bound his boundless fond Ambition;
Such as submits again he doth restore
Their riches, and their honours he makes more,
On Artabaces more then all bestow'd,
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For his fidelity to's Master show'd.
Thalestris Queen of th'Amazons now brought
Her Train to Alexander, (as 'tis thought.)
Though most of reading best and soundest mind,
Such Country there, nor yet such people find.
Then tell her errand, we had better spare
To th'ignorant, her title will declare:
As Alexander in his greatness grows,
So dayly of his virtues doth he lose.
He baseness counts, his former Clemency,
And not beseeming such a dignity;
His past sobriety doth also bate,
As most incompatible to his State;
His temperance is but a sordid thing,
No wayes becoming such a mighty King;
His greatness now he takes to represent
His fancy'd Gods above the Firmament.
And such as shew'd but reverence before,
Now are commanded strictly to adore;
With Persian Robes himself doth dignifie,
Charging the same on his nobility,
His manners habit, gestures, all did fashion
After that conquer'd and luxurious Nation.
His Captains that were virtuously inclin'd,
Griev'd at this change of manners and of mind.
The ruder sort did openly deride,
His feigned Diety and foolish pride;
The certainty of both comes to his Ears,
But yet no notice takes of what he hears:
With those of worth he still desires esteem,
So heaps up gifts his credit to redeem
And for the rest new wars and travails finds,
That other matters might take up their minds,
And hearing Bessus, makes himself a King,
Intends that Traitor to his end to bring.
Now that his Host from luggage might be free,
And with his burthen no man burthened be;
Commands forthwith each man his fardle bring,
Into the market place before the King;
VVhich done, sets fire upon those goodly spoyles,
The recompence of travails wars and toyles.
And thus unwisely in a mading fume,
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The wealth of many Kingdomes did consume,
But marvell 'tis that without mutiny,
The Souldiers should let pass this injury;
Nor wonder less to Readers may it bring,
Here to observe the rashness of the King.
Now with his Army doth he post away
False Bessus to find out in Bactria:
But much distrest for water in their march,
The drought and heat their bodies sore did parch.
At length they came to th'river Oxus brink,
Where so immoderately these thirsty drink,
Which more mortality to them did bring,
Then all their warrs against the Persian King.
Here Alexander's almost at a stand,
To pass the River to the other land.
For boats here's none, nor near it any wood,
To make them Rafts to waft them o're the flood:
But he that was resolved in his mind,
Would without means some transportation find.
Then from the Carriages the hides he takes,
And stuffing them with straw, he bundles makes.
On these together ti'd, in six dayes space,
They all pass over to the other place.
Had Bessus had but valour to his will,
With little pain there might have kept them still:
But Coward durst not fight, nor could he fly,
Hated of all for's former treachery,
Is by his own now bound in iron chains,
A Coller of the same, his neck contains.
And in this sort they rather drag then bring
This Malefactor vile before the King,
Who to Darius brother gives the wretch,
With racks and tortures every limb to stretch.
Here was of Greeks a town in Bactria,
Whom Xerxes from their Country led away,
These not a little joy'd, this day to see,
Wherein their own had got the sov'raignty
And now reviv'd, with hopes held up their head
From bondage long to be Enfranchised.
But Alexander puts them to the sword
Without least cause from them in deed or word;
Nor Sex, nor age, nor one, nor other spar'd,
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But in his cruelty alike they shar'd:
Nor reason could he give for this great wrong,
But that they had forgot their mother tongue.
While thus some time he spent in Bactria,
And in his camp strong and securely lay,
Down from the mountains twenty thousand came
And there most fiercely set upon the same:
Repelling these, two marks of honour got
Imprinted in his leg, by arrows shot.
The Bactrians against him now rebel;
But he their stubborness in time doth quell.
From hence he to Jaxartis River goes,
Where Scythians rude his army doth oppose,
And with their outcryes in an hideous sort
Beset his camp, or military court,
Of darts and arrows, made so little spare,
They flew so thick, they seem'd to dark the air:
But soon his souldiers forc'd them to a flight,
Their nakedness could not endure their might.
Upon this rivers bank in seventeen dayes
A goodly City doth compleatly raise,
Which Alexandria he doth likewise name,
And sixty furlongs could but round the same.
A third Supply Antipater now sent,
Which did his former forces much augment;
And being one hundred twenty thousand strong;
He enters then the Indian Kings among:
Those that submit, he gives them rule again,
Such as do not, both them and theirs are slain.
His warrs with sundry nations I'le omit,
And also of the Mallians what is writ.
His Fights, his dangers, and the hurts he had,
How to submit their necks at last they're glad.
To Nisa goes by Bacchus built long since,
Whose feasts are celebrated by this prince;
Nor had that drunken god one who would take
His Liquors more devoutly for his sake.
When thus ten days his brain with wine he'd soakt,
And with delicious meats his palate choakt:
To th'River Indus next his course he bends,
Boats to prepare, Ephestion first he sends,
Who coming thither long before his Lord,
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Had to his mind made all things to accord,
The vessels ready were at his command,
And Omphis King of that part of the land,
Through his perswasion Alexander meets,
And as his Sov'raign Lord him humbly greets
Fifty six Elephants he brings to's hand,
And tenders him the strength of all his land;
Presents himself first with a golden crown,
Then eighty talents to his captains down:
But Alexander made him to behold
He glory sought, no silver nor no gold;
His presents all with thanks he did restore,
And of his own a thousand talents more.
Thus all the Indian Kings to him submit,
But Porus stout, who will not yeild as yet:
To him doth Alexander thus declare,
His pleasure is that forthwith he repair
Unto his Kingdomes borders, and as due,
His homage to himself as Soveraign doe:
But kingly Porus this brave answer sent,
That to attend him there was his intent,
And come as well provided as he could,
But for the rest, his sword advise him should.
Great Alexander vext at this reply,
Did more his valour then his crown envy,
Is now resolv'd to pass Hydaspes flood,
And there by force his soveraignty make good.
Stout Porus on the banks doth ready stand
To give him welcome when he comes to land.
A potent army with him like a King,
And ninety Elephants for warr did bring:
Had Alexander such resistance seen
On Tygris side, here now he had not been.
Within this spacious River deep and wide
Did here and there Isles full of trees abide.
His army Alexander doth divide
With Ptolemy sends part to th'other side;
Porus encounters them and thinks all's there,
When covertly the rest get o're else where,
And whilst the first he valiantly assail'd,
The last set on his back, and so prevail'd.
Yet work enough here Alexander found,
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For to the last stout Porus kept his ground:
Nor was't dishonour at the length to yield,
When Alexander strives to win the field.
The kingly Captive 'fore the Victor's brought,
In looks or gesture not abased ought,
But him a Prince of an undaunted mind
Did Alexander by his answers find:
His fortitude his royal foe commends,
Restores him and his bounds farther extends.
Now eastward Alexander would goe still,
But so to doe his souldiers had no will,
Long with excessive travails wearied,
Could by no means be farther drawn or led,
Yet that his fame might to posterity
Be had in everlasting memory,
Doth for his Camp a greater circuit take,
And for his souldiers larger Cabbins make.
His mangers he erected up so high
As never horse his Provender could eye.
Huge bridles made, which here and there he left,
Which might be found, and for great wonders kept
Twelve altars then for monuments he rears,
Whereon his acts and travels long appears.
But doubting wearing time might these decay,
And so his memory would fade away,
He on the fair Hydaspes pleasant side,
Two Cities built, his name might there abide,
First Nicea, the next Bucephalon,
Where he entomb'd his stately Stalion.
His fourth and last supply was hither sent,
Then down Hydaspes with his Fleet he went;
Some time he after spent upon that shore,
Whether Ambassadors, ninety or more,
Came with submission from the Indian Kings,
Bringing their presents rare, and precious things,
These all he feasts in state on beds of gold,
His Furniture most sumptuous to behold;
His meat & drink, attendants, every thing,
To th'utmost shew'd the glory of a King.
With rich rewards he sent them home again,
Acknowledged their Masters sovereign;
Then sailing South, and coming to that shore,
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Those obscure Nations yielded as before:
A City here he built, call'd by his Name,
Which could not sound too oft with too much fame
Then sailing by the mouth of Indus floud,
His Gallyes stuck upon the flats and mud;
Which the stout Macedonians amazed sore,
Depriv'd at once the use of Sail and Oar:
Observing well the nature of the Tide,
In those their fears they did not long abide.
Passing fair Indus mouth his course he steer'd
To th'coast which by Euphrates mouth appear'd;
Whose inlets near unto, he winter spent,
Unto his starved Souldiers small content,
By hunger and by cold so many slain,
That of them all the fourth did scarce remain.
Thus winter, Souldiers, and provisions spent,
From hence he then unto Gedrosia went.
And thence he marcht into Carmania,
And so at length drew near to Persia,
Now through these goodly Countryes as he past,
Much time in feasts and ryoting did waste;
Then visits Cyrus Sepulchre in's way,
Who now obscure at Passagardis lay:
Upon his Monument his Robe he spread,
And set his Crown on his supposed head.
From hence to Babylon, some time there spent,
He at the last to royal Shushan went;
A wedding Feast to's Nobles then he makes,
And Statyra, Darius daughter takes,
Her Sister gives to his Ephestian dear,
That by this match he might be yet more near;
He fourscore Persian Ladies also gave,
At this same time unto his Captains brave:
Six thousand guests unto this Feast invites,
Whose Sences all were glutted with delights.
It far exceeds my mean abilities
To shadow forth these short felicities,
Spectators here could scarce relate the story,
They were so rapt with this external glory:
If an Ideal Paradise a man would frame,
He might this Feast imagine by the same;
To every guess a cup of gold he sends,
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So after many dayes the Banquet ends.
Now Alexanders conquests all are done,
And his long Travails past and overgone;
His virtues dead, buried, and quite forgot,
But vice remains to his Eternal blot.
'Mongst those that of his cruelty did tast,
Philotus was not least, nor yet the last,
Accus'd because he did not certifie
The King of treason and conspiracy:
Upon suspition being apprehended,
Nothing was prov'd wherein he had offended
But silence, which was of such consequence,
He was judg'd guilty of the same offence,
But for his fathers great deserts the King
His royal pardon gave for this foul thing.
Yet is Phylotas unto judgment brought,
Must suffer, not for what is prov'd, but thought.
His master is accuser, judge and King,
Who to the height doth aggravate each thing,
Inveighs against his father now absent,
And's brethren who for him their lives had spent.
But Philotas his unpardonable crime,
No merit could obliterate, or time:
He did the Oracle of Jove deride,
By which his Majesty was diefi'd.
Philotas thus o'recharg'd with wrong and grief
Sunk in despair without hope of Relief,
Fain would have spoke and made his own defence,
The King would give no ear, but went from thence
To his malicious Foes delivers him,
To wreak their spight and hate on every limb.
Philotas after him sends out this cry,
O Alexander, thy free clemency
My foes exceeds in malice, and their hate
Thy kingly word can easily terminate.
Such torments great as wit could worst invent,
Or flesh and life could bear, till both were spent
Were now inflicted on Parmenio's son
He might accuse himself, as they had done,
At last he did, so they were justifi'd,
And told the world, that for his guilt he di'd.
But how these Captains should, or yet their master
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Look on Parmenio, after this disaster
They knew not, wherefore best now to be done,
Was to dispatch the father as the son.
This sound advice at heart pleas'd Alexander,
Who was so much ingag'd to this Commander,
As he would ne're confess, nor yet reward,
Nor could his Captains bear so great regard:
Wherefore at once, all these to satisfie,
It was decreed Parmenio should dye:
Polidamus, who seem'd Parmenio's friend
To do this deed they into Media send:
He walking in his garden to and fro,
Fearing no harm, because he none did doe,
Most wickedly was slain without least crime,
(The most renowned captain of his time)
This is Parmenio who so much had done
For Philip dead, and his surviving son,
Who from a petty King of Macedon
By him was set upon the Persian throne,
This that Parmenio who still overcame,
Yet gave his Master the immortal fame,
Who for his prudence, valour, care and trust
Had this reward, most cruel and unjust.
The next, who in untimely death had part,
Was one of more esteem, but less desert;
Clitus belov'd next to Ephestian,
And in his cups his chief companion;
When both were drunk, Clitus was wont to jeer,
Alexander to rage, to kill, and swear;
Nothing more pleasing to mad Clitus tongue,
Then's Masters Godhead to defie and wrong;
Nothing toucht Alexander to the quick,
Like this against his Diety to kick:
Both at a Feast when they had tippled well,
Upon this dangerous Theam fond Clitus fell;
From jest to earnest, and at last so bold,
That of Parmenio's death him plainly told.
Which Alexanders wrath incens'd so high,
Nought but his life for this could satisfie;
From one stood by he snatcht a partizan,
And in a rage him through the body ran,
Next day he tore his face for what he'd done,
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And would have slain himself for Clitus gone:
This pot Companion he did more bemoan,
Then all the wrongs to brave Parmenio done.
The next of worth that suffered after these,
Was learned, virtuous, wise Calisthenes,
VVho lov'd his Master more then did the rest,
As did appear, in flattering him the least;
In his esteem a God he could not be,
Nor would adore him for a Diety:
For this alone and for no other cause,
Against his Sovereign, or against his Laws,
He on the Rack his Limbs in pieces rent,
Thus was he tortur'd till his life was spent.
Of this unkingly act doth Seneca
This censure pass, and not unwisely say,
Of Alexander this th'eternal crime,
VVhich shall not be obliterate by time.
VVhich virtues fame can ne're redeem by far,
Nor all felicity of his in war.
VVhen e're 'tis said he thousand thousands slew,
Yea, and Calisthenes to death he drew.
The mighty Persian King he overcame,
Yea, and he kill'd Calistthenes of fame.
All Countryes, Kingdomes, Provinces, he wan
From Hellispont, to th'farthest Ocean.
All this he did, who knows' not to be true?
But yet withal, Catisthenes he slew.
From Macedon, his Empire did extend
Unto the utmost bounds o' th'orient:
All this he did, yea, and much more, 'tis true,
But yet withal, Catisthenes he slew.
Now Alexander goes to Media,
Finds there the want of wise Parmenio;
Here his chief favourite Ephestian dies,
He celebrates his mournful obsequies:
Hangs his Physitian, the Reason why
He suffered, his friend Ephestian dye.
This act (me-thinks) his Godhead should a shame,
To punish where himself deserved blame;
Or of necessity he must imply,
The other was the greatest Diety.
The Mules and Horses are for sorrow shorne,
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The battlements from off the walls are torne.
Of stately Ecbatane who now must shew,
A rueful face in this so general woe;
Twelve thousand Talents also did intend,
Upon a sumptuous monument to spend:
What e're he did, or thought not so content,
His messenger to Jupiter he sent,
That by his leave his friend Ephestion,
Among the Demy Gods they might inthrone.
From Media to Babylon he went,
To meet him there t'Antipater he'd sent,
That he might act also upon the Stage,
And in a Tragedy there end his age.
The Queen Olimpias bears him deadly hate,
Not suffering her to meddle with the State,
And by her Letters did her Son incite,
This great indignity he should requite;
His doing so, no whit displeas'd the King,
Though to his Mother he disprov'd the thing.
But now Antipater had liv'd so long,
He might well dye though he had done no wrong;
His service great is suddenly forgot,
Or if remembred, yet regarded not:
The King doth intimate 'twas his intent,
His honours and his riches to augment;
Of larger Provinces the rule to give,
And for his Counsel near the King to live.
So to be caught, Antipater's too wise,
Parmenio's death's too fresh before his eyes;
He was too subtil for his crafty foe.
Nor by his baits could be insnared so:
But his excuse with humble thanks he sends,
His Age and journy long he then pretends;
And pardon craves for his unwilling stay,
He shews his grief, he's forc'd to disobey.
Before his Answer came to Babylon,
The thread of Alexanders life was spun;
Poyson had put an end to's dayes ('twas thought)
By Philip and Cassander to him brought,
Sons to Antipater, and bearers of his Cup,
Lest of such like their Father chance to sup;
By others thought, and that more generally,
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That through excessive drinking he did dye:
The thirty third of's Age do all agree,
This Conquerour did yield to destiny.
When this sad news came to Darius Mother,
She laid it more to heart, then any other,
Nor meat, nor drink, nor comfort would she take,
But pin'd in grief till life did her forsake;
All friends she shuns, yea, banished the light,
Till death inwrapt her in perpetual night.
This Monarchs fame must last whilst world doth stand,
And Conquests be talkt of whilest there is land;
His Princely qualities had he retain'd,
Unparalled for ever had remain'd.
But with the world his virtues overcame,
And so with black beclouded, all his fame;
Wise Aristotle Tutor to his youth.
Had so instructed him in moral Truth:
The principles of what he then had learn'd
Might to the last (when sober) be discern'd.
Learning and learned men he much regarded,
And curious Artist evermore rewarded:
The Illiads of Homer he still kept.
And under's pillow laid them when he slept.
Achilles happiness he did envy,
'Cause Homer kept his acts to memory.
Profusely bountifull without desert,
For such as pleas'd him had both wealth and heart
Cruel by nature and by custome too,
As oft his acts throughout his reign doth shew:
Ambitious so, that nought could satisfie,
Vain, thirsting after immortality,
Still fearing that his name might hap to dye,
And fame not last unto eternity.
This Conqueror did oft lament (tis said)
There were no more worlds to be conquered.
This folly great Augustus did deride,
For had he had but wisdome to his pride,
He would had found enough there to be done,
To govern that he had already won.
His thoughts are perisht, he aspires no more,
Nor can he kill or save as heretofore.
A God alive, him all must Idolize,
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Now like a mortal helpless man he lyes.
Of all those Kingdomes large which he had got,
To his Posterity remain'd no jot;
For by that hand which still revengeth bloud,
None of his kindred, nor his race long stood:
But as he took delight much bloud to spill,
So the same cup to his, did others fill.
Four of his Captains now do all divide,
As Daniel before had prophysi'd.
The Leopard down, the four wings 'gan to rise,
The great horn broke, the less did tyranize.
What troubles and contentions did ensue
We may hereafter shew in season due.
Aridæus.
Great Alexander dead, his Armyes left,
Like to that Giant of his Eye bereft;
When of his monstrous bulk it was the guide,
His matchless force no creature could abide.
But by Ulisses having lost his sight,
All men began streight to contemn his might;
For aiming still amiss, his dreadful blows
Did harm himself, but never reacht his Foes.
Now Court and Camp all in confusion be,
A King they'l have, but who, none can agree;
Each Captain wisht this prize to bear away,
But none so hardy found as so durst say:
Great Alexander did leave Issue none,
Except by Artabasus daughter one;
And Roxane fair whom late he married,
Was near her time to be delivered.
By natures right these had enough to claim,
But meaness of their mothers bar'd the same,
Alledg'd by those who by their subtile Plea
Had hope themselves to bear the Crown away.
A Sister Alexander had, but she
Claim'd not, perhaps, her Sex might hindrance be.
After much tumult they at last proclaim'd
His base born brother Aridæus nam'd,
That so under his feeble wit and reign,
Their ends they might the better still attain.
This choice Perdiccas vehemently disclaim'd,
And Babe unborn of Roxane he proclaim'd;
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Some wished him to take the style of King,
Because his Master gave to him his Ring,
And had to him still since Ephestion di'd
More then to th'rest his favour testifi'd.
But he refus'd, with feigned modesty,
Hoping to be elect more generally.
He hold on this occasion should have laid,
For second offer there was never made.
'Mongst these contentions, tumults, jealousies,
Seven dayes the corps of their great master lies
Untoucht, uncovered slighted and neglected,
So much these princes their own ends respected:
A Contemplation to astonish Kings,
That he who late possest all earthly things,
And yet not so content unless that he
Might be esteemed for a Diety;
Now lay a Spectacle to testifie,
The wretchedness of mans mortality.
After some time, when stirs began to calm,
His body did the Egyptians embalme;
His countenance so lively did appear,
That for a while they durst not come so near:
No sign of poyson in his intrails sound,
But all his bowels coloured, well and sound.
Perdiccas seeing Arideus must be King,
Under his name began to rule each thing.
His chief Opponent who Control'd his sway,
Was Meleager whom he would take away,
And by a wile he got him in his power,
So took his life unworthily that hour.
Using the name, and the command of th'King
To authorize his acts in every thing.
The princes seeing Perdiccas power and pride,
For their security did now provide.
Antigonus for his share Asia takes,
And Ptolemy next sure of Egypt makes:
Seleucus afterward held Babylon,
Antipater had long rul'd Macedon.
These now to govern for the king pretends,
But nothing less each one himself intends.
Perdiccas took no province like the rest,
But held command of th'Army (which was best)
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And had a higher project in his head,
His Masters sister secretly to wed:
So to the Lady, covertly he sent,
(That none might know, to frustrate his intent)
But Cleopatra this Suitor did deny,
For Leonatus more lovely in her eye,
To whom she sent a message of her mind,
That if he came good welcome he should find.
In these tumultuous dayes the thralled Greeks,
Their Ancient Liberty afresh now seeks.
And gladly would the yoke shake off, laid on
Sometimes by Philip and his conquering son.
The Athenians force Antipater to fly
To Lamia where he shut up doth lye.
To brave Craterus then he sends with speed
For succours to relieve him in his need.
The like of Leonatus he requires,
(Which at this time well suited his desires)
For to Antipater he now might goe,
His Lady take in th'way, and no man know.
Antiphilus the Athenian General
With speed his Army doth together call;
And Leonatus seeks to stop, that so
He joyne not with Antipater their foe.
The Athenian Army was the greater far,
(Which did his Match with Cleopatra mar)
For fighting still, while there did hope remain
The valiant Chief amidst his foes was slain.
'Mongst all the princes of great Alexander
For personage, none like to this Commander.
Now to Antipater Craterus goes,
Blockt up in Lamia still by his foes,
Long marches through Cilicia he makes,
And the remains of Leonatus takes:
With them and his he into Grecia went,
Antipater releas'd from prisonment:
After which time the Greeks did never more
Act any thing of worth, as heretofore:
But under servitude their necks remain'd,
Nor former liberty or glory gain'd.
Now di'd about the end of th'Lamian war
Demosthenes, that sweet-tongue'd Orator,
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Who fear'd Antipater would take his life
For animating the Athenian strife:
To end his dayes by poison rather chose
Then fall into the hands of mortal foes.
Craterus and Antipater now joyne,
In love and in affinity combine,
Craterus doth his daughter Phila wed
Their friendship might the more be strengthened.
Whilst they in Macedon do thus agree,
In Asia they all asunder be.
Perdiccas griev'd to see the princes bold
So many Kingdomes in their power to hold,
Yet to regain them, how he did not know,
His souldiers 'gainst those captains would not goe
To suffer them go on as they begun,
Was to give way himself might be undone.
With Antipater to joyne he sometimes thought,
That by his help, the rest might low be brought,
But this again dislikes; he would remain,
If not in stile, in deed a soveraign;
(For all the princes of great Alexander
Acknowledged for Chief that old Commander)
Desires the King to goe to Macedon,
Which once was of his Ancestors the throne,
And by his presence there to nullifie
The acts of his Vice-Roy now grown so high.
Antigonus of treason first attaints,
And summons him to answer his complaints.
This he avoids, and ships himself and son,
goes to Antipater and tells what's done.
He and Craterus, both with him do joyne,
And 'gainst Perdiccas all their strength combine.
Brave Ptolemy, to make a fourth then sent
To save himself from danger imminent.
In midst of these garboyles, with wondrous state
His masters funeral doth celebrate:
In Alexandria his tomb he plac'd,
Which eating time hath scarcely yet defac'd.
Two years and more, since natures debt he paid,
And yet till now at quiet was not laid.
Great love did Ptolemy by this act gain,
And made the souldiers on his side remain.
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Perdiccas hears his foes are all combin'd,
'Gainst which to goe, is not resolv'd in mind.
But first 'gainst Ptolemy he judg'd was best,
Neer'st unto him, and farthest from the rest,
Leaves Eumenes the Asian Coast to free
From the invasions of the other three,
And with his army unto Egypt goes
Brave Ptolemy to th'utmost to oppose.
Perdiccas surly cariage, and his pride
Did alinate the souldiers from his side.
But Ptolemy by affability
His sweet demeanour and his courtesie,
Did make his own, firm to his cause remain,
And from the other side did dayly gain.
Perdiccas in his pride did ill intreat
Python of haughty mind, and courage great.
Who could not brook so great indignity,
But of his wrongs his friends doth certifie;
The souldiers 'gainst Perdiccas they incense,
Who vow to make this captain recompence,
And in a rage they rush into his tent,
Knock out his brains: to Ptolemy then went
And offer him his honours, and his place,
With stile of the Protector, him to grace.
Next day into the camp came Ptolemy,
And is receiv'd of all most joyfully.
Their proffers he refus'd with modesty,
Yields them to Python for his courtesie.
With what he held he was now more content,
Then by more trouble to grow eminent.
Now comes there news of a great victory
That Eumenes got of the other three.
Had it but in Perdiccas life ariv'd,
With greater joy it would have been receiv'd.
Thus Ptolemy rich Egypt did retain,
And Python turn'd to Asia again.
Whilst Perdiccas encamp'd in Affrica,
Antigonus did enter Asia,
And fain would Eumenes draw to their side,
But he alone most faithfull did abide:
The other all had Kingdomes in their eye,
But he was true to's masters family,
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Nor could Craterus, whom he much did love.
From his fidelity once make him move:
Two Battles fought, and had of both the best,
And brave Craterus slew among the rest:
For this sad strife he poures out his complaints,
And his beloved foe full sore laments.
I should but snip a story into bits
And his great Acts and glory much eclipse,
To shew the dangers Eumenes befel,
His stratagems wherein he did excel:
His Policies, how he did extricate
Himself from out of Lab'rinths intricate:
He that at large would satisfie his mind,
In Plutarchs Lives his history may find.
For all that should be said, let this suffice,
He was both valiant, faithfull, patient, wise.
Python now chose Protector of the state,
His rule Queen Euridice begins to hate,
Sees Arrideus must not King it long,
If once young Alexander grow more strong,
But that her husband serve for supplement,
To warm his seat, was never her intent.
She knew her birth-right gave her Macedon,
Grand-child to him who once sat on that throne
Who was Perdiccas, Philips eldest brother,
She daughter to his son, who had no other.
Pythons commands, as oft she countermands;
What he appoints, she purposely withstands.
He wearied out at last would needs be gone,
Resign'd his place, and so let all alone:
In's room the souldiers chose Antipater,
Who vext the Queen more then the other far.
From Macedon to Asia he came,
That he might settle matters in the same.
He plac'd, displac'd, control'd rul'd as he list,
And this no man durst question or resist;
For all the nobles of King Alexander
Their bonnets vail'd to him as chief Commander.
When to his pleasure all things they had done,
The King and Queen he takes to Macedon,
Two sons of Alexander, and the rest,
All to be order'd there as he thought best.
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The Army to Antigonus doth leave,
And Government of Asia to him gave.
And thus Antipater the ground-work layes,
On which Antigonus his height doth raise,
Who in few years, the rest so overtops,
For universal Monarchy he hopes.
With Eumenes he diverse Battels fought,
And by his slights to circumvent him sought:
But vain it was to use his policy,
'Gainst him that all deceits could scan and try.
In this Epitome too long to tell
How finely Eumenes did here excell,
And by the self same Traps the other laid,
He to his cost was righteously repaid.
But while these Chieftains doe in Asia fight,
To Greece and Macedon lets turn our sight.
When great Antipater the world must leave,
His place to Polisperchon did bequeath,
Fearing his son Cassander was unstaid,
Too rash to bear that charge, if on him laid.
Antigonus hearing of his decease
On most part of Assyria doth seize.
And Ptolemy next to incroach begins,
All Syria and Phenicia he wins,
Then Polisperchon 'gins to act in's place,
Recalls Olimpias the Court to grace.
Antipater had banish'd her from thence
Into Epire for her great turbulence;
This new Protector's of another mind,
Thinks by her Majesty much help to find.
Cassander like his Father could not see,
This Polisperchons great ability,
Slights his Commands, his actions he disclaims,
And to be chief himself now bends his aims;
Such as his Father had advanc'd to place,
Or by his favours any way had grac'd
Are now at the devotion of the Son,
Prest to accomplish what he would have done;
Besides he was the young Queens favourite,
On whom (t'was thought) she set her chief delight:
Unto these helps at home he seeks out more,
Goes to Antigonus and doth implore,
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By all the Bonds 'twixt him and's Father past,
And for that great gift which he gave him last.
By these and all to grant him some supply,
To take down Polisperchon grown so high;
For this Antigonus did need no spurs,
Hoping to gain yet more by these new stirs,
Streight furnish'd him with a sufficient aid,
And so he quick returns thus well appaid,
With Ships at Sea, an Army for the Land,
His proud opponent hopes soon to withstand.
But in his absence Polisperchon takes
Such friends away as for his Interest makes
By death, by prison, or by banishment,
That no supply by these here might be lent,
Cassander with his Host to Grecia goes,
Whom Polisperchon labours to oppose;
But beaten was at Sea, and foil'd at Land,
Cassanders forces had the upper hand,
Athens with many Towns in Greece beside,
Firm (for his Fathers sake) to him abide.
Whil'st hot in wars these two in Greece remain,
Antigonus doth all in Asia gain;
Still labours Eumenes, would with him side,
But all in vain, he faithful did abide:
Nor Mother could, nor Sons of Alexander,
Put trust in any but in this Commander.
The great ones now began to shew their mind,
And act as opportunity they find.
Aridæus the scorn'd and simple King,
More then he bidden was could act no thing.
Polisperchon for office hoping long,
Thinks to inthrone the Prince when riper grown;
Euridice this injury disdains,
And to Cassandar of this wrong complains.
Hateful the name and house of Alexander,
Was to this proud vindicative Cassander;
He still kept lockt within his memory,
His Fathers danger, with his Family;
Nor thought he that indignity was small,
When Alexander knockt his head to th'wall.
These with his love unto the amorous Queen,
Did make him vow her servant to be seen.
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Olimpias, Aridæus deadly hates,
As all her Husbands, Children by his mates,
She gave him poyson formerly ('tis thought)
Which damage both to mind and body brought;
She now with Polisperchon doth combine,
To make the King by force his Seat resigne:
And her young grand-child in his State inthrone,
That under him, she might rule, all alone.
For aid she goes t'Epire among her friends,
The better to accomplish these her ends;
Euridice hearing what she intends,
In haste unto her friend Cassander sends,
To leave his siege at Tegea, and with speed,
To save the King and her in this their need:
Then by intreaties, promises and Coyne,
Some forces did procure with her to joyn.
Olimpias soon enters Macedon,
The Queen to meet her bravely marches on,
But when her Souldiers saw their ancient Queen,
Calling to mind what sometime she had been;
The wife and Mother of their famous Kings,
Nor darts, nor arrows, now none shoots or flings.
The King and Queen seeing their destiny,
To save their lives t'Amphipolis do fly;
But the old Queen pursues them with her hate,
And needs will have their lives as well as State:
The King by extream torments had his end,
And to the Queen these presents she did send;
A Halter, cup of poyson, and a Sword,
Bids chuse her death, such kindness she'l afford.
The Queen with many a curse, and bitter check,
At length yields to the Halter her fair neck;
Praying that fatal day might quickly haste,
On which Olimpias of the like might taste.
This done the cruel Queen rests not content,
'Gainst all that lov'd Cassander she was bent;
His Brethren, Kinsfolk and his chiefest friends,
That fell within her reach came to their ends:
Dig'd up his brother dead, 'gainst natures right,
And threw his bones about to shew her spight:
The Courtiers wondring at her furious mind,
Wisht in Epire she had been still confin'd.
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In Peloponesus then Cassander lay,
Where hearing of this news he speeds away,
With rage, and with revenge he's hurried on,
To find this cruel Queen in Macedon;
But being stopt, at streight Thermopoly,
Sea passage gets, and lands in Thessaly:
His Army he divides, sends post away,
Polisperchon to hold a while in play;
And with the rest Olimpias pursues,
For all her cruelty, to give her dues.
She with the chief o' th'Court to Pydna flyes,
Well fortifi'd, (and on the Sea it lyes)
There by Cassander she's blockt up so long,
Untill the Famine grows exceeding strong,
Her Couzen of Epire did what he might,
To raise the Siege, and put her Foes to flight.
Cassander is resolved there to remain,
So succours and endeavours proves but vain;
Fain would this wretched Queen capitulate,
Her foe would give no Ear, (such is his hate)
The Souldiers pinched with this scarcity,
By stealth unto Cassander dayly fly;
Olimpias means to hold out to the last,
Expecting nothing but of death to tast:
But his occasions calling him away,
Gives promise for her life, so wins the day.
No sooner had he got her in his hand,
But made in judgement her accusers stand;
And plead the blood of friends and kindreds spilt,
Desiring justice might be done for guilt;
And so was he acquitted of his word,
For justice sake she being put to th'Sword:
This was the end of this most cruel Queen,
Whose fury scarcely parallel'd hath been.
The daughter, sister, Mother, Wife to Kings,
But Royalty no good conditions brings;
To Husbands death ('tis thought) she gave consent,
The murtherer she did so much lament:
With Garlands crown'd his head, bemoan'd his fates,
His Sword unto Apollo consecrates.
Her Outrages too tedious to relate,
How for no cause but her inveterate hate;
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Her Husbands wives and Children after's death,
Some slew, some fry'd, of others stopt the breath:
Now in her Age she's forc'd to tast that Cup,
Which she had others often made to sup.
Now many Towns in Macedon supprest,
And Pellas fain to yield among the rest;
The Funerals Cassander celebrates,
Of Aridæus and his Queen with State:
Among their Ancestors by him they're laid,
And shews of lamentation for them made.
Old Thebes he then rebuilt so much of fame,
And Cassandria rais'd after his name.
But leave him building, others in their Urne,
Let's for a while, now into Asia turn.
True Eumenes endeavours by all Skill,
To keep Antigonus from Shushan still;
Having command o'th' Treasure he can hire,
Such as no threats, nor favour could acquire.
In divers Battels he had good success,
Antigonus came off still honourless;
When Victor oft he'd been, and so might still,
Peucestes did betray him by a wile.
T'Antigonus, who took his Life unjust,
Because he never would forgoe his trust;
Thus lost he all for his fidelity,
Striving t'uphold his Masters Family.
But to a period as that did haste,
So Eumenes (the prop) of death must tast;
All Persia now Antigonus doth gain,
And Master of the Treasure sole remain:
Then with Seleucus streight at odds doth fall,
And he for aid to Ptolomy doth call,
The Princes all begin now to envy
Antigonus, he growing up so high;
Fearing his force, and what might hap e're long,
Enters into a Combination strong,
Seleucus, Ptolemy, Cassander joynes,
Lysimachus to make a fourth combines:
Antigonus desirous of the Greeks,
To make Cassander odious to them seeks,
Sends forth his declarations near and far,
And clears what cause he had to make this war,
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Cassanders outrages at large doth tell,
Shews his ambitious practises as well.
The mother of their King to death he'd put,
His wife and son in prison close had shut:
And aiming now to make himself a king,
And that some title he might seem to bring,
Thessalonica he had newly wed,
Daughter to Philip their renowned head:
Had built and call'd a City by his name,
Which none e're did, but those of royal fame:
And in despight of their two famous Kings
Hatefull Olinthians to Greece rebrings.
Rebellious Thebes he had reedified,
Which their late King in dust had damnified,
Requires them therefore to take up their arms
And to requite this traitor for these harms.
Then Ptolemy would gain the Greeks likewise,
And he declares the others injuryes:
First how he held the Empire in his hands,
Seleucus driven from Goverment and lands,
The valiant Eumenes unjustly slain,
And Lord of royal Shushan did remain;
Therefore requests their help to take him down
Before he wear the universal Crown.
These princes at the sea soon had a fight,
Where great Antigonus was put to flight:
His son at Gaza likewise lost the field,
So Syria to Ptolemy did yield:
And Seleucus recovers Babylon,
Still gaining Countryes eastward he goes on.
Demetrius with Ptolemy did fight,
And coming unawares, put him to flight;
But bravely sends the prisoners back again,
With all the spoyle and booty he had tane.
Courteous as noble Ptolemy, or more,
VVho at Gaza did the like to him before.
Antigonus did much rejoyce, his son
VVith victory, his lost repute had won.
At last these princes tired out with warrs,
Sought for a peace, and laid aside their jarrs:
The terms of their agreement, thus express
That each should hold what now he did possess,
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Till Alexander unto age was grown,
VVho then should be enstalled in the throne.
This toucht Cassander sore for what he'd done,
Imprisoning both the mother and the son:
He sees the Greeks now favour their young Prince
Whom he in durance held, now, and long since,
That in few years he must be forc'd or glad,
To render up such Kingdomes as he had;
Resolves to quit his fears by one deed done,
So puts to death the Mother and her Son.
This Roxane for her beauty all commend,
But for one act she did, just was her end.
No sooner was great Alexander dead,
But she Darius daughters murthered.
Both thrown into a well to hide her blot,
Perdiccas was her Partner in this plot.
The heavens seem'd slow in paying her the same;
But at the last the hand of vengeance came.
And for that double fact which she had done,
The life of her must goe, and of her son
Perdiccas had before for his amiss,
But by their hands who thought not once of this.
Cassanders deed the princes do detest,
But 'twas in shew; in heart it pleas'd them best.
That he is odious to the world, they'r glad:
And now they were free Lords of what they had.
When this foul tragedy was past and done,
Polysperchon brings the other son
Call'd Hercules, and elder then his brother,
(But Olimpias would prefer the other)
The Greeks toucht with the murther done of late,
This Orphan prince 'gan to compassionate,
Begin to mutter much 'gainst proud Cassander,
And place their hopes on th'heir of Alexander.
Cassander fear'd what might of this ensue,
So Polisperchon to his counsel drew,
And gives Peloponesus for his hire,
Who slew the prince according to desire.
Thus was the race and house of Alexander
Extinct by this inhumane wretch Cassander.
Antigonus, for all this doth not mourn,
He knows to's profit, this at last will turn,
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But that some Title now he might pretend,
To Cleopatra doth for marriage send;
Lysimachus and Ptolemy the same,
And lewd Cassander too, sticks not for shame:
She then in Lydia at Sardis lay,
Where by Embassage all these Princes pray.
Choice above all, of Ptolemy she makes,
With his Embassador her journy takes;
Antigonus Lieutenant stayes her still,
Untill he further know his Masters will:
Antigonus now had a Wolf by th'Ears,
To hold her still, or let her go he fears.
Resolves at last the Princess should be slain,
So hinders him of her, he could not gain;
Her women are appointed for this deed,
They for their great reward no better speed:
For by command, they streight were put to death,
As vile Conspirators that stopt her breath.
And now he hopes, he's order'd all so well,
The world must needs believe what he doth tell;
Thus Philips house was quite extinguished,
Except Cassanders wife who yet not dead.
And by their means who thought of nothing less,
Then vengeance just, against them to express;
Now blood was paid with blood for what was done
By cruel Father, Mother, cruel Son:
Thus may we hear, and fear, and ever say,
That hand is righteous still which doth repay.
These Captains now the stile of Kings do take,
For to their Crowns their's none can Title make;
Demetrius first the royal stile assum'd,
By his Example all the rest presum'd.
Antigonus himself to ingratiate,
Doth promise liberty to Athens State;
With Arms and with provision stores them well,
The better 'gainst Cassander to rebel.
Demetrius thether goes, is entertain'd
Not like a King, but like some God they feign'd;
Most grosly base was their great Adulation,
Who Incense burnt, and offered oblation:
These Kings afresh fall to their wars again,
Demetrius of Ptolemy doth gain.
166
'Twould be an endless Story to relate
Their several Battels and their several fate,
Their fights by Sea, their victories by Land,
How some when down, straight got the upper hand
Antigonus and Seleucus then fight
Near Ephesus, each bringing all his might,
And he that Conquerour shall now remain,
The Lordship of all Asia shall retain;
This day 'twixt these two Kings ends all the strife,
For here Antigonus lost rule and life:
Nor to his Son, did e're one foot remain
Of those vast Kingdomes, he did sometimes gain.
Demetrius with his Troops to Athens flyes,
Hopes to find succours in his miseries;
But they adoring in prosperity,
Now shut their gates in his adversity:
He sorely griev'd at this his desperate State
Tryes Foes, sith friends will not compassionate.
His peace he then with old Seleucus makes,
Who his fair daughter Stratonica takes,
Antiochus, Seleucus, dear lov'd Son,
Is for this fresh young Lady quite undone;
Falls so extreamly sick, all fear'd his life,
Yet durst not say, he lov'd his Fathers wife,
When his disease the skill'd Physitian found,
His Fathers mind he wittily did sound,
Who did no sooner understand the same,
But willingly resign'd the beautious Dame:
Cassander now must dye his race is run,
And leaves the ill got Kingdomes he had won.
Two Sons he left, born of King Philips daughter,
Who had an end put to their dayes by slaughter;
Which should succeed at variance they fell,
The Mother would, the youngest might excell:
The eld'st inrag'd did play the Vipers part,
And with his Sword did run her through the heart:
Rather then Philips race should longer live,
He whom she gave his life her death shall give.
This by Lysimacus was after slain,
Whose daughter he not long before had ta'ne;
Demetrius is call'd in by th'youngest Son,
Against Lysimachus who from him won.
167
But he a Kingdome more then's friend did eye,
Seaz'd upon that, and slew him traitrously.
Thus Philips and Cassander's race both gone,
And so falls out to be extinct in one;
And though Cassander died in his bed,
His Seed to be extirpt, was destined;
For blood, which was decre'd that he should spill,
Yet must his Children pay for Fathers ill;
Jehu in killing Ahab's house did well,
Yet be aveng'd must blood of Jezerel.
Demetrius thus Cassander's Kingdoms gains,
And now in Macedon as King he reigns;
Though men and mony both he hath at will,
In neither finds content if he sits still:
That Seleucus holds Asia grievs him sore,
Those Countryes large his Father got before.
These to recover, musters all his might,
And with his Son in Law will needs go fight;
A mighty Navy rig'd, an Army stout,
With these he hopes to turn the world about:
Leaving Antigonus his eldest Son,
In his long absence to rule Macedon.
Demetrius with so many troubles met,
As Heaven and Earth against him had been set;
Disaster on disaster him pursue,
His story seems a Fable more then true.
At last he's taken and imprisoned
Within an Isle that was with pleasures fed,
Injoy'd what ere beseem'd his Royalty,
Only restrained of his liberty:
After three years he died, left what he'd won,
In Greece unto Antigonus his Son.
For his Posterity unto this day,
Did ne're regain one foot in Asia;
His Body Seleucus sends to his Son,
Whose obsequies with wondrous pomp was done.
Next di'd the brave and noble Ptolemp,
Renown'd for bounty, valour, clemency,
Rich Egypt left, and what else he had won,
To Philadelphus his more worthy Son.
Of the old Heroes, now but two remain,
Seleucus and Lysimachus these twain,
168
Must needs go try their fortune and their might,
And so Lysimachus was slain in fight;
'Twas no small joy unto Seleucus breast,
That now he had out-lived all the rest:
Possession of Europe thinks to take,
And so himself the only Monarch make;
Whilst with these hopes in Greece he did remain,
He was by Ptolemy Ceraunus slain.
The second Son of the first Ptolemy,
Who for Rebellion unto him did fly;
Seleucus was a Father and a friend,
Yet by him had this most unworthy end.
Thus with these Kingly Captains have we done,
A little now how the Succession run,
Antigonus, Seleucus and Cassander,
With Ptolemy, reign'd after Alexander;
Cassander's Sons soon after's death were slain,
So three Successors only did remain:
Antigonus his Kingdomes lost and life,
Unto Seleucus, Author of that strife.
His Son Demetrius, all Cassanders gains,
And his posterity, the same retains;
Demetrius Son was call'd Antigonus,
And his again was nam'd Demetrius.
I must let pass those many Battels fought,
Betwixt those Kings, and noble Pyrrhus stout,
And his Son Alexander of Epire,
Whereby immortal honour they acquire;
Demetrius had Philip to his Son,
(Part of whose Kingdomes Titus Quintius won)
Philip had Perseus, who was made a Thrale
T'Emilius the Roman General;
Him with his Sons in Triumph lead did he,
Such riches too as Rome did never see:
This of Antigonus, his Seed's the Fate,
VVhose Empire was subdu'd to th'Roman State.
Longer Seleucus held the royalty,
In Syria by his Posterity;
Antiochus Soter his Son was nam'd,
To whom the old Berosus (so much fam'd,)
His Book of Assurs Monarchs dedicates,
Tells of their names, their wars, their riches, fates;
169
But this is perished with many more,
VVhich oft we wish was extant as before.
Antiochus Theos was Soter's Son,
VVho a long war with Egypts King begun;
The Affinityes and Wars Daniel sets forth,
And calls them there the Kings of South & North,
This Theos murther'd was by his lewd wife,
Seleucus reign'd, when he had lost his life.
A third Seleucus next sits on the Seat,
And then Antiochus sirnam'd the great,
VVhose large Dominions after was made small,
By Scipio the Roman General;
Fourth Seleucus Antiochus succeeds,
And next Epiphanes whose wicked deeds,
Horrid Massacres, Murthers, cruelties,
Amongst the Jews we read in Machabees.
Antiochus Eupater was the next,
By Rebels and Impostors dayly vext;
So many Princes still were murthered,
The Royal Blood was nigh extinguished;
Then Tygranes the great Armenian King,
To take the Government was called in,
Lucullus, Him, (the Roman General)
Vanquish'd in fight, and took those Kingdomes all;
Of Greece and Syria thus the rule did end,
In Egypt next, a little time wee'l spend.
First Ptolemy being dead, his famous Son
Call'd Philadelphus, did possess the Throne.
At Alexandria a Library did build,
And with seven hundred thousand Volumes fill'd;
The seventy two Interpreters did seek,
They might translate the Bible into Greek.
His Son was Evergetes the last Prince,
That valour shew'd, virtue, or excellence,
Philopater was Evergetes Son,
After Epiphanes sate on the Throne;
Philometor, Evergetes again,
And after him, did false Lathurus reign:
Then Alexander in Lathurus stead,
Next Auletes, who cut off Pompeys head.
To all these names, we Ptolemy must add,
For since the first, they still that Title had.
170
Fair Cleopatra next, last of that race,
Whom Julius Cæsar set in Royal place,
She with her Paramour, Mark Anthony
Held for a time, the Egyptian Monarchy,
Till great Augustus had with him a fight
At Actium, where his Navy's put to flight;
He seeing his honour lost, his Kingdome end,
Did by his Sword his life soon after send.
His brave Virago Aspes sets to her Arms,
To take her life, and quit her from all harms;
For 'twas not death nor danger she did dread,
But some disgrace in triumph to be led.
Here ends at last the Grecian Monarchy,
Which by the Romans had its destiny;
Thus King & Kingdomes have their times & dates,
Their standings, overturnings, bounds and fates:
Now up, now down now chief, & then broght under,
The heavn's thus rule, to fil the world with wonder
The Assyrian Monarchy long time did stand,
But yet the Persian got the upper hand;
The Grecian them did utterly subdue,
And millions were subjected unto few:
The Grecian longer then the Persian stood,
Then came the Roman like a raging flood;
And with the torrent of his rapid course,
Their Crowns their Titles, riches bears by force.
The first was likened to a head of gold.
Next Arms and breast of silver to behold,
The third, Belly and Thighs of brass in sight,
And last was Iron, which breaketh all with might;
The stone out of the mountain then did rise,
and smote those feet those legs, those arms & thighs
Then gold, silver, brass, Iron and all the store,
Became like Chaff upon the threshing Floor.
The first a Lion, second was a Bear,
The third a Leopard, which four wings did rear;
The last more strong and dreadful then the rest,
Whose Iron teeth devoured every Beast,
And when he had no appetite to eat,
The residue he stamped under feet;
Yet shall this Lion, Bear, this Leopard, Ram,
All trembling stand before the powerful Lamb.
171
With these three Monarchyes now have I done,
But how the fourth, their Kingdomes from them won,
And how from small beginnings it did grow,
To fill the world with terrour and with woe;
My tyred brain leavs to some better pen,
This task befits not women like to men:
For what is past, I blush, excuse to make,
But humbly stand, some grave reproof to take;
Pardon to crave for errours, is but vain,
The Subject was too high, beyond my strain,
To frame Apology for some offence,
Converts our boldness into impudence:
This my presumption some now to requite,
Ne sutor ultra crepidum may write.
The End of the Grecian Monarchy.
~ Anne Bradstreet,
546:Obiit Mdcccxxxiii (Entire)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
414
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
I.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
‘Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.’
II.
415
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
III.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;
A web is wov’n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands–
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,–
A hollow form with empty hands.’
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
416
IV.
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should’st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
‘What is it makes me beat so low?’
Something it is which thou hast lost,
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken’d eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’
V.
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
417
VI.
One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’
That ‘Loss is common to the race’–
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still’d the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor,–while thy head is bow’d,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, ‘here to-day,’
Or ‘here to-morrow will he come.’
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking ‘this will please him best,’
She takes a riband or a rose;
418
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
VIII.
A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ’lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
419
He saddens, all the magic light
Dies off at once from bower and hall,
And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight:
So find I every pleasant spot
In which we two were wont to meet,
The field, the chamber and the street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,
O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish’d eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.
IX.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro’ early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
420
Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
X.
I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring’st the sailor to his wife,
And travell’d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp’d in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
XI.
421
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro’ the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
O’er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,
422
And saying; ‘Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?’
And circle moaning in the air:
‘Is this the end? Is this the end?’
And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weeps the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
XIV.
423
If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
And
And
And
And
I should tell him all my pain,
how my life had droop’d of late,
he should sorrow o’er my state
marvel what possess’d my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
XV.
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash’d on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
424
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI.
What words are these have fall’n from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or storm;
But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn’d me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?
XVII.
425
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
XVIII.
’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
’Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
426
Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro’ his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
XIX.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
That salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,
And hush’d my deepest grief of all,
When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
XX.
The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
427
Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
‘It will be hard,’ they say, ‘to find
Another service such as this.’
My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:
But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’
XXI.
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
‘This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.’
Another answers, ‘Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.’
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
428
‘A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?’
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol’n away.
XXII.
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer’d the way,
And, crown’d with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull’d the murmur on thy lip,
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
429
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
XXIV.
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
430
Is dash’d with wandering isles of night.
If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look’d to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
XXV.
I know that this was Life,–the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
431
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder’d tree,
And towers fall’n as soon as built–
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII.
432
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX.
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
That guard the portals of the house;
433
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before their time? They too will die.
XXX.
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho’ every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
Upon us: surely rest is meet:
‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’
And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang: ‘They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
‘Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather’d power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.’
434
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
XXXI.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary’s house return’d,
Was this demanded–if he yearn’d
To hear her weeping by his grave?
‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown’d
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal’d;
He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother’s face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
435
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII.
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev’n for want of such a type.
XXXIV.
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame,
436
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I?
’Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die;
’Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV.
Yet if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house,
‘The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:’
Might I not say? ‘Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive:’
But I should turn mine ears and hear
The moanings of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love would answer with a sigh,
‘The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.’
O me, what profits it to put
And idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
437
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape,
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.
XXXVI.
Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII.
Urania speaks with darken’d brow:
‘Thou pratest here where thou art least;
This faith has many a purer priest,
And many an abler voice than thou.
‘Go down beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.’
And my Melpomene replies,
438
A touch of shame upon her cheek:
‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
‘For I am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart,
And render human love his dues;
‘But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
‘I murmur’d, as I came along,
Of comfort clasp’d in truth reveal’d;
And loiter’d in the master’s field,
And darken’d sanctities with song.’
XXXVIII.
With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho’ always under alter’d skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any care for what is here
Survive in spirits render’d free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
XXXIX.
Old warder of these buried bones,
439
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow–fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men,–
What whisper’d from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
XL.
Could we forget the widow’d hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower!
When crown’d with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother’s face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern!
440
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer’d with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss’d her most
Shall count new things as dear as old:
But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover’d lands.
XLI.
The spirit ere our fatal loss
Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,
As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.
But thou art turn’d to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.
Deep folly! yet that this could be–
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For tho’ my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,
The howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
441
Tho’ following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Thro’ all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
XLII.
I vex my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank’d with him.
And so may Place retain us still,
And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will:
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit’s inner deeps,
When one that loves but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit’s folded bloom
Thro’ all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower:
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;
And love will last as pure and whole
442
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.
XLIV.
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish’d, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.
XLV.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I:’
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’
And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
443
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
XLVI.
We ranging down this lower track,
The path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is shadow’d by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back.
So be it: there no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past;
A lifelong tract of time reveal’d;
The fruitful hours of still increase;
Days order’d in a wealthy peace,
And those five years its richest field.
O Love, thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching far;
Look also, Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.
XLVII.
That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
444
And I shall know him when we meet:
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other’s good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing-place, to clasp and say,
‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’
XLVIII.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn:
Her care is not to part and prove;
She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love:
And hence, indeed, she sports with words,
But better serves a wholesome law,
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords:
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
XLIX.
From art, from nature, from the schools,
Let random influences glance,
Like light in many a shiver’d lance
445
That breaks about the dappled pools:
The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,
The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe,
The slightest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp.
And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencil’d shadow play.
Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.
L.
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
LI.
446
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen’d in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.
Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.
LII.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’
The Spirit of true love replied;
‘Thou canst not move me from thy side,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.
‘What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:
‘So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.
Abide: thy wealth is gather’d in,
When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’
447
LIII.
How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green:
And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Or, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?
Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
LIV.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
448
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last–far off–at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
LV.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI.
449
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
LVII.
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song:
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly: let us go.
450
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look’d with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And ‘Ave, Ave, Ave,’ said,
‘Adieu, adieu’ for evermore.
LVIII.
In those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answer’d: ‘Wherefore grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave.’
LIX.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom-friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,
451
Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good.
My centred passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from to-day;
But I’ll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine,
With so much hope for years to come,
That, howsoe’er I know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
LX.
He past; a soul of nobler tone:
My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is set
On one whose rank exceeds her own.
He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not what,
And envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
She sighs amid her narrow days,
Moving about the household ways,
In that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
And tease her till the day draws by:
At night she weeps, ‘How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?’
LXI.
If, in thy second state sublime,
452
Thy ransom’d reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise,
The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below,
How dimly character’d and slight,
How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
Where thy first form was made a man:
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
LXII.
Tho’ if an eye that’s downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale,
And fading legend of the past;
And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy,
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind;
And breathes a novel world, the while
His other passion wholly dies,
Or in the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.
LXIII.
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,
And love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;
And I am so much more than these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
453
And I would set their pains at ease.
So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
As, unto vaster motions bound,
The circuits of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep.
LXIV.
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
The pillar of a people’s hope,
The centre of a world’s desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play’d at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
454
Or in the furrow musing stands;
‘Does my old friend remember me?’
LXV.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
I lull a fancy trouble-tost
With ‘Love’s too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.’
And in that solace can I sing,
Till out of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought,
Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:
Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee
And move thee on to noble ends.
LXVI.
You thought my heart too far diseased;
You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay,
Like one with any trifle pleased.
The shade by which my life was crost,
Which makes a desert in the mind,
Has made me kindly with my kind,
And like to him whose sight is lost;
Whose feet are guided thro’ the land,
Whose jest among his friends is free,
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand:
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
His inner day can never die,
455
His night of loss is always there.
LXVII.
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls:
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o’er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
LXVIII.
When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
I walk as ere I walk’d forlorn,
When all our path was fresh with dew,
And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillée to the breaking morn.
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye,
Which makes me sad I know not why,
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:
456
But ere the lark hath left the lea
I wake, and I discern the truth;
It is the trouble of my youth
That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
LXIX.
I dream’d there would be Spring no more,
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chatter’d trifles at the door:
I wander’d from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call’d me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He look’d upon my crown and smiled:
He reach’d the glory of a hand,
That seem’d to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
LXX.
I cannot see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
457
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
And shoals of pucker’d faces drive;
Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
Till all at once beyond the will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro’ a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
LXXI.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
And madness, thou hast forged at last
A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro’ summer France.
Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;
While now we talk as once we talk’d
Of men and minds, the dust of change,
The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walk’d
Beside the river’s wooded reach,
The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.
LXXII.
458
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown’d estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken’d every living bloom,
And blurr’d the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might’st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look’d the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro’ time,
And cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,
Lift as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows
Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
LXXIII.
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
459
The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,
The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
LXXIV.
As sometimes in a dead man’s face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out–to some one of his race:
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
LXXV.
I leave thy praises unexpress’d
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess’d;
What practice howsoe’er expert
460
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of song
To stir a little dust of praise.
Thy leaf has perish’d in the green,
And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate’er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVI.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen’d to a needle’s end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’
The secular abyss to come,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that woke
The darkness of our planet, last,
Thine own shall wither in the vast,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
And what are they when these remain
The ruin’d shells of hollow towers?
461
LXXVII.
What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshorten’d in the tract of time?
These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box,
May serve to curl a maiden’s locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane
A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.
LXXVIII.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture’s breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
462
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No–mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXIX.
‘More than my brothers are to me,’–
Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
I know thee of what force thou art
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in Nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl’d
Thro’ all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.
At one dear knee we proffer’d vows,
One lesson from one book we learn’d,
Ere childhood’s flaxen ringlet turn’d
To black and brown on kindred brows.
And so my wealth resembles thine,
But he was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.
LXXX.
If any vague desire should rise,
463
That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his side,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,
The grief my loss in him had wrought,
A grief as deep as life or thought,
But stay’d in peace with God and man.
I make a picture in the brain;
I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks
But turns his burthen into gain.
His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
LXXXI.
Could I have said while he was here,
‘My love shall now no further range;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear.’
Love, then, had hope of richer store:
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me faint,
‘More years had made me love thee more.’
But Death returns an answer sweet:
‘My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat.’
LXXXII.
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
464
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter’d stalks,
Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
LXXXIII.
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell’s darling blue,
Deep tulips dash’d with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
465
LXXXIV.
When I contemplate all alone
The life that had been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow
To which thy crescent would have grown;
I see thee sitting crown’d with good,
A central warmth diffusing bliss
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,
On all the branches of thy blood;
Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;
For now the day was drawing on,
When thou should’st link thy life with one
Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled ‘Uncle’ on my knee;
But that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.
I seem to meet their least desire,
To clap their cheeks, to call them mine.
I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire.
I see myself an honour’d guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk,
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;
While now thy prosperous labour fills
The lips of men with honest praise,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills
With promise of a morn as fair;
And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers,
To reverence and the silver hair;
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,
466
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
What time mine own might also flee,
As link’d with thine in love and fate,
And, hovering o’er the dolorous strait
To the other shore, involved in thee,
Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.
What reed was that on which I leant?
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake
The old bitterness again, and break
The low beginnings of content.
LXXXV.
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,
’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all–
O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above
Be dimm’d of sorrow, or sustain’d;
And whether love for him have drain’d
My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast,
Thro’ light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.
467
My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna’s fatal walls
God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro’ the blissful climes,
And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remained, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darkened earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him.
friendship, equal poised control,
heart, with kindliest motion warm,
sacred essence, other form,
solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho’ left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses decked
With gifts of grace, that might express
All comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
468
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe,
That loved to handle spiritual strife,
Diffused the shock thro’ all my life,
But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again
For other friends that once I met;
Nor can it suit me to forget
The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master’d Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears:
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this:
But Summer on the steaming floods,
And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods,
And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave:
My old affection of the tomb,
A part of stillness, yearns to speak:
‘Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
‘I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more.’
469
And I, ‘Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?’
And lightly does the whisper fall;
‘’Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.’
So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall prove
A meeting somewhere, love with love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours?
First love, first friendship, equal powers,
That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore,
That beats within a lonely place,
That yet remembers his embrace,
But at his footstep leaps no more,
My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,
470
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.
LXXXVI.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro’ all the dewy-tassell’d wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ‘Peace.’
LXXXVII.
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro’ the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard one more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon’d on the panes;
And caught one more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
471
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door:
I linger’d; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
LXXXVIII.
472
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro’ the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I–my harp would prelude woe–
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
LXXXIX.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro’ the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
473
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
Or touch’d the changes of the state,
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For ‘ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other’s angles down,
‘And merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.’
We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran,
The wine-flask lying couch’d in moss,
Or cool’d within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall’n into her father’s grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
474
XC.
He tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their life,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise:
’Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o’er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away,
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their lands,
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho’ their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would make
Confusion worse than death, and shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
XCI.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I know
Thy spirit in time among thy peers;
The hope of unaccomplish’d years
475
Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer’s hourly-mellowing change
May breathe, with many roses sweet,
Upon the thousand waves of wheat,
That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come: not in watches of the night,
But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,
Come, beauteous in thine after form,
And like a finer light in light.
XCII.
If any vision should reveal
Thy likeness, I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal
To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view
A fact within the coming year;
And tho’ the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
They might not seem thy prophecies,
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
XCIII.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
476
Where first he walk’d when claspt in clay?
No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss,
O, from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated change,
Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near.
XCIV.
How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest:
But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within.
XCV.
477
By night we linger’d on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that peal’d
From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall’n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro’ wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
478
And all at once it seem’d at last
The living soul was flash’d on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time–the shocks of Chance–
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev’n for intellect to reach
Thro’ memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d
The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck’d from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
XCVI.
479
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
XCVII.
My love has talk’d with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown’d;
He sees himself in all he sees.
Two partners of a married life–
I look’d on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,
And of my spirit as of a wife.
480
These two–they dwelt with eye on eye,
Their hearts of old have beat in tune,
Their meetings made December June,
Their every parting was to die.
Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate’er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,
He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He
He
He
He
thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
reads the secret of the star,
seems so near and yet so far,
looks so cold: she thinks him kind.
She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither’d violet is her bliss:
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all, she loves him more.
For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
Her faith is fixt and cannot move,
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
‘I cannot understand: I love.’
XCVIII.
You leave us: you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail’d below,
When I was there with him; and go
481
By summer belts of wheat and vine
To where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark’d of me:
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna; rather dream that there,
A treble darkness, Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:
And yet myself have heard him say,
That not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown
Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With sport and song, in booth and tent,
Imperial halls, or open plain;
And wheels the circled dance, and breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of crimson or in emerald rain.
XCIX.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
482
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red
On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;
Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.
O wheresoever those may be,
Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
C.
I climb the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill,
Nor quarry trench’d along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
483
To left and right thro’ meadowy curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a kindlier day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
CI.
Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
484
CII.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, ‘Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.’
The other answers, ‘Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray’d in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.’
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret.
CIII.
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream’d a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me: distant hills
485
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil’d, to which they sang;
And which, tho’ veil’d, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail’d, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And roll’d the floods in grander space,
The maidens gather’d strength and grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch’d them, wax’d in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan’s heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
486
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail’d their lot; I did them wrong:
‘We served thee here’ they said, ‘so long,
And wilt thou leave us now behind?’
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, ‘Enter likewise ye
And go with us:’ they enter’d in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer’d her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
CIV.
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.
Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow’d ground.
CV.
487
To-night ungather’d let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
CVI.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
488
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring
Ring
Ring
Ring
out old shapes of foul disease;
out the narrowing lust of gold;
out the thousand wars of old,
in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CVII.
It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
489
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,
And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev’n as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
CVIII.
I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning, tho’ with might
To scale the heaven’s highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death?
What find I in the highest place,
But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
490
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face.
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
CIX.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion’d logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
High nature amorous of the good,
But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro’ all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask’d, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
491
CX.
Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
The proud was half disarm’d of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften’d, and he knew not why;
While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
And felt thy triumph was as mine;
And loved them more, that they were thine,
The graceful tact, the Christian art;
Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
But mine the love that will not tire,
And, born of love, the vague desire
That spurs an imitative will.
CXI.
The churl in spirit, up or down
Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all,
To him who grasps a golden ball,
By blood a king, at heart a clown;
The churl in spirit, howe’er he veil
His want in forms for fashion’s sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons thro’ the gilded pale:
For who can always act? but he,
To whom a thousand memories call,
492
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem’d to be,
Best seem’d the thing he was, and join’d
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil’d with all ignoble use.
CXII.
High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
For what wert thou? some novel power
Sprang up for ever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much,
In watching thee from hour to hour,
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway’d
In vassal tides that follow’d thought.
493
CXIII.
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons that may rise;
For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
In intellect, with force and skill
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil–
I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:
life in civic action warm,
soul on highest mission sent,
potent voice of Parliament,
pillar steadfast in the storm,
Should licensed boldness gather force,
Becoming, when the time has birth,
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it in another course,
With thousand shocks that come and go,
With agonies, with energies,
With overthrowings, and with cries,
And undulations to and fro.
CXIV.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But on her forehead sits a fire:
She sets her forward countenance
And leaps into the future chance,
Submitting all things to desire.
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain–
She cannot fight the fear of death.
494
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
For power. Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child:
For she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O, friend, who camest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.
CXV.
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
495
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
CXVI.
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And that dear voice, I once have known,
Still speak to me of me and mine:
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be.
CXVII.
O days and hours, your work is this
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace
For fuller gain of after bliss:
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
496
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue,
For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII.
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature’s earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown’d with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
497
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
CXIX.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;
I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee,
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand.
CXX.
I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.
498
CXXI.
Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen’d from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken’d in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world’s great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,
And see’st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last,
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
CXXII.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,
While I rose up against my doom,
And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,
To bare the eternal Heavens again,
To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;
If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
And enter in at breast and brow,
499
Till all my blood, a fuller wave,
Be quicken’d with a livelier breath,
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,
I slip the thoughts of life and death;
And all the breeze of Fancy blows,
And every dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard lightnings deeply glow,
And every thought breaks out a rose.
CXXIII.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV.
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor thro’ the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
500
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,
I heard a voice ‘believe no more’
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
CXXV.
Whatever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would give,
Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live
A contradiction on the tongue,
Yet Hope had never lost her youth;
She did but look through dimmer eyes;
Or Love but play’d with gracious lies,
Because he felt so fix’d in truth:
And if the song were full of care,
He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there;
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
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A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
CXXVI.
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho’ as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass’d by his faithful guard,
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.
CXXVII.
And all is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags:
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down,
And molten up, and roar in flood;
The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great Æon sinks in blood,
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And compass’d by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O’erlook’st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
CXXVIII.
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,
To
To
To
To
draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
fool the crowd with glorious lies,
cleave a creed in sects and cries,
change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil coöperant to an end.
CXXIX.
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Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
CXXX.
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho’ I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
CXXXI.
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O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer’d years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
_________
O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er
Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,
And yet is love not less, but more;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
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As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower,
That must he made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower:
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out: the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
And me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
That watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
The ‘wilt thou’ answer’d, and again
The ‘wilt thou’ ask’d, till out of twain
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Her sweet ‘I will’ has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign’d, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them–maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.
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But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour’d horses wait;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look’d, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.
Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the wealth
Of words and wit, the double health,
The crowning cup, the three-times-three,
And last the dance;–till I retire:
Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o’er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
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A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
547:Knyghthode And Bataile
A XVth Century Verse Paraphrase of Flavius Vegetius Renatus' Treatise 'DE RE
MILITARI'
Proemium.
Salue, festa dies
i martis,
Mauortis! auete
Kalende. Qua Deus
ad celum subleuat
ire Dauid.
Hail, halyday deuout! Alhail Kalende
Of Marche, wheryn Dauid the Confessour
Commaunded is his kyngis court ascende;
Emanuel, Jhesus the Conquerour,
This same day as a Tryumphatour,
Sette in a Chaire & Throne of Maiestee,
To London is comyn. O Saviour,
Welcome a thousand fold to thi Citee!
And she, thi modir Blessed mot she be
That cometh eke, and angelys an ende,
Wel wynged and wel horsed, hidir fle,
Thousendys on this goode approche attende;
And ordir aftir ordir thei commende,
As Seraphin, as Cherubyn, as Throne,
As Domynaunce, and Princys hidir sende;
And, at o woord, right welcom euerychone!
But Kyng Herry the Sexte, as Goddes Sone
Or themperour or kyng Emanuel,
To London, welcomer be noo persone;
O souuerayn Lord, welcom! Now wel, Now wel!
Te Deum to be songen, wil do wel,
And Benedicta Sancta Trinitas!
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Now prosperaunce and peax perpetuel
Shal growe,-and why? ffor here is Vnitas.
Therof to the Vnitee 'Deo gracias'
In Trinitee! The Clergys and Knyghthode
And Comynaltee better accorded nas
Neuer then now; Now nys ther noon abode,
But out on hem that fordoon Goddes forbode,
Periurous ar, Rebellovs and atteynte,
So forfaytinge her lyif and lyvelode,
Although Ypocrisie her faytys peynte.
Now, person of Caleys, pray euery Seynte
In hevenys & in erth of help Thavaile.
It is, That in this werk nothing ne feynte,
But that beforn good wynde it go ful sayle;
And that not oonly prayer But travaile
Heron be sette, Enserche & faste inquere.
Thi litil book of knyghthode & bataile,
What Chiualer is best, on it bewere.
Whil Te Deum Laudamus vp goth there
At Paulis, vp to Westmynster go thee;
The Kyng comyng, Honor, Virtus the Quene,
So glad goth vp that blisse it is to see.
Thi bille vnto the Kyng is red, and He
Content withal, and wil it not foryete.
What seith my lord Beaumont? 'Preste, vnto me
Welcom.' (here is tassay, entre to gete).
'Of knyghthode & Bataile, my lord, as trete
The bookys olde, a werk is made now late,
And if it please you, it may be gete.'
'What werk is it?' 'Vegetius translate
Into Balade.' 'O preste, I pray the, late
Me se that werk.' 'Therto wil I you wise.
Lo, here it is!' Anon he gan therate
To rede, thus: 'Sumtyme it was the gise'-
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And red therof a part. 'For my seruyse
Heer wil I rede (he seith) as o psaultier.'
'It pleaseth you right wel; wil your aduyse
Suppose that the kyng heryn pleasier
May haue?' 'I wil considir the matier;
I fynde it is right good and pertynente
Vnto the kyng; his Celsitude is hier;
I halde it wel doon, hym therwith presente.
Almyghti Maker of the firmament,
O mervailous in euery creature,
So singuler in this most excellent
Persone, our Souuerayn Lord! Of what stature
Is he, what visagynge, how fair feture,
How myghti mad, and how strong in travaile!
In oonly God & hym it is tassure
As in a might, that noo wight dar assaile.
Lo, Souuerayn Lord, of Knyghthode & bataile
This litil werk your humble oratour,
Ye, therwithal your Chiualers, travaile,
Inwith your hert to Crist the Conquerour
Offreth for ye. Ther, yeueth him thonour;
His true thought, accepte it, he besecheth,
Accepte; it is to this Tryumphatour,
That myghti werre exemplifying techeth.
He redeth, and fro poynt to poynt he secheth,
How hath be doon, and what is now to done;
His prouidence on aftirward he strecheth,
By see & lond; he wil provide sone
To chace his aduersaryes euerychone;
Thei hem by lond, thei hem by see asseyle;The Kyng his Oratoure, God graunt his bone,
Ay to prevaile in knyghthode & bataile.
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Amen.
I.
Sumtyme it was the gise among the wise
To rede and write goode and myghti thingis,
And have therof the dede in exercise;
Pleasaunce heryn hadde Emperour and Kingis.
O Jesse flour, whos swete odour our Kinge is,
Do me to write of knyghthode and bataile
To thin honour and Chiualers tavaile.
Mankyndys lyfe is mylitatioun,
And she, thi wife, is named Militaunce,
Ecclesia; Jhesu, Saluatioun,
My poore witte in thi richesse avaunce,
Cast out therof the cloude of ignoraunce,
Sette vp theryn thi self, the verrey light,
Therby to se thi Militaunce aright.
O Lady myn, Maria, Lode sterre,
Condite it out of myst & nyght, that dark is,
To write of al by see & lond the werre.
Help, Angelys, of knyghthode ye Ierarkys
In heven & here; o puissaunt Patriarkys,
Your valiaunce and werre in see & londe
Remembering, to this werk putte your honde.
Apostolys, ye, with thalmyghti swoorde
Of Goddis woord, that were Conquerourys
Of al the world, and with the same woorde
Ye Martirys that putte of sharpe shourys,
Ye Virgynys pleasaunt and Confessourys
That with the same sworde haue had victory,
Help heer to make of werre a good memory.
And euery werreour wil I beseche,
Impropurly where of myn ignoraunce
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Of werre I write, as putte in propre speche
And mende me, prayinge herof pleasaunce
To God be first, by Harry Kyng of Fraunce
And Englond, and thenne ereither londe,
Peasibilly that God putte in his honde.
Thus seide an humble Inuocatioun
To Criste, his Modir, and his Sayntis alle,
With confidence of illustratioun,
Criste me to spede, and prayer me to walle,
Myn inwit on this werk wil I let falle,
And sey what is kynyghthode, and in bataile,
By lond & see, what feat may best prevaile.
Knyghthode an ordir is, the premynent;
Obeysaunt in God, and rather deye
Then disobeye; and as magnificent
As can be thought; exiled al envye;
As confident the right to magnifie
As wil the lawe of Goddis mandement,
And as perseueraunt and patient.
The premynent is first thalmyghti Lord,
Emanuel, that euery lord is vndir
And good lyver; but bataile and discord
With him hath Sathanas; thei are asondir
As day & nyght, and as fier wasteth tundir,
So Sathanas his flok; and Cristis oste
In gemmy gold goth ardent, euery cooste.
Themanuel, this Lord of Sabaoth,
Hath ostis angelik that multitude,
That noon of hem, nor persone erthly, woote
Their numbir or vertue or pulcritude;
Our chiualers of hem similitude
Take as thei may, but truely ? fer is,
As gemmys are ymagyned to sterrys.
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Folk angelik, knyghthode archangelike,
And the terrible tourmys pryncipaunt,
The Potestates myght, ho may be like,The vigoroux vertue so valyaunt,
The Regalye of thordir domynaunt,
The Thronys celsitude of Cherubyn?
Who hath the light or flamme of Seraphyn?
Yit true it is, Man shal ben angelike;
Forthi their hosteyinye the Lord hath shewed
Ofte vnto man, the crafte therof to pike,
In knyghthode aftir hem man to be thewed:
By Lucyfer falling, rebate and fewed
Her numbir was, and it is Goddis wille,
That myghti men her numbir shal fulfille.
Of myghty men first is thelectioun
To make, & hem to lerne, & exercise
An ooste of hem for his perfectioun,
Be numbred thenne; and aftir se the gise
Of strong bataile, fighting in dyuers wise;
In craft to bilde, and art to make engyne
For see & lond, this tretys I wil fyne.
Thelectioun of werreours is good
In euery londe; and southward ay the more,
The more wit thei haue & lesse blood,
Forthi to blede thei drede it, and therfore
Reserue theim to labour & to lore,
And northeward hath more blood and lesse
Wit, and to fight & blede an hardinesse.
But werreours to worthe wise & bolde,
Is good to take in mene atwix hem twayne,
Where is not ouer hote nor ouer colde;
And to travaile & swete in snow & rayne,
In colde & hete, in wode & feeldys playne,
369
With rude fode & short, thei that beth vsed,
To chere it is the Citesens seclused.
And of necessitee, if thei be take
To that honour as to be werreourys,
In grete travaile her sleuth is of to shake,
And tolleraunce of sonne & dust & shourys,
To bere & drawe, & dayes delve and hourys
First vse thei, and reste hem in a cave,
And throute among, and fode a smal to haue.
In soden case emergent hem elonge
Fro their Cite, streyt out of that pleasaunce;
So shal thei worthe, ye, bothe bolde & stronge;
But feithfully the feld may most avaunce
A myghti ooste; of deth is his doubtaunce
Ful smal, that hath had smal felicite.
To lyve, and lande-men such lyuers be.
Of yonge folk is best electioun,
In puberte thing lightlier is lerned,
Of tendre age vp goth perfectioun
Of chiualers, as it is wel gouerned;
Alacrite to lepe & renne vnwerned,
Not oonly be, but therto sette hem stronge
And chere theim therwith, whil thei beth yonge.
For better is ?ge men compleyne
On yerys yet commyng and nat fulfilled,
Then olde men dolorouxly disdeyne,
That thei here yougthe in negligence haspilde.
The yonge may seen alle his daies filde
In disciplyne of were and exercise,
That age may not haue in eny wise.
Not litil is the discipline of werre,
O fote, on hors, with sword or shild or spere,
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The place & poort to kepe and not to erre,
Ne truble make, and his shot wel bewere,
To dike and voyde a dike, and entir there,
As is to do; lerned this gouernaunce,
No fere is it to fight, but pleasaunce.
The semelyest, sixe foote or litil lesse,
The first arayes of the legyoun,
Or wyngys horsyd, it is in to dresse;
Yet is it founde in euery regioun,
That smale men have had myght & renoun:
Lo, Tideus, as telleth swete Homere,
That litil man in vigour had no pere.
And him, that is to chese, it is to se
The look, the visagynge, the lymys stronge,
That thei be sette to force & firmytee;
For bellatours, men, horsis, hondis yonge,
As thei be wel fetured, is to fonge,
As in his book seith of the bee Virgile,
Too kyndis are, a gentil and a vile.
The gentil is smal, rutilaunt, glad-chered,
That other horribil, elenge and sloggy,
Drawinge his wombe abrede, and vgly-hered,
To grete the bolk, and tremulent and droggy,
The lymes hery, scabious & ruggy;
That be wil litil do, but slepe & ete,
And al deuoure, as gentil bees gete.
So for bataile adolescentys yonge
Of grym visage and look pervigilaunt,
Vpright-necked, brod-brested, boned stronge.
Brawny, bigge armes, fyngeres elongaunt,
Kne deep, smal wombe, and leggys valiaunt,
To renne & lepe: of these and suche signys
Thelectioun to make ascribed digne is.
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For better is, of myghti werryourys
To haue ynogh, then ouer mych of grete.What crafty men tabide on werrys shourys,
It is to se; fisshers, foulers, forlete
Hem alle, and pigmentaryes be foryete,
And alle they that are of idil craftys,
Their insolence & feet to be forlafte is.
The ferrour and the smyth, the carpenter,
The huntere of the hert & of the boor,
The bocher & his man, bed hem com nere,
For alle tho may do and kepe stoor.
An old prouerbe is it: Stoor is not soor,
And commyn wele it is, a werreour
To have aswel good crafte as grete vigour.
The reaumys myght, the famys fundament,
Stont in the first examynatioun
Or choys, wheryn is good be diligent.
Of the provynce that is defensioun;
A wysdom and a just intensioun
Is him to have, an ost that is to chese,
Wheryn is al to wynne or al to lese.
If chiualers, a land that shal defende,
Be noble born, and have lond & fee,
With thewys goode, as can noman amende,
Thei wil remembir ay their honeste,
And shame wil refreyne hem not to fle;
Laude & honour, hem sporynge on victory,
To make fame eternal in memory.
What helpeth it, if ignobilitee
Have exercise in werre and wagys large;
A traitour or a coward if he be,
Thenne his abode is a disceypt & charge;
If cowardise hym bere away by barge
372
Or ship or hors, alway he wil entende
To marre tho that wolde make or mende.
Ciuilians or officers to make
Of hem that have habilite to werre,
Is not the worship of a lond tawake,
Sumtyme also lest noughti shuld com nerre,
Thei sette hym to bataile, & theryn erre;
Therfore it is by good discretioun
And grete men to make electioun.
And not anoon to knyghthode is to lyft
A bacheler elect; let first appare
And preve it wel that he be stronge & swift
And wil the discipline of werrys lere,
With confidence in conflict as he were.
Ful oftyn he that is right personabil,
Is aftir pref reported right vnabil.
He putte apart, putte in his place an other;
Conflicte is not so sure in multitude,
As in the myght. Thus proved oon & other
Of werre an entre or similitude,
In hem to shewe. But this crafte dissuetude
Hath take away; here is noon exercise
Of disciplyne, as whilom was the gise.
How may I lerne of hym that is vnlerned,
How may a thing informal fourme me?
Thus I suppose is best to be gouerned:
Rede vp thistories of auctoritee,
And how thei faught, in theym it is to se,
Or better thus: Celsus Cornelius
Be red, or Caton, or Vegetius.
Vegetius it is, that I entende
Aftir to goon in lore of exercise,
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Besechinge hem that fynde a faut, amende
It to the best, or me tamende it wise;
As redy wil I be with my seruyce
Tamende that, as ferther to procede.
Now wel to go, the good angel vs lede.
First is to lerne a chiualerys pace,
That is to serue in journey & bataile;
Gret peril is, if they theryn difface,
That seyn: our enemye wil our oste assaile
And jumpe light; to goon is gret availe,
And pace in howrys fyve
Wel may they goon, and not goon ouer blyve.
And wightly may thei go moo,
But faster and they passe, it is to renne;
In rennyng exercise is good also,
To smyte first in fight, and also whenne
To take a place our foomen wil, forrenne,
And take it erst; also to serche or sture,
Lightly to come & go, rennynge is sure.
Rennynge is also right good at the chace,
And forto lepe a dike, is also good,
To renne & lepe and ley vppon the face,
That it suppose a myghti man go wood
And lose his hert withoute sheding blood;
For myghtily what man may renne & lepe,
May wel devicte and saf his party kepe.
To swymme is eek to lerne in somer season;
Men fynde not a brigge as ofte as flood,
Swymmyng to voide and chace an oste wil eson;
Eeke aftir rayn the ryueres goth wood;
That euery man in thoost can swymme, is good.
Knyght, squyer, footman, cook & cosynere
And grome & page in swymmyng is to lere.
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Of fight the disciplyne and exercise
Was this: to haue a pale or pile vpright
Of mannys hight, thus writeth olde wyse;
Therwith a bacheler or a yong knyght
Shal first be taught to stonde & lerne fight;
A fanne of doubil wight tak him his shelde,
Of doubil wight a mace of tre to welde.
This fanne & mace, which either doubil wight is
Of shelde & sword in conflicte or bataile,
Shal exercise as wel swordmen as knyghtys,
And noo man (as thei seyn) is seyn prevaile
In felde or in gravel though he assaile,
That with the pile nath first gret exercise;
Thus writeth werreourys olde & wise.
Have vche his pile or pale vpfixed faste,
And, as in werre vppon his mortal foo,
With wightynesse & wepon most he caste
To fighte stronge, that he ne shape him fro,On him with shild & sword avised so,
That thou be cloos, and prest thi foo to smyte,
Lest of thin owne deth thou be to wite.
Empeche his hed, his face, have at his gorge,
Bere at the breste, or serue him on the side
With myghti knyghtly poort, eue as Seynt George,
Lepe o thi foo, loke if he dar abide;
Wil he nat fle, wounde him; mak woundis wide,
Hew of his honde, his legge, his thegh, his armys;
It is the Turk: though he be sleyn, noon harm is.
And forto foyne is better then to smyte;
The smyter is deluded mony oonys,
The sword may nat throgh steel & bonys bite,
Thentrailys ar couert in steel & bonys,
But with a foyn anoon thi foo fordoon is;
375
Tweyne vnchys entirfoyned hurteth more
Then kerf or ege, although it wounde sore.
Eek in the kerf, thi right arm is disclosed,
Also thi side; and in the foyn, couert
Is side & arm, and er thou be supposed
Redy to fight, the foyn is at his hert
Or ellys where, a foyn is euer smert;
Thus better is to foyne then to kerve;
In tyme & place ereither is tobserue.
This fanne & mace ar ay of doubil wight,
That when the Bacheler hath exercise
Of hevy gere, and aftir taketh light
Herneys, as sheeld & sword of just assise,
His hert avaunceth, hardynes tarise.
My borthon is delyuered, thinketh he,
And on he goth, as glad as he may be.
And ouer this al, exercise in armys
The doctour is to teche and discipline,
For double wage a wurthi man of armys
Was wont to take, if he wer proved digne
Aforn his prince, ye, tymes VIII or IX;
And whete he had, and barly had the knyght
That couthe nat as he in armys fight.
Res publica right commendabil is,
If chiualers and armys there abounde,
For, they present, may nothing fare amys,
And ther thei are absent, al goth to grounde;
In gemme, in gold, in silk be thei fecounde,
It fereth not; but myghti men in armys,
They fereth with the drede of deth & harmys.
Caton the Wise seith: where as men erre
In other thinge, it may be wel amended;
376
But emendatioun is noon in werre;
The cryme doon, forthwith the grace is spended,
Or slayn anoon is he that there offended,
Or putte to flight, and euer aftir he
Is lesse worth then they that made him fle.
But turne ageyn, Inwit, to thi preceptys!
With sword & sheld the lerned chiualer
At pale or pile, in artilaunce excepte is;
A dart of more wight then is mester,
Tak him in honde, and teche hym it to ster,
And caste it at that pile, as at his foo,
So that it route, and right vppon hym go.
Of armys is the doctour heer tattende,
That myghtily this dart be take & shake,
And shot as myghtily, forthright on ende,
And smyte sore, or nygh, this pile or stake;
Herof vigour in tharmys wil awake
And craft to caste & smyte shal encrece;
The werreours thus taught, shal make peax.
But bachilers, the thridde or firthe part,
Applied ar to shote in bowes longe
With arowys; heryn is doctryne & art,
The stringys vp to breke in bowes stronge,
And swift and craftily the taclis fonge,
Starkly the lifte arm holde with the bowe,
Drawe with the right, and smyte, and ouerthrowe.
Set hert & eye vppon that pile or pale,
Shoot nygh or on, and if so be thou ride
On hors, is eek the bowys bigge vp hale;
Smyte in the face or breste or bak or side,
Compelle fle, or falle, if that he bide.
Cotidian be mad this exercise,
On fote & hors, as writeth olde wise.
377
That archery is grete vtilitee,
It nedeth not to telle eny that here is;
Caton, therof in bookys writeth he,
Among the discipline of chiualerys,
And Claudius, that werred mony yeres,
Wel seide, and Affricanus Scipio
With archerys confounded ofte his foo.
Vse eek the cast of stoon with slynge or honde;
It falleth ofte, if other shot ther noon is,
Men herneysed in steel may not withstonde
The multitude & myghti caste of stonys;
It breketh ofte & breseth flesh & bonys,
And stonys in effecte are euerywhere,
And slyngys ar not noyous forto bere.
And otherwhile in stony stede is fight,
A mountayn otherwhile is to defende,
An hil, a toun, a tour, and euery knyght
And other wight may caste stoon on ende.
The stonys axe, if other shot be spende,
Or ellys thus: save other shot with stonys,
Or vse hem, as requireth, both atonys.
The barbulys that named ar plumbatys,
Set in the sheld is good to take fyve,
That vsed hem of old, wer grete estatys;
As archerys, they wolde shote and dryve
Her foo to flight, or leve him not alyve;
This shot commended Dioclisian
And his Coemperour Maxymyan.
The Chiualers and werreourys alle,
Quicly to lepe on hors, and so descende
Vppon the right or lyft side, if it falle,
That exercise is forto kepe an ende;
Vnarmed first, and armed thenne ascende,
378
And aftir with a spere or sword & shelde,
This feet is good, when troubled is the felde.
And LX pounde of weght it hade to bere
And go therwith a chiualerys pace,
Vitaile & herneysing and sword & spere,
Frely to bere; al this is but solace;
Thinge exercised ofte in tyme & space,
Hard if it be, with vse it wil ben eased,
The yonge men herwith beth best appesed.
And exercise him vche in his armure,
As is the gise adayes now to were,
And se that euery peece herneys be sure,
Go quycly in, and quyk out of the gere,
And kepe it cler, as gold or gemme it were;
Corraged is that hath his herneys bright,
And he that is wel armed, dar wel fight.
To warde & wacche an oste it is to lerne
Both holsom is that fvlly and necessary,
Withinne a pale an oste is to gouerne,
That day & nyght saftly theryn they tary
And take reste, and neuer oon myscary;
For faute of wacch, ha worthi not myscheved
Now late, and al to rathe? Is this nat preved?
To make a fortresse, if the foon be nygh,
Assure a grounde, and se that ther be fode
For man & beest, and watir deep mydthigh,
Not fer; and se there wode or grovys goode.
Now signe it, lyne it out by yerde or rode,
An hil if ther be nygh, wherby the foo
May hurte, anoon set of the ground therfro.
Ther flood is wont the felde to ouer flete,
Mak ther noo strength; and as is necessary
379
Vnto thyn oste, as mych is out to mete,
And cariage also theryn most tary;
Men dissipat, here enemy may myscary,
And combred is an oste that is compressed;
Tak eue ynough, and hoom have vch man dressed.
Trianguler, or square, or dymyrounde
The strength it is to make of hosteyinge;
Thavis therof is taken at the grounde;And estward, or vppon thi foo comynge,
The yatys principal have vssuynge,
To welcom him; and if an ost journey,
The yatis ar to sette vppon his wey.
The centenaryes thervppon shal picche
Her pavilons, and dragonys and signys
Shal vp be set, and Gorgona the wicche
Vpsette they; to juste batail condigne is
Vch helply thing; another yate & signe is,
Ther trespassers shal go to their juesse,
That oponeth north, or westward, as I gesse.
In maneer a strengthe is to be walled,
If ther oppresse noo necessitee:
Delve vp the torf, have it togedir malled,
Therof the wal be mad high footys
Above grounde; the dike withouten be
IX foote brode, and deep dounright;
Thus dike & wal is wel fote in hight.
This werk they calle a dike tumultuary;
To stynte a rore, and if the foo be kene,
Legytymat dykinge is necessary;
XII foote brod that dike is to demene,
And nyne deep; his sidys to sustene,
And hege it as is best on either side,
That diked erth vpheged stonde & bide.
380
Above grounde arise it foure foote;
Thus hath the dike in brede footys XII,
And XIII is it high fro crop to roote,
That stake of pith which euery man him selve
Hath born, on oneward is it forto delve.
And this to do, pikens, mattok and spade
And tole ynough ther most be redy made.
But and the foo lene on forwith to fight,
The hors men alle, and half the folk ofoote
Embataile hem, to showve away their myght,
That other half, to dike foot by foote,
Be sette, and an heraude expert by roote,
The Centrions other the Centenaryis
In ordre forth hem calle, as necessary is.
And ay among the centrions enserch,
The werk, if it be wrought, kept the mesure,
In brede & deep & high, perch aftir perch,
And chastise him, that hath nat doon his cure.
An hoste thus exercised may ensure
In prevalence, whos debellatioun
Shal not be straught by perturbatioun.
Wel knowen is, nothinge is more in fight
Then exercise and daily frequentaunce;
Vch werreour therfore do his myght
To knowe it wel and kepe his ordynaunce;
An ooste to thicke, I sette, is encombraunce,
And also perilous is ouer thynne,
Thei sone fle that be to fer atwynne.
We werreours, forthi go we to feelde;
And as our name in ordir in the rolle is,
Our ordynaunt, so sette vs, dart & sheelde
And bowe & axe, and calle vs first by pollys;
Triangulys, quadrangulys, and rollys,
381
We may be made; and thus vs embataile,
Gouerned, vndir grate to prevaile.
A sengil ege is first to strecch in longe,
Withoute bosomynge or curuature,
With dowbeling forwith let make it stronge,
That also fele assiste, in like mesure,
And with a woord turne hem to quadrature,
And efte trianguler, and then hem rounde,
And raunge hem efte, and keep euerych his grounde.
This ordynaunce of right is to prevaile;
Doctryne hem eek, whenne it is best to square,
And when a triangul may more availe,
And orbys, how they necessary are;
How may be to condense, and how to rare;
The werreours that ha this exercise,
Be preste with hardynesse, & stronge & wise.
And ouer this, an olde vsage it was
To make walk thryes in euery mone,
And tho they wente a chiualerys paas
X myle outward, the men of armys, none
Vnharneysed; the footmen euerychone
Bowed, tacled, darted, jacked, saladed;
Vitaile eke born withal, her hertis gladed.
In hom comynge, among thei wente faste
And ranne among. Eek tourmys of ryderys
Sumtyme journeyed on foote in haste,
Shelded & herneysed with myghti sperys;
Not oonly in the playn, but also where is
A mountayn or a clif or streyt passagys.
Thus hadde thei both exercise and wagys.
Ereithre ege in this wise exercised
Was by & by, so that no chaunce of newe
382
Nas to be thought, that thei nere of avised,
And hadde way the daungerys teschewe
Vndaungered; and this wisdom thei knewe
By discipline of their doctour of armys,
To wynne honour withouten hate or harmys.
Thelectioun and exercise anended,
An ooste is now to numbre & dyvide,
And seen vch officer his part commended,
And how to sette a feeld to fight & bide.
Goode Angelys and Sayntys, ye me gide
And lighte me, o Lady Saynte Mary!
To write wel this werk & not to tary.-
II.
Electrix ita Milicie pars prima recedit,
Et pars partitrix ecce secunda subit.
The firste parte of IIII is here at ende;
Now to the part secounde! er we procede
To knowe this, His grace God vs sende!
Myn auctour ofte aduiseth vs to rede
And to the sense of it to taken hede;
To rede a thinge withoute intelligence,
As seith Cato the Wise, is negligence.
But this I leve vnto the sapience
Of chiualers, and to my werk retorne,
Theryn to do my feithful diligence
For their pleasaunce, out of this prosis storne
The resonaunce of metris wolde I borne.
As myghti herte in ryngynge herneysinge,
So gentil wit wil in good metris springe.
And for thonour of theuerlastyng kynge,
Our saviour Jhesus and his Ierarkys,
383
His Angelys, and for that swete thinge,
His Modre, patronesse of al my warkys,
For His prophetys love and patriarkys,
And for thapostolis that made our Crede,
As do me fauour, ye that wil me rede.
Virgile seith (an high poete is he)
That werre in armys stont and mannys myght,
The man on hors, o fote, or on the see;
Riders be wyngis clept, for swift & light,
On either half of thege eke ar thei dight;
But now that ege is called the banere
Or banerye, hauyng his banereer.
Also ther are riders legyonaryis;
Thei are annexed to the legioun.
In too maner of shippes men to cary is,
Their namys ar couth in this regioun;
Orthwart go they the flood, and vp & doun;
Riders in playn, footmen goth euery where,
By theyme the commyn wele is to conquere;
Riders a fewe, and haue o foote fele,
Thei spende smal, and horsmen spende fre.
Footmen o tweyne is to dyuide & dele:
Or legiaunt or aydaunt for to be.
Confederat men aydaunt is to se,
That is to say, by trewce or toleraunce,
As Frensh ar suffred here, and we in Fraunce.
Aydaunt be they, but in the legioun
Lith thordinaunce in werre to prevaile.
A legioun out of electioun
Hath take his name, as elect to bataile.
Her diligence and feith is not to faile;
Thi legyaunt forthi to multiplie
Is right, but aydauntys a fewe applie.
384
Thousant werreours was a phalange
In dayis olde, and of men
Was a caterve, but this diagalange
Is, as to this, not worth a pulled hen.
The legioun, departed into X,
Is vs to lerne, and legions how fele
It is to haue, and how asondir dele.
The consules legiounys ladden,
Al aldermeest; but thei hadde exercise,
Wherof the felde victoriously thei hadden;
To chose a legioun, this was the gise,
In bookys as they seyn, these olde wise:
Wyis, hardy, strong, doctryned, high statured,
In feet of werre ofte vsed & wel vred.
That was the man, he was mad mylitaunt,
When al the world to the Romayn Empire
Was made obey, by knyghthod valiaunt;A sacramental oth doth it requyre,
To write pleyn this matere I desire,
By God & Criste and Holy Goost swar he,
And by that Emperourys maiestee.
Next God is hym to drede and hym to honour is;
Right as to God ther bodily present,
To themperour, when he mad Emperour is,
Devotioun; vch loyal ympendent
Is to be vigilaunt, his seruyent;
God serueth he, both knyght & comynere,
That loueth him, to God that regneth here.
God, Criste Jhesus, and Holy Goste; was sworn
By theim, and themperourys maiestee,
That his commaundementys shuld be born
And strenuously be doon, be what thei be;
Fro mylitaunce that thei shal neuer fle
385
Ner voyde deth, but rather deth desire
For themperour, and wele of his Empire.
Thus sworn, vch knyght is of the legioun.
The legioun stont in cohortys;
Cohors the Latyn is, this regioun
Tenglish it fore, help vs, good Lord! Amen.
The dignite and number of the men
Hath in the firste cohors an excellence
Of noble blood, manhode and sapience.
This feleshepe, most worshipful, most digne,
Bar thegil and thymage of themperour;
As God present was holden either signe,
Thei hadde both attendaunce & honour;
Of chiualers heryn was doon the flour,
A an and footmen,
And of wight horsmen.
The military cohors, or the choors,
Thus named it the wise, and the secounde
Cohors, like as the bonet to his coors
Is set, thei sette it footmen stronge & sounde,
And an half, and abounde
In hit, with sixe & sixti hors, and it
The Quyngentary called men of wit.
As fele & myghty choys putte in the thridde is,
For in their honde espeyre is al to thryve;
Her place in ordynaunce is in the myddys,
And for the firth choors is to discrive
Footmen and an half,
With sixe & sixti hors, and eue as fele,
With better hors, vnto the fifthe dele.
For as the first cohors is the right horn,
So in the lift horn is the fifthe choors;
386
For V choors stonde in the frounte aforn,
Or the vawarde; of termys is noo foors,
So the conceyt be had. The sixt cohors
Hath, as the fifthe, yet lusty men & yonge;
To thegil next to stonde it is to fonge,
That is the right horn; in the myddil warde
The nexte choors hath eue as mony as she,
The nexte as fele, and therto is tawarde
The myghti men, amyddis forto be;
The nynth is of the same quantitie,
The tenth is eue as is the choors beforn,
But make it strong, for it is the lift horn.
The legioun in ten is thus cohorted,
And an see men on foote,
Hors, and therty therto soorted,
Of fewer hors is not to speke or moote
In eny legioun; yet, crop & roote
To seyn, of hors ther may be take moo,
Commaundement if ther be so to do.
Exployed heer thusage and ordynaunce
Of legyoun, vnto the principal
Of chiualers retourne our remembraunce;
The dignitie and name in special
Of euery prince enrolled, and who shal
Do what, and whenne, and where, it is to write;
Good angel, help vs al this werk tendite.
The grete Trybune is mad by Themperour,
And by patent, and send by jugement;
Thundir Trybune is hent of his labour.An Ordyner for fighters forth present
Is forto sette; eek Themperour content
Is ofte to sende and make secoundaryis;
What name is heer for hem? Coordinaryis.
387
An Egiller bar thegil, and thymage
Of themperour bar an Ymaginary;
And moo then oon ther were of those in wage;
A Banereer, tho clept a Draconary,
A Kyng Heralde, tho clept a Tesserary,The baner he, he bar commaundement,
Al thoost tobeye her princys hole entent.
Campigeners made exercise in feeldys,
Campymeters mesured out the grounde,
To picche pavilons, tentys and teeldys,
The forteresse triangeler or rounde
Or square to be made or dymyrounde,
His part hit was; and he that was Library,
Thaccomptys wrot, that rekenyng ne vary.
The Clarioner, Trompet, and Hornycler,
With horn, & trompe of bras, and clarioun,
In terribil batailis bloweth cleer,
That hors & man reioyceth at the soun;
The firmament therto making resoun
Or resonaunce; thus joyneth thei bataile;
God stonde with the right, that it prevaile!
A Mesurer, that is our Herbagere,
For paviloun & tent assigneth he
The grounde, and seith: 'Be ye ther, be ye here!'
Vch hostel eek, in castel and citee,
Assigneth he, vch aftir his degre.
A wreth o golde is signe of grete estate;
That wered it, was called a Torquate.
Sengil ther were of these, and duplicate
And triplicate, and so to for and fiv,
That hadde wage, vche aftir his estate.
Tho namys goon, such personys alyve,
It may be thought, therof wil I not scryve.
388
Ther were eek worthymen clept Candidate,
And last, the souldeours, vch othrys mate.
The principal prince of the legioun,
Sumtyme it was, and yet is a like gise,
To make a Primypile, a centurioun;
A Lieutenaunt men calle him in our wise;
And him beforn is Thegil forto arise;
Four hudred knyghtis eek of valiaunce
This prymypile hadde in his gouernaunce.
He in the frounte of al the legioun
Was as a vicaptayn, a gouernour,
And took availe at vch partitioun.
The First Spere was next, a lusty flour;
Two hundred to gouerne is his honour,
Wherof thei named him a Ducennary,
The name fro the numbir not to vary.
The Prince an hundred and an half gouerned,
Eek he gouerned al the legioun
In ordynaunce; oueral he went vnwerned.
The nexte spere, of name and of renoun,
As mony hadde in his directioun;
The First Triari hadde an hundred men;
A Chevetayn was eke of euery ten
Thus hath the first cohors fyve Ordinayris,
And euery ten an hed, a Cheveteyne,
To rewle theim; and so it necessayr is,
An hundred and fyve on this choors to reigne:
Four Ordinayris and the cheef Captayne,
That is their Ordinary General,
And seyde is ofte of him: He rewleth al.
So high honour, so gret vtilitee
Hath euerych estate of this renoun
389
Prouided hem by sage Antiquitee,
That euery persone in the legioun
With al labour, with al deuotioun
To that honour attended to ascende,
And that avail to wynne, her bodyis bende.
The nexte choors, named the Quyngentary,
Hath Centurions or Centenerys fyve;
Thridde choors as fele hath necessary;
The firthe fyve, and, forto spede vs blyve,
In euery choors the Centyners oo fyve
In numbir make, and so the legioun
Of hem hath fyvty-fyve vp & doun.
Not fyvty-fyve Whi? For fyve thordinayrys
In their Estate and stede of fyve stonde;
To graunte this, me semeth, noo contrary is;
Though in my book so wryton I ne fonde,
Of LV, wel I vndirstonde
And fynde cleer, so that it most appere,
That vndir Ordynayrys V were.
The consulys, for themperour Legatys
Sende vnto the oste; to thaim obtemperaunt
Was al the legioun, and al the statys;
They were of al the werres ordynaunt;
To theim obeyed euerych aydaunt;
In stede of whom illustres Lordes, Peerys,
Be substitute, Maistrys of Chiualerys;
By whom not oonly legiounys twayn,
But grete numbrys hadde gouernaunce.
The propre juge is the Provost, certayn,
With worthinesse of the first ordynaunce;
The vilegate is he by mynystraunce
Of his power, to hym the Centeners
Obey, and the Trybune and Chiualers.
390
Of him the rolle of wacch and of progresse
Thei crave and haue, and if a knyght offende,
At his precepte he was put to juesse
By the trybune, in payne or deth tanende.
Hors, herneys, wage & cloth, vitail to spende,
His cure it was tordeyn, and disciplyne
Vnto euery man, seuerous or benygne.
His justising, with sobre diligence,
And pite doon vppon his legioun,
Assured hem to longh obedience
And reuerence, and high deuotioun;
Good gouernaunce at his promotioun
Kept euery man; and his honour, him thoughte
It was, when euery man dede as him oughte.
The Maister or Provost of Ordynaunce,
Although he were of lower dignitie,
His estimatioun & gouernaunce,
The bastilys, dich, & pale is to se;
And wher the tabernaculys shal be
And tent & teelde & case & paviloun
And cariage of al the legioun.
For seeke men the leche and medycyne
Procureth he, for larderye and toolys;
Of euery werk cartyng he most assigne,
For bastile or engyne or myne. And fole is
He noon, that is expert in these scolys;
This was a wise, appreved chiualere,
That, as he dede himself, couth other lere.
And ouer this, the ferrour & the smyth,
The tymbre men, hewer & carpenter,
The peyntour, and vch other craft goth with,
To make a frame or engyne euerywhere,
Hem to defense and her foomen to fere;
391
Tormentys olde and carrys to repare
And make newe, as they to broken are.
Foregys and artelryis, armeryis,
To make tole, horshoon, shot & armurre;
And euery thing that nede myght aspie, is
In thooste; and eek mynours that can go sure
Vndir the dich, and al the wal demure
Or brynge in thoost; herof the Maister Smyth
Had al the rule, and euer went he with.
The legioun is seide haue choorsis X.
The military first, or miliary,
The best and gentilest and wisest men
And myghtiest, therto be necessary;
Eek letterure is good & light to cary.
Her gouernour was a Trybune of Armys,
Wise & honest, that body strong & arm is.
The choorsys aftir that, Trybunys cured
Or Maysterys, as it the prince pleased;
Vch chiualeer in exercise assured
So was, that God & man therwith was pleased;
And first to se the prince do, mych eased
The hertys alle. Fresh herneys, armur bright,
Wit, hardinesse & myght had euery knyght.
The firste signe of al the legioun
An Egil is, born by an Egeler,
And thenne in euery Choors is a Dragoun,
Born by a Draconair or Banereer;
A baner eek had euery Centener
Other a signe, inscrived so by rowe,
His Chevetayn that euery man may knowe.
The Centeners had also werreourys,
Hardy, wel harneysed, in their salet
392
That had a creste of fetherys or lik flourys,
That noon errour were in the batail set,
To his Cristate and to his Baneret
And to his Decanair euerych his sight
May caste, and in his place anoon be pight.
Right as the footmen haue a Centurion,
That hath in rewle an C men & X,
So haue the riders a Decurion,
That hath in rewle XXXII horsmen.
By his banere him knoweth alle his men,
And ouer that, right as it is to chese
A myghti man for thaym, so is for these.
For theim a stronge & wel fetured man,
That can a spere, a dart, a sword wel caste,
And also fight, and rounde a sheld wel can,
And spende his wepon wel withoute waste,
Redier to fight then flite, and ner agaste,
That can be sobre, sadde, & quyk & quyver,
And with his foo com of and him delyuer;
Obeyssaunt his premynentys wille,
And rather do the feat then of it crake,
Impatient that day or tyme spille
In armys exercise and art to wake,
And of himself a sampeler to make
Among his men, wel shod, honestly dight,
And make hem fourbe her armure euer bright.
Right so it is, for these men to chese
A Decurioun, thorugh lik to him in fourme,
Impatient that thei the tyme lese,
Wel herneysed, and euerych of hys tourme
In euery poynt of armys wil enfourme,
And armed wil his hors so sone ascende,
That mervaile is, and course hym stronge anende,
393
And vse wel a dart, a shaft, a spere,
And teche chiualers vndir his cure,
Right as himself to torne hem in her gere,
The brigandyn, helmet, and al procure,
It oftyn wipe clene,-and knowe sure,
With herneysing and myghti poort affrayed
Is ofte a foo, and forto fight dismayed.
Is it to sey: 'he is a werrely knyght,'
Whos herneys is horribil & beduste,
Not onys vsed in a fourte nyght,
And al that iron is or steel, beruste;
Vnkept his hors, how may he fight or juste?
The knyghtis and her horsys in his tourme
This Capitayn shal procure & refourme.
III.
Tercia bellatrix pars est et pacificatrix,
In qua quosque bonos concomitatur honos.
Comprised is in smal this part secounde,
An ooste to numbir, and a legioun;
In foylis is it fewe, in fruyt fecounde;
The saluature of al religioun
Is founde heryn for euery regioun.
Wel to digeste this God graunte vs grace,
And by the werre his reste to purchace.
O gracious our Kyng! Thei fleth his face.
Where ar they now? Summe are in Irelonde,
In Walys other are, in myghti place,
And other han Caleys with hem to stonde,
Thei robbeth & they reveth see & londe;
The kyng, or his ligeaunce or amytee,
Thei robbe anende, and sle withoute pitee.
394
The golden Eagle and his briddys III,
Her bellys ha they broke, and jessys lorne;
The siluer Bere his lynkys al to fle,
And bare is he behinde & eke beforne;
The lily whit lyoun, alas! forsworne
Is his colour & myght; and yet detrude
Entende thei the lond, and it conclude.
Of bestialite, lo, ye so rude,
The Noblis alle attende on the Antilope;
Your self & youris, ye yourself exclude,
And lose soule & lyif. Aftir your coope
Axe humble grace, and sette yourself in hope,
For and ye wiste, hou hard lyif is in helle,
No lenger wolde ye with the murthre melle.
Ye se at eye, it nedeth not you telle,
Hou that the beestis and the foulys alle,
That gentil are, ar sworn your wrong to quelle;
Ypocrisie of oothis wil not walle
You fro the sword, but rather make it falle
On your auarous evel gouernaunce,
That may be called pride & arrogaunce.
This yeve I theim to kepe in remembraunce;
Goode Antilop, that eny blood shal spille,
Is not thi wille; exiled is vengeaunce
From al thi thought; hemself, alas, thei kille.
O noble pantere! of thi breth the smylle,
Swete and pleasaunt to beest & briddis alle,
It oonly fleth the dragon fild with galle.
What helpeth it, lo, thangelis wil falle
On him with al our werreours attonys;
Thei muste nede his membris al to malle.Of this matere I stynte vntil eftsonys,
And fast I hast to write as it to doone is,
395
That myght in right vppon the wrong prevaile
In londe & see, by knyghthode & bataile.
Lo, thus thelectioun with exercise
And ordynaunce, as for a legioun,
Exployed is, as writeth olde wise.
What ha we next? Belligeratioun.
O Jesse flour! Jhesu, Saluatioun
And Savyour, commaunde that my penne
To thin honour go right heryn & renne.
An oste of exercise 'exercitus'
Hath holde of olde his name; a legioun
As an electioun is named thus,
And a choors of cohortatioun.
The princys of her mynystratioun
Her namys have, and aftir her degre
The Chevetaynys vndir named be.
Exercitus, that is to seyn an Ooste,
Is legiounys, or a legioun;
Tweyne is ynough, and IIII is with the moste,
And oon suffiseth in sum regioun;
Therof, with ayde and horsmen of renoun,
As needful is, groweth good gouernaunce
In euery londe, and parfit prosperaunce.
What is an ayde? It is stipendiaryis
Or souldiours conduct of straunge londe,
To such a numbir as it necessary is,
Aftir the legioun thei for to stonde
In ordynaunce, to make a myghti honde;
Heryn who wil be parfit and not erre,
Tak Maysterys of armys and of werre.
This was the wit of Princys wel appreved,
And ofte it hath be seid and is conclude,
396
That oostis ouer grete be myscheved
More of her owne excessif multitude
Then of her foon, that thenne wil delude
Her ignoraunce, that can not modifie
The suffisaunce, an ooste to geder & gye.
To gret an oost is hurt in mony cace:
First, slough it is in journeyinge & longe;
Forthi mysaventure it may difface,
Passagis hard, and floodis hye amonge;
Expense eek of vitaile is ouer stronge,
And if thei turne bak and onys fle,
They that escape, aferd ay aftir be.
Therfore it was the gise amonge the wise,
That of ?es had experience,
Oonly to take an oost as wil suffice,
Of preved & acheved sapience,
In chiualerys that han done diligence
In exercise of werre; a lerned ooste
Is sure, an vnlerned is cost for loste.
In light bataile, oon legioun with ayde,
That is, X Ml. men o fote, and too
Thousand on hors, sufficed as thei saide;
They with a lord no grete estat to goo,
And with a gret Estate as mony mo;
And for an infinit rebellioun
Twey dukys and tweyn oostys went adoun.
Prouisioun be mad for sanytee
In watre, place & tyme & medycyne
And exercise. In place ?h be
The pestilence, his place anoon resigne,
To weet marice and feeld to hard declyne;
To high, to lough, to light, to derk, to colde,
To hoot, is ille; attemperaunce be holde.
397
In snow & hail & frost & wintir shouris,
An ooste beyng, most nedes kacche colde;
For wyntir colde affrayeth somer flourys,
And mareys watir is vnholsom holde;
Good drinke and holsom mete away wil folde
Infirmytee; and fer is he fro wele,
That with his foon & sekenesse shal dele.
Cotidian at honde ha medycyne,
First for the prince; as needful is his helth
To thooste, as to the world the sonne shyne;
His prosperaunce procureth euery welth;
But let not exercise goon o stelthe;
Holde euer it. Ful seelde be thei seek
That euer vppon exercise seeke.
In ouer colde & hoot, kepe the couert,
And exercise in tymes temperate;
Footmen in high & lough, feeld & desert;
An hors to lepe a dich, an hege, a yate.
Tranquillite with peax & no debate
Be sadly kept, exiled al envie;
Grace in this gouernaunce wil multiplie.
Ha purviaunce of forage & vitaile
For man & hors; for iron smyteth not
So sore as honger doth, if foode faile.
The colde fyer of indigence is hoote,
And wood theron goth euery man, God woot;
For other wepen is ther remedie,
But on the dart of hongir is to deye.
Or have ynough, or make a litil werre,
And do the stuf in placys stronge & sure;
In more then ynough, me may not erre;
The moneyles by chevishaunce procure,
As lauful is, I mene, nat vsure;
398
But tak aforn the day of payment;
It loseth not, that to the prince is lent.
What man is hool in his possessioun,
If he ha no defense of men of armys?
Beseged if me be, progressioun
That ther be noon, and noo vitail in arm is,
O woful wight, ful careful thin alarm is!
Honger within, and enmytee abowte,
A warse foo withinn is then withoute.
And though thi foo withoute an honger be,
He wil abide on honger thee to sle;
Forthi comynge a foo, vitaile the,
And leve hym noght, or lite, vnworth a stre;
Whete and forage and flesh, fissh of ?
Wyn, salt & oyle, fewel and euery thinge
That helpeth man or beest to his lyvinge:
Tak al, thi foo comyng, and mak an oye
That euery man to strengthes ha ther goodis,
As thei of good & lyves wil ha joye,
And negligentys to compelle it good is.
The feriage be take away fro flodis,
The briggis on the ryverys to breke,
And passagis with falling tymbour steke.
The yatis and the wallys to repare,
The gunnys and engynys & tormente,
And forge newe, ynowe if that ther nare;
Ful late is it, if thi foo be presente,
And fere ingoth, if hardinesse absente.
Be war of this, and euery thing prouide,
That fere fle, and good corage abide.
Golde it is good to kepe, and make stoor
Of other thing, and spende in moderaunce;
399
More and ynough to haue, it is not soor,
And spare wel, whil ther is aboundaunce;
To spare of litil thing may lite avaunce.
By pollys dele, and not by dignitee,
So was the rewle in sage antiquytee.
And best be war, when that thin aduersary
Wil swere grete, ye by the Sacrament,
And vse that, ye and by seint Mary,
And al that is vndir the firmament:
Beleve nat his othe, his false entent
Is this: thi trewe entent for to begile.
The pref herof nys passed but a while.
Wel ofter hath fals simulatioun
Desceyved vs, then opon werre; and where
Me swereth ofte, it is deceptioun.
Judas, away from vs! cum thou no nere:
Thou gretest, Goddis child as thaugh thou were;
But into the is entred Sathanas,
And thou thi self wilt hange! an hevy cas.
Sumtyme amonge an ooste ariseth roore.
Of berth, of age, of contre, of corage
Dyuers thei are, and hoom thei longe sore,
And to bataile thei wil, or out of wage.
What salue may this bolnyng best aswage?
Wherof ariseth it? Of ydilnesse.
What may aswage it best? Good bisinesse.
With drede in oost to fight thei are anoyed,
And speke of fight, when theim wer leuer fle,
And with the fode and wacch thei are acloyed.
'Where is this felde? Shal we no batail see?
Wil we goon hoom? What say ye, sirs?' 'Ye, ye!'
And with her hed to fighting are thei ripe
Al esily, but he the swellinge wipe.
400
A remedie is, when thei are asonder,
The graunt Tribune, or els his lieutenaunt,
With discipline of armys holde hem vndir
Seuerously, tech hem be moderaunte,
To God deuout, and fait of werrys haunte,
The dart, baliste, and bowe, and cast of stoon,
And swymme & renne & leep, tech euerychoon.
Armure to bere, and barrys like a sworde,
To bere on with the foyn, and not to shere,
And smyte thorgh a plank other a boorde,
And myghtily to shake and caste a spere,
And loke grym, a Ml. men to fere,
And course a myghti hors with spere & shelde,
And daily se ho is flour of the feelde.
To falle a grove or wode, and make a gate
Thorgh it, and make a dike, and hewe a doun
A cragge, or thurl an hil, other rebate
A clyf, to make an even regioun,
Or dowbil efte the dike abowte a toun;
To bere stoon, a boolewerk forto make,
Other sum other gret werk vndirtake.
The chiualer, be he legionary,
As seide it is beforn, on hors or foote,
Or aydaunt, that is auxiliary,
On hors or foote,-if that thei talk or mote
Of werre, and reyse roore, vp by the roote
Hit shal be pulde with myghti exercise
Of werreourys, gouerned in this wise.
Commende, and exercise, and holde hem inne,
For when thei ha the verrey craft to fight,
Thei wil desire it, wel this for to wynne.
He dar go to, that hath both art & myght.
And if a tale is tolde that eny knyght
401
Is turbulent other sedicious,
Examyne it the duke, proceding thus:
The envious man, voide his suggestioun,
And knowe the trowth of worthi & prudent
Personys, that withouten questioun
Wil say the soth, of feith and trewe entent,
And if the duke so fynde him turbulent,
Disseuer him, and sende hym ellys where,
Sum myghti feet to doon as thaugh it were:
To kepe a castel, make a providence,
Or warde a place, and do this by thaduyce
Of counsel, and commende his sapience,
That he suppose hym self heryn so wise,
That therof hath he this honour & price;
So wittily do this, that he, reiecte,
Suppose that to honour he is electe.
For verreily, the hole multitude
Of oon assent entendeth not rebelle,
But egged ar of theim that be to rude,
And charge not of heven or of helle,
With mony folk myght thei her synnys melle;
Thei were at ease her synnys forto wynne,
Suppose thei, if mony be ther inne.
But vse not the medycyne extreme
Save in thin vtterest necessitee,
That is, the crymynous to deth to deme,
The principals; by hem that other be
Aferd to roore, yet better is to se
An oost of exercise in temperaunce
Obeysaunt, then for feere of vengeaunce.
The werriours ha myche thing to lerne;
And grace is noon, to graunte negligence,
402
Wher mannys helth is taken to gouerne;
To lose that, it is a gret offense;
And sikerly, the best diligence
Vnto thonour of victory tascende,
The seygnys is or tokenys tattende.
For in bataile, when al is on a roore,
The kynge or princys precept who may here
In such a multitude? And euermore
Is thinge of weght in hond, & gret matere,
And how to doon, right nedful is to lere;
Therfore in euery oste antiquitee
Hath ordeyned III signys forto be.
Vocal is oon, and that is mannys voys,
Semyvocal is trompe & clarioun
And pipe or horn; the thridde macth no noys,
And mute it hight or dombe, as is dragoun
Or thegil or thimage or the penoun,
Baner, pensel, pleasaunce or tufte or creste
Or lyuereys on shildir, arm or breste.
Signys vocal in wacch and in bataile
Be made, as wacch woordis: 'Feith, hope & grace,'
Or 'Help vs God,' or 'Shipman, mast & saile,'
Or other such, aftir the tyme and place;
Noo ryme or geeste in hem be, ner oon trace,
Ne go thei not amonge vs, lest espyes
With wepon of our owne out putte our eyis.
Semyvocals, as Trumpe and Clarioun
And pipe or horn, an hornepipe thoo
It myghte be; the trumpe, of gretter soun,
Toward batail blewe vp 'Go to, go to!';
The clarions techeth the knyghtys do,
And signys, hornys move; and when thei fight,
Attonys vp the soun goth al on hight.
403
To wacch or worch or go to felde, a trumpe
Hem meved out, and to retourne; and signys
Were moved, how to do, by hornys crompe,
First to remeve, and fixe ayeyn ther digne is.
Oonly the clarioun the knyghtis signe is;
Fight & retrayt and chace or feer or neer,
The clarion his voys declareth cleer.
What so the duke commaundeth to be doon
In werk or wacch or feeld, or frith or werre,
At voys of these it was fulfild anoon.The signys mute, in aventure a sterre,
A portcolys, a sonne, it wil not erre,
In hors, in armature, and in array
They signifie, and make fresh & gay.
Al this in exercise and longe vsage
Is to be knowe; and if a dust arise,
Theere is an oost, or sum maner outrage;
With fiyr a signe is mad in dyuers wise
Or with a beem, vche in his contre gise
His signys hath; and daily is to lerne,
That aftir hem men gide hem & gouerne.
Tho that of werre have had experience,
Afferme that ther is in journeyinge
Gretter peril, then is in resistence
Of fers batail; for in the counterynge
Men armed are oonly for yeynstondinge
And expugnatioun of hem present
In fight; theron oonly ther bowe hath bent.
Their sword & hert al preste ereither fight,
In journeyinge ereither lesse attente is;
Assault sodeyne a day other by nyght,
For vnavised men ful turbulent is.
Wherfore avised wel and diligent is
404
The duke to be purveyed for vnwist,
And redy is the forseyn to resiste.
A journal is in euery regioun
First to be had, wheryn he thinketh fight,
Wheryn haue he a pleyn descriptioun
Of euery place, and passage a forsight,
The maner, wey, both turnyng & forthright,
The dale & hil, the mountayn & the flood;
Purtreyed al to have is holdon good.
This journal is to shewe dukys wise
Of that province, or as nygh as may be,
The purtreyture & writing forto advise;
And of the contrey men a serch secre
Himself he make, and lerne in veritee
Of hem, that on her lyf wil vndirtake,
That thus it is, and vnder warde hem make.
Tak gidis out of hem, beheste hem grete,
As to be trewe, her lyif and grete rewarde,
And other if thei be, with deth hem threte,
And sette a wayt secret on hem, frowarde
Whethor thei thinke be other towarde;
Thei, this seynge, wil wel condite & lede,
Of grete rewarde & deth for hope & drede.
Tak wise and vsed men, and not to fewe;
Good is it not to sette on II or III
The doubte of al, though thei be parfit trewe;
The simpil man supposeth ofte he be
Weywiser then he is, and forthi he
Behesteth that he can not bringe aboute;
And such simpilnesse is forto doubte.
And good it is, that whidirward goth thooste,
Secret it be. The Mynotaurys mase
405
Doctryned hem to sey: 'Whidir thou gooste,
Kepe it secret; whil thi foomen go gase
Aboute her bekenys, to tende her blase,
Go thou the way that thei suppose leeste
Thou woldest go; for whi? it is sureste.'
Espyis are, of hem be war! also
The proditours that fle from oost to ooste,
Be war of hem; for swere thei neuer so,
They wil betray, and make of it their booste.
Escurynge is to haue of euery cooste;
Men wittiest on wightiest hors by nyght
May do it best, but se the hors be wight.
In a maner himself betrayeth he,
Whos taken is by negligence thespie;
Forthi be war, and quicly charge hem se
On euery side, and fast ayeyn hem hye;
Horsmen beforn eke euer haue an eye;
On vch an half footmen, and cariage
Amyddis is to kepe in the viage.
Footmen it is to haue & of the beste
Horsmen behinde; vppon the tail a foo
Wil sette among, and sumtyme on the breste,
And on the sidis wil he sette also.
With promptitude it is to putte him fro;
Light herneysed, and myghtiest that ride,
Doubte if ther is, putte hem vppon that side.
And archery withal is good to take;
And if the foo falle on on euery side,
Good wacch on euery side it is to make;
Charge euery man in herneys fast abide,
And wepynys in hondys to prouide.
Selde hurteth it, that is wel seyn beforn,
And whos is taken sleping, hath a scorn.
406
Antiquitee prouided eek, that roore
Arise not in thoost, for trowbelinge
The chiualers behinde other before,
As when the folk that cariage bringe,
Ar hurt, or are aferd of on comynge,
And make noyse; herfore helmettis wight
A fewe vppon the cariours were dight.
A baner hadde thei togedre to,
Alway CC vndir oon banere;
The forfighters a-sondred so ther-fro,
That no turbatioun amonge hem were,
If that ther felle a conflicte enywhere.
And as the journeyinge hadde variaunce,
So the defense had diuers ordynaunce.
In open felde horsmen wold rather falle
On then footmen; in hil, mareys & woodis,
Footmen rather. In feeld & frith to walle
An oost with myght, as wil the place, it good is,
And to be war that slough viage or floodis
Asondre not the chiualerys; for thynne
If that me be, ther wil the foo bygynne.
Therfore amonge it is to sette wyse
Doctours, as of the feelde, or other grete;
The forgoer to sette vnto his sise,
And hem that beth to slough, forthward to gete.
To fer aforn, and sole, a foo may bete;
He may be clipped of, that goth behinde;
And to goon hole as o man, that is kynde.
In placys as him semeth necessary,
And aduersaunt wil sette his busshement,
Not in apert, but in couert to tary,
And falle vppon; the duke heer diligent
It is to be, to haue his foomen shent;
407
But euery place it is the duke to knowe,
So that his witte her wylis ouerthrowe.
If thei dispose in mountayn oponly
Tassaulte, anoon ha prevely men sent
To an herre hil, that be therto neer by,
And so sette on, that of the busshement
Aboue her hed, and of thi self present
Thei be aferd, and sech away to fle,
When ouer hede and in the frount thei se.
And if the way be streyt and therwith sure,
Let hewe adoun aboute, and make it large;
In large way, peril is noo good vre;
Also this is tattende as thinge of charge,
Ye rather then gouerne ship or barge,
That wher the foo by nyght other by day
Is vsed oon to falle and make affray.
And, voyde that, it is to seen also,
What is his vse, on hors outher o foote,
With fele or fewe his feetys for to doo,
That sapience his werkys alle vnroote.
Of balys also grete is this the boote,
Dayly to gynne go in such an hour
As may be sure both oost & gouernour:
And yet bewar of simulatioun;
To festeyng call in sum fugitif
And here him wel with comendatioun,
And lerne first, hou fellen thei in strif,
And him beheste an honorabil lif;
Lerne of him al, and thenne aday or nyght,
When thei suppose leest, mak hem afright.
Agreved ofte are oostis negligent,
When it is hard passage ouer the floodys,
408
For if the cours be ouer violent
Or ouer deep, gret peril in that flood is.
A remedy to fynde heryn right good is,
For hevy men, pagis and cariage
Ar drowned oftyn tyme in such a rage.
The depth assay, and make of horsys hye
Tweyne eggys; oon be sette ayenst the streem,
The myght therof to breke; another plye
Benethe that, tawayte vppon the fleem
And charge theim, that thei attende on hem
That faile foote, and brynge theim alonde,
And thus til thooste be ouer, shal they stonde.
The flood is ouer deep in playn cuntre,
Departe it ofte, and make it transmeabil:
That most be doon with dykis gret plente,
And wil it not be so, sette ore a gabil,
On empti vesselling ley mony a tabil
Fro lond to lond a brigge is made anoon,
And sure ynough it is for hors & mon.
Horsmen haue had of reed or seggis shevys,
Theron carying their armure as thei swymme,
But better is, to voiden al myschevys,
Ha skafys smale, and hem togedir trymme
With coorde alonge, atteynynge either brymme,
And anchore it and tabil it at large,
And sure it is as arch or shippe or barge.
Yet war the foo; for vppon this passage
He leyt awayt; anoon thin ooste dyuide
And stakys picch, encounter their viage,
And in that stede, if good is thought tabide,
Mak vp a strong bastel on eyther side,
And there, as axeth chaunce, it is to stonde
And ha vitaile out of ereither londe.
409
Now castellinge in journey is to write.
Not euerywhere is founden a citee,
An ooste to loge, and vilagis to lite
For it ther ar, and siker thei ne be,
As, to be sure, it is necessitee
To take a grounde as good as may be fonde,
And thervppon to make our castel stonde.
Leve not the better grounde vnto thi foo,
Be war of that; se, watir, ayer & londe
Holsom be there, and foode ynough ther to
For man & hors, and woode ynough at honde.
No force if rounde or anguler it stonde,
But feyrest is the place and moost of strengthe,
When twey in brede is thryis in the lengthe.
Mesure a grounde, as wil thin ooste suffice;
To wide it is: thin ooste therin is rare;
To streyt: thei be to thicke; a myddil sise
Is beste.-Now make it vp, no labour spare;
It mot be doon, theryn is our welfare;
As for a nyght, mak vp of turf a wale
And stake it on our foo, the poyntis tavale.
A turf it is, when gras & herbe is grave
Vp with the grounde, with irons mad therfore;
A foote brode, a foote & half it haue
In lengthe, and half a foote thick, no more.
But if the lond solute be, not herfore
Turf like a brik to make of necessary,
Thenne is to make a dike tumultuary.
Make it III foote deep, and V obrede,
And stake it as beforn, vtward to stonde;
O nyght to dwelle heryn it is no drede.
And if thi foo be nygh, him to yeynstonde,
A gretter werk it is to take on honde.
410
Sette vp in ordir euery man his sheeld,
Whil princys and prudentys parte a feeld.
Vch centyner take vp the werk footmel,
With sword igord, anoon caste vp the dich,
And IX foote obrede wil do wel,
XI is as good; but poore and rich
Most on this werk, & even worch ilich,
XIII foote obrede or XVII
Is best of alle a werre to sustene.
The numbir odde is euer to obserue,
And hege it other stake it vp to stonde,
Therto ramayle and bowys ar to kerve,
Areyse it to his hegth aboue londe,
And make it castellike with myghti honde,
With loupis, archeturis, and with tourys.
O Chiualers! in this werk your honour is.
X footemel the centeneris take
This werk to doon, and ther vppon attende,
That euery company his cant vp make
And stynte not, vntil a parfit ende
Of al be mad; and who doth mys, is shende.
Forwhi? the prince himself goth al aboute
And by & by behaldeth euery rowte.
But lest assault felle on hem labouringe,
The hors, and thei on foote of dignitee,
That shal not worch, in circuyte a rynge
Shal make, and kepe of al hostilitie;
And first, as for the signys maiestie
Assigne place; for more venerabil
Then thei, ther is nothing, this is notabil.
And aftir that, the Duke & Erlys have
The pretory, a grounde out set therfore,
411
And for Trybunys out a grounde thei grave,
Her tabernaclis thei theryn tenstore
For legions & aydis, lesse & more,
On hors other o foote; a regioun
And place is had to picch her paviloun.
And IIII on hors and IIII o foote anyght
In euery centeyn hadde wacch to kepe,
And it departed was, to make it light,
That reasonabil tymys myght thei slepe;
For right as houris aftir houris crepe,
So went the wach, and kept his cours aboute,
Footmen withinne, & horsed men withoute.
Thei go to wacch by warnyng of the trumpe,
And there abide vntil their houris ende;
Away thei go by voys of hornys crumpe.
A wacch of serch also ther was tattende
That wel the tyme of wacchinge were spende;
Trybunys made of theim thelectioun,
That hadde of al the wacch directioun.
And twye a day the contrey was escured
By horsmen, in the morn and aftir noon;
Not by the same alway, for that endured
Shuld not ha been. This feleship hath doon:
They most reste, and other wynne her shoon;
Thus bothe man & hors may be releved,
Ye, ofte ynough, and not but litil greved.
And on the duk hangeth the gouernaunce,
That in this castellinge he ha vitaile
For euery wight withoutyn variaunce,
Clooth, wepon, herneysing, that nothing faile;
And in fortressis nygh it is availe
Footmen to haue & hors; ferde is thi foo,
If thou on euery side vppon him goo.
412
Mortal bataile in hourys II or III
Termyned is, and hope on that oon side
Is al agoon; but a good prince is he,
That can him & his ooste so wisely gide,
With litil slaught to putte his foo fro pride;
Pluck him vnwar and fray his folk to renne
Away, and myghtily sette aftir thenne.
On this behalve it is ful necessary,
That olde & exercised sapience
The duke to counsel have, and with hem tary,
As wil the tyme, and here their sentence
Of vinqueshinge couertly by prudence
Or by apert conflict, that is, bataile;
The surer way to take and moost availe.
Here hem heryn, and what folk hath thi foo,
And charge that thei glose not, for it
Doth oftyn harm; and here theim also
Speke of her exercise, her strength & wit,
And to their aduersayrys how thei quyt
Hemself aforn, and whether his horsmen
Be myghtier in fight, or his footmen.
Also the place of conflicte is to lerne,
And what thi foo himself is, what his frendis;
Wher he be wys a werre to gouerne,
And whar thei lyue as angelis or fendis;
Wher variaunt, or vchon others frend is,
And wher thei vse fight in ordynaunce
Or foliously, withoute gouernaunce.
And euery poynt forseyd, and other moo,
Considir in thin oost, and tak avis
Of hem, what is the beste to be do;
And peyse al in balaunce, and ay be wys;
And if thin ooste is ace, and his is syis,
413
What so thei sey, couertly by prudence
Dispose the to make resistence.
Dischere nat thi folk in eny wise;
The ferde anoon is redy for to fle;
Be vigilaunt and holde inne exercise,
And se thin hour; ful oftyn tyme hath he
The herre hand, that kepeth him secre;
Avaunte not for colde nor for hete,
For smale dooth that speketh ouer grete.
Certeyn it is, that knyghthode & bataile
So stronge is it, that therby libertee
Receyued is with encreste and availe;
Therby the Croune is hol in Maiestee
And vche persone in his dignitee,
Chastised is therby rebellioun,
Rewarded and defensed is renoun.
Forthi the duke, that hath the gouernaunce,
Therof may thinke he is a Potestate,
To whom betakyn is the prosperaunce
Of al a lond and euerych Estate.
The Chiualers, if I be fortunate,
The Citesens, and alle men shal be
If I gouerne wel, in libertee.
And if a faut is founden in my dede,
Not oonly me, but al the commyn wele
So hurteth it, that gretly is to drede
Dampnatioun, though noman with me dele;
And forthi, negligence I wil repele
And do my cure in feithful diligence
With fauoraunce of Goddis excellence.
If al is out of vse and exercise,
As forto fight in euery legioun
414
Chese out the myghtiest, the wight & wise
And aydis with, of like condicioun;
With their avice vnto correctioun
Reduce it al by his auctorite
The duke, & vse a grete seueritee.
Amended al as sone as semeth the,
Make out of hem a stronge electioun;
Disparpiled lerne if thi foomen bee,
And when thei lest suppose in their reasoun,
Fal on, and putte hem to confusioun.
Therof thi folk shal take an hardinesse
And daily be desirous on prowesse.
At brigge or hard passage, or hillis browe,
Is good to falle vppon; or if ther be
Mire or mareys or woode or grovis rowe
Or aggravaunt other difficultee,
To falle vppon is thenne vtilitee;
The hors to sech vnarmed or aslepe
To falle vppon is good to take kepe.
Thus hardy hem; for whos is vnexpert
Of werre, and woundis seeth, and summe slayn,
He weneth euery strok go to his hert,
And wiste he how, he wolde fle ful fayn.
But and he fle, retourne him fast agayn.
Thus with seueritee and good vsage
Ther wil revive in theim a fyne corage.
Dissensioun among foomen to meve,
Be thei rebellious or myscreaunt,
It is to do, theim selven thei myscheve.
The traditour Judas was desperaunt,
Him self he hynge: so wulle thei that haunt
Rebellioun or ellis heresie.
Alas! to fele thus wil lyve & deye.
415
Oon thinge heryn is wisely to be seyn,
Of this matier that ther noman dispayre;
As hath be doon, it may be doon ayeyn;
A desolat Castel man may repayre.
In wynter colde, in somer dayis fayre
Is good to se. So fareth exercise
Of knyghthode & of werre, as seyn the wise.
In Engelond til now was ther no werre
This LX yere, savynge at Seynt Albane,
And oon bataile aftir the blasing sterre,
And longe on hem that whirleth as the fane.
Is not their owne cryme her owne bane?
Ther leve I that, and sey that exercise
Of werre may in peax revyue & rise.
Seyde ofte it is: the wepon bodeth peax,
And in the londe is mony a chiualere,
That ha grete exercise doubtlesse
And think I wil that daily wil thei lere,
And of antiquitee the bokys here,
And that thei here, putte it in deuoyre,
That desperaunce shal fle comynge espoyre.
More esily a thing is al mad newe
In many cas, then is an olde repared;
The plauntys growe, as olde tren vp grewe,
And otherwhile a riche thing is spared.
It nedeth not to crave this declared,
But go we se, what helpeth to prevaile
Vppon the feelde in sette apert bataile.
Here is the day of conflict vncerteyn,
Here is to se deth, lif, honour & shame.
Glade vs, o Lord, this day & make vs fayn,
And make vs of this grete ernest a game!
Lord, make in vs magnificent thi name,
416
Thin angelis commaunde in vs tattende,
And she, thi modir, have vs recommende.
Now is the Duke the rather diligent,
That forth he goth bytwene espoyre & drede;
Now glorious the Prince is sapient,
Now thignoraunt shal deye or harde spede.
In this moment manhode & knyghtly dede
With Goddis honde is oonly to prevaile;
Now let se first, how wil our foon assaile.
The chiualers set forth first at the yate,
Whether ye dwelle in Castell or Citee,
And sette a frount or eny foo come ate,
Til thooste come out vndir securitee.
Go not to fer ne faste, for ye se,
A wery wyght hath spended half his myght,
And with the fresh is hard for him to fight.
And if thi foo the yatis ha forsette,
Delay it and attende what thei mene;
Let hem revile and gnaste & gomys whette,
And breke her ordynaunce, and when thei wene
Ye be aslepe, and they foryeton clene,
Breke on hem vnavised day or nyght;
This wisdom is to do, manhode & myght.
It is to frayne also with diligence,
Wher chiualerys think it be to fight,
Her countynaunce of fere or confidence
Wil be the juge, and truste not the knyght
That is aferd, ner hym ?his myght
Presumeth, inexpert what is bataile,
Conforte hem yet, telle hem thei shal prevaile.
And reasounynge reherce rebellioun
Or myscreaunce, and how thei be forsake
417
Of alle goode, a Prynce as a lyoun
May telle that aforn thei ha be shake;
And if he may with reasounynge awake
An hardinesse in hem he may procede
And ellys vttirly he stont in drede.
The first sight is ferdfullest for tho
That neuer were in fight; and remedie
Is in beholdinge ofte vppon her foo
Out of a siker place or placys heye;
Confort therof comyng, dispayr wil deye,
Eke issuynge on hem with a prevaile
Is hardyinge to falle to bataile.
Part of the victory is for to chese
The herre grounde, and ay the herre it be,
The more myght thou hast thi foo to ceese,
And more sharp dounward the taclys fle,
Thi foon her fight is with the grounde & the;
Yet footmen hors, and hors footmen tassaile,
Theire is the cleef, the playn is hem tavaile.
And if thou may ha with the sonne & wynde,
Ereither on the bak is grete availe,
Ereither also wil thi foomen blynde;
Ayeinst the wynde to fight, it is travaile,
A cloude of dust wil therwithal assaile
Thi foomen in the frount, and stony hem so
That they her wit shal seke what to do.
Forthi the Prince it is be prouident
And haue a sight to wynde & dust & sonne,
And on the turnyng take avisement,
Remembering hou certeyn hourys ronne.
It wil not stonde, as stood when thei begonne;
West wil the sonne and happely the wynde,
But seen he wil that thei come ay behinde,
418
And euer smyte his foomen in the face;
And there an ende of that. Now wil we se,
This ooste embateled vch in his place,
That noon errour in eny parti be;
Therof wel ordeyned vtilitee
Wil nede arise, and his inordynaunce
May brynge (as God defende) vs to myschaunce.
First is to sette a frounte, an Ege his name
Is. Whi? The foon it shal behalde & bite;
Ther chiualers, the worthiest of fame,
That wil with wisdom & with wepon smyte,
Noo knyght apostata, noon ypocrite,
Feers, feithful, ofte appreved, olde & wise
Knyghtys be thei, none other in no wise.
This ege in dayis olde a principaunt
Of wurthi men, as princys, had his name;
In thordre next personys valiaunt,
Such as ha sought honour and voyded shame
That vre haue had, to make her foomen tame,
Sette hem theryn, armure and shot & spere
That myghtily can vse and wel bewere.
Next to the firste frount this is secounde,
And as of old thei called hem hastate
By cause of vse of spere & shaftis rounde,
Of armure is noon of hem desolate.
III foote atwene had euery man his state,
So in a Ml. pace olength stood fixe
A Ml CC LX and VI
Footmen were alle these, and stode in kynde
In duble raunge, and euerych hadde III
Foote, as byforn is seide, and VI behinde
The raungis hadde a sondir, so that he
That stood beforn, vnlatted shulde be
419
To drawe & welde his wepon, and to take
His veer to lepe or renne, assaut to make.
In tho tweyn orderys wer ripe & olde
Appreved werryours of confidence,
That worthi men of armys had ben holde,
With wighti herneysing for to defense;
These as a wal to make resistence
Ay stille stode, hem may noo man constreyne
Tavaunce forth or reere o foote ayeyne.
Thei trouble not, lest other troubled were,
But fixe abide, and welcom thaduersary
With sword & axe, with shot & cast of spere,
Vntil thei yeve her coors to seyntewary,
Or fle; for whi? thei dar no lenger tary.
Thenne aftir hem that ar to go for al,
For these stille abide as doth a wal.
Tho tweyne eggys ar clept 'the grete armure,'
And aftir hem the thridde cours is sette
Of wighte & yonge and light herneysed sure,
With dartys and with taclis sharpply whette,
In dayis olde thei ferentayris hette;
The firthe cours was called the scutate,
Spedy to renne and glad to go therate.
Wight archery with hem to shote stronge,
The yongest and the best and lustyeste
Archers with crankelons & bowys longe;
The ferenters and thei to gedir keste
Named the light armure, as for the beste
Thorgh shulde passe and first with shot prouoke
The aduerse part, and on hem reyse a smoke.
If foomen fle, thei and horsmen the chase
Go swift vppon, and ellis thei retrete
420
And thorgh the frount indresse hem to their place.
The grete armure, if thei com on an hete,
Is hem to yeve of sword and axis grete,
On hem the feeld is now for to defende.
Thei gynne wel, God graunte hem a good ende!
The fifthe cours was the carrobaliste,
Manubalistys and fundibulary
And funditours; but now it is vnwiste,
Al this aray, and bumbardys thei cary,
And gunne & serpentyn that wil not vary,
Fouler, covey, crappaude and colueryne
And other soortis moo then VIII or IXne.
Heer faughte thei, that hadde as yet no sheelde,
As bachelers, with shot of dart or spere.
The sixte cours, and last of al the feelde
Wer sheeldys, of the myghtiest that were,
The bellatourys beste in euery gere;
Antiquytee denamed hem Triayrys,
In theym, as in the thridde, al to repayre is.
Thei to be sadde in strength and requyete,
More feruently to make inuasioun,
To take her ease in ordir alwey seete,
And if aforn wer desolatioun,
In theym therof was reparatioun;
In eny part if ther wer desperaunce,
Thei turned it anoon to prosperaunce.
Now the podisme, as whos wil sey, the space
Of grounde, vpon to fight; it to se,
Aforn is seide, hou in a Ml. pace
XVI C LX and VI may be,
So chiualers euerych ha footis III
To stonde vpon a foote and VI abacke
That for his veer and leep no rowme hym lacke.
421
VI eggys heer sette in a Ml. pace
Shal holde II and XLti. feet in brede,
And so X Ml. wil this grounde embrace;
Thus tembataile is sure, and fer fro drede;
And to II Ml. pas III cours for nede
In long goth out, so that the latitute
In XXI foote it self enclude.
As here is taught, X Ml. men may stonde
In oon or ellys in II Ml. pace,
And XXti. Ml. in the double londe,
And XXXti. Ml. in the threfolde space,
And XL Ml IIII folde is tembrace;
And this mesure is named the Pidisme,
Vntaught in doctrinal or in Grecisme.
A prince heryn expert, and hath to fight
His feelde and of his folk the multitude,
Shal seen anoon how thei shal stonde aright,
And if the feeld is short & brod, conclude
On rangis IX, and by this similitude,
Be short and huge in brede, or longe & rare,
But myghtier is brede, and mo may spare.
And rare, an ooste if thaduersary seeth,
He breketh on with hurt peraventure,
Wher thicke outholdeth him ayenst his teeth;
And ther an ende of that; but hoo shal cure
Ereither, horn and myddis, to be sure,
Ordeyne that, or aftir dignitee
Or aftir thaduersayris qualitee.
The feelde ofoote ordeyned in this gise,
To sette it is these hors at eyther horn,
As writeth in her werkys olde wise,
That herneysed sperys be sette aforn,
Vnharneysed abak, that of be born
422
The storm fro theym, whil myghti hors defende
Stronge archerye o foote to shote on ende.
For to defende haue horsis myghtieste,
Tho hornys in attempting is to sende
Out hors the swiftest & the wightieste,
To trouble theym sette on a pace on ende.
The duke it is to knowe & comprehende,
What hors ayenst what throngys ar to goon,
And whar he have hors as goode as his foon.
Their hors ar ouer vs; theryn is boote:
Tak wight and yonge men with sheeldis light,
With twene on hors, sette one of theim o foote;
With hem resiste our aduersayrys myght.
But this to take effecte and spede aright,
These yonge men herof grete exercise
Moste have, as telleth werreourys wise.
And aftir al his ooste, a duke shal haue
A myghti choyce of men on hors & foote,
Ereither horn and breste for to save,
That if the boorys hed in wolde wrote,
A sharre shere his groyn of by the roote.
(The boorys hed is a triangulere
Of men, a boorys hed as thaugh it were).
If that come on, with tuskys forto breke
The breste or egge or wynge or outher horn,
A sharre clippe hem of, right by the cheke,
And with the same his wrot away be shorn;
And set it al in ordir as beforn,
And if a place feynte, anoon a yawe
Of myghti men aforn it is to drawe.
Tribunys, Erlis or their lieutenauntys,
Of these, myghtiest to renne & ride
423
Wer mad the Capitayns & gouernauntys,
And werriours hem named the subside;
For thei releved thoost on euery side,
So that noman remeued from his place,
For so to doon, myght al an oost difface.
Eek out herof thei make a Boorys hed
And Cuneus thei name it, or a wege;
As thondirynge with leyting flammys red
It russheth on our aduersayrys egge
And shaketh of, ye mony a myghti segge,
And if it falle on either of the hornys,
It cracketh hem, as fier tocracketh thornys.
This stood behinde al other ordynaunce.
Now is to se the place of vche estate:
On the right honde, withoute variaunce
The principal Captayn or potestate,
That al the gouernaunce is taken ate,
There as the footmen and the hors dyuide,
He hath his place, al to gouerne & gide.
Footmen and hors to rewle heer stondeth he,
The potestate and al this oost to gide,
By premynence of his auctorite,
To chere theim that myghtily shal ride,
And theim o foote, as myghtily tabide.
A wynge is him to bringe aboute the horn
Him counteringe and on comynge beforn,
That is the lift horn of our aduersary,
Aboute a wynge, and on the backe hem clappe,
And thei of their comyng the tyme wary;
And if (as God defende) amys it happe,
Anoon the subside is to stoppe a gappe;
For soueraynly on hym that is tattende,
And, as the cas requyreth, come on ende.
424
The Duke secounde, and next in gouernaunce,
Amydde the frounte or forfrount is to stonde
And sustene it tabide in ordinaunce;
The boorys hed his part is to withstonde,
A sharre out of the subside is at honde,
Clappe it theron, and if ther nede a yawe,
Out of the same anoon it is to drawe.
The thridde Duke, right wys & vigorous,
His part it is to stonde on the lift horn
And myghti men with hym, for dangerous
Is that to kepe, as writon is beforn.
His wynge he muste extende, and hadde thei sworn
It, let hem not her wynge aboute hym clappe,
Subside at him be sone, if ought mys happe.
A clamour, clept an harrow or a shout,
Vntil the fight begynne, noon is to rere;
No werreour that wise is, out of doubt,
Wil shoute afer, therwith his foo to fere;
But when the shoute & shaftys fille his ere,
Then voyce yfere is so fel & horribil,
That for to fere, it is not incredibil.
Be redy first, and first to sette vppon,
And first to shote & shoute & make affray,
With myghti countynaunce, that is the mon,
That mornynge is to haue a ful fayr day.
This promptitude & wit & stronge aray
Thi foo seynge, is trembeling to fle,
The palme of victory goynge with the.
And ay bewar, lest his right wynge clappe
Aboute thi lift horn; this is remedie:
To rech it out; and if that wil not happe,
The wynge aboute thyn horn bacward replie
And fende hem of; now fight for the maistrye,
425
And if a bosh come on on eny side,
A better bosh on hem from our subside.
Here angelike valiaunce, here is puissaunce
Archangelik in ooste and legioun,
And it gouerneth Dukys principaunce
With myght, power, and dominatioun.
Omnipotens, this is his champioun;
God loueth this, his throne & sapience
Is sette heron, justice to dispence.
What is this oost, aduerse, rebelliouns
Presumptuous, periurious, mischevous,
Heresious with circumcelliouns?
A legioun attaynte, vntaken thevous,
That, as thei ar myscheved, wold myscheve vs.
Her lord is Lucifer, the kyng of pride,
In euery feeld with him doun goth his side.
Thei ha no breste, here hornys & her wyngis
Ful febil are and out of ordynaunce;
Subside is goon, no socour in their kynge is,
And moost amonge hem self is variaunce.
They wil away, now fle they to myschaunce;
Goon is their herte, and if the body dwelle,
Their hope is aftir deth and aftir helle.
Here is .o. breste, here hornys are & wyngys
And myghtieste in raunge & ordynaunce;
Subside is here, and socour in our kynge is,
Amonge vs is ther noo contrariaunce.
We wil abide vndir our gouernaunce,
Here is noo drede of deth or peyne of helle;
Here or with angelys is vs to dwelle.
Therfore our eye is to the kyngis signe,
We here his voys, as trumpe & clarioun,
426
His eyes are obeyed, we enclyne
Attonys vnto hym, his legioun
We are, and aftir God, his regioun.
His capitayn and his vicapitaynys
Tobey euerych of vs right glad & fayn is.
This champioun, this ooste & Goddis knyght
With fele and also fewe may prevaile,
Miraclis here & there God sheweth myght;
But first (as seide is erste) is hem tassaile.
The gretter ooste is this; now moste availe
Is ordinat bataile, as is beforn
Seide, and with wyngys clappe in eyther horn.
With wyngis wight hem vmbego, ley on
Behinde and holde hem streyt on euery side,
And cleche hem vp; whi wolde they be foon?
Tech hem obeyssaunce; sey: 'Fy! o pride!
Com on your way, we wil our self you gide.'
This way is good, so that this bestes ride
Be not a gret horribil multitude.
With multitude we myght been vmbegoon,
War that perile; holde of on other side
With wyngis wight, and strengthe hem faste anoon;
With myghtiest elect of the subside
Prevaile on hem; yet more is to prouide,
That if the boorys hed com in, a sharre
Be made for him, his tuskys forto marre.
But wurthi men are in this ooste afewe,
Sette hem in wise and myghti gouernaunce;
For heer the Lord wil his myracle shewe,
Their multitude or myght be noo turbaunce;
Truste in thi Lord and mak good ordynaunce;
Ordeyned wel, in fewe is to prevaile,
So that theryn no poynt or poyntis faile.
427
Do thus when thegys are at the congresse;
Thi lift hond, hold it from thin aduersary,
That of his shot it have noo distresse
And thi ryght wynge vppon hem wightly cary.
Theer to begynne it is most necessary;
Sette on in circuyte, and bringe abowte,
And to prevaile it nedeth nat to doubte.
But do this with thin horsmen myghtyeste
And footmen of the beste, and ha noo drede,
Thi foomen vndir foote to be keste;
And if thi foo to the the same bede,
A myghtiest subside vppon hym lede
Of horsmen and footmen, and thus delude
Hir arte with arte, and thervppon conclude.
Or otherwise, if men be myghtieste
On the lift hond, the right is to retrete
And fal on her right horn with wightieste
Footmen & hors; and til thei yelde hem, bete
Hem on the bak and breeste, and ouergete
Hem myghtily; but the right honde elonge,
That of thi foo noo forfeture it fonge.
War heer the boorys hed and euerywhere,
Or otherwise al putte in ordynaunce
CCCC or D pace yfere
Aforn the counteringe it is tavaunce
Our wyngis wight vppon their ignoraunce.
Prudence it is on hem to make affray,
Whil thei beth out of reule and of aray.
If hors be myghtiest, this wey is best
And doon anoon, and ellis is grete drede;
A remedy therfore is to be keste,
That al the light armure wightly procede,
And archerye, as sparkil out of glede.
428
And embataile anoon the frounte aforn,
The breste to defende, and either horn.
If this be doon, the frounte alonge is sure,
Vnlabored with fight, or otherwise,
Like as beforn is seyde, it is to cure,
That thi right wynge vppon his lift horn rise;
But myghtiest and wittiest dyuise
Vnto that feat, and archers with hem fonge
Of wighte men, ofoote that be stronge.
And this doyng, retrete thi lifte horn
Fer, al abak, and raunge it like a spere,
Dyuers heryn vnto the way beforn,
So that the foo noo strook theron bewere.
This wil devicte anoon withoute fere.
In this manere a smal & myghti ooste
Shal ouerthrowe a multitude of booste;
Or finally, this ooste is but of fewe
And not so myghti men as hath the foo:
Heer hath the werreour his craft to shewe,
And embataile hym nygh a flood that goo
On outher half; a cragge is good also,
Lake or marice or castel or citee,
A side to defende is good to se.
There embataile and putte ereither wynge
On oon side, and herwith pul of his horn,
But fro behinde aboute is beste it brynge,
And with the boorys hede route in beforn.
The myghtiest to this be not forborn,
Ner they, theryn that haue had exercise,
Thus hath be seyde of werryourys wise.
The foo peraventure is ferde and fled
Into sum holde, and ferther wolde he fle
429
Fayn, wiste he how. What is the beste reed
That he go forth, or heer beseged be?
To lete hem goon is moste vtilitee
And no perile is it that foo to chace
That turneth vs the bak & nat the face.
Yet heer be wys and sende a fewe aforn,
Right aftir hem, and with a myghty honde
Another way on even or amorn
Caste to come in and in their light to stonde.
When thei that aftir go, wynne on hem londe,
Her part it is tattempte hem esily
And so departe, aferd to bide therby.
This seyn, thei wil, suppose a wayt be goon,
And disolute anoon be negligent,
Thenne is the wit, that myghti honde come on
And take hem vp aslepe or vynolent;
Thus easily we haue our owne entent,
Therof to God the commendatioun
Be madde, and doon sacrificatioun.
If part of thooste be fled, & part prevaile,
Heryn the Prince exploye his valiaunce,
Hem myghtily retournyng to bataile.
Forwhi? the foon be fled vnto myschaunce.
Arere anoon vnto your ordynaunce;
The feelde is youre, and trumpe & clarioun
And scryis make of victory resoun.
Of knyghthode and bataile in special
Thus seide thelectioun & ordynaunce,
Here is to sette vp rewlys general,
As this: The gracious good gouernaunce
Obserueth euerywhere; al suffisaunce
Hath he that is content; al may be born
Saue wele; and: scorned is that vseth scorn;
430
Thi disavaile availe is to thi foo,
His hurt availeth the; voide his advice,
Do thin availe; do not as he hath do;
In thin electioun se thou be wys,
War negligence, do euery man justice,
Be vigilaunt, attende thin honour,
Thi prouidence be to thin oost socour.
Ha not to fight a knyght vnexercised;
Ha confidence in preved thing; secre
Thi counsel have; lerne of thi self disgised;
The fugitif herd and vntrested be;
Be gided wel by folk of that contre,
That thou wilt ouer ride; haue in writynge
Euery passage, and eke in purtreyinge.
Better is brede in oost to fight then lengthe;
Good is in stoor to haue a grete subside;
With sapience socoure a feebil strength,
Sende of thi foo; Let not thin oost diuide;
Whette vp thin ege; bidde horsmen wightly ride;
Fight in a raunge aforn with multitude
Ayenst a fewe, and hem anoon detrude.
A fewer oost falle on with the right horn,
And crokyng of the lift horn is telonge,
So that the myghtiest be sette beforn;
And if the lift horn be both wyce and stronge,
Sette it beforn, and bak the right be wronge;
Or on thin vnaduised foo with wight
And myghti wyngis go beforn & fight.
The light armure and euery ferentary
Aforn thi frount in nede anoon procede
With subside on the wyngys for to tary;
And he that hath a litil ooste, hath nede
Of mych wit, and myghti men in dede,
431
And on his honde a flood or place of strengthe,
And either wynge on his oon horn tenlengthe.
Ye truste in hors: the playn is beste; ye truste
Vppon footmen: the cleef is good. Espie
Amongis vs to be ther is distruste:
That euery man go hoom, anoon do crye,
And which is he, forwith me shal espie.
But sodenly this most be doon be day,
The yatis shitte, lest he go stele away.
What is to doon, with mony take advice;
What shalbe doon, tak fewe or be alone;
Tak his advice that is secret & wyce,
Be juste, indifferent to euerychone;
For idelnesse haue ay sumwhat to doone;
To straunge not, not to familier,
Make of a lord; chere a good Chiualeer.
And here anende I thus the thridde part
In this Tretice of knyghthode & bataile.
What ha we next ? Forsothe, a subtil art
To bilde a stronge Citee, and for tassaile
It and defense; and aftir, fight Navayle,
That is bataile in ship, I here entende
For chiualers to write, and make an ende.
IV.
Vltima pars vrbes parat, obsidet atque tuetur,
Bello nauali finit & ornat opus.
This IIIde part, as long as othre tweyne,
Halt prouidence of myghtiest bataile,
The morthereer to bringe vndir the cheyne.
There al his olde craft shal nought availe,
But hate of ire and angush of travaile
To fynde; and aftir al that to descende
432
To theuerlasting deth, if he namende.
In Brutis Albion is not to spende
This myghti knyghthode & bataile alone;
To Normandie and Fraunce it is tassende,
Til Cristis & the kyngis foos vchone
Be dryven out or chastised, and noone
Alyve ylefte, that wil not wel beleve
And vttirly the myscreaunt myscheve.
Here ende I that, and to my werk releve
The laste part, anoon to bringe an ende,
And aftir in correctioun it preve;
Criste truste I, that the kyng it wil attende
And werreours to knowe it condescende;
That leve I there, and write as is thavaile
To bilde and sette assege, and see bataile.
Nature or art assureth a Citee,
A dongeoun, a castel, or a tour,
In lake or in mareys or in the see
Sette it, that element is thi socour;
And if the lond shalbe propugnatour,
A mountayne or a clyef, a cragge, a rok
Sette it vppon, and saf it is fro strok.
And in foreste, in feelde or in champayne,
With craft or art it is tomake a strengthe,
And if nature assiste, it is tattayne
Effect anoon, as when the brede or lenghe
A rok, ryuer, mareys or see wil strengthe;
But art alone if noon herof availe,
Shal make it stronge with wisdam & travaile.
Mak bosumy and angulous the wal,
And so sette out therof the fundament
With touris and turrettis oueral,
433
That scale, engyne or rammer therto sent
Be ouer sette, and faile of his entent,
When he is vnbegon and al to donge
With al that may be kest fro wallis stronge.
In this manere a wal it is to make,
To stonde an infallibil thing for euer:
An interualle of XXti feet be take,
A wal on either side herof dissevre,
Caste in the moolde, sadde it with mal & lever,
Out of the dich caste it bitwix the wallys,
And ramme it doun with punchonys & mallis.
Mak the inner wal wel lower then withoute,
That esily, as by the clif, ascende
Me may vnto the loupis al aboute,
Or by an esi grice hem to defende;
Thus mad a wal, the ram may nat offende;
For thaugh he fronte awey this vttir cruste,
The grounde is stronge ynough with him to juste.
For firing of the yatis make obstacle,
Couer hem with hidys and with iron plate,
And make aforn a myghti propugnacle,
A portcolys to plumpe adoun therate,
Aftir thi foon atwixte it and the yate
Thei checked ar. The machcoling may thenne
Chastise hem that thei shal nat sle ner brenne.
The dichis ar to make brode at al
And deep at al, so that me may not fille
Hem in no wise, and renne vppon the wal;
The myner is his labour heer to spille,
And rathest if the watir hem fulfille;
For now hath he twey grete Impedymentys;
Depnesse is oon, another thelement is.
434
The multitude of shot is to repelle
With sheeld, pavice an here and duble say;
Shot perceth not ther thorgh; eek wittis felle
Han cratys fild with stoon at euery bay,
And if thassault come vp, adoun go they
Out of the crate, at euery loup is oon
Of these. It quelleth ordynaunce & mon.
In mony wise assault is and defense;
And on manere is by enfameyinge.
Hoolde foode away, and watir, kepe it thens,
And hem to honde anoon shal honger bringe.
But if we wite a seege on vs comynge,
Anoon gete al the foode within our wonys
And faste haue in the multitude of stonys.
Corn euerydel, larder, fisch, foul, forage,
And that may not be brought in, is to brenne,
Wyn, aysel, herbe, & fruyt and cariage,
Logyng, let brenne it vp, or cary it thenne;
So bare it for our foon that whenne thei renne,
Thei fynde nought; and vse we vitaile
With such attemperaunce, that it ne faile.
Glew, tar & picch and oyle incendiary,
And sulphour herwithal to brenne engyne,
Charcole & cole, and al that necessary
Is forto make armure and arowys fyne
And shelde & spere, hundirdys VIII or IX,
And coggys, cogulys & pibblis rounde,
Fil vp the wal with hem by roof & grounde.
Stoon of the flood is saddest and so best,
For fourneysinge a wal & euery loupe,
And outher with engynys to be kest
On hegh, adoun to falle on hed or croupe,
Or fro the scalyng forto make hem stoupe
And have of grene tymbour grete rollys
435
And loggys leyd to route vppon her pollys.
And beemys is to haue of euery sise
And boord of euery soort, and also nayl.
Ayenst engyne, engyne is to devise,
And that the stuf be prest, is thin availe.
High if it be, pulle ouer their top sail,
And if thei come in touris ambulary,
Hem myghtily to mete is necessary.
Nerf is to haue or senewis aboundaunce,
The crosbowyng to stringe and bowe of brake;
Hors her of mane & tail, if suffisaunce
Therof ther is, therto good is to take;
Of wymmen here tho stryngis eke thei make:
With stryngys of their her Romaynys wyvis
Saved her owne & her husbondis lyvis.
Raw hidis ar to kepe, and euery horn
The portcolis to couere, eek sheeld & targe
And mony a thing, it may not be forborn;
And if so be your watir be not large,
To synke a welle anoon it is to charge,
For lak therof; theym that the water brynge,
With shot defende outward & hoom comynge.
And if the welle is out of our shotinge,
Make vp a tour and putte archerys there,
For to defende tho that watir brynge;
Cisternys who can make, it is tenquere;
Make vp of theym in placis euerywhere,
Rayn watir kepe in hem; when wellys faile,
Rayn watir in cisternys may availe.
A See Citee this is, and salt is geson:
Kest watre salt in vesselling that sprede,
Salt wil the sonne it make in litil season;
436
But thus we dar not fette it in for drede,
The see gravel, gete it vp in this nede,
Fresh watir it, and let it drie in sonne,
And salt withoute doubte herof is wonne.
They that the wal assaulteth, bith terribil
A multitude, and trumpis proudly rynge;
The Citee nys but simpil and paisibil,
And ferde thei are at this first counteringe,
And in goth they; but if the spritis springe
And putte hem of, in comth an hardinesse,
And egal is fro now forth the congresse.
The tortoys or the snayl, the rammys grete,
The sekel or the sithe, and vyneyerd,
The cagys pluteal it is to gete
And tourys ambulary nere aferd;
The musculys eke with the pety berde,
Lo alle these wil this Citee assaile
With crafte, and yet with craft shal it prevaile.
Of tymbir and of boord it is to make
A tortoys or a shelled snail, and so
They name it; whi? for when hem liste awake
It, out therof the hed & hornys go
And in and out ayein; oon horn or too,
Croked or streght, hath it, right as a snaile,
Right as it semeth hem their moost availe.
The bak of this tortoys, snail or testude,
Wherof it hath figure and also name,
With felt & heere & hidis rawe or crude,
Lest theron fier doun cast, brenne vp the frame.
Wel couered is, the sidis beth the same;
Pendaunt theryn, ther goth a beem alonge,
Therof the hed is iron steeled stronge.
437
Tweyne hornys if it have, it is a snaile;
Streght may thei stonde, or the lifte horn may croke
Outher the right, as may be moost availe,
The wal to breke & stonys out to Rooke;
And if it haue but oon horn, & it hooke
A croche, it is a sikel or a sithe,
It breketh and out bringeth stonys swithe.
And when the frount is mad to breke & brese,
It is a ram for that similitude,
To rush vppon the wal and al to crese
The stuf in it; yet wil thei this delude,
And with oo crafte thoo craftis III conclude:
Of quylt & felt a trusse thei depende,
Ther as the ram entendeth for toffende.
Or by the hed they kecch it with a gnare
And hale it vp, or by the wal endlonge,
Or turne it vpsodoun thei wil not spare;
Hem semeth it to hurte it is no wronge;
And other haue a wulf, this ram to fonge:
That wulf is as a payre of smythis tongys,
Toothed, that in a wayt alway to honge is.
That wulf gooth on the ram, and by the hed
Or necke anoon pulde is he vp so doun,
Or so suspended that his myght is deed,
And other fro the wallis of the town
Or out of tourys hye or of dongeoun
Wil caste an huge ston or a pilere
Of marbil, and so breke it al yfere.
And if the wal be thorled therwithal,
As happeth ofte, or doun it gooth anoon:
Awey with euery hous, and mak a wal
Withinne that of planke or lyme & ston;
And if thin aduersayris come vppon,
Conclude theym bitwixt the wallis tweyne,
438
And so be quyte of this perile & peyne.
The vyneyerde is lighter tymburynge,
VIII foote brode, VI footys high, XVI
Footys in length, and dubil couertinge
Hath it of boord & fleyk; of twyggis grene
The sidis are, and fier for to sustene,
With felt & hidis grene it couere they,
So that to brenne or breke it, is no wey.
And made ynowe of these, ar sette yfere
Vnto the wal, as summe sette a vyne,
And tre pilers vpsetting heer & there,
To make it falle, vndir the wal thei myne,
That, puld away the stulpis VIII or IXne,
Doun go the wal, this vyneyerd remeved,
Lest it and al ther vndir be myscheved.
The cage pluteal of twiggis plat,
Of heerys hath couert and hidis grene;
Not ouer high the roof ner ouer flatte,
That shot & fier suffice it to sustene.
On whelis III to go thei thise demene,
As goth a cart; and fele herof thei make
With mony a wit the wallis forto awake.
The muscle shelle is but a smal engyne,
Mightily mad on whelis for to go,
And bere away the wallis when thei myne;
Thei bringe stuf the dich to fille also;
And on the werk it may go to & fro
And sadde it vp, that tourys ambulary
May men ynowe vppon the wallis cary.
The muscul eke is good, the way to mende,
For eny thing, of tourys ambulary.
To se the crafte is now to condescende,
439
Thartificeer it nedeth not to vary;
Make hem like other housing necessary,
A XXXti foote or XL foote square,
And otherwhile of Lti feet thei are.
Of bemys and of boord be thei compacte,
And competent the brede hath altitude,
With hidis, grene or felt sadly coacte
The robinge & the sidis are enclude.
Their apparaile ashameth wallys rude,
At euery lyme herof ar huge whelys
And brood withal the sole of euery whel is.
Present perile is, if this tour ammoeve
Vnto the wal, the place is in a doubte;
And impossibil is it of to shove.
Of myghtieste theryn is mony a route,
And briggis in, to renne on from withoute,
And scalis of al maner farsioun,
From eny part to renne on vp & doun.
The rammys are alongh as first engyne,
And not a fewe, a wal to ouerthrowe,
And vndir as a vyneyerd they myne
And briggis in the myddis are a rowe,
And fro the toppe they shote & stonys throwe;
Thus vndir and above and euerywhere
The wall besette; who dar abide there?
Yet here ayenst is diuers medycyne:
First, if the Chiualers with confidence
Go myghti out, and fire this engyne,
First pulde away the firys resistence,
And if thei ha not this magnificence,
Shote at hem molliols, also fallayrys;
But what thei ar, to knowe it necessayir is.
440
A malliol, a bolt of wilde fier is,
A fallary, a shafte is of the same;
Thorgh felt & hide hem shoote: al on a fier is;
But shoote hem thorgh into the tymber frame;
With myghti alblastris go to this game,
Brymston, rosyn, glewe, oyle incendiary
With flax doon on this shafte is necessary.
Or preuely with fier out of the toun
Ouer the wal, whil this tour is asclepe,
A feleship of fewe is let adoun,
That fiere it, as noo watir may it kepe;
And triced vp at hoom thei skippe & lepe
To se this ambulary touris brenne;
This hath be doon, & yet ful seelde whenne.
And otherwise is doun, the wal tarise,
And ouer go the touris altitude;
Yet ther ayenst is vsed to deuise
A subtiltee, tho wallis to delude;
In the vtter tour, an inner tour tenclude,
And when thei sette vppon this wallis blynde
With gabils & polifs hem ouerwynde.
And beemys otherwhile, ye ouerlonge,
Ordeyne thei, and sette on iron hornys,
And as a rammys hed thei make hem honge;
This tour with hem forbeton and throgh born is,
And sette ofiere, and vtturly for lorn is;
Yet otherwise, out of the toun a myne,
Vndir the way therof, sleth this engyne.
When this engyne on that concavitee
Goth with his wight vppon his myghti whelis,
Doun goth it, into helle as it wold fle;
And this to se, the toun in joy & wele is.
But thooste withoute al in dolour & deel is,
Al desperate of help by their engyne,
441
And al by witty makyng of a myne.
But if this tour sauf sette vppon the wallis
With euery shot of dart, of shaft, of spere,
And dynt of axe, of swoord, billys & mallys,
And caste of stoon thei ley on euerywhere,
That fro the wal awey they fle for fere,
Now to the wal, the briggis forto avale is,
And mony oon goth doun anoon by scalys.
Thei trice in other with the Tollenon:
The tollenon a tymbir pece on ende
Is sette, another twye as long theron,
The lighter ende of it adoun thei bende;
A cageful of men therwith thei sende
Vppon the wal, when they with cordis drawe
Adoun that other ende, as is the lawe.
Sumtyme ayen this werk, the bowe of brake,
Carribalistys and Arcubalistis,
Onagris and fustibulis wer take,
And mony a dart that vncouth & vnwiste is
Amonge vs heer. The taberinge of the fistis
Vppon the bowe, and trumpyng of the gunne
Hath famed vs as fer as shyneth sonne.
Thei trumpe adoun the tourys ambulary,
Thei ouerthrowe as wel ram as tortoys,
The cage and vyneyerd therby myscary,
The muscul may not with his dynt & voys;
And countir as it goth, ther is noo choys,
But deed or quyt; for and it onys touche,
It goth for al that hangeth in the pouche.
A conynger, that now they calle a myne,
Goth vndir erth vnwist; by that cauerne
Come in tatoun, ye, tourmys VIII or IXne,
442
And prevely they rise in sum tauerne
Or desolat hous, so noo wight hem werne;
And sodenly by nyght vppon the yate
They hewe, and leet their frendis in therate.
And ther ayenst, if that the dwellers be
In touris, on the wal, or housys hye,
Vppon the strete,-is ther yit comfort? Ye,
So stonys out of numbir on hem flye,
As thaugh the buldir hailed from the skye;
They wil anoon retrete out at the yatis,
Now steke hem out; and stynted this debate is.
And if thei do not thus, anoon their foo
Of prouidence her yatis may lete stonde,
Vntil as fele as fle, wil been ago,
And thenne in ease have hous & toun & londe;
But God defende vs that we be not fonde
Aslepe so that foon lede vs away
Withoute strook, or seide hem onys nay!
Lo, man, womman and childe may keste stoon
Vppon his foo from euery place o lofte,
And ther to redy sone are euerychon
By day & nyght; this holpen hath full ofte.
Ha stonys out of flood or feeld or crofte,
Store hem on high, that in a sodeyn fere
Fynde hem ye may, and on your foo bewere.
This conynger hath eek another gise,
Vndir the wal to crepe pryvely,
And sette vp postis heer, & ther by sise
And pike away the fundament wightly,
Ramayle it wel. the postis by & by,
And when their ooste was redy, make it brenne;
Doun goth the wall; in and vppon hem thenne!
443
Peraventure ther is a countir myne,
So that thei faile, and feyneth a dispayre,
And hem remeveth mylys VIII or IXne;
Now best be war, at market or at fayre,
Or day or nyght, thei thinketh to repayre,
If there appere among hem negligence;
Therfore now do grettest diligence.
Now se the wacch abide vppon the wall,
And houndis wise & grete is good to kepe;
Eek gees is good to haue in special,
For thei wil wake folke that ar aslepe,
The foo comynge her welth away to repe;
The mavlard in the dich and in the wallis,
The martilet at scaling wont to calle is.
The toun eke on thassege sodenly
Is wont to falle, if it be negligent;
Therfore a dich thei make vp myghtily,
Without shot of euerych instrument,
And stake it, pale it, toure it to thentent,
Ther to be sure hem self and holde hem inne;
Thus wayteth vch an other for to wynne.
The craft tassaulte a citee and defende
By myght and wit of knyghthode & bataile,
Honour to God, therof is mad an ende.
Now go we forth vnto this fight navaile,
That is fight on the see, no light travaile,
And not o londe; as there is so grete drede,
Therfore of gouernaunce hath it gret nede.
To make an hous, good stuf it is to take
Good farsioun, and good stuf is the hous;
But rather he that shippis is to make,
Se that his stuffe ne be nat vicious;
A feebil hous nys not so perilous
As is a feebil ship, other a barge,
444
Forthy therof the more it is to charge.
Fir and cipresse and the pynappul tre
Therfore is good, as seyn the bookys olde,
And ook is holden good in this cuntre;
The nayles are of bras wel better holde
Then iron. Whi? For ruste thei wil & olde
And kanker and consume, there as bras,
Consumed al the ship, is as it was.
Fro Juyl Kalendis vnto the Kalende
Of Janyveer, that is by monthis sixe
The seson is, tymbur to falle an ende;
Thumour dryinge in treen, now sad & fixe
Is euery pith; but fallinge is bitwixe
XV and XXIIti, when the mone
Is wanyng, dayis VII is this to done.
In other tyme or seson if me falle,
Wormeton wil it ben, eek it wil rote;
The tymbourmen of craft this knoweth alle;
Of rynde or bark is rende away the cote
And dryed thorgh, er it be put to note,
For tymbir weet, so wroght, wil aftir shrynke
And ryve and with right grete disconfort drynke.
For if the shippe vnto the maryner
Drynke of the see, sone aftir of the same
Thei drinketh al, and are of hevy cher;
Forthi, the carpenter is wurthi blame
That into shippis wil weet tymbour frame,
And wurthi thonk is he, that frameth drye,
So that in his defaulte no men deye.
The namys of the shippis as for werre
Myn auctour writeth not, save a liburne
He writeth of as mightier & herre
445
Of boord, and wight of foote, and light to turne.
As to the wastom of this shippis storne,
Thei hadde V or IIII ordris of ooris,
Or fewer, as the vessel lesse or more is.
And euery grete liburne a balynger
Hath had, and that a scafe exploratory
Was named, for to aspie fer & neer;
Of oorys hadde thei not but oon story.
But wight it was to go for a victory;
The seyl, the maste, and euery marynere
With see colour wer clad for to vnnapere.
A navey and an oost that wil gouerne
Vppon the see, him nedeth forto knowe
The wyndis, and the wedir to discerne;
He moste ha wit, leste he be ouerthrowe;
And first the foure cardinals arowe
Be knowe, as Est & West & North & South,
How thei amonge hem self discorde, is couth.
Theest cardinal is called subsolan,
And on his lifte hond hath he Sir Vulturne,
And Colchyas is on his right hond tan,
Septentrion, that cardinal so storne
Out of the North the see wil ouer torne,
Thocastias his right, and his lift side
Halt Aquylo, what se may theim abide.
Auster is cardinal meridian,
Nothus ful grymly goth on his right side,
And Chorus on the lift hond forth thei han,
And Zephirus that cardinal, abide
Wil in the west, and when him list to ride,
Grete Affricus shal ride on his right honde,
And Duk Fauonius on his lift honde.
446
If III or oon or tweyne of these vp blowe,
Tethis, of hir nater that is tranquylle,
Thei lene vppon, oppresse and ouerthrowe,
And causeth al crye out that wold be stille;
Thei ror ayeyn, of her thei haue her wille;
The shippe that this conflict seeth & hereth
(Heryn beleve me) his hert it fereth.
Sum varyaunce of tyme will refreyne
Her cruelous & feers rebellioun,
A nothir helpith hem to shake her cheyne
As all the firmament shuld falle adoun
And Occian lepe ouer Caleys Toun;
And after in a while it is tranquylle
And playne & calme, as whos seith 'husht, be stille!'
Therfore a storme is whisedom to preuyde,
And good it is forse serenyte,
And fro the storme abide or stopp atide,
And with meanabil wynd sette on the see;
Ful hard it is in peril hym to se,
That of the wyndes had inspeccioun,
Is raysonabil in direccioun.
Thenne is to se the monthis & the dayes
Of Nauygaunce, forwhy? not al the yere
The wyndis on the shippis make affrayes,
Sum monthis euer are of mery cheer,
And summe loure a while, & after cleer
Ynough they loke, & summe ar intractabil
And ragy wood, ancour to breke & gabil.
The VIth kalende of Juyn, when Pliades
Appereth: what is that? the sterrys VII;The wyndes alle ar bounden to the pees,
So that ther nys no truble vndir heuen,
Vntil the berth of Arcture al is even,
That is of Octobir the XVIIIth kalende,
447
Seecraft plesaunt hath at this day an ende.
Tho dayis euer are of mery cheer,
And thenne vnto the IIIde Ide of Nouembre
The dayis wil now loure and now be cleer;
For vnto now, as bookys me remembre,
Arcture, as from the first Ide of Septembre,
His reigne he hath, and in this meane while
The firmament wil loure amonge & smyle.
Nouembir in tempest is al to shake,
And aftir vnto Marchis Idus VI,
Viage thenne on see nys noon to take,
But in the woose it is tabide fixe;
Also by londe vnvsed is betwixe
Alhaleweday & March to goon or ride,
But if a grete necessitee betide.
Short is the day, the nyght is ouerlonge,
Thicke is the myst, and thestir is the mone,
And aftir in ther comth of wynde a thronge,
That forto stonde he hath ynough to done,
That is o londe; a strom is aftir sone
Of leyt, of wynd, of rayn, of hail, of thondir,
That woful is the wight that goth thervndir.
And, ovir this, in Marche, Aprile & May,
Antiquytee of Navigatioun
Dyuers sollemnytee and grete aray
Was vsed have in high deuotioun,
And eke of arte exercitatioun
To kepe in honde, and as for feat of werre,
Thei bood vntil the sonne ascended herre.
And tokenys of tranquille and tempeste,
Of wynde and rayn, thei hadden in the moone;
Of tokenys this was surest & best:
448
Reed is the mone, it wil be wynde right sone,
To take see theryn is good to shone;
The pale mone is lyke to haue a rayn,
The pale rede is wynde & storm, thei sayn
And when the mone ariseth glad & bright,
And namely the day that is the pryme,
Withoute humour, in hornys sharpe & light,
To take a grete viage is right good tyme.
But if the sonne telle of eny cryme,
As is if he arise vndir a cloude,
That day in rayn & wynd is wont to croude.
His bright aristh is like a mery day,
His rede aristh is like a breef to blowe,
And maculous, is shour or cloudis ay,
And pale aristh wil reyn or ellis snowe;
A tokyn eke of rayn is the raynbowe.
In wynde and ayer, in fish & foule, Virgile
The signys seyth that may noman begile.
The maryners, thei sayn, haue al this art
Of wydiringe, and thei be wedir wise,
By discipline of it ha thei no part,
But of a longe vsage or exercise.
Wel knowe thei, the Reume if it arise,
An aker is it clept, I vndirstonde,
Whos myght ther may no ship or wynd withstonde.
This Reume in Thoccian of propur kynde
Withoute wynde hath his commotioun,
The maryner therof may not be blinde,
But whenne & where in euery regioun
It regneth, he moste haue inspectioun;
For in viage it may both hast & tary
And vnaduised therof al mys cary.
449
The marinere, er he come at congresse
Or counturinge, vppon the see bataile,
Wil his Navey so for the Reume adresse,
As may been his aduerser dissavaile
And hindiraunce, and also his availe.
This may be doon anoon, for a liburne
With wynde or oorys, as me wil, may turne.
The Maister Marynere, the gouernour,
He knoweth euery cooste in his viage
And port saluz; and forthi grete honour
He hath, as worthi is, and therto wage.
The depper see, the gladder he; for rage
Of wynde or of bataile if ther abounde,
The surer he, the ferre he be fro grounde.
He knoweth euery rok and euery race,
The swolewys & the starrys, sonde & sholde,
And where is deep ynough his foo to chace;
And chese a feeld he can, bataile to holde,
And myghtily sette on liburnys bolde,
First with the frounte al vndir see to route,
And as a thought, anoon be brought aboute.
The maister of the shippe, he muste be wyis;
The mariners most be ful diligent,
And myghti rowing vp at point device
Is to been had at his commaundement,
That storne and ooris go by oon assent
Forth right to sette vppon, and light to turne,
Ful gret avauntage haldeth this liburne.
And as o londe an oost may be prevent
And leyde awayt vppon, right so by see
At ilis or in streytys pertynent
A bushement to falle vppon may be
Rathest; out of aray is good to se
When that thei be; the reume & strem & wynde
450
With you & countour hem is good to fynde.
Or wayte on hem, for wery or aslepe,
Or when thei leest of thi comynge suppose,
Or in a rode as is no wey to crepe
Away, but that ye must been in their nose.
Al that is you to wynne, is hem to lose,
And if thei can avoyde alle your cautelis,
Thenne vch his right, the feeld & fight to dele is.
Thenne in a feelde a frounte of this liburnys
It is to sette, and not as on the londe
An oost; and whi? for inward it to turne is,
The hornys as a sharp cressaunt to stonde,
A bosomynge amyddis to be founde,
That vmbego ye may your aduersary
And close hem enviroun, and with you cary.
But on the hornys be liburnys sturne
With myghtiest & booldest men of werre,
Aboute our foon of myscreaunce to turne,
With confidence hem for to seyn: 'Ye erre;
Com vndir vs, and knowe your ouer herre
Moost gracioux, knowe him your souuerayne;
And wil ye not? At youre perile & peyne!'
The beemys, vp thei goth out of the trumpe
And euery brayn astonyeth their reson;
The firmament, lo! clariounys crumpe
To crye vppon, and lo! it comth adoun
With angelis, ye, mony a legioun,
To countour periurie & myscreaunce
And surquydrye and disobeyssaunce.
In euery man thei setteth fortitude
And high magnificence and confidence,
Perseueraunt for trouth to conclude
451
With adiuuaunce of myghti patience,
And on the part aduerse, an impotence
With couwardise & diffident dispayre
Wil ferdfully with trembelyng repayre.
The canonys, the bumbard & the gunne,
Thei bloweth out the voys & stonys grete,
Thorgh maste & side & other be thei runne,
In goth the serpentyne aftir his mete;
The colueryne is besy for to gete
An hole into the top, and the crappaude
Wil in; the fouler eek wil haue his laude.
The covey fleeth as foulis thorgh the sayle,
The pavice are accombred with coventys,
Yet on thei come, and vs thei wil assaile;
The bowe vnnumerabil redy bent is,
The shaft fro there an ende it goth. Apprentys
Thonagir is and the carribaliste,
The fundubal and the manubaliste.
The catafract, plumbate & scorpioun,
The dart and arpagoun in dayis olde
Were had, and are amonge vs leyde adoun;
Crosbowys yet and crankelons ar bolde
With wilde fier to brenne al in the folde,
The malliol goth out with the fallary,
The wildefier to bere our aduersary.
Yet on they come: awaite vppon the toppe
Good archery; the storm of shot as hail
So rayketh on, thei dar not shewe her croppe
Ner in the mastys topp, ner vndir sail,
Yet haile hem in a myghti voys: 'hail, hail!
Come vndir your Kyng Harry! fy! o pride!'
Thei wil not throf attonys on hem ride.
452
Bende vp, breke euerych oore in the mytside
That hath a rash; help hem, lo, thei goth vndir;
To this mysaventure hemself thei gide;
Lo, how thei cracke on euery side a sondir,
What tempest is on hem, what leyt & thondir!
On grapesinge anoon let se their fleete,
What hertys are in hem with vs to mete!
Armure & axe & spere of ouer wight
Is ouer light; as sparkelys in rede,
So sparkel they on helm & herneys bright
The rammys and twibil the side out shrede
Of ship & mast; doun goth the sail in dede,
Vp goth our hook, now it is on their gabil;
Lo, ther it lyeth; this batail is notabil.
Summe into se go, fisshes forto fede,
Summe vndir hacch ar falde adoun for fere,
And summe above, her hert blood to bleede,
And summe seke, hem self they wote ner where;
And summe crye 'alas, that we come there!
Myschefe vpon mysgouernaunce betide!
Lo, pride hath vs betrapped! Fy, o pride!'
'Com on! with vs ye shal go se the kyng,
The gracious,-have of anoon this gere!
Ye muste have on another herneysing:
A gyngeling of jessis shal ye were.
Ye shal no lenger stondyn in this fere.
O siluer bere, o lilial lioun,
O goldon Eagle! where is your renoun!'
Thus may be doon, if that it be forseyn
Of our meryte in souuerayn providence;
Forthi forwith do euery wight his peyne,
Sleuth out to holde, and haue in diligence,
Sette vp the werk, and spare noon expense;
Of Goddis honde although ye have victory,
453
Yet in the knotte is al thonour & glory.
Knytte vp the werk, and say: 'Hail haliday!'
The werre intraneous of al this londe
Is at an ende, here nys no more affray;
Justice is heer peasibilly to stonde,
And al the world shal telle of Engelonde
And of the kyngis high magnificence,
And been adred tattempte it with offense.
But forto knytte a knotte vppon this book,
That is to sey, therof to make an ende,
What is the ram, this twibil & this hook,
That helpeth vs this shippis thus to shende?
The ram, a beem is, by the mast suspende,
That as a saylis yerde is smal & longe,
On either ende an iron hed to fonge.
A rammys or a snailis hed theron
Ther may be sette, with streght or caumber horn,
On either side it may sette on our foon,
With myghti hand adoun that thei be born.
Ther nys nothing may stonde ther beforn;
For of the shippe it breketh out the side,
Vnnethe may the mast his myght abide.
The hook of iron kene is & of strengthe,
And like a sithe vppon a myghti sperre,
And not to gret, but of an huge lengthe,
And polissed to bace & make it herre;
The gabelis that in a ship of werre
Bere vp the sail, herwith may be fordone,
So may the stay & shroudis euerychone.
The twibil is an axe with double bite,
And therwithal in myddis of the maste;
What maryneris dede, is hard to wite,
454
But fele it hurte, and fele it made agaste.Now faste vntil and ende I wil me haste,
Yet first thonagir and carribaliste,
What thing it was, it were good we wiste.
Thonagir was an huge & myghti bowe,
Strynged with nerf, therwith the stonys grete,
In maner of a thonderynge were throwe,
And for defaute of nerf, hors heer was gete
To strynge hem with, and rather then forlete
The help therof, their heer Romaynys wyvis
Kitte of, to strynge hem with, and saue her lyvys.
Theim leuer was to haue her goode husbandis
With honestee, & with their hedis bare,
Then dishonest be led to straunge londys,
Dispareged, her mariage forfare.
O, mony oon of yon goode wyvys are,
That charge more vertue and honestee
Then worldly good or bodily beautee.
In carris had for hem, carribalistis
Wer sette; thei were, as bowis are, of brake;
Oon more of hem then X manubalistis;
Of nerf or heer stringes for hem wer take.
Their myghti shot made herte & herneys quake;
They and thonagre bowys myghtieste,
Tymbir that oon, stonys that other keste.
Of tholde world the brightest herneysinge,
Best ordinaunce and myghtieste mad were;
O Chiualers, to you this is to bringe;
The beste ye chese, and yet a point go nerre.
O Lady myn, Maria, lode sterre,
Licence me toward the lond; beholde,
See seke am I, fulfayn o lande I wolde!
455
Hail, porte saluz! with thi pleasaunt accesse,
Alhail Caleis! ther wolde I faynest londe;
That may not I - oo, whi so? for thei distresse
Alle, or to deye or with her wrong to stonde.
That wil I not, to wynne al Engelonde!
What myght availe, a litil heer to dwelle,
And world withouten ende abide in helle.
O litil case, o pouere hous, my poort
Saluz thou be, vntil that ayer amende,
That is to sey, vntil an other soort
Gouerne there, that by the kyng be sende.
Yit let me se, what way my wit is wende:
In this tretys, first is thelectioun
Of werreours, as for the legioun,
Yonge, and statured wel, of vp o londe
And laborers be taught to pace & renne
And lepe and shote and with a dart in honde
Shakyng vppon the Sarrasins that grenne,
To shote quyk, and to swymme ouer, whenne
The ryuer is to deep, there euery gise
Of hosteyinge & fight hath exercise.
The part secounde hath the diuisioun
Of al an oost, wheryn is tolde of thaide,
That subsequent is to the legioun,
Wherin teuerych office his part is leyde;
Theer of a feeld al ordinaunce is seyde,
With evitatioun of al perile;
Who redeth it, therate among wil smyle.
The IIIde part prouideth and vitaileth
And paeseth thooste, and voydeth al myschaunce,
And al that in the journeyinge availeth,
Is here to rede, and what feeld may avaunce
An ooste to fighte, and euery ordinaunce
How is to sette, and in conflicte how VII
456
Weyis ther ar the quyckest vndir heven.
The firthe part in crafte & in nature
Strengtheth a place and techeth it tassaile,
Engynys eek to make & putte in vre,
And to resiste hemself to disavaile;
And on the see to make a stronge bataile,
Where euery feat of werre it is to spende,
And of this werk theryn is mad an ende.
Go, litil book, and humbilly beseche
The werriourys, and hem that wil the rede,
That where a fault is or impropir speche,
Thei vouchesafe amende my mysdede.
Thi writer eek, pray him to taken hede
Of thi cadence and kepe Ortographie,
That neither he take of ner multiplye.
Finis
~ Anonymous Olde English,

IN CHAPTERS [193/193]



   56 Integral Yoga
   21 Poetry
   20 Occultism
   8 Christianity
   7 Fiction
   6 Philosophy
   5 Psychology
   4 Yoga
   3 Mythology
   2 Philsophy
   2 Hinduism
   2 Baha i Faith
   1 Theosophy
   1 Education
   1 Buddhism
   1 Alchemy


   77 Sri Aurobindo
   16 The Mother
   14 James George Frazer
   12 Satprem
   8 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   6 H P Lovecraft
   6 A B Purani
   5 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   4 William Wordsworth
   4 Sri Ramakrishna
   4 Carl Jung
   3 Robert Browning
   3 Plato
   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   3 John Keats
   3 Aleister Crowley
   2 Vyasa
   2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   2 Ovid
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 Baha u llah
   2 Aldous Huxley


   17 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   14 The Golden Bough
   11 The Life Divine
   8 City of God
   7 The Human Cycle
   7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   6 Record of Yoga
   6 Lovecraft - Poems
   6 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   5 The Secret Doctrine
   4 Wordsworth - Poems
   4 Letters On Yoga IV
   4 Labyrinths
   4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
   3 Vedic and Philological Studies
   3 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   3 Letters On Yoga I
   3 Keats - Poems
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 Browning - Poems
   3 Agenda Vol 12
   2 Vishnu Purana
   2 The Secret Of The Veda
   2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   2 The Perennial Philosophy
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Selected Fictions
   2 Questions And Answers 1956
   2 Metamorphoses
   2 Magick Without Tears
   2 Emerson - Poems
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   2 Agenda Vol 11
   2 Agenda Vol 09


0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   Totapuri arrived at the Dakshineswar temple garden toward the end of 1864. Perhaps born in the Punjab, he was the head of a monastery in that province of India and claimed leadership of seven hundred sannyasis. Trained from early youth in the disciplines of the Advaita Vedanta, he looked upon the world as an illusion. The gods and goddesses of the dualistic worship were to him mere fantasies of the deluded mind. Prayers, ceremonies, rites, and rituals had nothing to do with true religion, and about these he was utterly indifferent. Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute. Thenceforward he roamed in the world as an unfettered soul, a lion free from the cage. Clad in a loin-cloth, he spent his days under the canopy of the sky alike in storm and sunshine, feeding his body on the slender pittance of alms. He had been visiting the estuary of the Ganges. On his return journey along the bank of the sacred river, led by the inscrutable Divine Will, he stopped at Dakshineswar.
   Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
  --
   The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
   --- MONASTIC DISCIPLES

0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The triple Path of devotion, knowledge and works attempts the province which Rajayoga leaves unoccupied. It differs from
  Rajayoga in that it does not occupy itself with the elaborate training of the whole mental system as the condition of perfection, but seizes on certain central principles, the intellect, the heart, the will, and seeks to convert their normal operations by turning them away from their ordinary and external preoccupations and activities and concentrating them on the Divine. It

01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
   This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.

01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Into our province of ephemeral sight,
  A colonist from immortality.

0 1961-09-03, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You would like to carry thought into higher domains, beyond the province of thought itself! This is something practically impossible.
   You understand, if I were British and writing in English, I could try to do a book on Sri Aurobindo using Savitri alone. With quotations from Savitri one can maintain a certain poetical rhythm, and this rhythm can generate an opening. But in French it isnt possiblehow could it be translated?

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You may say, what need is there of a Samgha? Let me be free and live in every vessel; let all become one without form and let whatever must be happen in the midst of that vast formlessness. There is a truth there, but only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the formless Spirit alone; we have also to direct the movement of life. And there can be no effective movement of life without form. It is the Formless that has taken form and that assumption of name and form is not a caprice of Maya. Form is there because it is indispensable. We do not want to rule out any activity of the world as beyond our province. Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art will all remain, but we must give them a new soul and a new form.
   Why have I left politics? Because the politics of the country is not a genuine thing belonging to India. It is an importation from Europe and an imitation. At one time there was a need of it. We also have done politics of the European kind. If we had not done it, the country would not have risen and we too would not have gained experience and attained full development. There is still some need of it, not so much in Bengal as in the other provinces of India. But the time has come to stop the shadow from extending and to seize on the reality. We must get to the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works.
   People now talk of spiritualizing politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianized Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms the water of the Causal ocean into raw vesselsei ther the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama,2 so long as that life and that power remain. But what we want in the Temple of India is not Hanuman, but the god, the avatar, Rama himself.

0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But in physics you are in the very domain of the mechanical law where process is everything and the driving consciousness has chosen to conceal itself with the greatest thoroughnessso that, scientifically speaking, it does not exist there. One can discover it there by occultism and yoga, but the methods of occult science and of yoga are not measurable or followable by the means of physical scienceso the gulf remains in existence. It may be bridged one day, but the physicist is not likely to be the bridge-builder, so it is no use asking him to try what is beyond his province.
   November 5, 1934

0 1968-06-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Ive just come from there [the music room where Mother receives visitors]. I saw some twenty people. There was Orissas Chief Minister (Orissa is the first province in India to give money for a pavilion in Auroville: they gave a lakh of rupees). He is a nice man. The people from Orissa, they are nice people; of all provinces, they are the ones who seem the most eager to forge ahead, to change something.
   And Bengal? Isnt it ahead?

0 1968-07-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Externally the provinces of India are very different in character, tendencies, culture, as well as in language, and any attempt to unify them artificially could only have disastrous results.
   But her soul is one, intense in her aspiration towards the spiritual truth, the essential unity of the creation and the divine origin of life, and by uniting with this aspiration the whole country can recover a unity that has never ceased to exist for the superior mentality.

0 1970-07-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   but matter and the body are the weak point or crucial point of our Yoga, since this province has never been conquered by the spiritual Power, the old Yogas having either left it alone or used on it only a detail mental and vital force, not the general spiritual force. It was the reason why after a serious illness caused by a terribly bad state of the Ashram atmosphere
   (Mother laughs)

0 1970-08-01, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So we are in a bizarre situation: the whole anti-government movement in India doesnt want us to be helped by the government; and the government of one province says we are friends with another province and we shouldnt be friends So to please them, we would have to become as stupid as they are.
   P. B., I dont know what he says, but he read me something he had written, which was good. He said the danger is seriousand its true. But there have been remarkable things: for instance some young people from that pro-Chinese movement [the Naxalites], who want the Chinese, have written to me to ask me if that is right, if they should be like that, and Well do as you say. So it shows that in any case the Influence is strong. There are signs there is hope. No, its not inescapable. Its dangerous, but not inescapable.

0 1971-05-15, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   We must find a large number of newspapers in all the provinces.
   And I wouldnt sign your name. I would put A lover of India, something like that.

0 1971-06-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are only two possible foundations for the material life here. One is that one is a member of an Ashram founded on the principle of self-giving and surrender. One belongs to the Divine and all one has belongs to the Divine; in giving one gives not what is ones own but what already belongs to the Divine. There is no question of payment or return, no bargain, no room for demand and desire. The Mother is in sole charge and arranges things as best they can be arranged within the means at her disposal and the capacities of her instruments. She is under no obligation to act according to the mental standards or vital desires and claims of the Sadhaks; she is not obliged to use a democratic equality in her dealings with them. She is free to deal with each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks fit, but no one can demand that she shall do so. Personal demands and desires cannot be imposed on her. If anyone has what he finds to be a real need or a suggestion to make which is within the province assigned to him, he can do so; but if she gives no sanction, he must remain satisfied and drop the matter. This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga.
   April 11, 1930

0 1971-12-29b, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Several provinces of West Pakistan have revolted against the people he had put in to govern them.2
   Well see.

06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   How to do it? How to find interest in anything or all things? Is there not a work that conforms to your nature, adapted to your character and capacity? And are there not works that are against the grain with you that lie outside your scope and province?
   The question is not about your scope and capacity. All depends upon your attitude, the consciousness with which you approach a work, especially when you are a sadhak. When a work comes to you or when you have to do a work, you must take it up as a thing worth doing. Whatever the value given to it normally or you often put upon it, you should not neglect or merely tolerate it, but welcome it and set about it with the utmost conscientiousness possible. Even if it were a trifling insignificant thing, a menial affair, for example, do not consider it as mean or beneath your dignity. Directly you begin to do a thing in the right spirit, you will find it becoming miraculously interesting. Try to bring perfection even in that bit of insignificance. Do it with a goodwill, even if it is scrubbing the floor, telling yourself: I must do it as best I can, that is to say, this too I shall do even better than a servant, I shall make the floor look really neat and clean and beautiful. That is the crux of the matter. You should try to bring out the best in you and put it into your work. In other words, the work becomes an instrument of progress. The goodwill, attention, concentration, self-forgetfulness and the control over yourself, over your organs and nerves the smaller the work the more detailed is the control gainedall which are involved in doing a work perfectly, with as much perfection as it is possible for you to command, are elements called forth in you and help to make you a better man. Indeed a work for which you have no preferential bias, to which you are not emotionally attached, even indifferent normally, may be of especial help, for you will be able to do it with less nervous disturbance, with a large amount of detachment and disinterestedness.

1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  Second. In the study of the etheric body and prana lies the revelation of the effects of those rays of the sun which (for lack of better expression), we will call "solar pranic emanations." These solar pranic emanations are the produced effect of the central heat of the sun approaching other bodies within the solar system by one of the three main channels of contact, and producing on the bodies then contacted certain effects differing somewhat from those produced by the other emanations. These effects might be considered as definitely stimulating and constructive, and (through their essential quality) as producing conditions that further the growth of cellular matter, and concern its adjustment to environing conditions; they concern likewise the internal health (demonstrating as the heat of the atom and its consequent activity) and the uniform evolution of the form of which that particular atom of matter forms a constituent part. Emanative prana does little in connection with [79] form building; that is not its province, but it conserves the form through the preservation of the health of its component parts. Other rays of the sun act differently, upon the forms and upon their substance. Some perform the work of the Destroyer of forms, and others carry on the work of cohering and of attracting; the work of the Destroyer and of the Preserver is carried on under the Law of Attraction and Repulsion. Some rays definitely produce accelerated motion, others produce retardation. The ones we are dealing with herepranic solar emanationswork within the four ethers, that matter which (though physical) is not as yet objectively visible to the eye of man. They are the basis of all physical plane life considered solely in connection with the life of the physical plane atoms of matter, their inherent heat and their rotary motion. These emanations are the basis of that "fire by friction" which demonstrates in the activity of matter.
  Finally, in the study of the etheric body and prana comes comprehension of the method of logoic manifestation, and therefore much of interest to the metaphysician, and all abstract thinkers. The etheric body of man holds hid the secret of his objectivity. It has its correspondence on the archetypal plane,the plane we call that of the divine manifestation, the first plane of our solar system, the plane Adi. The matter of that highest plane is called often the "sea of fire" and it is the root of the akasha, the term applied to the substance of the second plane of manifestation. Let us trace the analogy a little more in detail, for in its just apprehension will be found much of illumination and much that will serve to elucidate problems both macrocosmic and microcosmic. We will begin with man and his etheric body.

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  natural province. 10 That is what we call evolution which is
  an evolution of Consciousness and an evolution of the Spirit

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
  The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
  --
  they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season. The secretary of the province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that those in New Netherland, and especially in New
  England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses in this fashion for two reasons; firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands.

1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  To produce our conscious perceptions it was necessary that all the diffused clarities which the intelligence and the sense-faculty in our rudimentary being could assemble or could produce, should converge towards certain points in the vastness of infinity destined to form the field of our experiences and of our progress, and each of our possible conquests in that field, always obtained by a greater concentration of light, has circumscribed around us, by the very act of giving it precision, the province of the visible.
  In the beginning there was the immense penumbra of the uniform Inconscient and when the Spirit said, "Let there be light," the lightning broke forth from it and the Night settled with a greater weight of darkness over all that the flashes did not illumine. Thus the day was born out of the shadows and night had the day for its cause.

1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision.
  There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. The

1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  In 1960, Kham (the eastern province of Tibet) was
  invaded by the Chinese. As a young boy, Khenpo had

1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introduction of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics. We do not deny the use of some of these things as instruments, as weapons in a political struggle, but we deny their sufficiency whether as instruments or ideals and look beyond to an end which they do not serve except in a trifling degree. They might be sufficient if it were our ultimate destiny to be an outlying province of the British Empire or a dependent adjunct of European civilisation. That is a future which we do not think it worth making any sacrifice to accomplish.
  We believe on the other hand that India is destined to work out her own independent life and civilisation, to stand in the forefront of the world and solve the political, social, economical and moral problems which Europe has failed to solve, yet the pursuit of whose solution and the feverish passage in that pursuit from experiment to experiment, from failure to failure she calls her progress. Our means must be as great as our ends and the strength to discover and use the means so as to attain the end can only be found by seeking the eternal source of strength in ourselves.

1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
  Until this spring I was staying at a place called Shinoda in Izumi province. In a village nearby named Tsukumi, there lived the son of a very wealthy man named Shinkichir. He was talented, handsome, had a clever mind, and was dearly loved by all the members of his family, who coddled and protected him as he grew up. Shinkichir turned eighteen last year, his father having passed away three or four years earlier. Arrangements for his marriage were begun this past winter. An agreement was reached with the bride's family, and the bride was being fitted out with a trousseau and so forth.
  A minor disagreement of some kind between Shinkichir and his mother flared suddenly into a serious altercation. Shinkichir lost control of himself and grabbed his mother by the hair, yanking some strands of it out by the roots. He picked up a sewing needle and jabbed it into her shoulder. His mother fainted away. Members of the household ran in and lifted her up. By sprinkling cold water on her face, they were finally able to revive her.
  --
  Hakuin was still a young monk when he composed this letter, nearing the end of a decade-long pilgrimage and well into the post-satori phase of his practice, having achieved several satori experiences earlier in his twenties. He was staying at Inry-ji, a St temple in Izumi province south of Osaka, and was writing in response to a letter from Watanabe Sukefusa's father Heizaemon, who was the proprietor of an important honjin inn at the Hara post station (the kind reserved for the use of
  Daimyo and others of high rank), informing him of his son's unfilial behavior.
  --
  Izumi province, at the time, so I sent Sukefusa a long letter. It made a strong impression on him.
  He immediately changed his ways and became a devoted son.

1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Beyond the province of mortality:
  There is not one of all the Gods that dares

1.02 - To Zen Monks Kin and Koku, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
  Kin or Koku, nor the name of the temple issuing the invitation to Hakuin, have been identified, although the temple was no doubt located close by, probably in Suruga province.
  Note that Hakuin initially refers to the Vimalakirti Sutra as the Beyond Comprehension Sutra, using one of the Vimalakirti Sutra's chapter titles.

1.02 - What is Psycho therapy?, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  seemed to be everybodys province, today psycho therapy has become a
  science and uses the scientific method. With our deepened understanding of

1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  chief product of some parts of Laos, a province of Siam, is lac.
  This is a resinous gum exuded by a red insect on the young branches

1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to the surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without any real insight into the law of mans being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details but without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as art to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement aimed like the new philo sophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into the hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old moorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually bring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and literature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search into what may be called the hidden inside of things and away from the rational and objective canon or motive.
  Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.

1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
  "One day when I was in Mino province, I observed a cicada casting its skin in the shade. It managed to get its head free, and then its hands and feet emerged one after the other. Only its left wing remained inside, adhering to the old skin. It didn't look as though the cicada would ever get that wing unstuck. Watching it struggling to free itself, I was moved by feelings of pity to assist it with my fingernail. 'Excellent,' I thought. 'Now you are free to go on your way.' But the wing I had touched remained shut and would not open. The cicada never was able to fly the way it should have. Watching it, I felt ashamed of myself, regretting deeply what I had done.
  "When you consider it, present-day Zen teachers act in much the same way in guiding their students. I've seen and heard how they take young people of exceptional talent-those destined to become the very pillars and ridgepoles of our school-and with their extremely ill-advised and inopportune methods, end up turning them into something half-baked and unachieved. This is the primary reason for the decline of our Zen school, why the Zen groves are withering away.
  --
  "There is a sea beach only several hundred paces from my native village of Hara. Suppose someone is troubled because he doesn't know the taste of seawater, and decides to sample some. He sets out down to the beach, but stops and comes backs before he has gone even a hundred steps. He starts out again, this time returning after taking only ten steps. He will never know the taste of seawater that way, will he? Yet if he keeps going straight ahead and he doesn't turn back, even if he lives far inland in a landlocked province such as Shinano, Kai, Hida, or Mino, he will eventually reach the ocean. By dipping his finger in the ocean and licking it, he will know instantly the taste of seawater the world over, because it has the same taste everywhere, in India, in China, in the southern or northern seas.
  "It is the same for Dharma patricians exploring the secret depths. Proceeding straight ahead, pushing steadily forward, they bore into their minds with unbroken effort, never slackening or regressing. When the breakthrough suddenly arrives, they penetrate their own nature, the nature of others, the nature of sentient beings, the nature of evil passions and enlightenment, the nature of the
  --
  Although a handful of friends and fellow villagers had been studying at Shin-ji during the first decade of Hakuin's incumbency, Ishii was one of the earliest of the lay students from outside Hara village, another indication that the unsung young Zen teacher's reputation had spread to other parts of the province, and probably beyond as well.
  Ishii became an important patron of the impoverished temple, and later helped fund a number of

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  How can Shih-kuang recognize the mysterious tune? Shih-kuang was the son of Ching-kuang of Chin in the province of Chiang under the Chou dynasty. His other name was Tzu-yeh. He could thoroughly distinguish the five sounds and the six notes; he could even hear the ants fighting on the other side of a hill. When Chin and Chu were at war, Shih-kuang could tell, just by softly fingering the strings of his lute, that the engagement would surely be unfavourable for Chu. In spite of his extraordinary sensitiveness Seccho declares that he is unable to recognize the mysterious tune. After all, one who is not at all deaf is really deaf. The most exquisite note in the higher spheres is beyond the hearing of Shih-kuang. Says Seccho, I am not going to be a Li-lou, nor a Shih-kuang; for
  What life can compare with this? Sitting quietly by the window,

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  confessed himself unable to wield at will; and as province after
   province of nature thus fell from his grasp, till what had once

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  suddenly come into my head: Very well, you will have 6000 desyatins in the Samara province, as well
  as 300 horses; what then? And I was completely taken aback and did not know what else to think. As

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The object of this book is to suggest a prior possibility,that the whole European theory may be from beginning to end a prodigious error. The confident presumption that religion started in fairly recent times with the terrors of the savage, passed through stages of Animism & Nature worship & resulted variously in Paganism, monotheism or the Vedanta has stood in the way of any extension of scepticism to this province of Vedic enquiry. I dispute the presumption and deny the conclusions drawn from it. Before I admit it, I must be satisfied that a system of pure Nature worship ever existed. I cannot accept as evidence Sun & Star myth theories which, as a play of ingenious scholastic fancy, may attract the imagination, but are too haphazard, too easily self-contented, too ill-combined & inconsequent to satisfy the scientific reason. No other religion of which there is any undisputed record or sure observation, can be defined as a system of pure Nature worship. Even the savage-races have had the conception of gods & spirits who are other than personified natural phenomena. At the lowest they have Animism & the worship of spirits, ghosts & devils. Ancestor-worship & the cult of snake & four-footed animal seem to have been quite as old as any Nature-gods with whom research has made us acquainted. In all probability the Python was worshipped long before Apollo. It is therefore evident that even in the lowest religious strata the impulse to personify Nature-phenomena is not the ruling cult-idea of humanity. It is exceedingly unlikely that at any time this element should have so far prevailed as to cast out all the others so as to create a type of cult confined within a pure & rigid naturalism. Man has always seen in the universe the replica of himself. Unless therefore the Vedic Rishis had no thought of their subjective being, no perception of intellectual and moral forces within themselves, it is a psychological impossibility that they should have detected divine forces behind the objective world but none behind the subjective.
  These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attri butes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilencein Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. The question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?
  --
  But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.
  We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
  --
  But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
  Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
  --
  Indra and Varuna are called to give victory, because both of them are samrat. The words samrat & swarat have in Veda an ascertained philosophical sense.One is swarat when, having self-mastery & self-knowledge, & being king over his whole system, physical, vital, mental & spiritual, free in his being, [one] is able to guide entirely the harmonious action of that being. Swarajya is spiritual Freedom. One is Samrat when one is master of the laws of being, ritam, rituh, vratani, and can therefore control all forces & creatures. Samrajya is divine Rule resembling the power of God over his world. Varuna especially is Samrat, master of the Law which he follows, governor of the heavens & all they contain, Raja Varuna, Varuna the King as he is often styled by Sunahshepa and other Rishis. He too, like Indra & Agni & the Visvadevas, is an upholder & supporter of mens actions, dharta charshaninam. Finally in the fifth sloka a distinction is drawn between Indra and Varuna of great importance for our purpose. The Rishi wishes, by their protection, to rise to the height of the inner Energies (yuvaku shachinam) and have the full vigour of right thoughts (yuvaku sumatinam) because they give then that fullness of inner plenty (vajadavnam) which is the first condition of enduring calm & perfection & then he says, Indrah sahasradavnam, Varunah shansyanam kratur bhavati ukthyah. Indra is the master-strength, desirable indeed, (ukthya, an object of prayer, of longing and aspiration) of one class of those boons (vara, varyani) for which the Rishis praise him, Varuna is the master-strength, equally desirable, of another class of these Vedic blessings. Those which Indra brings, give force, sahasram, the forceful being that is strong to endure & strong to overcome; those that attend the grace of Varuna are of a loftier & more ample description, they are shansya. The word shansa is frequently used; it is one of the fixed terms of Veda. Shall we translate it praise, the sense most suitable to the ritual explanation, the sense which the finally dominant ritualistic school gave to so many of the fixed terms of Veda? In that case Varuna must be urushansa, because he is widely praised, Agni narashansa because he is strongly praised or praised by men,ought not a wicked or cruel man to be nrishansa because he is praised by men?the Rishis call repeatedly on the gods to protect their praise, & Varuna here must be master of things that are praiseworthy. But these renderings can only be accepted, if we consent to the theory of the Rishis as semi-savage poets, feeble of brain, vague in speech, pointless in their style, using language for barbaric ornament rather than to express ideas. Here for instance there is a very powerful indicated contrast, indicated by the grammatical structure, the order & the rhythm, by the singular kratur bhavati, by the separation of Indra & Varuna who have hitherto been coupled, by the assignment of each governing nominative to its governed genitive and a careful balanced order of words, first giving the master Indra then his province sahasradavnam, exactly balancing them in the second half of the first line the master Varuna & then his province shansyanam, and the contrast thus pointed, in the closing pada of the Gayatri all the words that in their application are common at once to all these four separated & contrasted words in the first line. Here is no careless writer, but a style careful, full of economy, reserve, point, force, and the thought must surely correspond. But what is the contrast forced on us with such a marshalling of the stylists resources? That Indras boons are force-giving, Varunas praiseworthy, excellent, auspicious, what you will? There is not only a pointless contrast, but no contrast at all. No, shansa & shansya must be important, definite, pregnant Vedic terms expressing some prominent idea of the Vedic system. I shall show elsewhere that shansa is in its essential meaning self-expression, the bringing out of our sat or being that which is latent in it and manifesting it in our nature, in speech, in our general impulse & action. It has the connotation of self-expression, aspiration, temperament, expression of our ideas in speech; then divulgation, publication, praiseor in another direction, cursing. Varuna is urushansa because he is the master of wide self-expression, wide aspirations, a wide, calm & spacious temperament, Agni narashansa because he is master of strong self-expression, strong aspirations, a prevailing, forceful & masterful temperament;nrishansa had originally the same sense, but was afterwards diverted to express the fault to which such a temper is prone,tyranny, wrath & cruelty; the Rishis call to the gods to protect their shansa, that which by their yoga & yajna they have been able to bring out in themselves of being, faculty, power, joy,their self-expression. Similarly, shansya here means all that belongs to self-expression, all that is wide, noble, ample in the growth of a soul. It will follow from this rendering that Indra is a god of force, Varuna rather a god of being and as it appears from other epithets, of being when it is calm, noble, wide, self-knowing, self-mastering, moving freely in harmony with the Law of things because it is aware of that Law and accepts it. In that acceptance is his mighty strength; therefore is he even more than the gods of force the king, the giver of internal & external victory, rule, empire, samrajya to his votaries. This is Varuna.
  We see the results & the conditions of the action ofVaruna in the four remaining verses. By their protection we have safety from attack, sanema, safety for our shansa, our rayah, our radhas, by the force of Indra, by the protecting greatness of Varuna against which passion & disturbance cast themselves in vain, only to be destroyed. This safety & this settled ananda or delight, we use for deep meditation, ni dhimahi, we go deep into ourselves and the object we have in view in our meditation is prarechanam, the Greek katharsis, the cleansing of the system mental, bodily, vital, of all that is impure, defective, disturbing, inharmonious. Syad uta prarechanam! In this work of purification we are sure to be obstructed by the powers that oppose all healthful change; but Indra & Varuna are to give us victory, jigyushas kritam. The final result of the successful purification is described in the eighth sloka. The powers of the understanding, its various faculties & movements, dhiyah, delivered from self-will & rebellion, become obedient to Indra & Varuna; obedient to Varuna, they move according to the truth & law, the ritam; obedient to Indra they fulfil with that passivity in activity, which we seek by Yoga, all the works to which mental force can apply itself when it is in harmony with Varuna & the ritam. The result is sharma, peace. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the exactness with which hymn after hymn describes with a marvellous simplicity & lucidity the physical & psychological processes through which Indian Yoga proceeds. The process, the progression, the successive movements of the soul here described are exactly what the Yogin experiences today so many thousands of years after the Veda was revealed. No wonder, it is regarded as eternal truth, not the expression of any particular mind, not paurusheya but impersonal, divine & revealed.

1.04 - To the Priest of Rytan-ji, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
  Ttmi province to lecture on a Chinese Zen text, Precious Lessons of the Zen School. He was in the middle of his second decade of teaching at Shin-ji, having two years before completed a highly successful meeting that had established his reputation as one of the foremost Zen teachers in the country, and had also attracted a large assembly of trainees to the temple. Hakuin now seems more willing to accept requests from other temples to conduct lecture meetings.
  It was a convention to address letters of this type to the attendant rather than to the head priest himself. Hakuin also mentions that this is the third time he has received a letter from the attendant, alluding to a famous episode from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history when the warlord
  --
  Much closer to home in your own Ttmi province, there are any number of excellent priests, all of them formidable dragons of the Zen seas. What could a shrimp like me accomplish at such a meeting?
  I break into a nervous sweat just thinking about it. And we are talking about Rytan-ji (Dragon-Pool
  --
  Rytan-ji was a large and important Rinzai temple located at Iinoya village in Ttmi province (now incorporated into the city of Ha-mamatsu in present-day Shizuoka Prefecture). It would have been about an eighty-mile trip west from Shin-ji in Hara village, traveling along the Tkaid Road. The
  Rytan-ji abbot at the time was Dokus Hun (n.d.), about whom little is known. Senior Monk Zents
  --
  Ttmi province to lecture on Precious Lessons of the Zen School."
  But we learn from Trei's draft manuscript of the Chronological Biography that the meeting was actually held in autumn to commemorate the 650th anniversary of the temple's founding, and that "a hundred monks accompanied Hakuin on the journey to Ttmi to take part in the meeting." Precious

1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Our present economic, social and international arrangements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness. We begin by lacking charity towards Nature, so that instead of trying to co-operate with Tao or the Logos on the inanimate and subhuman levels, we try to dominate and exploit, we waste the earths mineral resources, ruin its soil, ravage its forests, pour filth into its rivers and poisonous fumes into its air. From lovelessness in relation to Nature we advance to lovelessness in relation to arta lovelessness so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts and set up various kinds of mass production by machines in their place. And of course this lovelessness in regard to art is at the same time a lovelessness in regard to the human beings who have to perform the fool-proof and grace-proof tasks imposed by our mechanical art-surrogates and by the interminable paper work connected with mass production and mass distribution. With mass-production and mass-distribution go mass-financing, and the three have conspired to expropriate ever-increasing numbers of small owners of land and productive equipment, thus reducing the sum of freedom among the majority and increasing the power of a minority to exercise a coercive control over the lives of their fellows. This coercively controlling minority is composed of private capitalists or governmental bureaucrats or of both classes of bosses acting in collaborationand, of course, the coercive and therefore essentially loveless nature of the control remains the same, whether the bosses call themselves company directors or civil servants. The only difference between these two kinds of oligarchical rulers is that the first derive more of their power from wealth than from position within a conventionally respected hierarchy, while the second derive more power from position than from wealth. Upon this fairly uniform groundwork of loveless relationships are imposed others, which vary widely from one society to another, according to local conditions and local habits of thought and feeling. Here are a few examples: contempt and exploitation of coloured minorities living among white majorities, or of coloured majorities governed by minorities of white imperialists; hatred of Jews, Catholics, Free Masons or of any other minority whose language, habits, appearance or religion happens to differ from those of the local majority. And the crowning superstructure of uncharity is the organized lovelessness of the relations between state and sovereign statea lovelessness that expresses itself in the axiomatic assumption that it is right and natural for national organizations to behave like thieves and murderers, armed to the teeth and ready, at the first favourable opportunity, to steal and kill. (Just how axiomatic is this assumption about the nature of nationhood is shown by the history of Central America. So long as the arbitrarily delimited territories of Central America were called provinces of the Spanish colonial empire, there was peace between their inhabitants. But early in the nineteenth century the various administrative districts of the Spanish empire broke from their allegiance to the mother country and decided to become nations on the European model. Result: they immediately went to war with one another. Why? Because, by definition, a sovereign national state is an organization that has the right and duty to coerce its members to steal and kill on the largest possible scale.)
  Lead us not into temptation must be the guiding principle of all social organization, and the temptations to be guarded against and, so far as possible, eliminated by means of appropriate economic and political arrangements are temptations against charity, that is to say, against the disinterested love of God, Nature and man. First, the dissemination and general acceptance of any form of the Perennial Philosophy will do something to preserve men and women from the temptation to idolatrous worship of things in timechurch-worship, state-worship, revolutionary future-worship, humanistic self-worship, all of them essentially and necessarily opposed to charity. Next come decentralization, widespread private ownership of land and the means of production on a small scale, discouragement of monopoly by state or corporation, division of economic and political power (the only guarantee, as Lord Acton was never tired of insisting, of civil liberty under law). These social rearrangements would do much to prevent ambitious individuals, organizations and governments from being led into the temptation of behaving tyrannously; while co-operatives, democratically controlled professional organizations and town meetings would deliver the masses of the people from the temptation of making their decentralized individualism too rugged. But of course none of these intrinsically desirable reforms can possibly be carried out, so long as it is thought right and natural that sovereign states should prepare to make war on one another. For modern war cannot be waged except by countries with an over-developed capital goods industry; countries in which economic power is wielded either by the state or by a few monopolistic corporations which it is easy to tax and, if necessary, temporarily to nationalize; countries where the labouring masses, being without property, are rootless, easily transferable from one place to another, highly regimented by factory discipline. Any decentralized society of free, uncoerced small owners, with a properly balanced economy must, in a war-making world such as ours, be at the mercy of one whose production is highly mechanized and centralized, whose people are without property and therefore easily coercible, and whose economy is lop-sided. This is why the one desire of industrially undeveloped countries like Mexico and China is to become like Germany, or England, or the United States. So long as the organized lovelessness of war and preparation for war remains, there can be no mitigation, on any large, nation-wide or world-wide scale, of the organized lovelessness of our economic and political relationships. War and preparation for war are standing temptations to make the present bad, God-eclipsing arrangements of society progressively worse as technology becomes progressively more efficient.

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.
     It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in and through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for continually the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation. Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this' defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On the other side. Science and Art and the knowledge of life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance.
     A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
  --
     This then is the true relation between divine and human knowledge; it is not a separation into disparate fields, sacred and profane, that is the heart of the difference, but the character of the consciousness behind the working. All is human knowledge that proceeds from the ordinary mental consciousness interested in the outside or upper layers of things, in process, in phenomena for their own sake or for the sake of some surface utility or mental or vital satisfaction of Desire or of the Intelligence. But the same activity of knowledge can become part of the Yoga if it proceeds from the spiritual or spiritualising consciousness which seeks and finds in all that it surveys or penetrates the presence of the timeless Eternal and the ways of manifestation of Eternal in Time. It is evident that the need of a concentration indispensable for the transition out of the Ignorance may make it necessary for the seeker to gather together his energies and focus them only on that which will help the transition and to leave aside or subordinate for the time all that is not directly turned towards the one object. He may find that this or that pursuit of human knowledge with which he was accustomed to deal by the surface power of the mind still brings him, by reason of this tendency or habit, out of the depths to the surface or down from the heights which he has climbed or is nearing, to lower levels. These activities then may have to be intermitted or put aside until secure in a higher consciousness he is able to turn its powers on all the mental fields; then, subjected to that light or taken up into it, they are turned, by the transformation of his consciousness, into a province of the spiritual and divine. All that cannot be so transformed or refuses to be part of a divine consciousness he will abandon without hesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its emptiness or its incapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental test or principle for these things; he will therefore follow no unalterable rule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to his feeling, insight or experience until the greater Power and Light are there to turn their unerring scrutiny on all that is below and choose or reject their material out of what the human evolution has prepared for the divine labour.
     How precisely or by what stages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form, need and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence is always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the integral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there may be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness and an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its relegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of it may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic and spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements, but that compulsion of the temperament or the nature which, in human beings, necessitates one kind of activity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of the existence, will diminish and eventually no attachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere. Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted desire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater Consciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of the whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the inner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a restriction of the' activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of mental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the Yoga-shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or many fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of metaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken where none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches out from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour down its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the creation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may be the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the Yoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him above as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all the activities of knowledge.
     There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker's mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more au thentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge.
     These two changes are the signs of a first effectuation in which the activities of the mental nature are lifted up, spiritualised, widened, universalised, liberated, led to a consciousness of their true purpose as an instrumentation of the Divine creating and developing its manifestation in the temporal universe. But this cannot be the whole scope of the transformation; for it is not in these limits that the integral seeker can cease from his ascension or confine the widening of his nature. For, if it were so, knowledge would still remain a working of the mind, liberated, universalised, spiritualised, but still, as all mind must be, comparatively restricted, relative, imperfect in the very essence of its dynamism; it would reflect luminously great constructions of Truth, but not move in the domain where Truth is au thentic, direct, sovereign and native. There is an ascension still to be made from this height, by which the spiritualised mind will exceed itself and transmute into a supramental power of knowledge. Already in the process of spiritualisation it will have begun to pass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount successively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind and next into the gloaming belts of a still greater free intelligence illumined with a Light from above. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed response the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in itself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to the abundant intrusion of error. Here too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that untruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of essential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For there is an overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which supports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a transmitting belt of passage downward or an instrument for the creations of the Ignorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of overmind itself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the supramental light of the Divine Gnosis. For there in the supramental Light is the seat of the divine Truth-Consciousness that has native in it, as no other consciousness below it can have, the power to organise the works of a Truth which is no longer .tarnished by the shadow of the cosmic Inconscience and Ignorance. There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that can transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the integral Yoga.

1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  And in the same spirit, the king of the south Indian province
  of Quilacare, at the completion of the twelfth year of his reign,

1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  9:But as in Thought, so in Life, the true rule of self-realisation is a progressive comprehension. Brahman expresses Itself in many successive forms of consciousness, successive in their relation even if coexistent in being or coeval in Time, and Life in its self-unfolding must also rise to ever-new provinces of its own being. But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His selfmanifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing.
  10:Besides the recoil from the physical life, there is another exaggeration of the ascetic impulse which this ideal of an integral manifestation corrects. The nodus of Life is the relation between three general forms of consciousness, the individual, the universal and the transcendent or supracosmic. In the ordinary distribution of life's activities the individual regards himself as a separate being included in the universe and both as dependent upon that which transcends alike the universe and the individual. It is to this Transcendence that we give currently the name of God, who thus becomes to our conceptions not so much supracosmic as extra-cosmic. The belittling and degradation of both the individual and the universe is a natural consequence of this division: the cessation of both cosmos and individual by the attainment of the Transcendence would be logically its supreme conclusion.

1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Kursk, a province of Southern Russia, when rain is much wanted, the
  women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or
  --
  Minahassa, a province of North Celebes, the priest bathes as a
  rain-charm. In Central Celebes when there has been no rain for a
  --
  against the stream. In the Caucasian province of Georgia, when a
  drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is possible, as in a certain high exaggeration of the path of knowledge, to cut here also the knot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with the crudities of the world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing from outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our adoration of the Divine in the heart's silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that are either in themselves an expression of love for the Divine, prayer, praise, symbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these things and partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns away to satisfy its inner longing in the absorbed or the God-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is possible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one's love of the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do the works of philanthropy, benevolence and beneficence, charity and succour to man and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual passion, at least bring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power of a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly favoured by the religious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the proper field of action of the Godseeker or of the man whose life is founded on divine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul's pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of the soul's love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence.
  It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one's works; for, says the Gita, "He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion"; and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered with love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, - a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, - by putting behind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of Godward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul's communion, the mind's understanding, the life's obedience, the heart's surrender.
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  Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its direct field of effectuation and major province.
  It covers the entire range of life's more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.

1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  12:MAHASARASWATI is the Mother s Power of Work and her spirit of perfection and order. The youngest of the Four, she is the most skilful in executive faculty and the nearest to physical Nature. Maheshwari lays down the large lines of the worldforces, Mahakali drives their energy and impetus, Mahalakshmi discovers their rhythms and measures, but Mahasaraswati presides over their detail of organisation and execution, relation of parts and effective combination of forces and unfailing exactitude of result and fulfilment. The science and craft and technique of things are Mahasaraswati's province. Always she holds in her nature and can give to those whom she has chosen the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker. This Power is the strong, the tireless, the careful and efficient builder, organiser, administrator, technician, artisan and classifier of the worlds. When she takes up the transformation and new-building of the nature, her action is laborious and minute and often seems to our impatience slow and interminable, but it is persistent, integral and flawless. For the will in her works is scrupulous, unsleeping, indefatigable; leaning over us she notes and touches every little detail, finds out every minute defect, gap, twist or incompleteness, considers and weighs accurately all that has been done and all that remains still to be done hereafter. Nothing is too small or apparently trivial for her attention; nothing however impalpable or disguised or latent can escape her. Moulding and remoulding she labours each part till it has attained its true form, is put in its exact place in the whole and fulfils its precise purpose. In her constant and diligent arrangement and rearrangement of things her eye is on all needs at once and the way to meet them and her intuition knows what is to be chosen and what rejected and successfully determines the right instrument, the right time, the right conditions and the right process. Carelessness and negligence and indolence she abhors; all scamped and hasty and shuffling work, all clumsiness and a peu pres and misfire, all false adaptation and misuse of instruments and faculties and leaving of things undone or half done is offensive and foreign to her temper. When her work is finished, nothing has been forgotten, no part has been misplaced or omitted or left in a faulty condition; all is solid, accurate, complete, admirable. Nothing short of a perfect perfection satisfies her and she is ready to face an eternity of toil if that is needed for the fullness of her creation. Therefore of all the Mother s powers she is the most long-suffering with man and his thousand imperfections. Kind, smiling, close and helpful, not easily turned away or discouraged, insistent even after repeated failure, her hand sustains our every step on condition that we are single in our will and straightforward and sincere; for a double mind she will not tolerate and her revealing irony is merciless to drama and histrionics and self-deceit and pretence. A mother to our wants, a friend in our difficulties, a persistent and tranquil counsellor and mentor, chasing away with her radiant smile the clouds of gloom and fretfulness and depression, reminding always of the ever-present help, pointing to the eternal sunshine, she is firm, quiet and persevering in the deep and continuous urge that drives us towards the integrality of the higher nature. All the work of the other Powers leans on her for its completeness; for she assures the material foundation, elaborates the stuff of detail and erects and rivets the armour of the structure.
  13:There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, - most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to their supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change into dynamic divine nature because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.
  --
  16:Avoid also the error of the ignorant mind's demand on the Divine Power to act always according to our crude surface notions of omniscience and omnipotence. For our mind clamours to be impressed at every turn by miraculous power and easy success and dazzling splendour; otherwise it cannot believe that here is the Divine. The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the Ignorance; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature. There are conditions that have been laid down by a Supreme Will, there are many tangled knots that have to be loosened and cannot be cut abruptly asunder. The Asura and Rakshasa hold this evolving earthly nature and have to be met and conquered on their own terms in their own longconquered fief and province; the human in us has to be led and prepared to transcend its limits and is too weak and obscure to be lifted up suddenly to a form far beyond it. The Divine Consciousness and Force are there and do at each moment the thing that is needed in the conditions of the labour, take always the step that is decreed and shape in the midst of imperfection the perfection that is to come. But only when the supermind has descended in you can she deal directly as the supramental Shakti with supramental natures. If you follow your mind, it will not recognise the Mother even when she is manifest before you. Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances; trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.
  17:The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother The Mother s power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.

1.07 - Hui Ch'ao Asks about Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  the province of fire; he is seeking fire with fire. Likewise, I am
  Buddha, yet I went on searching for Buddha." Fa Yen said,

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "I felt very badly when I heard of the boy's passing away. He was a pupil in a school and he used to come here. He would often say to me that he couldn't enjoy worldly life. He had lived with some relatives in the western provinces and at that time used to meditate in solitude, in the meadows, hills, and forests. He told me he had visions of many divine forms.
  "Perhaps this was his last birth. He must have finished most of his duties in his previous birth. The little that had been left undone was perhaps finished in this one.

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Sea. In reality^ that does not belong to the province that I originally contemplated illustrating within the pages of this book, although it can be simply and briefly demon- strated that the experience even here is capable of analysis, being induced by an unconscious application of the funda- mental principles laid down above. The wealth and luxuriant variety of the overwhelming beauty of Wide
  Arcadian fields and rolling hills act in one of two ways, differing with different individuals in different places.

1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  because the resistance increases in proportion. Matter is the place of the greatest spiritual difficulty, but also the place of Victory. The yoga of the body, therefore, lies well beyond the scope of our vital or mental powers; it is the province of a supramental yoga, which we will discuss later.
  Independence from the Senses Matter is the starting point of our evolution. It is confined in Matter that consciousness has gradually evolved; therefore the more consciousness emerges, the more it will recover its sovereignty and assert its independence. This is the first step (not the last, as we will see). We are, however, almost totally subservient to the needs of the body for our survival, and to the bodily organs for perceiving the world; we are very proud, and rightly so, of our machines, but when our machine gets a little headache everything becomes a blur, and when we are denied our array of telegraphs, telephones, televisions,

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Saraswati, a name familiar to the religious conceptions of the race from our earliest eras, & of incessant occurrence in poetic phraseology and image, is worshipped yearly even at the present day in all provinces of the peninsula no less than those many millenniums ago in the prehistoric dawn of our religion and literature. Consistently, subsequent to the Vedic times, she has been worshipped everywhere & is named in all passages as a goddess of speech, poetry, learning and eloquence. Epic, Purana and the popular imagination know her solely as this deity of speech & knowledge. She ranks therefore in the order of religious ideas with the old Hellenic conceptions of Pallas, Aphrodite or the Muses; nor does any least shadow of the material Nature-power linger to lower the clear intellectuality of her powers and functions. But there is also a river Saraswati or several rivers of that name. Therefore, the doubt suggests itself: In any given passage may it not be the Aryan river, Saraswati, which the bards are chanting? even if they sing of her or cry to her as a goddess, may it not still be the River, so dear, sacred & beneficent to them, that they worship? Or even where she is clearly a goddess of speech and thought, may it not be that the Aryans, having had originally no intellectual or moral conceptions and therefore no gods of the mind and heart, converted, when they did feel the need, this sacred flowing River into a goddess of sacred flowing song? In that case we are likely to find in her epithets & activities the traces of this double capacity.
  For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswatis etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayanas distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, prve ntan uta, are guides worthy of trustwhe ther they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen intuition of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.

1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  were formerly the province of priests and philosophers. From the degree to
  which priests and philosophers no longer discharge any duties in this

11.07 - The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The brain thus is the controller-general of the whole physical system of the human body. In particular, however, it is the controller and regulator of the physical mind and the senses (the six indriyas of Indian psychology). This is the province of the basic earth principle, this range of material matter over which the Fire is the presiding deity. There are, however, other provinces and units, co-lateral to the brain system and having special functions of their own. First of all, at the bottom of the scale, or rather the first step upward in the scale,that is, after the vertebral pedestalis the abdominal system which consists, as we know, of the three main operations: (i) digestion, (ii) evacuation, and (iii) generation, comprising, in other words, the stomach, the intestines, the liver and the spleen, the kidneys, the bladder, and finally, the sex glands. The glands indeed, here in this domain, are the operative agent: and they have a special way of operation, namely, washing. If fire controls the most material, the earth-principle, it is water, apas, that is the god in this region of the vital functions. The Vedas speak of the purifying streams of the Sindhus and the Srotas; they speak of the underground stream of rasa which Sarama, the Hound of Heaven, crossed to' come over to our earth. Water, in fact, does the work appropriate to this region. It is the vital region in man and consists of functions attached to the vital activities. The vital in its ordinary and normal functions means desires and attachments, hunger and thirst, ties and bondages, urges and demands these have to be cleared and washed out if there is to be healthy strength in the system, washed by spraying the pure vital fluid. Physiologically the enzymes and endocrine secretions are the physical formations or outer formulations of the hidden vital fluid. This indeed is the function of the deity, Soma, Pawamana Soma, the flowing stream of Delight, who in effect is the true presiding godhead here. For it is this section of the body that is the stage for our whole world of enjoyment for the play of all our physical delights as well as of all our ailments and diseases. Purified, it is the giver of health and happiness leading ultimately to that Supreme Delight which is immortality, Life transfigured.
   Above and next to this region of the viscera, on the other side of the diaphragm, is the region of the thorax, the chest cavity. It contains the ,most important of all human organs, the heart and the lungs, which means the respiratory and the circulatory systems, extending into the solar plexus; and the power that controls it is that of the third element Tejas, the pulsating, radiant energy. It is the energising heat, the warmth of will and aspiration, concentration in the heart; it is also Tapas. It is indeed a form of fire, fire in its essential substance, a quiet white flame against the robust red and crimson and purple fires of earth. It is the mounting urge of consciousness in its rhythmic poise of harmonious strength. And that is the god Aryama of the Vedas, the godhead presiding over the upward surge of evolution. From here comes not merely the drive to go forward, the secret dynamo that moves the being to its goal but also the vision that shows the way and the conditions under which the end is achieved or fulfilled. From here too comes rhythm and the balance and the happy harmony of all movements in life. The calm heave of the lung sand the glad beat of the heart are the sign and symbol of a radiant animation.

1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  we find that in some parts of the Swedish province of Blekinge they
  still choose a Midsummer's Bride, to whom the "church coronet" is

11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Such then are the stages in the progression of consciousness; they are clearly observable and admitted practically on all hands. Only Sri Aurobindo points out two crucial characters of this movement. First: Matter, Life, Mind-Intelligence these are not distinct or separate entities, one coming after another, the succeeding one simply adding itself to the preceding, coming we do now know from where. Not so, for something cannot come out of nothing. If life came out of Matter, it is because life was there hidden in Matter, Matter was secretly housing, was instinct with life. That only can evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of gradation is linked together indissolubly and the binding reality that runs through all is consciousness, overt or covert. It is indeed consciousness that lies at the root of existence the basic substance, Matter is nothing but consciousness become unconscious; and the whole scheme or processus of the cosmos is the increasing manifestation and expression of that consciousness. Secondly, the other character is that at each cross-over, there is not only a rise in consciousness but also a reversal of consciousness, that is to say, the level attained turns back upon the preceding levels, influencing and moulding them as far as possible in its own mode and law of existence. When life appeared in Matter, wherever there was material life, the matter thus taken up by life behaved differently from dead matter: an organic body does not follow the strict mechanical laws of inanimate bodies. Likewise a life endowed with mind has a different functioning than mere life. And a body which houses a life and mind, which has, as it were, flowered into life and mind moves and acts in another way than an inert body or even a vitalised body. Man's intelligence and reason have reoriented or tend to reorient his vital instincts and reactions, even his bodily functions and forms. A conscious regulation, even refashioning of his life and body is the very essence of human consciousness, the urge of his nature, instead of a spontaneous laissez-faire movement of pure vitality or the mechanical go-round of the material base. These three major provinces or layers of consciousness Matter, Life and Mindman has taken up into himself and in the light of his consciousness his Intelligencehas studied and classified them arranging them serially as the well-known sciences of Physics Biology and Psychology.
   Now, Sri Aurobindo says, evolution marches onward and will rise beyond mind to another status of consciousness which he calls Supermind. In the earthly scheme there will thus manifest a new type, a higher functioning of consciousness and a new race or species will appear on earth with this new consciousness as the ruling principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will come inevitably.

1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The whole difficulty of the reason in trying to govern our existence is that because of its own inherent limitations it is unable to deal with life in its complexity or in its integral movements; it is compelled to break it up into parts, to make more or less artificial classifications, to build systems with limited data which are contradicted, upset or have to be continually modified by other data, to work out a selection of regulated potentialities which is broken down by the bursting of a new wave of yet unregulated potentialities. It would almost appear even that there are two worlds, the world of ideas proper to the intellect and the world of life which escapes from the full control of the reason, and that to bridge adequately the gulf between these two domains is beyond the power and province of the reason and the intelligent will. It would seem that these can only create either a series of more or less empirical compromises or else a series of arbitrary and practically inapplicable or only partially applicable systems. The reason of man struggling with life becomes either an empiric or a doctrinaire.
  Reason can indeed make itself a mere servant of life; it can limit itself to the work the average normal man demands from it, content to furnish means and justifications for the interests, passions, prejudices of man and clo the them with a misleading garb of rationality or at most supply them with their own secure and enlightened order or with rules of caution and self-restraint sufficient to prevent their more egregious stumbles and most unpleasant consequences. But this is obviously to abdicate its throne or its highest office and to betray the hope with which man set forth on his journey. It may again determine to found itself securely on the facts of life, disinterestedly indeed, that is to say, with a dispassionate critical observation of its principles and processes, but with a prudent resolve not to venture too much forward into the unknown or elevate itself far beyond the immediate realities of our apparent or phenomenal existence. But here again it abdicates; either it becomes a mere critic and observer or else, so far as it tries to lay down laws, it does so within very narrow limits of immediate potentiality and it renounces mans drift towards higher possibilities, his saving gift of idealism. In this limited use of the reason subjected to the rule of an immediate, an apparent vital and physical practicality man cannot rest long satisfied. For his nature pushes him towards the heights; it demands a constant effort of self-transcendence and the impulsion towards things unachieved and even immediately impossible.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is not enough to describe Sri Aurobindo's discovery, we must also understand how it is accessible to us. It is very difficult to draw a diagram, however, and say, "Here is the way," because spiritual development is always adapted to the nature of each individual. And for good reason: this is not about learning a foreign language but about oneself, and no two natures are alike: The ideal I put before our yoga does not bind all spiritual life and endeavor. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it, with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement.172 Therefore we can give only a few pointers, with the hope that each person will find the particular clue that will open his or her own path. One should always keep in mind that the true system of yoga is to capture the thread of one's own consciousness, the "shining thread" of the rishis [Rig Veda, X.53], to seize hold of it, and follow it right to the end.
  Since cosmic consciousness and Nirvana do not give us the evolutionary key we are seeking, let us resume our quest, with Sri Aurobindo, where he had left it at Baroda prior to his two great experiences. The first step is the ascent into the Superconscient. As we have said, as silence settles in the seeker's mind, as he quiets his vital and frees himself from his absorption in the physical, the consciousness emerges from the countless activities in which it was indiscernibly commingled, scattered, and it takes on an independent existence. It becomes like a separate being within the being, a compact and increasingly intense Force. And the more it grows, the less it is satisfied with being confined in a body; we notice that it radiates outward, first during sleep, then during meditation, and finally with our eyes wide open. But this outward movement is not just lateral, as it were, toward the universal Mind, universal Vital, and universal Physical; the consciousness also seeks to go upward. This ascending urge may not even be the result of a conscious discipline; it may be a natural and spontaneous need (we should never forget that our efforts in this life are the continuation of many other efforts in many other lives, hence the unequal development of different individuals and the impossibility of setting up fixed rules). We may spontaneously feel something above our head drawing us, like an expanse or a light, or like a magnetic pole that is the origin of all our actions and thoughts, a zone of concentration above our head. The seeker has not silenced his mind to become like a slug; his silence is not dead, but alive; he is tuned in upward because he senses a life there. Silence is not an end but a means, just as learning to read notes is a means to capture music, and there are many kinds of music. Day after day, as his consciousness becomes increasingly concrete, he has hundreds of almost imperceptible experiences springing from this Silence above. He might think about nothing, when suddenly a thought crosses his mind not even a thought, a tiny spark and he knows exactly what he has to do and how he has to do it, down to the smallest detail, as if the pieces of a puzzle were suddenly falling into place, and with a sense of absolute certainty (below, everything is always uncertain, with always at least two solutions to every problem). Or a tiny impulse might strike him: "Go and see so-and-so"; he does, and "coincidentally" this person needs him. Or "Don't do this"; he persists, and has a bad fall. Or for no reason he is impelled toward a certain place, to find the very circumstances that will help him. Or, if some problem has to be solved, he remains immobile, silent, calling above, and the answer comes, clear and irrefutable.

1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Night is indeed the province of his reign:
  Yet all his dark exploits no more contain
  --
  Thy province is to fight; but when shall be
  The time to fight, the king consults with me:

1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Reason has indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious being and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It cannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own right the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine love and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke upon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East andmuch more crudely and imperfectly doneof theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering is again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably enter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning, inferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our knowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical truths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary workings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces the rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief, and even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest when it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual being and the spiritual life, just as they are given to it, and throw them into such form, order and language as will make them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning mind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an intellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot give a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the gates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness of man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, I have tried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which are beyond my province.
  But there is another level of the religious life in which reason might seem justified in interfering more independently and entitled to assume a superior role. For as there is the suprarational life in which religious aspiration finds entirely what it seeks, so too there is also the infrarational life of the instincts, impulses, sensations, crude emotions, vital activities from which all human aspiration takes its beginning. These too feel the touch of the religious sense in man, share its needs and experience, desire its satisfactions. Religion includes this satisfaction also in its scope, and in what is usually called religion it seems even to be the greater part, sometimes to an external view almost the whole; for the supreme purity of spiritual experience does not appear or is glimpsed only through this mixed and turbid current. Much impurity, ignorance, superstition, many doubtful elements must form as the result of this contact and union of our highest tendencies with our lower ignorant nature. Here it would seem that reason has its legitimate part; here surely it can intervene to enlighten, purify, rationalise the play of the instincts and impulses. It would seem that a religious reformation, a movement to substitute a pure and rational religion for one that is largely infrarational and impure, would be a distinct advance in the religious development of humanity. To a certain extent this may be, but, owing to the peculiar nature of the religious being, its entire urge towards the suprarational, not without serious qualifications, nor can the rational mind do anything here that is of a high positive value.

1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Dominican province. London, 1911-22. 18 vols.
  Thomas Aquinas, pseud. "Aurora, sive Aurea hora." In: [H. Con-

1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  have obtained at least six provinces in Norway by marriage with the
  daughters of the local kings.

1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Religion is the seeking after the spiritual, the suprarational and therefore in this sphere the intellectual reason may well be an insufficient help and find itself, not only at the end but from the beginning, out of its province and condemned to tread either diffidently or else with a stumbling presumptuousness in the realm of a power and a light higher than its own. But in the other spheres of human consciousness and human activity it may be thought that it has the right to the sovereign place, since these move on the lower plane of the rational and the finite or belong to that border-land where the rational and the infrarational meet and the impulses and the instincts of man stand in need above all of the light and the control of the reason. In its own sphere of finite knowledge, science, philosophy, the useful arts, its right, one would think, must be indisputable. But this does not turn out in the end to be true. Its province may be larger, its powers more ample, its action more justly self-confident, but in the end everywhere it finds itself standing between the two other powers of our being and fulfilling in greater or less degree the same function of an intermediary. On one side it is an enlightenernot always the chief enlightener and the corrector of our life-impulses and first mental seekings, on the other it is only one minister of the veiled Spirit and a preparer of the paths for the coming of its rule.
  This is especially evident in the two realms which in the ordinary scale of our powers stand nearest to the reason and on either side of it, the aesthetic and the ethical being, the search for Beauty and the search for Good. Mans seeking after beauty reaches its most intense and satisfying expression in the great creative arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, but in its full extension there is no activity of his nature or his life from which it need or ought to be excluded,provided we understand beauty both in its widest and its truest sense. A complete and universal appreciation of beauty and the making entirely beautiful our whole life and being must surely be a necessary character of the perfect individual and the perfect society. But in its origin this seeking for beauty is not rational; it springs from the roots of our life, it is an instinct and an impulse, an instinct of aesthetic satisfaction and an impulse of aesthetic creation and enjoyment. Starting from the infrarational parts of our being, this instinct and impulse begin with much imperfection and impurity and with great crudities both in creation and in appreciation. It is here that the reason comes in to distinguish, to enlighten, to correct, to point out the deficiencies and the crudities, to lay down laws of aesthetics and to purify our appreciation and our creation by improved taste and right knowledge. While we are thus striving to learn and correct ourselves, it may seem to be the true law-giver both for the artist and the admirer and, though not the creator of our aesthetic instinct and impulse, yet the creator in us of an aesthetic conscience and its vigilant judge and guide. That which was an obscure and erratic activity, it makes self-conscious and rationally discriminative in its work and enjoyment.

1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our ethical impulses and activities begin like all the rest in the infrarational and take their rise from the subconscient. They arise as an instinct of right, an instinct of obedience to an ununderstood law, an instinct of self-giving in labour, an instinct of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, an instinct of love, of self-subordination and of solidarity with others. Man obeys the law at first without any inquiry into the why and the wherefore; he does not seek for it a sanction in the reason. His first thought is that it is a law created by higher powers than himself and his race and he says with the ancient poet that he knows not whence these laws sprang, but only that they are and endure and cannot with impunity be violated. What the instincts and impulses seek after, the reason labours to make us understand, so that the will may come to use the ethical impulses intelligently and turn the instincts into ethical ideas. It corrects mans crude and often erring misprisions of the ethical instinct, separates and purifies his confused associations, shows as best it can the relations of his often clashing moral ideals, tries to arbitrate and compromise between their conflicting claims, arranges a system and many-sided rule of ethical action. And all this is well, a necessary stage of our advance; but in the end these ethical ideas and this intelligent ethical will which it has tried to train to its control, escape from its hold and soar up beyond its province. Always, even when enduring its rein and curb, they have that inborn tendency.
  For the ethical being like the rest is a growth and a seeking towards the absolute, the divine, which can only be attained securely in the suprarational. It seeks after an absolute purity, an absolute right, an absolute truth, an absolute strength, an absolute love and self-giving, and it is most satisfied when it can get them in absolute measure, without limit, curb or compromise, divinely, infinitely, in a sort of godhead and transfiguration of the ethical being. The reason is chiefly concerned with what it best understands, the apparent process, the machinery, the outward act, its result and effect, its circumstance, occasion and motive; by these it judges the morality of the action and the morality of the doer. But the developed ethical being knows instinctively that it is an inner something which it seeks and the outward act is only a means of bringing out and manifesting within ourselves by its psychological effects that inner absolute and eternal entity. The value of our actions lies not so much in their apparent nature and outward result as in their help towards the growth of the Divine within us. It is difficult, even impossible to justify upon outward grounds the absolute justice, absolute right, absolute purity, love or selflessness of an action or course of action; for action is always relative, it is mixed and uncertain in its results, perplexed in its occasions. But it is possible to relate the inner being to the eternal and absolute good, to make our sense and will full of it so as to act out of its impulsion or its intuitions and inspirations. That is what the ethical being labours towards and the higher ethical man increasingly attains to in his inner efforts.

1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Let us then look at this vital instinct and life dynamism in its own being and not merely as an occasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really rebellious in its very nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we have described is the first stage of the vital being, the infrarational, the instinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and persists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the enlightening reason. Evidently it is in this natural form a thing of the earth, gross, earthy, full even of hideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring discords; but so also is the infrarational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in religion. It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than these others, more fundamentally and obstinately resists elevation, because it is the very province of the infrarational, a first formulation of consciousness out of the Inconscient, nearest to it in the scale of being. But still it has too, properly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty, nobility, good, sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are highreaching gods, masked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now, reason, in the garb no longer of philosophy, but of science, has increasingly proposed to take up all this physical and vital life and perfect it by the sole power of rationalism, by a knowledge of the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology and biology and health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new psychological education and a number of other kindred means. All this is well in its own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and can never come to a truly satisfying success. The ancient attempt of reason in the form of a high idealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an imperfect discipline of the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a polishing, a gloss, a clothing and mannerising of the original uncouth savage. The modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and thorough rational, utilitarian and efficient instruction and organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all its insistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in the future. These endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful if our theory of life is right and if this great mass of vital energism contains in itself the imprisoned suprarational, if it has, as it then must have, the instinctive reaching out for something divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind strivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass itself and become a passage to the Divine.
  The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way of living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain religious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations boldly and applied them to our souls communion with God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the economic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but still the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,never mind the often ugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self-sacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have created the katriys tyaktajvit of the Sanskrit epic phrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And again the Divine in fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and the ideal of human unity however dim and far off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a greater unified cooperative life of the human race.

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [5]: 'Divine knowledge is the province only of those who can separate soul from body; that is, who live independent of bodily infirmities and passions. We have not overcome corporeal vicissitudes, and have therefore no concern with such abstruse inquiries.' This is the commentator's explanation of the passage.
  [6]: Alluding, says the commentator, to the fable of a washerman, who, whilst washing his clothes in the Ganges, proposed daily to drink of its waters, but forgot his purpose in his occupation: or of a boy, who proposed the same as he pursued fish after fish, and never accomplished his intention, being engrossed by his sport: both died without drinking.

1.19 - Thought, or the Intellectual element, and Diction in Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Next, as regards Diction. One branch of the inquiry treats of the Modes of Utterance. But this province of knowledge belongs to the art of Delivery and to the masters of that science. It includes, for instance,--what is a command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, a question, an answer, and so forth. To know or not to know these things involves no serious censure upon the poet's art. For who can admit the fault imputed to Homer by Protagoras,--that in the words, 'Sing, goddess, of the wrath,' he gives a comm and under the idea that he utters a prayer? For to tell some one to do a thing or not to do it is, he says, a command. We may, therefore, pass this over as an inquiry that belongs to another art, not to poetry.
  author class:Aristotle

1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  object:1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings
  author class:Vyasa
  --
  Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings. Universality of Viṣṇu. Four varieties of spiritual contemplation. Two conditions of spirit. The perceptible attributes of Viṣṇu types of his imperceptible properties. Viṣṇu every thing. Merit of hearing the first book of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.
  WHEN Prithu was installed in the government of the earth, the great father of the spheres established sovereignties in other parts of the creation. Soma was appointed monarch of the stars and planets, of Brahmans and of plants, of sacrifices and of penance. Vaisravaṇa was made king over kings; and Varuṇa, over the waters. Viṣṇu was the chief of the Ādityas; Pāvaka, of the Vasus; Dakṣa, of the patriarchs; Vāsava, of the winds. To Prahlāda was assigned dominion over the Daityas and Dānavas; and Yama, the king of justice, was appointed the monarch of the Manes (Pitris). Airāvata was made the king of elephants; Garuḍa, of birds; Indra, of the gods. Uccaiśravas was the chief of horses; Vṛṣabha, of kine. Śeṣa became the snake-king; the lion, the monarch of the beasts; and the sovereign of the trees was the holy fig-tree[1]. Having thus fixed the limits of each authority, the great progenitor Brahmā stationed rulers for the protection of the different quarters of the world: he made Sudhanwan, the son of the patriarch Viraja, the regent of the east; Sa

1.24 - The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The thing to be done is as large as human life, and therefore the individuals who lead the way will take all human life for their province. These pioneers will consider nothing as alien to them, nothing as outside their scope. For every part of human life has to be taken up by the spiritual,not only the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, but the dynamic, the vital, the physical; therefore for none of these things or the activities that spring from them will they have contempt or aversion, however they may insist on a change of the spirit and a transmutation of the form. In each power of our nature they will seek for its own proper means of conversion; knowing that the Divine is concealed in all, they will hold that all can be made the spirits means of self-finding and all can be converted into its instruments of divine living. And they will see that the great necessity is the conversion of the normal into the spiritual mind and the opening of that mind again into its own higher reaches and more and more integral movement. For before the decisive change can be made, the stumbling intellectual reason has to be converted into the precise and luminous intuitive, until that again can rise into higher ranges to overmind and supermind or gnosis. The uncertain and stumbling mental will has to rise towards the sure intuitive and into a higher divine and gnostic will, the psychic sweetness, fire and light of the soul behind the heart, hdaye guhym, has to alchemise our crude emotions and the hard egoisms and clamant desires of our vital nature. All our other members have to pass through a similar conversion under the compelling force and light from above. The leaders of the spiritual march will start from and use the knowledge and the means that past effort has developed in this direction, but they will not take them as they are without any deep necessary change or limit themselves by what is now known or cleave only to fixed and stereotyped systems or given groupings of results, but will follow the method of the Spirit in Nature. A constant rediscovery and new formulation and larger synthesis in the mind, a mighty remoulding in its deeper parts because of a greater enlarging Truth not discovered or not well fixed before, is that Spirits way with our past achievement when he moves to the greatnesses of the future.
  This endeavour will be a supreme and difficult labour even for the individual, but much more for the race. It may well be that, once started, it may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage; it may be that it will take long centuries of effort to come into some kind of permanent birth. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swift gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the new birth, a rapid conversion, a transformation that in its luminous moment figures like a miracle. Even when the first decisive change is reached, it is certain that all humanity will not be able to rise to that level. There cannot fail to be a division into those who are able to live on the spiritual level and those who are only able to live in the light that descends from it into the mental level. And below these too there might still be a great mass influenced from above but not yet ready for the light. But even that would be a transformation and a beginning far beyond anything yet attained. This hierarchy would not mean as in our present vital living an egoistic domination of the undeveloped by the more developed, but a guidance of the younger by the elder brothers of the race and a constant working to lift them up to a greater spiritual level and wider horizons. And for the leaders too this ascent to the first spiritual levels would not be the end of the divine march, a culmination that left nothing more to be achieved on earth. For there would be still yet higher levels within the supramental realm, as the old Vedic poets knew when they spoke of the spiritual life as a constant ascent,

1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  hope of immortality. Every province then had the tomb and mummy of
  its dead god. The mummy of Osiris was to be seen at Mendes; Thinis
  --
  in the province of Quilacare, "there is a Gentile house of prayer,
  in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and
  --
  and much revenue: it is a very great affair. This province has a
  king over it, who has not more than twelve years to reign from
  --
  In the province of Lagos, the Ijebu tribe of the Yoruba race is
  divided into two branches, which are known respectively as the Ijebu
  --
  the sovereign are limited to a single day. In Ngoio, a province of
  the ancient kingdom of Congo, the rule obtains that the chief who

1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:Still there is one aspect of this problem which must be immediately considered; it is the gulf created between Mind as we know it and the supramental Truth-Consciousness of which we have found Mind in its origin to be a subordinate process. For this gulf is considerable and, if there are no gradations between the two levels of consciousness, a transition from one to the other, either in the descending involution of Spirit into Matter or the corresponding evolution in Matter of the concealed grades leading back to the Spirit, seems in the highest degree improbable, if not impossible. For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, - as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve. Supermind, on the contrary, is in actual and natural possession of the Truth and its formations are forms of the Reality, not constructions, representations or indicative figures. No doubt, the evolving Mind in us is hampered by its encasement in the obscurity of this life and body, and the original Mind principle in the involutionary descent is a thing of greater power to which we have not fully reached, able to act with freedom in its own sphere or province, to build more revelatory constructions, more minutely inspired formations, more subtle and significant embodiments in which the light of Truth is present and palpable. But still that too is not likely to be essentially different in its characteristic action, for it too is a movement into the Ignorance, not a still unseparated portion of the Truth-Consciousness. There must be somewhere in the descending and ascending scale of Being an intermediate power and plane of consciousness, perhaps something more than that, something with an original creative force, through which the involutionary transition from Mind in the Knowledge to Mind in the Ignorance was effected and through which again the evolutionary reverse transition becomes intelligible and possible. For the involutionary transition this intervention is a logical imperative, for the evolutionary it is a practical necessity. For in the evolution there are indeed radical transitions, from indeterminate Energy to organised Matter, from inanimate Matter to Life, from a subconscious or submental to a perceptive and feeling and acting Life, from primitive animal mentality to conceptive reasoning Mind observing and governing Life and observing itself also, able to act as an independent entity and even to seek consciously for self-transcendence; but these leaps, even when considerable, are to some extent prepared by slow gradations which make them conceivable and feasible. There can be no such immense hiatus as seems to exist between supramental Truth-Consciousness and the Mind in the Ignorance.
  3:But if such intervening gradations exist, it is clear that they must be superconscient to human mind which does not seem to have in its normal state any entry into these higher grades of being. Man is limited in his consciousness by mind and even by a given range or scale of mind: what is below his mind, submental or mental but nether to his scale, readily seems to him subconscious or not distinguishable from complete inconscience; what is above it is to him superconscious and he is almost inclined to regard it as void of awareness, a sort of luminous Inconscience. Just as he is limited to a certain scale of sounds or of colours and what is above or below that scale is to him inaudible and invisible or at least indistinguishable, so is it with his scale of mental consciousness, confined at either extremity by an incapacity which marks his upper and his nether limit. He has no sufficient means of communication even with the animal who is his mental congener, though not his equal, and he is even capable of denying mind or real consciousness to it because its modes are other and narrower than those with which in himself and his kind he is familiar; he can observe submental being from outside but cannot at all communicate with it or enter intimately into its nature. Equally the superconscious is to him a closed book which may well be filled only with empty pages. At first sight, then, it would appear as if he had no means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness: if so, they cannot act as links or bridges and his evolution must cease with his accomplished mental range and cannot exceed it; Nature in drawing these limits has written finis to his upward endeavour.

1.28 - The Killing of the Tree-Spirit, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Franken, a province of Bavaria, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, the
  village urchins used to make a straw effigy of Death, which they

1.3.5.04 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This slow preparation of Nature covered immense aeons of time and infinities of space in which they appeared to be her only business; the real business strikes on our view at least when we look with the outward eye of reason as if it came only as a fortuitous accident, in or near the end, for a span of time and in a speck and hardly noticeable corner of one of the smallest provinces of a possibly minor universe among these many boundless finites, these countless universes. If it were so, we could still reply that time and space matter not to the Infinite and Eternal; it is not a waste of labour for That - as it would be for our brief death-driven existences - to work for trillions of years in order to flower only for a moment. But that paradox too is only an appearance - for the history of this single earth is not all the story of evolution - other earths there are even now elsewhere, and even here many earth-cycles came before us, and many are those that will come hereafter.
  Nature laboured for innumerable millions of years to create a material universe of flaming suns and systems; for a lesser but still interminable series of millions she stooped to make this earth a habitable planet. For all that incalculable time she was or seemed busy only with the evolution of Matter; life and mind were kept secret in an apparent non-existence. But the time came when life could manifest, a vibration in the metal, a growing and seeking, a drawing in and a feeling outward in the plant, an instinctive force and sense, a nexus of joy and pain and hunger and emotion and fear and struggle in the animal, - a first organised consciousness, the beginning of the long-planned miracle. Thenceforward she was busy no more exclusively with matter for its own sake, but most with palpitant plasmic matter useful for the expression of life; the evolution of life was now her one intent purpose. And slowly too mind manifested in life, an intensely feeling, a crude thinking and planning vital mind in the animal, but in man the full organisation and apparatus, the developing if yet imperfect mental being, the Manu, the thinking, devising, aspiring, already self-conscient creature. And from

1.37 - Oriential Religions in the West, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Italy, and especially at Rome, but also in the provinces,
  particularly in Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and

1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  festival in the sixteen provinces of Egypt, are described in a long
  inscription of the Ptolemaic period, which is engraved on the walls

1.45 - The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrck,
  Hanover, it is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female
  --
  department over which they preside as their special province; but
  they are not rigorously confined to it; they can exert their power

1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces and
  districts of China to welcome the approach of spring. On the first

1.49 - Thelemic Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Cesspools in every theologian's back garden: sewers in every legislator's garden city: there is no end to the literature of the subject. But one point is amusing; the Jesuits have always been accused of answering that question in the affirmative, apparently for no better reason than that their doctrine is unanimously adverse to admitting it. (People are like that! They say that I spent months in Yucatan the only province in Mexico that I did not visit. They say that my home is a Tibetan monastery; and Tibet is almost the only country in East and Central Asia that my feet have never trodden. They say that I lived for years in Capri the only town in Italy, of those that I know at all, where I spent less than 48 hours.)
  The Law of Thelema helps us to deal with this question very simply and succinctly. First, it obviates the need of defining the proper "End;" for with us this becomes identical with the "True Will;" and we are bound to assume that the man himself is the sole arbiter; we postulate that his "End" is self-justified.

1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Pturages, in the province of Hainaut, down to about 1840 the custom
  was observed under the name of _Escouvion_ or _Scouvion._ Every year
  --
  In the French province of Franche-Comt, to the west of the Jura
  Mountains, the first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of the
  --
  with the practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province
  of Picardy "on the first Sunday of Lent people carried torches
  --
  country, especially in the provinces of Bohus and Scania and in
  districts bordering on Norway, it is celebrated by the frequent
  --
  In the mountainous part of Comminges, a province of Southern France,
  the midsummer fire is made by splitting open the trunk of a tall
  --
  In several provinces of France, and particularly in Provence, the
  custom of the Yule log or _trfoir,_ as it was called in many

1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the French province of Bourbonnais a popular remedy for epilepsy is
  a decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on St.

1.66 - Vampires, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  When I crossed the Burma-China frontier for the first time, who should I meet but our Consul at Tengyueh, the admirable Litton, who had by sheer brains and personality turned the whole province of Yunnan into his own Vice-royalty? We lunched together on the grass, and I hastened to dig into the goldmine of his knowledge of the country. About the third or fourth thing he said to me was this: "Remember! whatever anyone tells you about China is true." No words have ever impressed me more deeply; they sank right in and were illuminated by daily experience until they had justified themselves a thousand times over.
  That goes for Vampires!

1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  fra thair ene." Similarly in Bastar, a province of India, "if a man
  is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is beaten by the crowd, his
  --
  within the provinces of the Cameroons. Groups of people, generally
  the inhabitants of a village, have chosen various animals, with

1914 09 28p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   My pen is mute to chant Thy presence, O Lord; yet art Thou like a king who has taken entire possession of his kingdom. Thou art there, organising, putting all in place, developing and increasing every province. Thou awakenest those that were asleep. Thou makest active those that were sinking towards inertia; Thou art building a harmony out of the whole. A day will come when the harmony shall be achieved and all the country shall be by its very life the bearer of Thy word and Thy manifestation.
   But meanwhile my pen is mute to chant Thy praise.

1954-03-24 - Dreams and the condition of the stomach - Tobacco and alcohol - Nervousness - The centres and the Kundalini - Control of the senses, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Why? Because, they do so. There is no moral reason. It is a fact. There is a poison in alcohol, there is a poison in tobacco; and this poison goes into the cells and damages them. Alcohol is never expelled, so to say; it accumulates in a certain part of the brain, and then, after the accumulation, these cells no longer function at allsome people even go mad because of it, that is what is called delirium tremens, the result of having swallowed too much alcohol which is not absorbed but remain in this way concentrated in the brain. And it is so radical even that There is a province in France, for instance, which produces wine, a wine with a very low percentage of alcohol: I believe it is four or five per cent, a very low percentage, you understand; and these people, because they make it, drink wine as one drinks water. They drink it neat, and after some time they become ill. They have cerebral disorders. I knew people of this kind, the brain was disordered, didnt function any more. And tobacconicotine is a very serious poison. It is a poison that destroys the cells. I have said that it is a slow poison because one doesnt feel it immediately except when one smokes for the first time and it makes one very ill. And this should make you understand that it ought not to be done. Only, people are so stupid that they think it is a weakness and so continue until they get used to the poison. And the body no longer reacts, it allows itself to be destroyed without reacting: you get rid of the reaction.
  It is the same thing physically as morally. When you do something you ought not to do and your psychic tells you in its still small voice not to do it, then if you do it in spite of that, after a while it will no longer tell you anything, and you will no longer have any inner reactions at all to your bad actions, because you have refused to listen to the voice when it spoke to you. And then, naturally, you go from bad to worse and tumble into the hole. Well, for tobacco it is the same thing: the first time the body reacts violently, it vomits, it tells you, I dont want it at any cost. You compel it with your mental and vital stupidity, you force it to do so; it doesnt react any longer and so lets itself be poisoned gradually until it decomposes. The functioning deteriorates; it is the nerves that are affected; they no longer transmit the will because they are affected, they are poisoned. They no longer have the strength to transmit the will. And finally people begins to tremble, they have nervous movements. There are quite a few, one doesnt need to go very far to find them. And they are like that only because they have committed excesses: they drank and smoked. And when they lift an object, their hands shake (gesture). Thats what one gets by doing this.

1955-05-25 - Religion and reason - true role and field - an obstacle to or minister of the Spirit - developing and meaning - Learning how to live, the elite - Reason controls and organises life - Nature is infrarational, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Here, Sweet Mother, it is written: the intellectual reason may well be an insufficient help and find itself, not only at the end but from the beginning, out of its province and condemned to tread diffidently
  So?
  --
  A function of preparation, as I said; it is in order to prepare for something higher which is suprarational and which must come. It is a preparation. You see, he has said, one would think, it means that it is just an impression one has that its right is indisputable. It is not indisputable. He says that its province is vast, you see, that its powers are ample, that its action is more self-confident, but it always finds itself standing between the two other powers of our being, the infrarational and the suprarational. It is an intermediary to free us from the infrarational influence that of all the instincts, all the desires, all the passions, all the impulsesto free us from this domain and prepare for the coming of the suprarational one. Therefore it is an instrument of mediation, of transition, and in this intermediating in this region, it is the best master. But it cannot go further. There is a point where it loses its power. When one is ready for the suprarational intervention, well, it has to keep quiet; and if for example, by an inner development, by a yogic action you have managed to come into contact with a divine consciousness and receive inspirations from this divine consciousness, if at this moment you want to judge these inspirations by the reason, then you are sure to make stupid mistakes, because reason understands nothing of this, and it should abdicate. But you must be sure that it is truly a contact with the divine Force; and to be sure of this well, until one is sure of it, reason is very good for preventing you from deceiving yourself.
  Usually people who have a tendency for not altogether ordinary experiences find reason very troublesome; and even before being ready to surpass its action they reject it, and that is how usually they become absolutely unreasonable and end up by being half-mad. That is why, so long as you dont have an absolute certainty of having reached where you want to go, well, you must keep the reason very active in yourself in order to prevent yourself from becoming derailed. This is very, very important. One cannot dethrone reason unless the experience of the higher regions is so absolute, so true, so complete, that it compels recognition. It is not a very frequent thing. So I always advise people to keep their reason. But theres a point where it must cease having its superior rights thats to judge spiritual experience, because it cannot judge this, it does not understand it; but it must truly be a spiritual experience, not something which tries to imitate it; here an absolute sincerity is necessary. One must not deceive oneself through ambition, or indeed let oneself be deceived by any odd humbugs who come and tell you extraordinary stories in order to make you believe in their superiority.

1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - Stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    (Another disciple) I had prepared a question. (He takes the Synthesis and reads:) The central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more au thentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise.
    But this cannot be the whole scope of the transformation. For, if it were so, knowledge would still remain a working of the mind, liberated, universalised, spiritualised.

1956-06-13 - Effects of the Supramental action - Education and the Supermind - Right to remain ignorant - Concentration of mind - Reason, not supreme capacity - Physical education and studies - inner discipline - True usefulness of teachers, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And so, the aim of all those who know, whether they are teachers, instructors or any others, the very purpose of those who know, is to inform you, to help you. When you are in a situation which seems difficult to you, you put your problem and, from their personal experience, they can tell you, No, it is like this or it is like that, and you must do this, you must try that. So, instead of forcing you to absorb theories, principles and so-called laws, and a more or less abstract knowledge, they would be there to give you information about things, from the most material to the most spiritual, each one within his own province and according to his capacity.
  It is quite obvious that if you are thrown into the world without the least technical knowledge, you may do the most dangerous things. Take a child who knows nothing, the first thing he will do if he has any matches, for instance, is to burn himself. So, in that field, from the purely material point of view, it is good that there are people who know and who can inform you; for otherwise, if each one had to learn from his own experience, he would spend several lives learning the most indispensable things. That is the usefulness, the true usefulness of teachers and instructors. They have learnt more or less by practice or through a special study, and they can teach you those things it is indispensable to know. That makes you save time, a lot of time. But that is their only usefulness: to be able to answer questions. And, in fact, you should have a brain which is lively enough to ask questions. I dont know, but you never have anything to ask me or it is so seldom. But that shows a terrible mental laziness!

1f.lovecraft - Out of the Aeons, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   There was mention of a kingdom or province called Knaa in a very
   ancient land where the first human people had found monstrous ruins

1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   little fishing village of Kingsport, in the province of the
   Massachusetts-Bay.

1f.lovecraft - The Dreams in the Witch House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  hid from the King's men in the dark, olden days of the province. Nor
  was any spot in that city more steeped in macabre memory than the gable

1f.lovecraft - The Strange High House in the Mist, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   was Governor of His Majestys province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
   Then one summer there came a philosopher into Kingsport. His name was

1f.lovecraft - The Unnamable, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   possess any aesthetic significance, and that it is the province of the
   artist not so much to rouse strong emotion by action, ecstasy, and

1f.lovecraft - The Very Old Folk, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   must have been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled
   by a senatorial proconsul instead of a prtorian legate of Augustus,
  --
   That, on the other hand, the successful administration of a province
   depended primarily upon the safety and good-will of the civilised
  --
   cooperation would most firmly bind the province to the Imperium of the
   Senate and the Roman People. It was at once a duty and an advantage to

1.jkhu - A Visit to Hattoji Temple, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese Lone mountain dominating three provinces White clouds cover a green peak Summit soaring to great heights Old temple nearly a thousand years A monk meditates alone in a moonlit hall A monkey cries in the mist in an old tree Saying to worldly folk: "Come here; free yourselves of karmic dust." [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  When late this province was a lawless spoil,
  Still weep amid the wild Hungarian camp,
  --
  The province to invite your highness back
  To your high dignities, we are too happy.

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act III, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  The provinces about the Danube's mouth,
  The promise of fair soil beyond the Rhone;

1.jk - Otho The Great - Act IV, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  When they should span the provinces! A snake,
  A scorpion, sprawling on the first gold step,
  --
  One who could say, Here, rule these provinces!
  Take tribute from those cities for thyself!

1.lb - South-Folk in Cold Country, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
  Whose white head is lost for this province?
  *NOTE by Pound: "i. e., we have been warring from one end of the empire to the other, now east, now west, on each border."

1.pbs - Marenghi, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.--[MRS. SHELLEYS NOTE, 1824.]

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Now the very definition of Attraction implies particularity -the existence of parts, particles, or atoms; for we define it as the tendency of "each atom &c. to every other atom," &c. according to a certain law. Of course where there are no parts -where there is absolute Unity -where the tendency to oneness is satisfied -there can be no Attraction: -this has been fully shown, and all Philosophy admits it. When, on fulfilment of its purposes, then, Matter shall have returned into its original condition of One -a condition which presupposes the expulsion of the separative ether, whose province and whose capacity are limited to keeping the atoms apart until that great day when, this ether being no longer needed, the overwhelming pressure of the finally collective Attraction shall at length just sufficiently predominate and expel it: -when, I say, Matter, finally, expelling the Ether, shall have returned into absolute Unity, -it will then (to speak paradoxically for the moment) be Matter without Attraction and without Repulsion -in other words, Matter without Matter -in other words, again, Matter no more. In sinking into Unity, it will sink at once into that Nothingness which, to all Finite Perception, Unity must be -into that Material Nihility from which alone we can conceive it to have been evoked -to have been created by the Volition of God.
  "Gravity, therefore, must be the strongest of forces." See previous section, "Now, although the philosophic cannot be said to"

1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part III - Evening, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  How first the Austrians got these provinces . . .
  (If that is all, I'll satisfy you soon)

1.rb - Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris', #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  ``I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
  ``There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,

1.rb - Sordello - Book the Fourth, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  "No question. Fifty years the province held
  "Taurello; troubles raised, and troubles quelled,

1.rwe - Boston, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
   province to province faithful clung,
  Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,

1.rwe - May-Day, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Through tracts and provinces of sky,
  Every night alighting down

1.sfa - Exhortation to St. Clare and Her Sisters, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP & Ignatius C. Brady, OFM Original Language Italian Listen, little poor ones called by the Lord, who have come together from many parts and provinces: Live always in truth, that you may die in obedience. Do not look at the life outside, for that of the Spirit is better. I beg you through great love, to use with discretion the alms which the Lord gives you. Those who are weighed down by sickness and the others who are wearied because of them, all of you: bear it in peace. For you will sell this fatigue at a very high price and each one of you will be crowned queen in heaven with the Virgin Mary. [1495.jpg] -- from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works: The Classics of Western Spirituality, Translated by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP / Translated by Ignatius C. Brady, OFM <
1.ww - Book Second [School-Time Continued], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Split like a province into round and square?
  Who knows the individual hour in which

1.ww - Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Mounted--from province on to province swept,
  Keen hunters in a chase of fourteen weeks,

1.ww - Book Tenth {Residence in France continued], #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Wide as a province, but, the signal given,
  Before the point of the life-threatening spear

1.ww - The Excursion- V- Book Fouth- Despondency Corrected, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Its most illustrious province, must be found
  In furnishing clear guidance, a support

2.02 - Indra, Giver of Light, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Next are described the results towards which the seer aspires. With this fuller light opening on to the finalities of mental knowledge the powers of Limitation will be satisfied and of themselves will withdraw, consenting to the farther advance and to the new luminous activities. They will say, in effect, "Yes, now you have the right which we were hitherto justified in denying. Not only in the fields won already, but in other and untrod provinces pursue then your conquering march. Repose this action wholly on the divine Intelligence, not upon your lower capacities. For it is the greater surrender which gives you the greater right."
  The word arata, move or strive, like its congeners ari, arya, arya, arata, aran.i, expresses the central idea of the Veda. The root ar indicates always a movement of effort or of struggle or a state of surpassing height or excellence; it is applied to rowing, ploughing, fighting, lifting, climbing. The Aryan then is the man who seeks to fulfil himself by the Vedic action, the internal and external karma or apas, which is of the nature of a sacrifice to the gods. But it is also imaged as a journey, a march, a battle,

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: One must take the risk. Growth of consciousness cannot come without freedom. You can, of course, have certain elementary laws, and develop sanitation, spread knowledge of health and hygiene among the people. The State can provide medical aid certainly, but when one goes beyond ones province then the error comes in. To say that one can't change ones doctor, it seems to me, is a little too much. In Indian spirituality they have allowed all sorts of experiments including Vama Marga, and you see how wonderfully it has developed.
   Mechanisation has begun from the pressure exerted by the developments of the physical sciences in which one can be exact, precise and where everything is mechanical. It is tried and found to be all right so far as physical things are concerned because, if you make a mistake there, Nature knocks you on the nose and you are compelled to see your error. But the moment you deal with Life and Mind, you cannot apply the same rules. If you apply them then you may go on committing mistakes and never know it. You fail to see this because of a fixed idea which tries to fit in everything according to its own conception.

2.04 - Agni, the Illumined Will, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Powers to whose province they by right belong. Therefore the hymns repeatedly speak of the portions of the gods. It is the problem of the right arrangement and distribution of his works that
  280

2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is clear that in this analogy two quite different kinds of illusion not illustrative of each other are mistakenly put together as if they were identical in nature. All mental or sense hallucinations are really misrepresentations or misplacements or impossible combinations or false developments of things that are in themselves existent or possible or in some way within or allied to the province of the real. All mental errors and illusions are the result of an ignorance which miscombines its data or proceeds falsely upon a previous or present or possible content of knowledge. But the cosmic Illusion has no basis of actuality, it is an original and all-originating illusion; it imposes names, figures, happenings that are pure inventions on a Reality in which there never were and never will be any happenings, names or figures.
  The analogy of mental hallucination would only be applicable if we admit a Brahman without names, forms or relations and a world of names, forms and relations as equal realities imposed one upon the other, the rope in the place of the snake, or the snake in the place of the rope, - an attri bution, it might be, of the activities of the Saguna to the quiescence of the Nirguna. But if both are real, both must be either separate aspects of the Reality or co-ordinate aspects, positive and negative poles of the one

2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   any finality, - the conflict of an intuition intensely aware of an absolute transcendent and inmost Reality and a strong intellectual reason regarding the world with a keen and vigorous rational intelligence. The intellect of the thinker regards the phenomenal world from the standpoint of the reason; reason is there the judge and the authority and no suprarational authority can prevail against it: but behind the phenomenal world is a transcendent Reality which the intuition alone can see; there reason - at least a finite dividing limited reason - cannot prevail against the intuitive experience, it cannot even relate the two, it cannot therefore solve the mystery of the universe. The reason has to affirm the reality of the phenomenal existence, to affirm its truths as valid; but they are valid only in that phenomenal existence. This phenomenal existence is real because it is a temporal phenomenon of the eternal Existence, the Reality: but it is not itself that Reality and, when we pass beyond the phenomenon to the Real, it still exists but is no longer valid to our consciousness; it is therefore unreal. Shankara takes up this contradiction, this opposition which is normal to our mental consciousness when it becomes aware of both sides of existence and stands between them; he resolves it by obliging the reason to recognise its limits, in which its unimpaired sovereignty is left to it within its own cosmic province, and to acquiesce in the soul's intuition of the transcendent Reality and to support, by a dialectic which ends by dissolving the whole cosmic phenomenal and rational-practical edifice of things, its escape from the limitations constructed and imposed on the mind by Maya. The explanation of cosmic existence by which this is brought about seems to be - or so we may translate it to our understanding, for there have been different expositions of this profound and subtle philosophy, - that there is a Transcendence which is for ever self-existent and immutable and a world which is only phenomenal and temporal. The eternal Reality manifests itself in regard to the phenomenal world as Self and Ishwara. The Ishwara by his Maya, his power of phenomenal creation, constructs this world as a temporal phenomenon, and this phenomenon of things which do not exist in the utterly Real is imposed by
  Reality and the Cosmic Illusion

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: But about the spinning clause I know that even in the heyday of non-cooperation no one spun. There is also a resolution that the provinces should carry out the orders of the A.I.C.C. I wonder why that is brought forward.
   Sri Aurobindo: It is to bring Bengal under the No-changers.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  we know, and which the history of the Roman province teaches us to
  know ever more thoroughly, this most admirable work of art on a grand

2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   of an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness or else a submerged consciousness below and in a way inferior to and less than our organised waking awareness or, at least, less in possession of itself. But we find, when we go within, that somewhere in our subliminal part, - though not co-extensive with it since it has also obscure and ignorant regions, - there is a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours; that is our inner being, and it is this which we must regard as our subliminal self and set apart the subconscient as an inferior, a lowest occult province of our nature. In the same way there is a superconscient part of our total existence in which there is what we discover to be our highest self, and this too we can set apart as a higher occult province of our nature.
  But what then is the subconscient and where does it begin and how is it related to our surface being or to the subliminal of which it would seem more properly to be a province? We are aware of our body and know that we have a physical existence, even very largely identify ourselves with it, and yet most of its operations are really subconscious to our mental being; not only does the mind take no part in them but, as we suppose, our most physical being has no awareness of its own hidden operations or, by itself, of its own existence; it knows or rather feels only so much of itself as is enlightened by mind-sense and observable by intelligence. We are aware of a vitality working in this bodily form and structure as in the plant or lower animal, a vital existence which is also for the most part subconscious to us, for we only observe some of its movements and reactions. We are partly aware of its operations, but not by any means of all or most of them, and rather of those which are abnormal than those which are normal; its wants impress themselves more forcibly upon us than its satisfactions, its diseases and disorders than its health and its regular rhythm, its death is more poignant to us than its life is vivid: we know as much of it as we can consciously observe and use or as much as forces itself upon us by pain and pleasure and other sensations or as a cause of nervous or
  The Boundaries of the Ignorance

2.1.4 - The Lower Vital Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The supramental creation, since it is to be a creation upon earth, must be not only an inner change but a physical and external manifestation also. And it is precisely for this part of the work, the most difficult of all, that surrender is most needful; for this reason, that it is the actual descent of the supramental Divine into Matter and the working of the Divine Presence and Power there that can alone make the physical and external change possible. Even the most powerful self-assertion of human will and endeavour is impotent to bring it about; as for egoistic insistence and vital revolt, they are, so long as they last, insuperable obstacles to the descent. Only a calm, pure and surrendered physical consciousness, full of the psychic aspiration, can be its field; this alone can make an effective opening of the material being to the Light and Power and the supramental change a thing actual and practicable. It is for this that we are here in the body, and it is for this that you and other sadhaks are in the Asram near us. But it is not by insistence on petty demands and satisfactions in the external field or on an outer nearness pleasing to the vital nature and its pride or desire that you can get the true relation with the Divine in this province. If you want the realisation there, it is the true nearness that you must seek, the descent and presence of the Mother in your physical consciousness, her constant inner touch in the physical being and its activities, her will and knowledge behind all its work and thought and movement and the ever present Ananda of that presence expelling all vital and physical separateness, craving and desire. If you have that, then you have all the nearness you can ask for and the rest you will gladly leave to the Mothers knowledge and will to decide. For with this in you there can be no feeling of being kept away, no sense of gulf and distance, no complaint of a unity that is lacking or an empty dryness and denial of nearness.
  A time comes when after a long preparation of the mind and vital being, it becomes necessary to open also the physical nature. But when that happens, very often the vital exaltation which can be very great when the experience is on its own plane, falls away and the obscure, obstructive physical and material consciousness appears in its unrelieved inertia. Inertia, tamas, stupidity, narrowness and limitation, an inability to progress, doubt, dullness, dryness, a constant forgetfulness of the spiritual experiences received are the characteristics of the unregenerated physical nature, when that is not pushed by the vital and is not supported either by the higher mental will and intelligence. This seems to be in part what has temporarily happened to you, but the way out is not to excite the physical by any vital revolt and outcry or to blame for your condition either circumstances or the Mother,for that will only make things worse and increase the tamas, dryness, dullness, inertia,but to recognise that there is here an element of the universal Nature reflected in yours which you must eliminate. And this can only be done by more and more surrender and aspiration and by so bringing in from beyond the vital and the mind the divine peace, light, power and presence. This is the only way towards the transformation and fulfilment of the physical nature.

2.1.5.2 - Languages, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Hindi is good only for those who belong to a Hindi-speaking province. Sanskrit is good for all Indians.
  ***

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But it is evident that this solution cannot be accepted in its rigour, as it has no integrality in it but looks at only one side of existence, even only one province or district of existence, and leaves all the rest unexplained, without inherent reality, without significance. If pushed to its extreme, it would give to a stone or a plum-pudding a greater reality and to thought, love, courage, genius, greatness, the human soul and mind facing an obscure and dangerous world and getting mastery over it an inferior dependent reality or even an unsubstantial and evanescent reality. For in this view these things so great to our subjective vision are valid only as the reactions of an objective material being to an objective material existence; they are valid only in so far as they deal with objective realities and make themselves effective upon them: the soul, if it exists, is only a circumstance of an objectively real world-Nature. But it could be held, on the contrary, that the objective assumes value only as it has a relation to the soul; it is a field, an occasion, a means for the soul's progression in Time: the objective is created as a ground of manifestation for the subjective. The objective world is only an outward form of becoming of the Spirit; it is here a first form, a basis, but it is not the essential thing, the main truth of being. The subjective and objective are two necessary sides of the manifested Reality and of equal value, and in the range of the objective itself the supraphysical object of consciousness has as much right to acceptance as the physical objectivity; it cannot be a priori set aside as a subjective delusion or hallucination.
  In fact, subjectivity and objectivity are not independent realities, they depend upon each other; they are the Being, through consciousness, looking at itself as subject on the object and the same Being offering itself to its own consciousness as object to the subject. The more partial view concedes no substantive reality to anything which exists only in the consciousness, or, to put it more accurately, to anything to which the inner consciousness or sense bears testimony but which the outer physical senses do not provide with a ground or do not substantiate. But the outer senses can bear a reliable evidence only when they refer their version of the object to the consciousness and that consciousness gives a significance to their report, adds to its externality its own internal intuitive interpretation and justifies it by a reasoned adherence; for the evidence of the senses is always by itself imperfect, not altogether reliable and certainly not final, because it is incomplete and constantly subject to error. Indeed, we have no means of knowing the objective universe except by our subjective consciousness of which the physical senses themselves are instruments; as the world appears not only to that but in that, so it is to us. If we deny reality to the evidence of this universal witness for subjective or for supraphysical objectivities, there is no sufficient reason to concede reality to its evidence for physical objectivities; if the inner or the supraphysical objects of consciousness are unreal, the objective physical universe has also every chance of being unreal. In each case understanding, discrimination, verification are necessary; but the subjective and the supraphysical must have another method of verification than that which we apply successfully to the physical and external objective. Subjective experience cannot be referred to the evidence of the external senses; it has its own standards of seeing and its inner method of verification: so also supraphysical realities by their very nature cannot be referred to the judgment of the physical or sense mind except when they project themselves into the physical, and even then that judgment is often incompetent or subject to caution; they can only be verified by other senses and by a method of scrutiny and affirmation which is applicable to their own reality, their own nature.

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Sir Akbar's is as good as any. My idea is like what Tagore once wrote. There may be one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure a continuity of policy and an assembly representative of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation, united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local problems. Mussolini started with the fundamentals of the Indian system but afterwards began bullying and bluffing other nations for the sake of imperialism. If he had persisted in his original idea, he would have been a great creator.
   Disciple: Dr. Bhagwandas suggested that there should be legislators above the age of forty, completely disinterested like the Rishis.
  --
   The Congress at the present stage what is it but a Fascist organisation? Gandhi is the dictator, like Stalin I wont say like Hitler. What Gandhi says they accept and even the Working Committee follows him. Then it goes to A.I.C.C. which adopts it and then the Congress. There is no opportunity for any difference of opinion except for Socialists who are allowed to differ. Whatever resolutions the Congress passes are obligatory on all the provinces whether the resolutions suit them or not. There is no room for any other independent opinion. Everything is fixed up before and the people are only allowed to talk over it like in Stalin's Duma. When we started the movement, we began with the idea of throwing out the Congress oligarchy and opening the whole organisation to the general mass.
   Disciple: Srinivas Aiyangar retired from Congress because of his differences with Gandhi. He objected to Gandhi's giving the movement a religious turn and bringing religion into politics.
  --
   Disciple: It failed in agricultural provinces and seems to have succeeded in other places, especially where people had no occupation.
   Disciple: In Bengal it didn't succeed.

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: It seems he objected strongly to armed volunteers keeping watch over him while he was in the Frontier province.
   Sri Aurobindo: And what should they do in case there was an attack? Stand around simply?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Technical, agricultural and other. Without properly educated and trained people, how will they develop industries etc.? India is such a vast country that she can produce all her own necessary things. External trade is not necessary at the beginning. That is what the U.S.A. did. She developed first her internal trade to meet all the necessities of her own people; and when by that means she had increased her wealth she began to develop external trade. The government should have a plan for the economic survey of the provinces to see what are the products necessary for consumption in India.
   Disciple: That is one good thing Bose has done; he has organised an economic planning committee.

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: He used to sell plots of land to customers through his agents and kept some of the best ones for himself. There were similar charges against some Ministers in the Central provinces.
   Disciple: Though people bitterly criticize the High Command, it has done a good job.

2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:The ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after the hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of practice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism, -- we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these things do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us arid the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner. In India,428a Egypt, Chaldea, China, Greece, the Celtic countries they have formed part of various Yogic systems and disciplines which had once a great hold everywhere, but to the modern mind have seemed mere superstition and mysticism, although the facts and experiences on which they are founded are quite as real in their own field and as much governed by intelligible laws of their own as the facts and experiences of the material world. It is not our intention here to plunge into this vast and difficult field of psychical knowledge.428b But it becomes necessary now to deal with certain broad facts and principles which form its framework, for without them our Yoga of knowledge cannot be complete. We find that in the various systems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are considerable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as is natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and difficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made all-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain fields of experience which are in one system held to be merely subordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms. But I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic arrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads, first because it seems to me at once the simplest and most philosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its basis the three principles of our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle of vijnana, supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier of seven planes, -- sometimes regarded as five only, because, only the lower five are wholly accessible to us, -- through which the developing being can rise to its perfection.
  4:But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general-settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which an universal existence has created or established between itself, or let us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its becoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of the becoming is what we call soul or Purusha, individual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the principle and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or prakriti. But since being, conscious-force and delight of being are always the three constituent terms of existence, the nature of a world is really determined by the way in which prakriti is set to deal with these three primary things and the forms which it is allowed to give to them. For existence itself is and must always be the stuff of its own becoming; it must be shaped into the substance with which Force has to deal. Force again must be the power which works out that substance and works with it to whatever ends; Force is that which we ordinarily call Nature. Again the end, the object with which the worlds are created must be worked out by the consciousness inherent in all existence and all force and all their workings, and the object must be the possession of itself and of its delight of existence in the world. To that all the circumstances and aims of any world-existence must reduce themselves; it is existence developing its terms of being, its power of being, its conscious delight of being; if these are involved, their evolution; if they are veiled, their self-revelation.

2.2.03 - The Science of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures just as it [is] not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer to observe and know only those movements and properties of the stars that are visible to the unaided eye. Here as there a whole world of occult phenomena have to be laid bare and brought under control before the psychologist can hope to be master of his province.
  Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves, is only the little visible part of our being. It is a small field below which are depths and farther depths and widths and ever wider widths which support and supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being, - what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature.
  --
  And the Inconscient is not all. For behind our little frontal ego and nature is a whole subliminal kingdom of inner consciousness with many planes and provinces. There are in that kingdom many powers, movements, personalities which are part of ourselves and help to form our little surface personality and its powers and movements. This inner self, these inner persons we do not know, but they know us and observe and dictate our speech, our thoughts, feelings, doings even more directly than the Inconscient below us.
  318

2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: The Hindu Mahasabha this year has got a larger number of delegates from Bengal and Punjab than from the other provinces.
   Sri Aurobindo: From the two provinces which are most oppressed under Muslim majority.
   Disciple: Do you think that the Hindu Mahasabha, if it is organised, would weaken the Congress?

2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yet behind every great religion, behind, that is to say, its exoteric side of faith, hope, symbols, scattered truths and limiting dogmas, there is an esoteric side of inner spiritual training and illumination by which the hidden truths may be known, worked out, possessed. Behind every exoteric religion there is an esoteric Yoga, an intuitive knowledge to which its faith is the first step, inexpressible realities of which its symbols are the figured expression, a deeper sense for its scattered truths, mysteries of the higher planes of existence of which even its dogmas and superstitions are crude hints and indications. What Science does for our knowledge of the material world, replacing first appearances and uses by tile hidden truths and as yet occult powers of its great natural forces and in our own minds beliefs and opinions by verified experience and a profounder understanding. Yoga does for the higher planes and worlds and possibilities of our being which are aimed at by the religions. Therefore all this mass of graded experience existing behind closed doors to which the consciousness of man may find, if it wills, the key, falls within the province of a comprehensive Yoga of knowledge, which need not be confined to the seeking after the Absolute alone or the knowledge of the Divine in itself or of the Divine only in its isolated relations with the individual human soul. It is true that the consciousness of the Absolute is the highest reach of the Yoga of knowledge and that the possession of the Divine is its first, greatest arid most ardent object and that to neglect it for an inferior knowledge is to afflict our Yoga with inferiority or even frivolity and to miss or fall away from its characteristic object; but, the Divine in itself being known, the Yoga of knowledge may well embrace also the knowledge of the Divine in its relations with ourselves and the world on the different planes of our existence. To rise to the pure Self-being steadfastly held to as the summit of our subjective self-uplifting, we may from that height possess our lower selves even to the physical and the workings of Nature which belong to them.
  We may seek this knowledge on two sides separately, the side of Purusha, the side of prakriti; and we may combine the two for the perfect possession of the various relations of Purusha and prakriti in the light of the Divine. There is, says the Upanishad, a fivefold soul in man and the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The physical soul, self or being, -- Purusha, Atman, -- is that of which we are all at first conscious, a self which seems to have hardly any existence apart from the body and no action vital or even mental independent of it. This physical soul is present everywhere in material Nature, it pervades the body, actuates obscurely its movements and is the whole basis of its experiences; it informs all things even that are not mentally conscious. But in man this physical being has become vitalised and mentalised; it has received something of the law and capacities of the vital and mental being and nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed, as it were, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to the law and action of the physical existence and its instruments. It is this dominance of our mental and vital parts by the body and the physical nature which seems at first sight to justify the theory of the materialists that mind and life are only circumstances and results of physical force and all their operations explicable by the activities of that force in the animal body. In fact, entire subjection of the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped humanity, as it is in an even greater degree of the infra-human animal. According to the theory of reincarnation those who do not get beyond this stage in the earthly life, cannot rise after death to the mental or higher vital worlds, but have to return from the confines of a series of physical planes to increase their development In the next earthly existence. For the undeveloped physical soul is entirely dominated by material nature and its impressions and has to work them out to a better advantage before it can rise in the scale of being.

2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  IF A spiritual evolution of consciousness in the material world and a constant or repeated rebirth of the individual into an earthly body are admitted, the next question that arises is whether this evolutionary movement is something separate and complete in itself or part of a larger universal totality of which the material world is only one province. This question has already its answer implied in the gradations of the involution which precede the evolution and make it possible; for, if that precedence is a fact, there must be worlds or at least planes of higher being and they must have some connection with the evolution which has been made possible by their existence. It may be that all they do for us is by their effective presence or pressure on the earth-consciousness to liberate the involved principles of life and mind and spirit and enable them to manifest and assert their reign in material Nature. But it would be in the highest degree improbable that the connection and intervention should cease there; there is likely to be a sustained, if veiled, commerce between material life and the life of the other planes of existence. It is necessary now to look more closely into this problem, regard it in itself and determine the nature and limits of this connection and intercommunication, in so far as it affects the theory of evolution and rebirth in material Nature.
  The descent of the Soul into the Ignorance can be thought of as an abrupt precipitation or immediate lapse of a pure spiritual being out of the superconscient spiritual Reality into the first inconscience and the subsequent evolving phenomenal life of material Nature. If that were so, there might be the Absolute above and the Inconscient below, with the material world created out of it, and the issue, the return back would then be a similar abrupt or precipitous transit from a material embodied world-being into the transcendent Silence. There would be no intermediate powers or realities other than Matter and Spirit, no other planes than the material, no other worlds than the world of Matter. But this idea is too trenchant and simple a construction and cannot outlive a wider view of the complex nature of existence.
  --
  At the same time there are some elements in our subliminal experience which raise a point of question against any invariable priority of the other worlds to the material existence. One such indication is that in the vision of after-death experience there is a persistent tradition of residence in conditions which seem to be a supraphysical prolongation of earth-conditions, earth-nature, earth-experience. Another is that, in the life-worlds especially, we find formulations which seem to resemble the inferior movements of earth-existence; here are already embodied the principles of darkness, falsehood, incapacity and evil which we have supposed to be consequent upon the evolution out of the material Inconscience. It seems even to be the fact that the vital worlds are the natural home of the Powers that most disturb human life; this is indeed logical, for it is through our vital being that they sway us and they must therefore be powers of a larger and more powerful life-existence. The descent of Mind and Life into evolution need not have created any such untoward developments of the limitation of being and consciousness: for this descent is in its nature a limitation of knowledge; existence and cognition and delight of being confine themselves in a lesser truth and good and beauty and its inferior harmony, and move according to that law of a narrower light, but in such a movement darkness and suffering and evil are not obligatory phenomena. If we find them existing in these worlds of other mind and other life, even though not pervading it but only occupying their separate province, we must either conclude that they have come into existence by a projection out of the inferior evolution, upward from below, by something in the subliminal parts of Nature bursting there into a larger formation of the evil created here, or that they were already created as part of a parallel gradation to the involutionary descent, a gradation forming a stair for evolutionary ascension towards Spirit just as the involutionary was a stair of the descent of the Spirit. In the latter hypothesis the ascending gradation might have a double purpose. For it would contain pre-formations of the good and evil that must evolve in the earth as part of the struggle necessary for the evolutionary growth of the Soul in Nature; these would be formations existing for themselves, for their own independent satisfaction, formations that would present the full type of these things, each in its separate nature, and at the same time they would exercise on evolutionary beings their characteristic influence.
  These worlds of a larger life would then hold in themselves both the more luminous and the darker formations of our world's life in a medium in which they could arrive freely at their independent expression, their own type's full freedom and natural completeness and harmony for good or for evil, - if indeed that distinction applies in these ranges, - a completeness and independence impossible here in our existence where all is mingled in the complex interaction necessary to the field of a many-sided evolution leading towards a final integration. For we find what we call false, dark or evil seems there to have a truth of its own and to be entirely content with its own type because it possesses that in a full expression which creates in it a sense of a satisfied power of its own being, an accord, a complete adaptation of all its circumstances to its principle of existence; it enjoys there its own consciousness, its own self-power, its own delight of being, obnoxious to our minds but to itself full of the joy of satisfied desire. Those life impulses which are to earth-nature inordinate and out of measure and appear here as perverse and abnormal, find in their own province of being an independent fulfilment and an unrestricted play of their type and principle. What is to us divine or titanic, Rakshasic, demoniac and therefore supernatural, is, each in its own domain, normal to itself and gives to the beings that embody these things the feeling of self-nature and the harmony of their own principle. Discord itself, struggle, incapacity, suffering enter into a certain kind of life-satisfaction which would feel itself baulked or deficient without them. When these powers are seen in their isolated working, building their own life-edifices, as they do in those secret worlds where they dominate, we perceive more clearly their origin and reason of existence and the reason also for the hold they have on human life and the attachment of man to his own imperfections, to his life-drama of victory and failure, happiness and suffering, laughter and tears, sin and virtue. Here on earth these things exist in an unsatisfied and therefore unsatisfactory and obscure state of struggle and mixture, but there reveal their secret and their motive of being because they are there established in their native power and full form of nature in their own world and their own exclusive atmosphere. Man's heavens and hells or worlds of light and worlds of darkness, however imaginative in their building, proceed from a perception of these powers existing in their own principle and throwing their influences on him in life from a beyond-life which provides the elements of his evolutionary existence.
  In the same way as the powers of Life are self-founded, perfect and full in a greater Life beyond us, so too the powers of Mind, its ideas and principles that influence our earth-being, are found to have in the greater Mind-world their own field of fullness of self-nature, while here in human existence they throw out only partial formations which have much difficulty in establishing themselves because of their meeting and mixture with other powers and principles; this meeting, this mixture curbs their completeness, alloys their purity, disputes and defeats their influence. These other worlds, then, are not evolutionary, but typal; but it is one though not the sole reason of their existence that they provide things that must arise in the involutionary manifestation as well as things thrown up in the evolution with a field of satisfaction of their own significance where they can exist in their own right; this established condition is a base from which their functions and workings can be cast as elements into the complex process of evolutionary Nature.

2.2.1 - The Prusna Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  other breaths each in his province.
  Prashna Upanishad
  --
  staying and his lordship in the five provinces, likewise his
  relation to the Spirit, one shall taste immortality.' "

2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But there are also the true vital worlds, - original constructions, organised developments, native habitats of the universal life-principle, the cosmic vital Anima, acting in its own field and in its own nature. On his internatal journey he may be held there for a period by force of the predominantly vital character of the influences which have shaped his earthly existence, - for these influences are native to the vital world and their hold on him would detain him for a while in their proper province: he may be kept in the grasp of that which held him in its grasp even in the physical being. Any residence of the soul in annexes or in its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the consciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical state; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical Nature. It may enter at once into the worlds of other-life, or it may remain first, as a transitional stage, in some region of subtle-physical experience whose surroundings may seem to it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual-mental planes to which the soul seems to have an internatal access and into which it may pursue its internatal journey; but it is not likely to live consciously there if there has not been a sufficient mental or soul development in this life. For these levels must normally be the highest the evolving being can internatally inhabit, since one who has not gone beyond the mental rung in the ladder of being would not be able to ascend to any supramental or overmental state; or if he had so developed as to overleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for him to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation of an overmental or supramental life in Matter.
  But, even so, the mental worlds are not likely to be the last normal stage of the after-death passage; for man is not entirely mental: it is the soul, the psychic being, and not the mind, that is the traveller between death and birth, and the mental being is only a predominant element in the figure of its self-expression.

2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we look at the past, we can still see the evidences of this line of natural evolution, although most of its earlier stages are hidden from us in the unwritten pages of prehistory. It has been contended that religion in its beginnings was nothing but a mass of animism, fetishism, magic, totemism, taboo, myth, superstitious symbol, with the medicine-man as priest, a mental fungus of primitive human ignorance, - later on at its best a form of Nature-worship. It could well have been so in the primitive mind, though we have to add the proviso that behind much of its beliefs and practices there may have been a truth of an inferior but very effective kind that we have lost with our superior development. Primitive man lives much in a low and small province of his life-being, and this corresponds on the occult plane to an invisible Nature which is of a like character and whose occult powers can be called into activity by a knowledge and methods to which the lower vital intuitions and instincts may open a door of access. This might be formulated in a first stage of religious belief and practice which would be occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its character and interests, not yet spiritual; its main element would be a calling in of small lifepowers and elemental beings to the aid of small life-desires and a rude physical welfare.
  But this primitive stage, - if it is indeed such and not, in what we still see of it, a fall or a vestige, a relapse from a higher knowledge belonging to a previous cycle of civilisation or the debased remnants of a dead or obsolete culture, - can have been only a beginning. It was followed, after whatever stages, by the more advanced type of religion of which we have a record in the literature or surviving documents of the early civilised peoples. This type, composed of a polytheistic belief and worship, a cosmology, a mythology, a complexus of ceremonies, practices, ritual and ethical obligations interwoven sometimes deeply into the social system, was ordinarily a national or tribal religion intimately expressive of the stage of evolution of thought and life reached by the community. In the outer structure we still miss the support of a deeper spiritual significance, but this gap was filled in in the greater more developed cultures by a strong background of occult knowledge and practices or else by carefully guarded mysteries with a first element of spiritual wisdom and discipline.
  --
  Occultism is in its essence man's effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and potentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical limits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour to establish communication with worlds and entities belonging to the supraphysical heights, depths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise this communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his will to make himself sovereign over Nature's powers and forces. This human aspiration takes its stand on the belief, intuition or intimation that we are not mere creatures of the mud, but souls, minds, wills that can know all the mysteries of this and every world and become not only Nature's pupils but her adepts and masters. The occultist sought to know the secret of physical things also and in this effort he furthered astronomy, created chemistry, gave an impulse to other sciences, for he utilised geometry also and the science of numbers; but still more he sought to know the secrets of supernature. In this sense occultism might be described as the science of the supernatural; but it is in fact only the discovery of the supraphysical, the surpassing of the material limit, - the heart of occultism is not the impossible chimera which hopes to go beyond or outside all force of Nature and make pure phantasy and arbitrary miracle omnipotently effective. What seems to us supernatural is in fact either a spontaneous irruption of the phenomena of other-Nature into physical Nature or, in the work of the occultist, a possession of the knowledge and power of the higher orders or grades of cosmic Being and Energy and the direction of their forces and processes towards the production of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of interconnection and means for a material effectuality. There are powers of the mind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature's present systematisation of mind and life in matter, but are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought in and added to the present systematisation so as to enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on the minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces. The modern admission of hypnotism is an example of such a discovery and systematised application, - though still narrow and limited, limited by its method and formula, - of occult powers which otherwise touch us only by a casual or a hidden action whose process is unknown to us or imperfectly caught by a few; for we are all the time undergoing a battery of suggestions, thought suggestions, impulse suggestions, will suggestions, emotional and sensational suggestions, thought waves, life waves that come on us or into us from others or from the universal Energy, but act and produce their effects without our knowledge. A systematised endeavour to know these movements and their law and possibilities, to master and use the power or Nature-force behind them or to protect ourselves from them would fall within one province of occultism: but it would only be a small part even of that province; for wide and multiple are the possible fields, uses, processes of this vast range of little explored Knowledge.
  In modern times, as physical Science enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of Nature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism receded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real and mind and life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis, believing material Energy to be the key of all things, Science has attempted to move towards a control of mind and life processes by a knowledge of the material instrumentation and process of our normal and abnormal mind and life functionings and activities; the spiritual is ignored as only one form of mentality. It may be observed in passing that if this endeavour succeeded, it might not be without danger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other scientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which underlie and sustain our existence. Occultism in the West could be thus easily pushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and a philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the romance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major effort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernormal powers. It deviated into magic white and black or into a romantic or thaumaturgic paraphernalia of occult mysticism and the exaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These tendencies and this insecurity of mental foundation made it difficult to defend and easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour: this ampler maturity can be seen still intact in the remarkable system of the Tantras; it was not only a many-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult elements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual discipline and self-realisation. For the highest occultism is that which discovers the secret movements and dynamic supernormal possibilities of mind and life and spirit and uses them in their native force or by an applied process for the greater effectivity of our mental, vital and spiritual being.

2.26 - Samadhi, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The importance of Samadhi rests upon the truth which modern knowledge is rediscovering, but which has never been lost in Indian psychology, that only a small part whether of world-being or of our own being comes into our ken or into our action. The rest is hidden behind in subliminal reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications. The old Indian psychology expressed this fact by dividing consciousness into three provinces, waking state, dream-state, sleep-state, jagrat, svarna, susupti; and it supposed in the human being a waking self, a dream-self, a sleep-self, with the supreme or absolute self of being, the fourth or Turiya, beyond, of which all these are derivations for the enjoyment of relative experience in the world.
  If we examine the phraseology of the old books, we shall find that the waking state is the consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a condition of dreamless sleep. The Turiya beyond is the consciousness of our pure self-existence or our absolute being with which we have no direct relations at all, whatever mental reflections we may receive in our dream or our waking or even, irrecoverably, in our sleep consciousness. This fourfold scale corresponds to the degrees of the ladder of being by which we climb back towards the absolute Divine. Normally therefore we cannot get back from the physical mind to the higher planes or degrees of consciousness without receding from the waking state, without going in and away from it and losing touch with the material world. Hence to those who desire to have the experience of these higher degrees, trance becomes a desirable thing, a means of escape from the limitations of the physical mind and nature.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This makes it difficult for the mind to go beyond itself, to exceed its own level and spiritualise the nature; for what it cannot even make fully conscious, cannot securely mentalise and rationalise, it cannot spiritualise, since spiritualisation is a greater and more difficult integration. No doubt, by calling in the spiritual force, it can establish an influence and a preliminary change in some parts of the nature, especially in the thinking mind itself and in the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits and what it does achieve is rare and difficult. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means and, even though it brings in a divine light into the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the life, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for the most part it can only regulate or check the lower action of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native to the spiritual consciousness and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon the members.
  But even this intervention of a new dynamic principle and this powerful imposition may take long to succeed; for the lower parts of the being have their own rights and, if they are to be truly transformed, they must be made to consent to their own transformation. This is difficult to bring about because the natural propensity of each part of us is to prefer its own selflaw, its dharma, however inferior, to a superior law or dharma which it feels to be not its own; it clings to its own consciousness or unconsciousness, its own impulsions and reactions, its own dynamisation of being, its own way of the delight of existence.

2.2.7.01 - Some General Remarks, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I am keeping Krishnaprems letter. I dont know that it is very advisable for me to give my view: if I do so I will try to restrict myself to general considerations about poetry and literature. I will only say that my opinions about this poetry or yours or Amals or Arjavas are personal to myself and nobody need attach any value to them if his own do not agree. As they are personal, what others think, however eminent they may be, cannot make any difference. I experience a certain beauty, power or charm, an expression of things I feel and know in the occult or spiritual province with what seems to me a great or a sufficient breath of poetry in it. I do not expect all or many to share my feeling and I do not need it. I can understand Krishnaprems strictures or his reservations (without endorsing, refuting or qualifying them) but I have had the same view about very great poets like Shelley or Spenser at one time, so that does not seriously touch my feeling that this is poetry of beauty and value. Also I do not make comparisons I take it by itself as a thing apart in its own province. I know of course that my old schoolfellow Binyon and others in England have spoken in this connection of Keats and Shelley; but I do not myself feel the need of that comparative valuation. After all one can only give ones own view of contemporary poetry,we must leave it to Tagores viva-mnava (posterity?) to decide.
  29 December 1934

2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of earthly nature that is ready for the change, so now there will be established on earth a gnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth-nature that is ready for this new transformation. It will also receive into itself from above, progressively, from its own domain of perfect light and power and beauty all that is ready to descend from that domain into terrestrial being. For the evolution proceeded in the past by the The Gnostic Being upsurging, at each critical stage, of a concealed Power from its involution in the Inconscience, but also by a descent from above, from its own plane, of that Power already self-realised in its own higher natural province. In all these previous stages there has been a division between surface self and consciousness and subliminal self and consciousness; the surface was formed mainly under the push of the upsurging force from below, by the Inconscient developing a slowly emergent formulation of a concealed force of the spirit, the subliminal partly in this way but mainly by a simultaneous influx of the largeness of the same force from above: a mental or a vital being descended into the subliminal parts and formed from its secret station there a mental or a vital personality on the surface. But before the supramental change can begin, the veil between the subliminal and the surface parts must have been already broken down; the influx, the descent will be in the entire consciousness as a whole, it will not take place partly behind a veil: the process will be no longer a concealed, obscure and ambiguous procedure but an open outflowering consciously felt and followed by the whole being in its transmutation. In other respects the process will be identical, - a supramental inflow from above, the descent of a gnostic being into the nature, and an emergence of the concealed supramental force from below; the influx and the unveiling between them will remove what is left of the nature of the Ignorance. The rule of the Inconscient will disappear: for the Inconscience will be changed by the outburst of the greater secret Consciousness within it, the hidden Light, into what it always was in reality, a sea of the secret Superconscience. A first formation of a gnostic consciousness and nature will be the consequence.
  The creation of a supramental being, nature, life on earth, will not be the sole result of this evolution; it will also carry with it the consummation of the steps that have led up to it: for it will confirm in possession of terrestrial birth the overmind, the intuition and the other gradations of the spiritual natureforce and establish a race of gnostic beings and a hierarchy, a shining ladder of ascending degrees and successive constituent formations of the gnostic light and power in earth-nature. For the description of gnosis applies to all consciousness that is based upon Truth of being and not upon the Ignorance or Nescience.

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mind as a supramental province. Mind also when flooded by the Overmind lights feels itself living in a surprising revelation of divine Truth. The difficulty comes when we deal with the vital and still more with the physical. Then it becomes imperative to face the difficulty and to make a sharp distinction between
  Overmind and Supermind - for it then becomes evident that the Overmind Power (in spite of its lights and splendours) is not sufficient to overcome the Ignorance because it is itself under the law of Division out of which came the Ignorance. One has to pass beyond and supramentalise Overmind so that mind and all the rest may undergo the final change.

2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I mean by the psychic the inmost soul-being and the soul nature. This is not the sense in which the word is used in ordinary parlance, or rather, if it is so used, it is with great vagueness and much misprision of the true nature of this soul and it is given a wide extension of meaning which carries it far beyond that province. All phenomena of an abnormal or supernormal psychological or an occult character are dubbed psychic; if a man has a double personality changing from one to another, if an apparition of a dying man, something of his mere vital sheath or else a thought-form of him, appears and stalks through the room of his wondering friend, if a poltergeist kicks up an unseemly row in a house, all that is classed under psychic phenomena and regarded as a fit object for psychic research, though these things have nothing whatever to do with the psyche. Again much in
  Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or subtle physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed, often shadowy, often illusory range of experiences which belong to this intervening country between the soul and its superficial instruments or rather to its outermost fringes, all the chaos of the intermediate zone, is summed up as psychic and considered as an inferior and dubious province of spiritual discovery. Again there is a constant confusion between the mentalised desire-soul which is a creation of the vital urge in man, of his life-force seeking for its fulfilment and the true soul which is a spark of the Divine Fire, a portion of the Divine.
  Because the soul, the psychic being uses the mind and the vital as well as the body as instruments for growth and experience it is itself looked at as if it were some amalgam or some subtle substratum of mind and life. But in Yoga if we accept all this chaotic mass as soul-stuff or soul-movement we shall enter into a confusion without an issue. All that belongs only to the coverings of the soul; the soul itself is an inner divinity greater than mind

2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is the universal physical consciousness of Nature and there is our own which is a part of it, moved by it, and used by the central being for the support of its expression in the physical world and for a direct dealing with all these external objects and movements and forces. This physical consciousness plane receives from the other planes their powers and influences and makes formations of them in its own province. Therefore we have a physical mind as well as a vital mind and the mind proper; we have a vital physical part in us - the nervous being - as well as the vital proper; and both are largely conditioned by the gross material bodily part which is almost entirely subconscient to our experience.
  The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it is sceptical of the existence of supraphysical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue; even when it has spiritual experiences, it forgets them easily, loses the impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one object of this Yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.

31.01 - The Heart of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   These words are not merely a hyperbole or an emotional outburst of blind faith. The truth embodied in these words will not only be felt in the core but will be felt at every step by all those who have left Bengal .and have become familiar with other provinces and countries. Such green, fertile and graceful land can hardly be seen to the same extent elsewhere. Water springs out from the soil of Bengal at a mere scratch, as it were. The peasantry of Bengal can produce a bumper crop by the sheer touch of their plowshare. Such is the soil on which Bengal is founded.
   And then, who have been born there, who have grown there, and which is the race that migrated there? In the Bengalis the blood of the Aryans and the Dravidians has perfectly blended. We do not actually know how much the
  --
   In the nerves, the mind and the vital of the Bengalis, there is flexibility in a good sense or instability in a bad sense. This is why there is the possibility of a new creation in them. They are not yet able to conform their soul to a cut and dried way of life. No tradition has taken a deep root in them. There is so much want of pure blood in this race and the river-bed of this province changes so often that the immobile tower of past glory cannot weigh heavily upon it.
   Therefore there is a vacuity, a gap through which the impulse of new creation can constantly come in. In fact, it has happened so. No other province can compete with Bengal in new and brilliant contri butions to the modern age. There is a transparency in the nature of Bengal, so the influence of the spiritual world, the ideal world above, has manifested itself there more than anywhere else. We admit that for want of general strength the result has not been quite satisfactory in a good many cases, but the influence of the Light above has been responsible for the new creation.
   The wealth of Bengal is the wealth of her soul from above. Bengalis are not skilful in work and their special quality is not a calm, clear and firm thinking power; but there is an urge in their action and an imaginativeness in their thoughts. Bengalis do not work and think for their own sake. They think and act unawares, as it were. A deep realisation and an unknown urge possess and overwhelm their whole being. Bengalis are a race of artists. A deep sense of delight from the soul regulates and dyes all their faculties and creations, and their life itself. They are not active in order to follow and fulfil a particular aim or purpose. Their actions, to a great extent, have no motive, but are for the mere joy of creation and the appreciation of beauty. They want independence of the Mother country, not for the sake of good food and drink. This thought does not arise in their minds at all. They want freedom in order to make their beautiful country more beautiful. This is the thing that is dearest to their hearts. They do not understand well their own conveniences and necessities. Nothing can move them save beauty and emotion. The poets of Bengal have far exceeded her politicians in greatness.
  --
   Another touchstone of beauty is woman. Women of beauty abound more in other parts of India, but Bengal owns graceful women. Some unknown versifier, while describing the special qualities of the beauties of the different provinces of India, remarked that the beauty of teeth is the speciality of the women of Bengal. The famous poet Jayadeva also was enamoured of the lustre of the shining teeth of the Bengali women. We may not be consciously aware of it, but there is a grace and a charm on the faces of the women of Bengal. Faultless beauty in the formation of the body may be absent there, but it will remind us of the words in The Song of Solomon, I am black but comely. The soft, pliant, graceful and mobile ways of life and character are reflected on the faces of the Bengali women. In the structure of the Bengalis, the statuesqueness of the Greeks is not to be found, but there is gracefulness and charm. And what is this gracefulness? Bergson has given a nice explanation to the effect:
   The soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness.
  --
   Bengal, the wet and fertile land, has the power to appreciate the essence of the supreme Delight more than any other province. The creations of Bengal are but the creations of Delight. We do not know if the Bengalis are the "sons of Immortalily" (amrtasya putrah),but they are undoubtedly the children of Delight. The inspiration of their works does not derive from a dry sense of duty or from stern discipline. There is hardly any place for austerities in the temperament of the Bengalis. They cannot accept from the bottom of their hearts the stoic ideal of Mahatma Gandhi. Rabindranath is the model of a Bengali. The Deccan has produced Shankara; Nanak and Surdas appeared in the North; but in the fertile soil of Bengal were born Sri Chaitanya, Chandidas and Ramprasad. The cult of devotion exists, no doubt, in other parts of India; but the cult of looking upon God as the Lover of the beloved devotee has blossomed only in Bengal. The worship of Kartikeya prevails in some parts; Sri Rama or Sita and Rama are worshipped in some parts. But the full significance of Radha's pining for Krishna has been appreciated only by the Bengalis. Mahadeva (Siva) has taken his abode in many places, but it is the Bengalis who have been mad over his consort, Gauri. The doctrine of Vedanta has spread all over and has absorbed all other doctrines, but the Bengali race has sought for a way of spiritual culture which transcends the injunctions of the Vedas. The worship of the Self is not enough. The worship of man, Sahaja Sadhana,has resulted from the genius of Bengal.
   Bengalis as a race are worshippers of the feminine aspect of God. The religion and literature of Bengal abound in ceremonies of such worship. They do not generally worship God in his masculine aspect. They have not been able to make their own the self-poised calmness of samadhi.They have wanted manifestation of the divine sport. So Bengal is the seat of the Mother, Shakti. Bengal is the land of Delight. The immobile Brahmanis not the aim of Bengal. The power of Delight of the Divine is inherent in the heart of Bengal. We find Rammohan, the worshipper of Shakti, at the dawn of modern Bengal. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were also the worshippers of Shakti. Howsoever Vedanta may have influenced them, the worship of Shakti was very dear to their hearts. And in a different field, what Jagadish Chandra Bose has been demonstrating as a new aspect of Nature-worship also reflects nothing but the genius of Bengal.

3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Your dreams are of a very familiar kind, both coming often to sadhaks. The first is a sort of formation on the vital plane or a possibility for the futurewhe ther or how it will come about in the physical is a different matter. The other is an excursion into the vital world where there are all the types and forms of things that happen here, each having its own region or province there. One is constantly going into these planes (and others also, mental and psychic and subtle physical as well as vital) and seeing and doing things there. Very often what one does and experiences there is a symbol of things in the nature, tendencies, achievements, difficulties, things hidden within or only half-seen on the surface. This one came clearly to show how far you have travelled from certain elements, tendencies or possibilities that were there in the past. The feeling in the dream was the sign of that progress.
  ***
  A great many people have these dreams [of flying]. It is the vital being that goes out in sleep and moves about in the vital worlds and has this sense of floating in the air in its own (vital) body. The waves of a sea having the colour of lightning must have been the atmosphere of some vital province. I have known of some sadhaks, when they go at first out of the body in a more conscious way, thinking they have actually levitated, the vividness of the movement is so intense, but it is simply the vital body going out.
  ***
  --
  The last three dreams described by you are of this character. The figures are supplied from the old social life in England,though the place is not England; in the first, with some attempt at structure, in the others in a more haphazard inconsequent way; but so far as that goes, all seem trivial and unmeaning and, as one might say, not worth dreaming. The strong significant power and purposefulness and quite intelligible symbolism of the higher vital, the psychic or the mental dream-experiences is not there. But still there are in the first dream three points de repre, the railway-journey, the meeting with the father and mother, the communion, and these all are suggestive symbols. The railway-journey is always in vital dreams a symbol of a journey or progress of the inner being; here it is in the vital consciousness that some movement of progress is under way and it is in the course of it that you get down at a station, that is to say in some particular region of the lower vital where you meet your father and mother. A meeting of this kind by itself might simply be an actual encounter on the vital plane with some contact or interchange there for in the vital one can meet thus both those who have passed beyond and those who are still in the body. But once the presence of a symbolism is established, it is probable that the father and mother are also part of the symbolism and, as they very often do, represent what might be called the Purusha and Prakriti of that particular kingdom. If it is an actual encounter, it must be with some part of their vital selves which is in sympathy with or representative of this domain, not with the actual persons, not with their whole selves. But the assistant here is clearly not any earthly person, but a being of this world who embodies one of its characteristic forces, the zeal of a dogmatic and ritual religious traditionalism without any deeper spirit or experience behind it; it is with this external ritualism that you clash in the dream, he insisting on the form, you careless of the form and admitting it only as a means for contact with the original spiritual truth behind it. That would justify our taking the whole thing as symbolism, representing a special lower vital worldone which plays a large part in moulding this external human life as it is now. It is a world of social forms, social and domestic feelings, social intercourse; whatever appearance of spiritual life there is, is traditional and formal: this is what you felt in the blessing of your father. The last part of the dream is more obscure there is evidently a meaning in the luggage and the lost trunk, but the clue is insufficient; if one could catch it, it would probably explain why you got down at all in this province of the lower vital world instead of continuing your journey.
  This is a very good example of the nature of these dreams and their indications and that is why I have dealt with it at a greater length than its importance seems to warrant. The other two are of the same world, but the third is ambiguous and in the second the clue is missing. The second, if taken as only an encounter with ordinary beings of the human world met on the vital plane seems merely absurd and trivial; but if the people represent forces or movements of this particular vital province, then some meaning is there for I have always found that there is something which even the most casual or insignificant dreams of this kind are trying to indicate. If we take the two dreams together, the elderly lady would represent the interest certain beings in this kind of world take in some kind of pseudo-spiritual stuff of the lower occultist kind, e.g. Steiners anthroposophytaken by her more as a fad than anything else, a fad which she imposes on her guests. That would explain her wanting to sit in the rain for the rain is a symbol of a descent from some other consciousness, and it would explain also the remark of the guest who had been in India, that is to say in some hot-air province of this world where the contact with occultist spirituality or pseudo-spirituality could be had more abundantly than here! To the physical mind the working out of the imagery is absurd and illogical, but this kind of dream cares only to get its symbols through and, not addressing itself to the mind, it disregards logical coherence. The whiskey would be the image of the dram drinking which this kind of occultism can be; along with the rain it would be the clue image.
  This is how these dreams are built and the question at once arises, what is their utility and why should they with their triviality and incoherent symbolism and the obscurity and pettiness of the world to which they belong take so large a place. The answer is that it is here between the subconscient and the petty lower vital world that there is the hidden basis of a great part of mans ordinary movements, especially the things that are hereditary, customary, imposed by education and surrounding and left strongly entrenched in the subconscious obscurity, even when suppressed and rejected and entirely contradicted by the mind and will and the higher vital: it is the field of the suppressed complexes of the Freudians, it is the basis of the herd mind, it is the support of all that is petty and obscure in the being and of many other undesirable things. In your dreamseven in your lower vitalyou are out of sympathy with this world, irritated and ill at ease and yet there is something in the subconscient nature that is tied and constantly going there as soon as the waking mind and will are quiescent. So it is with all, for one has to go there for two reasons, first either to become acquainted with its movements and work them out in the subtle experience till they go out of the system by rejection or to clear them out by a conscious action or else to work upon this world and bring into it a real consciousness and a true Light.

3.4.03 - Materialism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Progress is the very heart of the significance of human life, for it means our evolution into greater and richer being; and these ages by insisting on it, by forcing us to recognise it as our aim and our necessity, by making impossible hereafter the attempt to subsist in the dullness or the gross beatitude of a stationary self-content, have done a priceless service to the earth-life and cleared the ways of heaven. Outward progress was the greater part of its aim and the inward is the more essential? but the inward too is not complete if the outward is left out of account. Even if the insistence of our progress fall for a time too exclusively on growth in one field, still all movement forward is helpful and must end by giving a greater force and a larger meaning to our need of growth in deeper and higher provinces of our being. Freedom is a godhead whose greatness only the narrowly limited mind, the State-worshipper or the crank of reaction can now deny. No doubt, again, the essential is an inner freedom; but if without the inner realisation the outer attempt at liberty may prove at last a vain thing, yet to pursue an inner liberty and perpetuate an outer slavery or to rejoice in an isolated release and leave mankind to its chains was also an anomaly that had to be exploded, a confined and too self-centred ideal. Humanity is not the highest godhead; God is more than humanity; but in humanity too we have to find and to serve him. The cult of humanity means an increasing kindliness, tolerance, charity, helpfulness, solidarity, universality, unity, fullness of individual and collective growth, and towards these things we are advancing much more rapidly than was possible in any previous age, if still with sadly stumbling footsteps and some fierce relapses. The cult of our other human selves within the cult of the Divine comes closer to us as our large ideal. To have brought even one of these things a step nearer, to have helped to settle them with whatever imperfect expression and formula in our minds, to have accelerated our movement towards them are strong achievements, noble services.
  Objection can at once be made that all these great things have no connection with materialism. The impulse towards them was of old standing and long active in the human mind; the very principle of the humanitarianism which has been one of the striking developments of modern sentiment, was first brought out from our nature and made prominent by religion, compassion and the love of man first intimately and powerfully enforced by Christianity and Buddhism; if they have now a little developed, it is the natural expanding from seeds that had long been sown. Materialism was rather calculated to encourage opposite instincts; and the good it favoured it limited, made arid, mechanised. If all these nobler things have grown and are breaking the bounds set to them, it is because man is fortunately inconsistent and after a certain stage of our development cannot be really and wholly materialistic; he needs ideals, ethical expansion, a closer emotional fulfilment, and these needs he has tacked on to his development of materialistic opinion and corrected its natural results by them. But the ideals themselves were taken from an anterior opinion and culture.

3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a very powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t=cat, t-r-e-e=tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna em. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true fountain of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor and dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the province of a greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.
  ***

3.7.1.01 - Rebirth, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Rebirth is for the modern mind no more than a speculation and a theory; it has never been proved by the methods of modern science or to the satisfaction of the new critical mind formed by a scientific culture. Neither has it been disproved; for modern science knows nothing about a before-life or an after-life for the human soul, knows nothing indeed about a soul at all, nor can know; its province stops with the flesh and brain and nerve, the embryo and its formation and development. Neither has modern criticism any apparatus by which the truth or untruth of rebirth can be established. In fact, modern criticism, with all its pretensions to searching investigation and scrupulous certainty, is no very efficient truth-finder. Outside the sphere of the immediate physical it is almost helpless. It is good at discovering data, but except where the data themselves bear on the surface their own conclusion, it has no means of being rightly sure of the generalisations it announces from them so confidently in one generation and destroys in the next. It has no means of finding out with surety the truth or untruth of a doubtful historical assertion; after a century of dispute it has not even been able to tell us yes or no, whether Jesus Christ ever existed. How then shall it deal with such a matter as this of rebirth which is stuff of psychology and must be settled rather by psychological than physical evidence?
  The arguments which are usually put forward by supporters and opponents, are often weak or futile and even at their best insufficient either to prove or to disprove anything in the world. One argument, for instance, often put forward triumphantly in disproof is this that we have no memory of our past lives and therefore there were no past lives! One smiles to see such reasoning seriously used by those who imagine that they are something more than intellectual children. The argument proceeds on psychological grounds and yet it ignores the very nature of our ordinary or physical memory which is all that the normal man can employ. How much do we remember of our actual lives which we are undoubtedly living at the present moment? Our memory is normally good for what is near, becomes vaguer or less comprehensive as its objects recede into the distance, farther off seizes only some salient points and, finally, for the beginning of our lives falls into a mere blankness. Do we remember even the mere fact, the simple state of being an infant on the mothers breast? and yet that state of infancy was, on any but a Buddhist theory, part of the same life and belonged to the same individual,the very one who cannot remember it just as he cannot remember his past lives. Yet we demand that this physical memory, this memory of the brute brain of man which cannot remember our infancy and has lost so much of our later years, shall recall that which was before infancy, before birth, before itself was formed. And if it cannot, we are to cry, Disproved your reincarnation theory! The sapient insipiency of our ordinary human reasoning could go no farther than in this sort of ratiocination. Obviously, if our past lives are to be remembered whether as fact and state or in their events and images, it can only be by a psychical memory awaking which will overcome the limits of the physical and resuscitate impressions other than those stamped on the physical being by physical cerebration.

3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The third movement of mind labours to bring the soul of man out of the tangle of the vital and mental forces and opens to him a field in which the mind raises itself, raises at least the head of its thought and will, above the vital demands and standards and there at that top of its activities, whatever its other concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the true demands of a mental being, even though one imprisoned in a body and set to wrestle with the conditions of life in a material universe. The innate demand of the mental being is for mental experience, for the minds manifold strengths, its capacities, joys, growth, perfections, and for these things for their own sake because of the inevitable satisfaction they give to his nature,the demand of the intellect for truth and knowledge, the demand of the ethical mind for right and good, the demand of the aesthetic mind for beauty and delight of beauty, the demand of the emotional mind for love and the joy of relation with our fellow-beings, the demand of the will for self-mastery and mastery of things and the world and our existence. And the values which the mental being holds for supreme and effective are the values of truth and knowledge, of right and good, of beauty and aesthetic delight, of love and emotional joy, of mastery and inner lordship. It is these things that he seeks to know and follow, to possess, discover, enjoy, increase. It is for this great adventure that he came into the world, to walk hardily through the endless fields they offer to him, to experiment, to dare, to test the utmost limit of each capacity and follow each possibility and its clue to the end as well as to observe in each its at present discovered law and measure. Here as in the other fields, as in the vital and physical, so in his mental provinces, it is the appointed work of his intelligence and will to know and master through an always enlarging experience the conditions of an increasing light and power and right and truth and joy and beauty and wideness, and not only to discover the Truth and the Law and set up a system and an order, but to enlarge continually its lines and boundaries. And therefore in these fields, as in life, man, the mental being, cannot stop short too long in the partial truth of an established system and a temporary mistaken for an eternal orderhere least, because as he advances he is always tempted still farther forward until he realises that he is a seeker of the infinite and a power of the absolute. His base here plunges into the obscure infinite of life and matter; but his head rises towards the luminous infinite of the spirit.
  The third movement of the mental energy carries it therefore into its own native field and kingdom above the pressing subjection to the lowering and limiting claim of a vital and physical Karma. It is true that his lower being remains subject to the law of life and of the body, and it is true also that he must strive either to find in life or to bring into the world around him some law of truth, of right and good, of beauty, of love and joy, of the minds will and mastery, for it is by that effort that he is man and not the animal and without it he cannot find his true satisfaction in living. But two things he has more and more to feel and to realise, first, that life and matter follow their own law and not, in mans sense of it at least, a moral, a rational, a mentally determined aesthetic or other mind order, and if he wishes to introduce any such thing into them, he must himself here create it, transcending the physical and the vital law and discovering another and a better, and secondly, that the more he follows these things for their own sake, the more he discovers their true form, svarpa, and develops their force to prevail upon and lift up life into an air of higher nature. In other words he passes from the practical pursuit of a serviceable knowledge, morality, aesthesis, force of emotion and will-power,serviceable for his vital aims, for life as it first is,to an ideal pursuit of these things and the transformation of life into the image of his ideal. This he is unable indeed as yet to realise and is obliged to rest on balance and compromise, because he has not found the whole reconciling secret of that which lies beyond his ideals. But it is as he pursues them in their purity, for their own imperative innate demand and attraction, on the line of their trend to their own infinite and absolute that he gets nearer in his total experience to the secret. There is so a chance of his discovering that as the beauty and irrefragable order of life and matter are due to the joy of the Infinite in life and in matter and the fidelity of the Force here at work to the hidden knowledge and will and idea of the Self and Spirit in them, so there is within his own hidden self, his own vast and covert spirit a secret of the Infinites self-knowledge, will, joy, love and delight, mastery, right and truth of joy and action by which his own greater life rising above the vital and mental limitations can discover an infinite perfection and beauty and delight in itself and spontaneous irrefragable order.

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  literary Bengali, for the spoken Sanscrit of the provinces often
  preserved forms and meanings the literary language lost and

4.01 - Introduction, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  edge of that time included myth-formation in its province-
  witness Wundt's Volkerpsychologie it was not in a position to

4.01 - The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Tantric discipline is in its nature a synthesis. It has seized on the large universal truth that there are two poles of being whose essential unity is the secret of existence, Brahman and shakti, Spirit and Nature, and that Nature is power of the spirit or rather is spirit as power. To raise nature in man into manifest power of spirit is its method and it is the whole nature that it gathers up for the spiritual conversion. It includes in its system of instrumentation the forceful Hathayogic process and especially the opening up of the nervous centres and the passage through them of the awakened shakti on her way to her union with the Brahman, the subtler stress of the Rajayogic purification, meditation and concentration, the leverage of will-force, the motive power of devotion, the key of knowledge. But it does not stop short with an effective assembling of the different powers of these specific Yogas. In two directions it enlarges by its synthetic turn the province of the Yogic method. First, it lays its hand firmly on many of the main springs of human quality, desire, action and it subjects them to an intensive discipline with the soul's mastery of its motives as a first aim and their elevation to a diviner spiritual level as its final utility. Again, it includes in its objects of Yoga not only liberation,586a which is the one all-mastering preoccupation of the specific systems, but a cosmic enjoyments586b of the power of the Spirit, which the others may take incidentally on the way, in part, casually, but avoid making a motive or object. It is a bolder and larger system.
  In the method of synthesis which we have been following, another clue of principle has been pursued which is derived from another view of the possibilities of Yoga. This starts from the method of Vedanta to arrive at the aim of the Tantra. In the tantric method shakti is all-important, becomes the key to the finding of spirit; in this synthesis spirit, soul is all-important, becomes the secret of the taking up of shakti. The tantric method starts from the bottom and grades the ladder of ascent upwards to the summit; therefore its initial stress is upon the action of the awakened shakti in the nervous system of the body and its centres; the opening of the six lotuses is the opening up of the ranges of the power of Spirit. Our synthesis takes man as a spirit in mind much more than a spirit in body and assumes in him the capacity to begin on that level, to spiritualise his being by the power of the soul in mind opening itself directly to a higher spiritual force and being and to perfect by that higher force so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature. For that reason our initial stress has fallen upon the utilisation of the powers of soul in mind and the turning of the triple key of knowledge, works and love in the locks of the spirit; the Hathayogic methods can be dispensed with, -- though there is no objection to their partial use, -- the Rajayogic will only enter in as an informal element. To arrive by the shortest way at the largest development of spiritual power and being and divinise by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human living is our inspiring motive.

4.1.3 - Imperfections and Periods of Arrest, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for the other matter how can the carts of the sadhaks here, none of whom have reached perfection or anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null or worthless? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle. No sadhak can be judged as if he were already a siddha Yogi, least of all those who have only travelled a quarter or less of a very long path as is the case with most of us who are here. Even great Yogis do not claim perfection and you cannot say that because they are not absolutely perfect, therefore their spirituality is false or of no use to the world. There are besides all kinds of spiritual men, some who are content with spiritual experience and do not seek after an outward perfection or progress, some who are saints, others who do not seek after sainthood, others who are content to live in the cosmic consciousness in touch or union with the All but allowing all kinds of forces to play through them, e.g., as in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga is one thing, but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual achievement. It is from the basis of this truth which I shall try to explain in subsequent letters that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge. Let me do that first and afterwards if I am able to give some idea of it, which is not easy, particular questions can be more soluble.
  P.S. All these things I say, must not be applied to the personal cases you mention which are only an occasion for saying them. The one thing that applies to them is that they are sadhaks, not siddhas, raw still, not ripe.
  --
  I want to show that spiritual seeking and achievement are not one limited thing that can be clearly defined in a single mental formula and reduced to a single rule or set of rules but a kingdom like the mental kingdom with all sorts of stages, lines, variations, provinces, types of spiritual men, and it is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, either in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of the past and the present or relate the different ideals, stages etc. thrown up in the spiritual evolution of the human being.
  ***

4.20 - The Intuitive Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The original nature of supermind is the self-conscience and all-conscience of the Infinite, of the universal Spirit and Self in things, organising on the foundation and according to the character of a direct self-knowledge its own wisdom and effective omnipotence for the unfolding and the regulated action of the universe and of all things in the universe. It is, we might say, the gnosis of the Spirit, master of its own cosmos, atma, jnata, isvarah. As it knows itself, so too it knows all things-for all are only becomings of itself -- directly, totally and from within outward, spontaneously in detail and arrangement, each thing in the truth of itself and its nature and in its relation to all other things. And it knows similarly all action of its energy in antecedent or cause and occasion of manifestation and effect or consequence, all things in infinite and in limited potentiality and in selection of actuality and in their succession of past, present and future. The organising supermind of a divine being in the universe would be a delegation of this omnipotence and omniscience for the purpose and within the scope of his own action and nature and of all that comes into its province. The supermind in an individual would be a similar delegation on whatever scale and within whatever province. But while in the god this would be a direct and an immediate delegation of a power illimitable in itself and limited only in action, but otherwise unaltered in operation, natural to the being and full and free always, in man any emergence of the supermind must be a gradual and at first an imperfect creation and to his customary mind the activity of an exceptional and supernormal will and knowledge.
  In the first place it will not be for him a native power always enjoyed without interruption, but a secret potentiality which has to be discovered and one for which there are no organs in his present physical or mental system: he has either to evolve a new organ for it or else to adopt or transform existing ones and make them utilisable for the purpose. He has not merely to uncover the hidden sun of the supermind in the subliminal cavern of his secret being or remove the cloud of his mental ignorance from its face in the spiritual skies so that it shall at once shine out in all its glory. His task is much more complex and difficult because he is an evolutionary being and by the evolution of Nature of which he is a part he has been constituted with an inferior kind of knowledge, and this inferior, this mental power of knowledge forms by its persistent customary action an obstacle to a new formation greater than its own nature. A limited mental intelligence enlightening a limited mind of sense and the capacity not always well used of a considerable extension of it by the use of the reason are the powers by which he is at present distinguished from all other terrestrial creatures. This sense mind, this intelligence, this reason, however inadequate, are the instruments in which he has learned to put his trust and he has erected by their means certain foundations which he is not over-willing to disturb and has traced limits outside of which he feels all to be confusion, uncertainty and a perilous adventure. Moreover the transition to the higher principle means not only a difficult conversion of his whole mind and reason and intelligence, but in a certain sense a reversal of all their methods. The soul climbing above a certain critical line of change sees all its former operations as an inferior and ignorant action and has to effect another kind of working which sets out from a different starting-point and has quite another kind of initiation of the energy of the being. If an animal mind were called upon to leave consciently the safe ground of sense impulse, sense understanding and instinct for the perilous adventure of a reasoning intelligence, it might well turn back alarmed and unwilling from the effort. The human mind would here be called upon to make a still greater change and, although self-conscious and adventurous in the circle of its possibility, might well hold this to be beyond the circle and reject the adventure. In fact the change is only possible if there is first a spiritual development on our present level of consciousness and it can only be undertaken securely when the mind has become aware of the greater self within, enamoured of the Infinite and confident of the presence and guidance of the Divine and his shakti.

4.2.4.11 - Psychic Intensity, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I have done and others before me have done. It is only when one lives centrally in the psychic with the mental, vital and physical as provinces held under its rule that one knows what psychic intensity is. It is only when the higher consciousness comes down in its floods that one can know what can be the intensities or ecstasies of spiritual peace, light, love, bliss. You can say, "I have not yet had these intensities", but you cannot say in a sweeping way, "They do not exist and I shall never have them", or "They are only tepid quiet little things, soothing and more capable of lasting, but not intense and glorious like the vital joys and pleasures." Do not cling to these notions born of the past limitations, but keep yourself open and plastic to greater possibilities in the future.
  My own experience is not limited to a radiant peace; I know very well what ecstasy and Ananda are from the Brahmananda down to the sarra ananda, and can experience them at any time.

4.25 - Towards the supramental Time Vision, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The third state of consciousness is that of the mind of knowledge in which all things and all truths are perceived and experienced as already present and known and immediately available by merely turning the inner light upon it, as when one turns the eye upon things in a room already known and familiar, -though not always present to the vision because that is not attentive, -- and notes them as objects of a pre-existent knowledge. The difference from the second self-forgetful state of consciousness is that there is here no effort or seeking needed but simply a turning or opening of the inner light on whatever field of knowledge, and therefore it is not a recalling of things forgotten and self-hidden from the mind, but a luminous presentation of things already present, ready and available. This last condition is only possible by a partial supramentalising of the intuitive mentality and its full openness to any and every communication from the supramental ranges. This mind of knowledge is in its essentiality a power of potential omnipotence, but in its actual working on the level of mind it is limited in its range and province. The character of limitation applies to the supermind itself when it descends into the mental level and works in the lesser substance of mentality, though in its own manner and body of power and light, and it persists even in the action of the supramental reason. It is only the higher supramental shakti acting on its own ranges whose will and knowledge work always in a boundless light or with a free capacity of illimitable extension of knowledge subject only to such limitations as are self-imposed for its own purposes and at its own will by the spirit.
  The human mind developing into supermind has to pass through all these stages and in its ascent and expansion it may experience many changes and various dispositions of the powers and possibilities of its time consciousness and time knowledge. At first man in the mind of ignorance can neither live in the infinite time consciousness nor comm and any direct and real power of the triple time knowledge. The mind of ignorance lives, not in the indivisible continuity of time, but successively in each moment. It has a vague sense of the continuity of self and of an essential continuity of experience, a sense of which the source is the deeper self within us, but as it does not live in that self, also it does not live in a true time continuity, but only uses this vague but still insistent awareness as a background, support and assurance in what would otherwise be to it a constant baseless flux of its being. In its practical action its only support other than its station in the present is the line left behind by the past and preserved in memory, the mass of impressions deposited by previous experience and, for the future, an assurance of the regularity of experience and a power of uncertain forecast founded partly upon repeated experience and well-founded inference and partly on imaginative construction and conjecture. The mind of ignorance relics on a certain foundation or element of relative or moral certainties, but for the rest a dealing with probabilities and possibilities is its chief resource.
  --
  Actually man is not content solely with living in the present, though it is that he does with the most pressing vividness and insistence: he is moved to look before and after, to know as much as he can of the past and try to penetrate as far as he can, however obscurely, into the future. And he has certain aids towards this endeavour of which some depend on his surface mind, while others open to intimations from another subliminal or super-conscient self which has a greater, subtler and more certain knowledge. His first aid is that of the reason proceeding forward from cause to effect and backward from effect to cause, discovering the law of energies and their assured mechanic process, assuming the perpetual sameness of the movements of Nature, fixing her time measures and thus calculating on the basis of a science of general lines and assured results the past and the future. A certain measure of limited but sufficiently striking success has been gained by this method in the province of physical Nature and it might seem that the same process might eventually be applied to the movements of mind and life and that at any rate this alone is man's one reliable means in any field of looking with precision back and forwards. But as a matter of fact, the happenings of vital and still more of mental nature escape to a very great degree the means of inference and calculation from assured law that apply in the field of physical knowledge: it can apply there only to a limited range of regularised happenings and phenomena and for the rest leaves us where we were amid a mixed mass of relative certainties, uncertain probabilities and incalculable possibilities.
  This is because mind and life bring in a great subtlety and intricacy of movement, each realised movement carries in it a complex of forces, and even if we could disengage ail these, all, that is to say, that are simply actualised and on or near the surface, we should still be baffled by all the rest that is obscure or latent, --concealed and yet potent contri butory causes, hidden motion and motive force, undeployed possibilities, uncalculated and incalculable chances of variation. It ceases to be practicable here for our limited intelligence to calculate accurately and with certitude as in the physical field from precise cause to precise effect, that is to say, from a given apparent set of existing conditions to an inevitable resultant of subsequent or a necessary precedence of antecedent conditions. It is for this reason that the predictions and previsions of the human intelligence are constantly baffled and contradicted by the event, even when largest in their view of the data and most careful in their survey of possible consequence. Life and mind are a constant flux of possibles intervening between spirit and matter and at each step bring in, if not an infinite, at least an indefinite of possibles, and this would be enough to make all logical calculation uncertain and relative. But in addition there reigns behind them a supreme factor incalculable by human mind, the will of the soul and secret spirit, the first indefinitely variable, fluid and elusive, the second infinite and inscrutably imperative, bound, if at all, only by itself and the Will in the Infinite. It is therefore only by going back from the surface physical mind to the psychic and spiritual consciousness that a vision and knowledge of the triple time, a transcendence of our limitation to the standpoint and view range of the moment, can be wholly possible.

5.01 - Message, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I take the opportunity of the publication of this issue of the Bulletin dducation Physique of the Ashram to give my blessings to the Journal and the AssociationJ.S.A.S.A. (Jeunesse Sportive de lAshram de Sri Aurobindo). In doing so I would like to dwell for a while on the deeper raison dtre of such Associations and especially the need and utility for the nation of a widespread organisation of them and such sports or physical exercises as are practised here. In their more superficial aspect they appear merely as games and amusements which people take up for entertainment or as a field for the outlet of the bodys energy and natural instinct of activity or for a means of the development and maintenance of the health and strength of the body; but they are or can be much more than that: they are also fields for the development of habits, capacities and qualities which are greatly needed and of the utmost service to a people in war or in peace, and in its political and social activities, in most indeed of the provinces of a combined human endeavour. It is to this which we may call the national aspect of the subject that I would wish to give especial prominence.
  In our own time these sports, games and athletics have assumed a place and comm and a general interest such as was seen only in earlier times in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the city state. It was Greece that made an institution of the Olympiad and the recent re-establishment of the Olympiad as an international institution is a significant sign of the revival of the ancient spirit. This kind of interest has spread to a certain extent to our own country and India has begun to take a place in international contests such as the Olympiad. The newly founded State in liberated India is also beginning to be interested in developing all sides of the life of the nation and is likely to take an active part and a habit of direction in fields which were formerly left to private initiative. It is taking up, for instance, the question of the foundation and preservation of health and physical fitness in the nation and the spreading of a general recognition of its importance. It is in this connection that the encouragement of sports and associations for athletics and all activities of this kind would be an incalculable assistance. A generalisation of the habit of taking part in such exercises in childhood and youth and early manhood would help greatly towards the creation of a physically fit and energetic people.

5.04 - Supermind and the Life Divine, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This change might happen not only in the few, but extend and generalise itself in the race. This possibility, if fulfilled, would mean that the human dream of perfection, perfection of itself, of its purified and enlightened nature, of all its ways of action and living, would be no longer a dream but a truth that could be made real and humanity lifted out of the hold on it of inconscience and ignorance. The life of the mental being could be harmonised with the life of the Supermind which will then be the highest order above it, and become even an extension and annexe of the truth-consciousness, a part and province of the divine life. It is obvious that if the Supermind is there and an order of supramental being is established as the leading principle in earth-nature, as mind is now the leading principle, but with a sureness, a complete government of the earthly existence, a capacity of transformation of all upon their level and within their natural boundaries of which the mind in its imperfection was not capable, an immense change of human life, even if it did not extend to transformation, would be inevitable.
  It remains to consider what might be the obstacles in the way of this possibility, especially those offered by the nature of the earth-order and its function as a field of a graded evolution in which our humanity is a stage and, it might be argued, its very imperfection an evolutionary necessity, how far could or would Supermind by its presence and government of things overcome this difficulty while respecting the principle of gradation, and whether it could not rectify the wrong and ignorant order imposed by the Ignorance and Inconscience and substitute for it a right gradation in which the perfection and divinisation would be possible. Certainly, the way for the individual would be open; whatever group of human beings aspire as united in an endeavour at a perfect individual and collective living or aspire to the divine life, would be assisted towards the attainment of its aspiration: that at least the Supermind would make its minimum

5.07 - Mind of Light, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature of the evolutionary process as it is at present, two stages. In the first, we can see the mind of Light gathering itself out of the
  Ignorance, assembling its constituent elements, building up its shapes and types, however imperfect at first, and pushing them towards perfection till it can cross the border of the Ignorance and appear in the Light, in its own Light. In the second stage we can see it developing itself in that greater natural light, taking its higher shapes and forms till it joins the supermind and lives as its subordinate portion or its delegate. In each of these stages it will define its own grades and manifest the order of its beings who will embody it and give to it a realised life. Thus there will be built up, first, even in the Ignorance itself, the possibility of a human ascent towards a divine living; then there will be, by the illumination of this mind of Light in the greater realisation of what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life.

5.1.01.1 - The Book of the Herald, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Greece unavenged, the Aegean a lake and Europe a province.
  Choosing from Hellas exile, from Peleus and Deidamia,

5.4.01 - Notes on Root-Sounds, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   governor of a province.
   assemblage, multitude.

5.4.02 - Occult Powers or Siddhis, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An activity on the astral plane in contact with the astral Forces attended by a leaving of the body is not a spiritual aim but belongs to the province of occultism. It is not a part of the aim of Yoga. Also fasting is not permissible in the Asram, as its practice is more often harmful than helpful to the spiritual endeavour.
  This aim suggested to you seems to be part of a seeking for occult powers; such a seeking is looked on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which

9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
    Assam: A province in the northeast corner of India.
    asti: Is, or being.
  --
    Marhatta: A race inhabiting the province of Bombay.
    Marwari: An inhabitant of Marwar, in Rajputana, in central India.

APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    Liber CXCIV. (194) [] - An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order ::: Any province of the O.T.O. is governed by the Grand Master and those to whom he delegates his Authority, until such time as the Order is established, which is the case when it possesses eleven or more Profess-houses in the province. Then the regular constitution is automatically Promulgated. The Quotation is slightly adapted from an address in one of the Rituals.
    Liber CXCVII. (197) [C] - Sir Palamedes the saracen knight ::: The High History of Good Sir Palamedes the Saracen Knight and of his following of the Questing Beast. A poetic account of the Great Work and enumeration of many obstacles. Equinox IV, Special Supplement.

BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But I have still some things to say in confutation of those who refer the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, because it prohibits the offering of sacrifices to the gods. For this end I must recount all, or as many as may seem sufficient, of the disasters which befell that city and its subject provinces, before these sacrifices were prohibited; for all these disasters they would doubtless have attri buted to us, if at that time our religion had shed its light upon them, and had prohibited their sacrifices. I must then go on to show what social well-being the true God, in whose hand are all kingdoms, vouchsafed to grant to them that their empire might increase. I must show why He did so, and how their false gods, instead of at all aiding them, greatly injured them by guile and deceit. And, lastly, I must meet those who, when on this point convinced and confuted by irrefragable proofs, endeavour to maintain that they worship the gods, not hoping for the present advantages of this life, but for those which are to be enjoyed after death. And this, if I am not mistaken, will be the most difficult part of my task, and will be worthy of the loftiest argument; for we must then enter the lists with the philosophers, not the mere common herd of philosophers, but the most renowned, who in many points agree with ourselves, as regarding the immortality of the soul, and that the true God created the world, and by His providence rules all He has created. But as they differ from us on other points, we must not shrink from the task of exposing their errors, that, having refuted the gainsaying of the wicked with such ability as God may vouchsafe, we may assert the city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, to which alone the promise of true and everlasting felicity is attached. Here, then, let us conclude, that we may enter on these subjects in a fresh book.
  [Pg 48]

BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  In the foregoing book, having begun to speak of the city of God, to which I have resolved, Heaven helping me, to consecrate the whole of this work, it was my first endeavour to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world is being devastated, and specially the recent sack of Rome by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ, which prohibits the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils. I have shown that they ought rather to attri bute it to Christ, that for His name's sake the barbarians, in contravention of all custom and law of war, threw open as sanctuaries the largest churches, and in many instances showed such reverence to Christ, that not only His genuine servants, but even those who in their terror feigned themselves to be so, were exempted from all those hardships which by the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted. Then out of this there arose the question, why wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share in these benefits; and why, too, the hardships and calamities of war were inflicted on the godly as well as on the ungodly. And in giving a suitably full answer to this large question, I occupied some considerable space, partly that I might relieve the anxieties which disturb many when they observe that the blessings of God, and the common and daily human casualties,[Pg 50] fall to the lot of bad men and good without distinction; but mainly that I might minister some consolation to those holy and chaste women who were outraged by the enemy, in such a way as to shock their modesty, though not to sully their purity, and that I might preserve them from being ashamed of life, though they have no guilt to be ashamed of. And then I briefly spoke against those who with a most shameless wantonness insult over those poor Christians who were subjected to those calamities, and especially over those broken-hearted and humiliated, though chaste and holy women; these fellows themselves being most depraved and unmanly profligates, quite degenerate from the genuine Romans, whose famous deeds are abundantly recorded in history, and everywhere celebrated, but who have found in their descendants the greatest enemies of their glory. In truth, Rome, which was founded and increased by the labours of these ancient heroes, was more shamefully ruined by their descendants, while its walls were still standing, than it is now by the razing of them. For in this ruin there fell stones and timbers; but in the ruin those profligates effected, there fell, not the mural, but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city, and their hearts burned with passions more destructive than the flames which consumed their houses. Thus I brought my first book to a close. And now I go on to speak of those calamities which that city itself, or its subject provinces, have suffered since its foundation; all of which they would equally have attri buted to the Christian religion, if at that early period the doctrine of the gospel against their false and deceiving gods had been as largely and freely proclaimed as now.
    3. That we need only to read history in order to see what calamities the Romans suffered before the religion of Christ began to compete with the worship of the gods.
  --
  But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers, and their disputations? In the first place, these belong not to Rome, but to Greece; and even if we yield to them that they are now Roman, because Greece itself has become a Roman province, still the teachings of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature, and the right and wrong in ethics, and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic, and what was inconsequent and erroneous. And some of them, by God's help, made great discoveries; but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human infirmity, and fell into mistakes. And this was ordered by divine providence, that their pride might be restrained, and that by their example it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to the highest regions.[Pg 56] But of this we shall have more to say, if the Lord God of truth permit, in its own place.[92] However, if the philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honours to them? Were it not more accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings in a "Temple of Plato," than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of Cybele[93] mutilating themselves, the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful, ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a more suitable education, and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue, if they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods, instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors? Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when once they are possessed by what Persius calls "the burning poison of lust,"[94] prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the young profligate in Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Dana in the form of a golden shower, accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness, and boasts that he is an imitator of God. "And what God?" he says. "He who with His thunder shakes the loftiest temples. And was I, a poor creature compared to Him, to make bones of it? No; I did it, and with all my heart."[95]
  [Pg 57]
  --
  But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the[Pg 73] rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property, than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbour, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let every one with impunity do what he will in company with his own family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit,[108] dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it, let him be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them secure that such felicity be not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind. What sane man would compare a republic such as this, I will not say to the Roman empire, but to the palace of Sardanapalus, the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures, that he caused it to be inscribed on his tomb, that now that he was[Pg 74] dead, he possessed only those things which he had swallowed and consumed by his appetites while alive? If these men had such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.
  21. Cicero's opinion of the Roman republic.

BOOK III. - The external calamities of Rome, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But they supposed that, in erecting the temple of Concord within the view of the orators, as a memorial of the punishment and death of the Gracchi, they were raising an effectual obstacle to sedition. How much effect it had, is indicated by the still more deplorable wars that followed. For after this the orators endeavoured not to avoid the example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their projects; as did Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius the prtor, and some time after Marcus Drusus, all of whom stirred seditions which first of all occasioned bloodshed, and then the social wars by which Italy was grievously injured, and reduced to a piteously desolate and wasted condition. Then followed the servile war and the civil wars; and in them what battles were fought, and what blood was shed, so that almost all the peoples of Italy, which formed the main strength of the Roman empire, were conquered as if they were barbarians! Then even historians themselves find it difficult to explain how the servile war was begun by a very few, certainly less than seventy gladiators, what numbers of fierce and cruel men attached themselves to these, how many of the Roman generals this band defeated, and how it laid waste many districts and cities. And that was not the only servile war: the province of Macedonia, and subsequently Sicily and the sea-coast, were also depopulated by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe either the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or the wars they afterwards maintained against Rome?
  27. Of the civil war between Marius and Sylla.
  --
  Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits, blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and there rose the mingled fragrance of "Saban incense and fresh garlands;"[154] the priests were clothed with honour, the shrines were maintained in splendour; sacrifices,[Pg 133] games, sacred ecstasies, were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But they who most unpardonably calumniate this Christian era, are the very men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they might be safe. In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one of those who now accuse us who would not have attri buted them to our religion. How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters, which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies, had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the Christians would they have imputed these as crimes? I do not speak of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful,oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other sex; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works, and which do not injure, but only astonish men. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stonesnot hailstones, but real stonesthis certainly was calculated to do serious damage. We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighbouring shore, caused the sea to boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to run,a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no[Pg 134] less hurtful. By the same violent heat, they relate that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so that the houses of the city Catina were destroyed and buried under them,a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tri bute for that year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater number in the neighbouring districts. At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten. Yet which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be attri buted to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own gods they attri bute none of these things, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved from these serious disasters.
  [Pg 135]

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  domain; nor is it the province of exact science to place any reliance on them.*** If "empirical" -- and
  Haeckel declares so himself repeatedly -- then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the sight of
  --
  minor races, and the original order of evolutions. For the province of exact, real Science, materialistic
  though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guess-work, speculation which cannot be verified; in
  --
  palaeontology find their province here in investigating the many physical agencies which contri bute so
  largely, as shown by Darwin, Spencer and others, to the segregation of species. But even in this

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  same province under the leadership of Nimrod, the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham, and greatgrandson of Noah. . . . . This took place at the time when Nimrod received the governorship of
  Babylonia as the delegate of Dzahhak named Biurasp."
  --
  "whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man, in spite of the diversity of
  his races, always forms one and the same human being."
  --
  Roodoo, to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (Lib. I. 26, p. 30) calls "thirty
  days an Egyptian year," or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Chinese records. Si-dzang (Tibet) is mentioned in the MSS. of the sacred library of the province of FoKien, as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages before Buddha. The Emperor
  Yu, the "great" (2,207 years B.C.), a pious mystic and great adept, is said to have obtained his

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  resolving the "single material element" into one absolute irresolvable element -- Spirit, or "Rootmatter," thus placing it at once outside the reach and province of physical philosophy -- he has, of
  course but little in common with the orthodox men of science. He maintains that Spirit and Matter are

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  whose name is unknown and who has many names in towns and provinces. . ." Coming out from the
  primordial water crowned with the uraeus, which is the serpent emblem of Cosmic fire, and himself
  --
  names in towns and provinces." Some of the most important, however, will be shown in their order.
  One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more one studies their Hierarchies and finds out their

BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  We had promised, then, that we would say something against those who attribute the calamities of the Roman republic to our religion, and that we would recount the evils, as many and great as we could remember or might deem sufficient, which that city, or the provinces belonging to its empire, had suffered before their sacrifices were prohibited, all of which would beyond doubt have been attri buted to us, if our religion had either already shone on them, or had thus prohibited their sacrilegious rites. These things we have, as we think, fully disposed of in the second and third books, treating in the second of evils in morals, which alone or chiefly are to be accounted evils; and in the third, of those which only fools dread to undergonamely, those of the body[Pg 137] or of outward thingswhich for the most part the good also suffer. But those evils by which they themselves become evil, they take, I do not say patiently, but with pleasure. And how few evils have I related concerning that one city and its empire! Not even all down to the time of Csar Augustus. What if I had chosen to recount and enlarge on those evils, not which men have inflicted on each other, such as the devastations and destructions of war, but which happen in earthly things, from the elements of the world itself? Of such evils Apuleius speaks briefly in one passage of that book which he wrote, De Mundo, saying that all earthly things are subject to change, overthrow, and destruction.[156] For, to use his own words, by excessive earthquakes the ground has burst asunder, and cities with their inhabitants have been clean destroyed: by sudden rains whole regions have been washed away; those also which formerly had been continents, have been insulated by strange and new-come waves, and others, by the subsiding of the sea, have been made passable by the foot of man: by winds and storms cities have been overthrown; fires have flashed forth from the clouds, by which regions in the East being burnt up have perished; and on the western coasts the like destructions have been caused by the bursting forth of waters and floods. So, formerly, from the lofty craters of Etna, rivers of fire kindled by God have flowed like a torrent down the steeps. If I had wished to collect from history wherever I could, these and similar instances, where should I have finished what happened even in those times before the name of Christ had put down those of their idols, so vain and hurtful to true salvation? I promised that I should also point out which of their customs, and for what cause, the true God, in whose power all kingdoms are, had deigned to favour to the enlargement of their empire; and how those whom they think gods can have profited them nothing, but much rather hurt them by deceiving and beguiling them; so that it seems to me I must now speak of these things, and chiefly of the increase of the Roman empire. For I have already said not a little, especially in the second book, about the many evils introduced into their manners by the hurtful deceits of the[Pg 138] demons whom they worshipped as gods. But throughout all the three books already completed, where it appeared suitable, we have set forth how much succour God, through the name of Christ, to whom the barbarians beyond the custom of war paid so much honour, has bestowed on the good and bad, according as it is written, "Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and the evil, and giveth rain to the just and the unjust."[157]
    3. Whether the great extent of the empire, which has been acquired only by wars, is to be reckoned among the good things either of the wise or the happy.
  Now, therefore, let us see how it is that they dare to ascribe the very great extent and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they contend that they worship honourably, even by the obsequies of vile games and the ministry of vile men: although I should like first to inquire for a little what reason, what prudence, there is in wishing to glory in the greatness and extent of the empire, when you cannot point out the happiness of men who are always rolling, with dark fear and cruel lust, in warlike slaughters and in blood, which, whether shed in civil or foreign war, is still human blood; so that their joy may be compared to glass in its fragile splendour, of which one is horribly afraid lest it should be suddenly broken in pieces. That this may be more easily discerned, let us not come to nought by being carried away with empty boasting, or blunt the edge of our attention by loud-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces. But let us suppose a case of two men; for each individual man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the element of a city or kingdom, however far-spreading in its occupation of the earth. Of these two men let us suppose that one is poor, or rather of middling circumstances; the other very rich. But the rich man is anxious with fears, pining with discontent, burning with covetousness, never secure, always uneasy, panting from the perpetual strife of his enemies, adding to his patrimony indeed by these miseries to an immense degree, and by these additions also heaping up most bitter cares. But that other man of moderate wealth is contented with a small and compact estate, most dear to[Pg 139] his own family, enjoying the sweetest peace with his kindred neighbours and friends, in piety religious, benignant in mind, healthy in body, in life frugal, in manners chaste, in conscience secure. I know not whether any one can be such a fool, that he dare hesitate which to prefer. As, therefore, in the case of these two men, so in two families, in two nations, in two kingdoms, this test of tranquillity holds good; and if we apply it vigilantly and without prejudice, we shall quite easily see where the mere show of happiness dwells, and where real felicity. Wherefore if the true God is worshipped, and if He is served with genuine rites and true virtue, it is advantageous that good men should long reign both far and wide. Nor is this advantageous so much to themselves, as to those over whom they reign. For, so far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity, which are great gifts of God, suffice to give them true felicity, enabling them to live well the life that now is, and afterwards to receive that which is eternal. In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater licence in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, "For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave."[158]
  4. How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies.
  --
  For what kind of augury is that which they have declared to be most beautiful, and to which I referred a little ago, that[Pg 169] Mars, and Terminus, and Juventas would not give place even to Jove the king of the gods? For thus, they say, it was signified that the nation dedicated to Mars,that is, the Roman,should yield to none the place it once occupied; likewise, that on account of the god Terminus, no one would be able to disturb the Roman frontiers; and also, that the Roman youth, because of the goddess Juventas, should yield to no one. Let them see, therefore, how they can hold him to be the king of their gods, and the giver of their own kingdom, if these auguries set him down for an adversary, to whom it would have been honourable not to yield. However, if these things are true, they need not be at all afraid. For they are not going to confess that the gods who would not yield to Jove have yielded to Christ. For, without altering the boundaries of the empire, Jesus Christ has proved Himself able to drive them, not only from their temples, but from the hearts of their worshippers. But, before Christ came in the flesh, and, indeed, before these things which we have quoted from their books could have been written, but yet after that auspice was made under king Tarquin, the Roman army has been divers times scattered or put to flight, and has shown the falseness of the auspice, which they derived from the fact that the goddess Juventas had not given place to Jove; and the nation dedicated to Mars was trodden down in the city itself by the invading and triumphant Gauls; and the boundaries of the empire, through the falling away of many cities to Hannibal, had been hemmed into a narrow space. Thus the beauty of the auspices is made void, and there has remained only the contumacy against Jove, not of gods, but of demons. For it is one thing not to have yielded, and another to have returned whither you have yielded. Besides, even afterwards, in the oriental regions, the boundaries of the Roman empire were changed by the will of Hadrian; for he yielded up to the Persian empire those three noble provinces, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. Thus that god Terminus, who according to these books was the guardian of the Roman frontiers, and by that most beautiful auspice had not given place to Jove, would seem to have been more afraid of Hadrian, a king of men, than of the king of the gods. The aforesaid[Pg 170] provinces having also been taken back again, almost within our own recollection the frontier fell back, when Julian, given up to the oracles of their gods, with immoderate daring ordered the victualling ships to be set on fire. The army being thus left destitute of provisions, and he himself also being presently killed by the enemy, and the legions being hard pressed, while dismayed by the loss of their commander, they were reduced to such extremities that no one could have escaped, unless by articles of peace the boundaries of the empire had then been established where they still remain; not, indeed, with so great a loss as was suffered by the concession of Hadrian, but still at a considerable sacrifice. It was a vain augury, then, that the god Terminus did not yield to Jove, since he yielded to the will of Hadrian, and yielded also to the rashness of Julian, and the necessity of Jovinian. The more intelligent and grave Romans have seen these things, but have had little power against the custom of the state, which was bound to observe the rites of the demons; because even they themselves, although they perceived that these things were vain, yet thought that the religious worship which is due to God should be paid to the nature of things which is established under the rule and government of the one true God, "serving," as saith the apostle, "the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for evermore."[176] The help of this true God was necessary to send holy and truly pious men, who would die for the true religion that they might remove the false from among the living.
  30. What kind of things even their worshippers have owned they have thought about the gods of the nations.

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  overshadow [the north Persian province of] Mazanderan.
  Its hom is as of gold and is hollow, and from it a thousand
  --
  the common speech of certain provinces, this Hare is called
  the Physician or the Precious Hare or the Hare of Jade.
  --
  and divided the land into Nine provinces fit for virtue and
  agriculture. In this way he held back the Waters that threatened to flood Heaven and Earth, and left us this account of
  --
  the streams throughout the nine provinces, and conducted
  them to the sea. I deepened the channels and canals, and
  --
  cadenas), which also goes by the name of the Tin Pig (chancho de lata), is prevalent as well in the province of Buenos
  Aires in slums and towns along the riverside.
  --
  Buenos Aires, province of,
  Buffalo,

BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  The following gods, certainly, Varro signalizes as select, devoting one book to this subject: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, father Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus,[Pg 260] Vesta; of which twenty gods, twelve are males, and eight females. Whether are these deities called select, because of their higher spheres of administration in the world, or because they have become better known to the people, and more worship has been expended on them? If it be on account of the greater works which are performed by them in the world, we ought not to have found them among that, as it were, plebeian crowd of deities, which has assigned to it the charge of minute and trifling things. For, first of all, at the conception of a ftus, from which point all the works commence which have been distributed in minute detail to many deities, Janus himself opens the way for the reception of the seed; there also is Saturn, on account of the seed itself; there is Liber,[246] who liberates the male by the effusion of the seed; there is Libera, whom they also would have to be Venus, who confers this same benefit on the woman, namely, that she also be liberated by the emission of the seed;all these are of the number of those who are called select. But there is also the goddess Mena, who presides over the menses; though the daughter of Jupiter, ignoble nevertheless. And this province of the menses the same author, in his book on the select gods, assigns to Juno herself, who is even queen among the select gods; and here, as Juno Lucina, along with the same Mena, her stepdaughter, she presides over the same blood. There also are two gods, exceedingly obscure, Vitumnus and Sentinus the one of whom imparts life to the ftus, and the other sensation; and, of a truth, they bestow, most ignoble though they be, far more than all those noble and select gods bestow. For, surely, without life and sensation, what is the whole ftus which a woman carries in her womb, but a most vile and worthless thing, no better than slime and dust?
    3. How there is no reason which can be shown for the selection of certain gods, when the administration of more exalted offices is assigned to many inferior gods.

BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  In fine, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He commences the series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries it on to the death of the man decrepit[Pg 252] with age, and terminates it with the goddess Nnia, who is sung at the funerals of the aged. After that, he begins to give an account of the other gods, whose province is not man himself, but man's belongings, as food, clothing, and all that is necessary for this life; and, in the case of all these, he explains what is the special office of each, and for what each ought to be supplicated. But with all this scrupulous and comprehensive diligence, he has neither proved the existence, nor so much as mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life is to be sought,the one object for which we are Christians. Who, then, is so stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening up so diligently the civil theology, and by exhibiting its likeness to that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology, and also by teaching that that fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was labouring to obtain a place in the minds of men for none but that natural theology which he says pertains to philosophers, with such subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to censure the civil, shows its censurable character by simply exhibiting it; and thus, both being reprobated by the judgment of men of right understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But concerning this in its own place, by the help of the true God, we have to discuss more diligently.
  10. Concerning the liberty of Seneca, who more vehemently censured the civil theology than Varro did the fabulous.

BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  This same book, De Republica, advocates the cause of justice[Pg 332] against injustice with great force and keenness. The pleading for injustice against justice was first heard, and it was asserted that without injustice a republic could neither increase nor even subsist, for it was laid down as an absolutely unassailable position that it is unjust for some men to rule and some to serve; and yet the imperial city to which the republic belongs cannot rule her provinces without having recourse to this injustice. It was replied in behalf of justice, that this ruling of the provinces is just, because servitude may be advantageous to the provincials, and is so when rightly administered,that is to say, when lawless men are prevented from doing harm. And further, as they became worse and worse so long as they were free, they will improve by subjection. To confirm this reasoning, there is added an eminent example drawn from nature: for "why," it is asked, "does God rule man, the soul the body, the reason the passions and other vicious parts of the soul?" This example leaves no doubt that, to some, servitude is useful; and, indeed, to serve God is useful to all. And it is when the soul serves God that it exercises a right control over the body; and in the soul itself the reason must be subject to God if it is to govern as it ought the passions and other vices. Hence, when a man does not serve God, what justice can we ascribe to him, since in this case his soul cannot exercise a just control over the body, nor his reason over his vices? And if there is no justice in such an individual, certainly there can be none in a community composed of such persons. Here, therefore, there is not that common acknowledgment of right which makes an assemblage of men a people whose affairs we call a republic. And why need I speak of the advantageousness, the common participation in which, according to the definition, makes a people? For although, if you choose to regard the matter attentively, you will see that there is nothing advantageous to those who live godlessly, as every one lives who does not serve God but demons, whose wickedness you may measure by their desire to receive the worship of men though they are most impure spirits, yet what I have said of the common acknowledgment of right is enough to demonstrate that, according to the above definition, there can be no people,[Pg 333] and therefore no republic, where there is no justice. For if they assert that in their republic the Romans did not serve unclean spirits, but good and holy gods, must we therefore again reply to this evasion, though already we have said enough, and more than enough, to expose it? He must be an uncommonly stupid, or a shamelessly contentious person, who has read through the foregoing books to this point, and can yet question whether the Romans served wicked and impure demons. But, not to speak of their character, it is written in the law of the true God, "He that sacrificeth unto any god save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[657] He, therefore, who uttered so menacing a commandment decreed that no worship should be given either to good or bad gods.
  22. Whether the God whom the Christians serve is the true God to whom alone sacrifice ought to be paid.

BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  During the same period there were three famous kingdoms[Pg 131] of the nations, in which the city of the earth-born, that is, the society of men living according to man under the domination of the fallen angels, chiefly flourished, namely, the three kingdoms of Sicyon, Egypt, and Assyria. Of these, Assyria was much the most powerful and sublime; for that king Ninus, son of Belus, had subdued the people of all Asia except India. By Asia I now mean not that part which is one province of this greater Asia, but what is called Universal Asia, which some set down as the half, but most as the third part of the whole world,the three being Asia, Europe, and Africa, thereby making an unequal division. For the part called Asia stretches from the south through the east even to the north; Europe from the north even to the west; and Africa from the west even to the south. Thus we see that two, Europe and Africa, contain one half of the world, and Asia alone the other half. And these two parts are made by the circumstance, that there enters between them from the ocean all the Mediterranean water, which makes this great sea of ours. So that, if you divide the world into two parts, the east and the west, Asia will be in the one, and Europe and Africa in the other. So that of the three kingdoms then famous, one, namely Sicyon, was not under the Assyrians, because it was in Europe; but as for Egypt, how could it fail to be subject to the empire which ruled all Asia with the single exception of India? In Assyria, therefore, the dominion of the impious city had the pre-eminence. Its head was Babylon,an earth-born city, most fitly named, for it means confusion. There Ninus reigned after the death of his father Belus, who first had reigned there sixty-five years. His son Ninus, who, on his father's death, succeeded to the kingdom, reigned fifty-two years, and had been king forty-three years when Abraham was born, which was about the 1200th year before Rome was founded, as it were another Babylon in the west.
  18. Of the repeated address of God to Abraham, in which He promised the land of Canaan to him and to his seed.

Gorgias, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  SOCRATES: As to the arts generally, they are for the most part concerned with doing, and require little or no speaking; in painting, and statuary, and many other arts, the work may proceed in silence; and of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within the province of rhetoric.
  GORGIAS: You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.

Liber, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
  Liber CXCIV. (194) [] - An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order ::: Any province of the O.T.O. is governed by the Grand Master and those to whom he delegates his Authority, until such time as the Order is established, which is the case when it possesses eleven or more Profess-houses in the province. Then the regular constitution is automatically Promulgated. The Quotation is slightly adapted from an address in one of the Rituals.
  Liber CXCVII. (197) [C] - Sir Palamedes the saracen knight ::: The High History of Good Sir Palamedes the Saracen Knight and of his following of the Questing Beast. A poetic account of the Great Work and enumeration of many obstacles. Equinox IV, Special Supplement.

r1912 01 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Lipi 1.2. Thought has to take trikaldrishti into its province firmly. This had already begun, and the lipi is only an explanation. The trikaldrishti is prakamya and intuition of distant movements and is accepted subject to confirmation.
   The Vani which was anandamaya of the Prema Natha (dasyamadhura), is this morning ananda-vijnanamaya of the Guru-sakha.

r1912 01 16, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The morning has been chiefly devoted to the taking entire possession by the personality of the Ishwara of the thought-expression and the removal of all restraints or government of the thought by the Shakti. The thought has also taken into itself the history of past ages, but is not yet as perfect in that province as in ordinary thought. The nature of the siddhi, as was recently more than once predicted by the Vani, approximates to the sadhan in the jail and is indeed in its nature the same sadhan, without its intensity, passing into siddhi. Sraddha is wanting or deficient.The lipi 8 has been frequent yesterday & was confirmed this morning. The elementary utthapana is once more triumphant over the denial of utthapana though still hampered by sukshma klanti and a strong return of the denial of anima. Walking from 6.20 to 7.35 and again from 8.5 to 10.8. No weariness in the body, the attempts of weariness to return being successfully rejected, but stiffness in the lower limbs & negative electrical ache, sukshma & slightly sthula, in the upper part of the body.The lipis 3 confirmed in the morning & 6 have also been frequent. Arogya is reasserting itself but not yet reestablished in possession of the body. The rupadrishti is still vague & blurred though often stable; perfect images come, but, except the prakashamaya, do not wholly or stably materialise.
   2.2 pm

r1912 01 27, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Progress, unclouded resumed this morning. The results of the last few days, so far as yet ascertained, may now be summed up. The first chatusthaya, denied by the assault of the triguna, has gained in strength by the ejection of the remnants of lower tejas; pravritti, prakasha & shama are arriving at a perfect harmony. The dasyam is being rendered firmer and firmer and combined with ananda is perfecting the shama and divesting it of all tamasic elements, perfecting also the pravritti and divesting it of all rajasic elements. The only tamas left is the physical and the asraddha of the Adesha, the latter the result of insufficient prakasha, the former of the imperfect conquest of the physical being by the vijnanam. The manifestation of the Kalibhava, harmonising the bala, raudra (karali) & shiva Kali, has perfected the second chatusthaya in all but intensity. The remnants of general asraddha in God & swashakti are disappearing and the only province of asraddha is the Adesha and the rapidity of the siddhi. This defect prevents the intensity of kalyanasraddha, and ishwarabhava etc. necessary to the perfection of the second chatusthaya. Jnanaprakasha is now strong and the mithyadharanas (asadgrahas) relating to the Yoga and Lila are disappearing. The Kalibhava and the realisation of self in all and all in the self are growing strong and persistent. The Master of the Yoga is more and more manifest in each detail of experience, but half-veiled by the Prakriti in the surroundings. Sahitya is once more hampered by the refusal of the annam to obey or even contain the vijnanamaya movements of the vak. On the other hand artha becomes more & more full and clear, powerful and luminous. Jnanam & Anandam Brahma are steadily deepening.
   The chief struggle is over the third & fourth chatusthayas where the annamaya obstruction has concentrated the best of its strength. Ananda has risen from the ratha of rasagrahana to the ratna of bhoga with a frequent emergence of rtha, which is especially strong in the sahaituka vishayabhoga & tivra & is spreading to the kama etc. Ananda, even ratha of the kamananda, is beginning definitely to emerge. The other bhogas (chidghana, prema, ahaituka, shuddha) are involved in the sharira and emerge out of it. It is here that the contradictions of ananda are occasionally strong. Ratha of the bhoga of events, conditions etc is prevailing. The contradictions are being overborne; pain & discomfort of heat & cold, contact etc are being dominated. The other field of struggle is the arogya; the sore throat was ejected after a struggle by siddhi. The rogas still capable of touching the surface of the system attack frequently, but cannot hold except for short intervals, coming, retiring, succeeding, failing without cause. The disturbances of assimilation are yielding perceptibly to the Arogya; when they come, they cannot hold or make only a brief & seldom violent visit. Three full days of avisrishti were attended with perfect ease and the remaining one and a half with only a vague tendency to disturbance. Two nominal visrishtis occurred on the fifth & sixth days, but with only parthiva pressure, no tejasic, vayavic or jalamaya. Only at the end of the sixth day (this morning) somewhat acute tejahkshobha produced a copious visrishti of the old type. The system, however, dismissed the kshobha in about fifteen minutes and it went leaving behind no acute results. The central arogya still advances slowly. Sarvasaundaryam is not yet continuously permanent.

r1912 12 19, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   This was effected later in the day. The Master through the vani from above & by sukshma speech from outside began to manifest himself everywhere in a well-established stability with the character of youth & strength and as he manifests, the aspect of Love & Good Auspice manifests also . The first result has been a great increase in the satyam. The thought perception & trikaldrishti, as well as vani, became perfectly & minutely accurate for a time & continue to be so except, (1) in the more hasty perceptions, (2) in those which are still afflicted with doubt, (3) in the omission of important circumstances & their exact arrangement. When these are made perfectly effectual (and their survival in imperfection is a mere inert habit), the vijnana in its knowledge-side will be accomplishedonly the range will remain to be widened. The haste must make no difference to the truth, doubt must make no difference, omission of circumstance must not lead to incorrect conclusion, arrangement must be exact so far as it goes. It is now evident also that the knowledge was still acting on the levels of potentiality, where the thing arranged can be disturbed, because it is the arrangement of the Manishi, not the Kavi. It was, however, one of the higher levels on which the Manishi is strong in will, clearsighted in perception, but not able to embrace enough in his view (mahan, urushansa). The knowledge is now rising to the levels of the vijnana proper,becoming of the nature of vijnana and not only enlightened, helped or led by the vijnana. Power is working in the field of the Yogic karma, moulding the thoughts & feelings of others precisely in the immediate vicinity, but is not yet dominant in that province. It is reasserting its hold on immediately surrounding trifles.
   Physical activity, 4 hours in the morning, 1 hours in the afternoon & from 5 to 11.30 with half an hours interval in the evening & night, 12 hours in all. The violent insistence of defect of anima became ineffective in the last period, but is still present in a modified form on the morning of the 20th. Sleep 6 hours.

r1913 01 16, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   In the evening Rupadrishti developed in the crudest forms a greater variety and completeness. Samadhi at night was barren & the dreams confused in record. Aishwarya showed a considerable increase in force and each exercise of will was successful. Vijnana became active, though not yet well-harmonised, in its various parts and lipi more in possession of the akasha, though still obliged to use an effort in order to manifest; there was a perfect intelligibility and appositeness in most of the lipis and a full play of interpretation of the various objective materials of trikaldrishti. The subjective powers of knowledge have passed their period of effort and difficulty; only the objective material is still unable to deploy itself easily & richly in the material akasha. Power is beginning to accomplish its firm mastery, although still hampered in the matter of equipment and slow in other provinces. There is fresh proof of its efficacy in karma.
   ***

r1920 03 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   A very clear, strong, distinguishing and accurate drishti in the telepathies, vyapti and prakamya. Its action is in the already occupied province, but it is there removing all sources of confusion. Also in the telepathic trikaldrishti.
   One or two true ghanas have for the first time appeared with the primary stability out of the mass of crude material in daylight; this has the advantage of appearance and stability frankly fronting the physical eye. Other forms present themselves obliquely or dart into the direct field of vision and stay there for a moment or two or three moments or more. Some ghanas of that kind have direct under the eye a primary stability.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  place, but many there are who open shops there and take to business. Going to the western provinces in
  the company of Mathuranath, I found the environment there just the same as here. The mango trees,
  --
  the king sends the viceroy when there is any disturbance in some far-off province in order to quell it, so
  whenever there is waning of religion in any part of the world, God sends there His Avatara to guard

Sophist, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  STRANGER: Let this, then, be named the art of mimicry, and this the province assigned to it; as for the other division, we are weary and will give that up, leaving to some one else the duty of making the class and giving it a suitable name.
  THEAETETUS: Let us do as you sayassign a sphere to the one and leave the other.

Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
  The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of divination, which is the art of communion between gods and menthese, I say, are concerned only with the preservation of the good and the cure of the evil love. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I dare say that I too have omitted several things which might be said in praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.
  Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not, however, until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony of the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the sneezing than I was cured.

Tablets of Baha u llah text, #Tablets of Baha u llah, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
  Hath the Sháh been informed, and chosen to close his eyes to thine acts? Or hath he been seized with fear at the howling of a pack of wolves who have cast the Path of God behind their backs and followed in thy way without any clear proof or Book? We have heard that the provinces of Persia have been adorned with the adornment of justice. When We observed closely, however, We found them to be the dawning-places of tyranny and the daysprings of injustice. We behold justice in the clutches of tyranny. We beseech God to set it free through the power of His might and His sovereignty. He, verily, overshadoweth all that is in the heavens and on earth. To none is given the right to protest against anyone concerning that which hath befallen the Cause of God. It behooveth whosoever hath set his face towards the Most Sublime Horizon to cleave tenaciously unto the cord of patience, and to put his reliance in God, the Help in Peril, the Unconstrained. O ye loved ones of God! Drink your fill from the wellspring of wisdom, and walk ye in the garden of wisdom, and soar ye in the atmosphere of wisdom, and speak forth with wisdom and eloquence. Thus biddeth you your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Knowing.
  O Báqir! Rely not on thy glory, and thy power. Thou art even as the last trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it fade away, as decreed by God, the All-Possessing, the Most High. Thy glory and the glory of such as are like thee have been taken away, and this verily is what hath been ordained by the One with Whom is the Mother Tablet. Where is he to be found who contended with God, and whither is gone he that gainsaid His signs, and turned aside from His sovereignty? Where are they who have slain His chosen ones and spilt the blood of His holy ones? Reflect, that haply thou mayest perceive the breaths of thine acts, O foolish doubter! Because of you the Apostle 1 lamented, and the Chaste One 2 cried out, and the countries were laid waste, and darkness fell upon all regions. O concourse of divines! Because of you the people were abased, and the banner of Islám was hauled down, and its mighty throne subverted. Every time a man of discernment hath sought to hold fast unto that which would exalt Islám, ye raised a clamor, and thereby was he deterred from achieving his purpose, while the land remained fallen in clear ruin. 1. Muhammad.

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  one exceeds one's province the error comes in. To say that one can't change
  one's doctor even if one does not believe in him or like him is, it seems to
  --
  the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation, united at the top,
  leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local
  --
  all the provinces, whether the laws suit the provinces or not. There is no
  room for any other independent opinion. Everything is fixed beforeh and and
  --
  PURANI: The Charka failed in agricultural provinces but seems to have succeeded in other places, especially where people had no occupation.
  NIRODBARAN: In Bengal it didn't succeed.
  --
   provinces, the Central provinces, Bombay and Madras.
  PURANI: Sir Sikandar Hussain has tried to make a division of India into martial races, like those of the Punjab, and non-martial races.
  --
  man. Only in the United provinces does the Muslim League seem strong. If
  the Congress could win in Sind, then the Bengal and Punjab Premiers will
  --
  Government should have a plan for an economic survey of provinces to see
  what products are necessary for consumption in India. But, of course, one
  --
  the help of Madrasi sepoys, the United provinces with that of Bengali sepoys and the Muslim Punjab itself with that of Hindu sepoys. And now they
  are all non-martial races!

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
  SRI AUROBINDO: No, not Kher but Dr. Khare from Central province.
  PURANI: Good Lord! I would like to see how Vinoba would carry on even

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
  'take all knowledge for his province'.
  Many of those who find Mr. Koestler's arguments completely
  --
  and debasement; for Cicero 'the province of the ridiculous ... lies in
  a certain baseness and deformity'; for Descartes laughter is a mani-
  --
  virtually every main province of science is torn by even deeper
  controversies than before.
  --
  met (pp 84 fF.), and shall meet again in other provinces of art, as a
  characteristic factor in the evolution of creative techniques in general.
  --
  seemingly distant provinces of science and art. To quote a single
  example: the rediscovery of the treatise on conic sections by Apol-
  --
  universal laws (at least, this applies to a given province of science in a
  given period or cycle). The progress of art does not display this overall
  --
  size of the total body of human knowledge or even a single province
  thereof created that dissociated phenomenon, the specialist mind;
  --
  Magnesia, a province of Thessaly, came soon to be applied to any kind
  of attraction or affinity, physical, psychological, or metaphorical
  --
  God-forsaken Prussian province of Varmia; his main ambition, as far
  as one can tell, was* to be left alone and not to incur derision or dis-

The Book of Certitude - P2, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
  How, We wonder, do they explain the aforementioned tradition, a tradition which, in unmistakable terms, foreshadoweth the revelation of things inscrutable, and the occurrence of new and wondrous events in His day? Such marvellous happenings kindle so great a strife amongst the people, that all the divines and doctors sentence Him and His companions to death, and all the peoples of the earth arise to oppose Him. Even as it hath been recorded in the "Káfí," in the tradition of Jabír, in the "Tablet of Fátimih," concerning the character of the Qá'im: "He shall manifest the perfection of Moses, the splendour of Jesus, and the patience of Job. His chosen ones shall be abased in His day. Their heads shall be offered as presents even as the heads of the Turks and the Daylamites. They shall be slain and burnt. Fear shall seize them; dismay and alarm shall strike terror into their hearts. The earth shall be dyed with their blood. Their womenfolk shall bewail and lament. These indeed are my friends!" Consider, not a single letter of this tradition hath remained unfulfilled. In most of the places their blessed blood hath been shed; in every city they have been made captives, have been paraded throughout the provinces, and some have been burnt with fire. And yet no one hath paused to reflect that if the promised Qá'im should reveal the law and ordinances of a former Dispensation, why then should such traditions have been recorded, and why should there arise such a degree of strife and conflict that the people should regard the slaying of these companions as an obligation imposed upon them, and deem the persecution of these holy souls as a means of attaining unto the highest favour? ["Even as it hath been recorded..."] The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh vol. 1 p. 267
  ["Hadíth-i-Jábir..."] God Passes By, p. 80; The Dawn-Breakers p. 645 footnote #39

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Burgundy; he came to the rescue of several provinces ravaged by famine and pestilence; and the alms which he sent to
  Lorraine and Champagne amounted to nearly two millions".
  --
  law among Mexicans. In some provinces a fire was also lit, and a movement was made of
  passing the child through the flame so as to purify it both by water and by fire. The Tibetans
  --
  disobliging reputation which they shared, moreover, in certain provinces with the Freemasons
  themselves. Fet us add that the latter had hastened to adopt and introduce into their hierarchy
  --
  the calabash show us that this worthy son of the Auvergne province no longer has to worry
  about food and drink. Further, the shell attached to his hat, special sign of the pilgrims of St
  --
  triumph, by the provinces of the ocean, the Prince of the Universe. Caesar will be king of
  men, and I will be the Caesar of Caesars; all the power of Rome is now my slave and can

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  11) When one considers the clamorous emptiness of the world, words of so little sense, actions of so little merit, one loves to reflect on the great reign of silence. The noble silent men scattered here and there each in his province silently thinking and silently acting of whom no morning paper makes mention, these are the salt of the earth. ~ Ramakrishna
  12) Real action is done in moments of silence. ~ Emerson

The Garden of Forking Paths 1, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
  Under the trees of England I meditated on this lost and perhaps mythical labyrinth. I imagined it untouched and perfect on the secret summit of some mountain; I imagined it drowned under rice paddies or beneath the sea; I imagined it infinite, made not only of eight-sided pavilions and of twisting paths but also of rivers, provinces and kingdoms . . . I thought of a maze of mazes, of a sinuous, ever growing maze which would take in both past and future and would somehow involve the stars.
  Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny - that of the hunted. For an undetermined period of time I felt myself cut off from the world, an abstract spectator. The hazy and murmuring countryside, the moon, the decline of the evening, stirred within me. Going down the gently sloping road I could not feel fatigue. The evening was at once intimate and infinite.
  --
  "A strange destiny," said Stephen Albert, "that of Ts'ui Pen - Governor of his native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology and tireless in the interpretation of the canonical books, a chess player, a famous poet and a calligrapher. Yet he abandoned all to make a book and a labyrinth. He gave up all the pleasures of oppression, justice, of a well-stocked bed, of banquets, and even of erudition, and shut himself up in the Pavilion of the Limpid Sun for thirteen years. At his death, his heirs found only a mess of manuscripts. The family, as you doubtless know, wished to consign them to the fire, but the executor of the estate - a Taoist or a Buddhist monk - insisted on their publication."
  "Those of the blood of Ts'ui Pen," I replied, "still curse the memory of that monk.

The Garden of Forking Paths 2, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
  For an instant, I thought that Richard Madden in some way had penetrated my desperate plan. Very quickly, I understood that that was impossible. The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths. I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts'ui Pen who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost. Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneous tasks, but the hand of a stranger murdered him-and his novel was incoherent and no one found the labyrinth. Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms. . . I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgot my destiny of one pursued. I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day worked on me, as well as the slope of the road which eliminated any possibility of weariness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road descended and forked among the now confused meadows. A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance. I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets. Thus I arrived before a tall, rusty gate. Between the iron bars I made out a poplar grove and a pavilion. I understood suddenly two things, the first trivial, the second almost unbelievable: the music came from the pavilion, and the music was Chinese. For precisely that reason I had openly accepted it without paying it any heed. I do not remember whether there was a bell or whether I knocked with my hand. The sparkling of the music continued.
  From the rear of the house within a lantern approached: a lantern that the trees sometimes striped and sometimes eclipsed, a paper lantern that had the form of a drum and the color of the moon. A tall man bore it. I didn't see his face for the light blinded me. He opened the door and said slowly, in my own language: "I see that the pious Hsi P'eng persists in correcting my solitude. You no doubt wish to see the garden?"
  --
  "An astounding fate, that of Ts'ui Pen," Stephen Albert said. "Governor of his native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology and in the tireless interpretation of the canonical books, chess player, famous poet and calligrapher-he abandoned all this in order to compose a book and a maze. He renounced the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his populous couch, of his banquets and even of erudition-all to close himself up for thirteen years in the Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude. When he died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manuscripts. His family, as you may be aware, wished to condemn them to the fire; but his executor-a Taoist or Buddhist monk-insisted on their publication."
  "We descendants of Ts'ui Pen," I replied, "continue to curse that monk. Their publication was senseless. The book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts. I examined it once: in the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive. As for the other undertaking of Ts'ui Pen, his labyrinth. . ."

The Golden Sentences of Democrates, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  12. It is the province of a magnanimous man to bear with mildness the errors of others.
  13. It is comely not to oppose the law, nor a prince, nor one wiser than yourself.
  --
  33. Put not confidence in all men, but in those that are worthy; for to do the former is the province of a stupid man, but the latter of a wise man.
  34. A worthy and an unworthy man are to be judged not from their actions only, but also from their will.
  35. To desire immoderately is the province of a boy, and not of a man.
  36. Unseasonable pleasures bring forth pains.

The Logomachy of Zos, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  i extend their province, their mistakes are limiting- doors shutting on
  - and the splendid figure of Art changes to a

The Poems of Cold Mountain, #Cold Mountain, #Han-shan, #Zen
  are native to China's southwestern provinces and were sent to the capital as tri bute by the
  hill tribes that still inhabit the border regions. During the T'ang dynasty, troupes of musicians and dancers came to the capital of Ch'ang-an from the kingdoms along the Silk
  --
  19. Parrots are native to Kansu and Szechuan provinces in Western China. When the king of
  the state of Sung demanded the wife of one of his subjects, the woman sent the king this

The Theologians, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  remote province came to forget that the author had only stated this doctrine
  in order better to refute it. A century later, Aurelian, coadjutor of Aquileia,

The Waiting, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  the province of Buenos Aires and a crucifix adorned the walls; the wallpaper
  was crimson, with a pattern of huge spread-tailed peacocks. The only door

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun province

The noun province has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (4) state, province ::: (the territory occupied by one of the constituent administrative districts of a nation; "his state is in the deep south")
2. (1) province, responsibility ::: (the proper sphere or extent of your activities; "it was his province to take care of himself")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun province

2 senses of province                          

Sense 1
state, province
   => administrative district, administrative division, territorial division
     => district, territory, territorial dominion, dominion
       => region
         => location
           => object, physical object
             => physical entity
               => entity

Sense 2
province, responsibility
   => sphere, domain, area, orbit, field, arena
     => environment
       => situation, state of affairs
         => state
           => attribute
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun province

2 senses of province                          

Sense 1
state, province
   => commonwealth
   => eparchy
   => American state
   HAS INSTANCE=> Guangdong, Kwangtung, Guangdong province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Gansu, Kansu, Gansu province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Hebei, Hopei, Hopeh, Hebei province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Hunan, Hunan province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Szechwan, Sichuan, Szechuan, Szechwan province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Yunnan, Yunnan province
   HAS INSTANCE=> Xinjiang, Sinkiang, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
   HAS INSTANCE=> Inner Mongolia, Nei Monggol
   HAS INSTANCE=> Yucatan
   HAS INSTANCE=> Campeche
   HAS INSTANCE=> Chihuahua
   HAS INSTANCE=> Coahuila
   HAS INSTANCE=> Quintana Roo
   HAS INSTANCE=> Tabasco
   HAS INSTANCE=> Lower Saxony
   HAS INSTANCE=> Bavaria
   => Italian region
   HAS INSTANCE=> Kosovo
   HAS INSTANCE=> Bosnia
   => Canadian province
   => Australian state
   HAS INSTANCE=> Tyrol, Tirol
   HAS INSTANCE=> Assam
   HAS INSTANCE=> Karnataka, Mysore
   HAS INSTANCE=> Manipur
   HAS INSTANCE=> Andhra Pradesh
   HAS INSTANCE=> Bihar
   HAS INSTANCE=> Goa
   HAS INSTANCE=> Gujarat, Gujerat
   HAS INSTANCE=> Tamil Nadu, Madras
   HAS INSTANCE=> Uttar Pradesh
   HAS INSTANCE=> Orissa
   HAS INSTANCE=> West Bengal
   HAS INSTANCE=> Indonesian Borneo, Kalimantan
   HAS INSTANCE=> Friesland
   HAS INSTANCE=> Free State, Orange Free State
   HAS INSTANCE=> Transvaal
   HAS INSTANCE=> Cape Province, Cape of Good Hope Province, Cape Colony
   HAS INSTANCE=> Cape of Good Hope
   => Soviet Socialist Republic
   HAS INSTANCE=> Abkhaz, Abkhazia
   HAS INSTANCE=> Adzhar, Adzharia
   HAS INSTANCE=> Buganda

Sense 2
province, responsibility
   => ecclesiastical province


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun province

2 senses of province                          

Sense 1
state, province
   => administrative district, administrative division, territorial division

Sense 2
province, responsibility
   => sphere, domain, area, orbit, field, arena




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun province

2 senses of province                          

Sense 1
state, province
  -> administrative district, administrative division, territorial division
   => borough
   => canton
   => city
   => commune
   => country, state, land
   => county
   => county palatine
   => department
   => federal district
   => reservation, reserve
   => school district
   => shire
   => municipality
   => prefecture
   => state, province
   => township, town
   => ward
   HAS INSTANCE=> Lower Egypt
   HAS INSTANCE=> Upper Egypt
   HAS INSTANCE=> Khabarovsk

Sense 2
province, responsibility
  -> sphere, domain, area, orbit, field, arena
   => distaff
   => front
   => kingdom, land, realm
   => lap
   => political arena, political sphere
   => preserve
   => province, responsibility




--- Grep of noun province
canadian province
cape of good hope province
cape province
ecclesiastical province
gansu province
guangdong province
hebei province
hunan province
province
szechwan province
yunnan province



IN WEBGEN [10000/6020]

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Wikipedia - Biscay -- Province of Spain
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Wikipedia - Bitlis Province
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Wikipedia - BM-aM-:M-/c Giang Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - BM-aM-:M-/c Ninh Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - BM-aM-:M-?n Tre Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Boharo -- One of nine administrative provinces of Puntland (Somalia)
Wikipedia - Bohol Island State University -- Public university in Bohol province, Philippines
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Wikipedia - Bresse -- Former province of France
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Wikipedia - Brockville (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
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Wikipedia - Bueng Kan Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Buenos Aires (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Bukovina Governorate -- Romanian autonomous province during World War II
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Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Church of the Province of Melanesia)
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Wikipedia - Ca Mau Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Canadian provinces
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Wikipedia - Carmen (district) -- district in San Jose canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Carrandi District -- district in Matina canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Cartago Province -- Province of Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Catamarca Province -- Province of Argentina
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Wikipedia - Category:Konya Province
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Wikipedia - Category:People from Zavkhan Province
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Wikipedia - Catmon, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Cauayan, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Cavite Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Cavite, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cavite State University -- Public university in Cavite province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cebu Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Cebu, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation, Inc. -- Collegiate athletic association in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cebu Technological University -- Public university in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cennet and Cehennem -- Two sinkholes in Mersin Province; Turkey
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Wikipedia - Central District (Dasht-e Azadegan County) -- District in Dasht-e Azadegan County, Khuzestan Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Central District (Kalaleh County) -- District in Golestan Province, Iran
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Wikipedia - Central District (Masjed Soleyman County) -- District (bakhsh) in Khuzestan Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Central District (Ravansar County) -- District (bakhsh) in Ravansar County, Kermanshah Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Central Java -- Province of Indonesia
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Wikipedia - Central Mindanao University -- {Public university in Bukidnon province, Central Mindanao, Philippines
Wikipedia - Central Province (Kenya) -- Province of Kenya
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Wikipedia - Central Sulawesi -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Centro Sur -- Province of Equatorial Guinea
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Wikipedia - Chachoengsao Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Chaiyaphum Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Champagne (historical province)
Wikipedia - Champagne (province)
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Wikipedia - Changshan Commandery -- Historical commandery of China located in present-day southern Hebei province
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Wikipedia - Chanthaburi Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Chernograd -- Village in Burgas Province, Bulgaria
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Wikipedia - Chiang Mai railway station -- Railway station in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand
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Wikipedia - Chiang Rai Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Chichibu Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Chikugo Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Chikuzen Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Chi-Phat -- Commune of Thma Bang District, Koh Kong Province, Cambodia
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Wikipedia - Chishima Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Chlef Province -- Province of Algeria
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Wikipedia - Chomes -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Chonburi Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Chrey Seima -- Commune in Sampov Lun District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
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Wikipedia - Chrouy Sdau -- Commune in Thma Koul District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Chubut Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Chuhandanda -- Village development committee in Province No. 1, Nepal
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Wikipedia - Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean
Wikipedia - Church of the Province of Uganda
Wikipedia - Church of the Province of West Africa
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Wikipedia - Cibitoke Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Ciego de M-CM-^Avila Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Cienfuegos Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Cinco Esquinas -- district in Tibas canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Cipreses -- district in Oreamuno canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Cisplatine War -- 1825-1828 war between Brazil and the United Provinces of the River Plate
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Wikipedia - Claudius Xenophon -- Roman Governor of Britannica Inferior a province of Roman Britain
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Wikipedia - CM-aM-;M--u Long Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Coast Province -- Province of Kenya
Wikipedia - Coat of arms of Manitoba -- Coat of arms of the province of Manitoba, Canada
Wikipedia - Cobano -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Colima District -- district in Tibas canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Colinas District -- district in Buenos Aires canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Coln Province
Wikipedia - Colorado District -- district in Abangares canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Colorado, Pococi -- district in Pococi canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Commando Drift Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - Communaute de communes Les Trois Provinces -- Federation of municipalities in France
Wikipedia - Comodoro D. Ricardo Salomon Airport -- Airport in Mendoza Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Compostela, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, Alajuelita -- district in Alajuelita canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, Atenas -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, La Union -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, San Isidro -- district in San Isidro canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, San Rafael -- district in San Rafael canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Concepcion, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Concepcion, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Concession and Agreement -- Document on religious freedom in Province of New Jersey
Wikipedia - Confederation Bridge -- Fixed link connecting Canadian province of Prince Edward Island with the mainland, at New Brunswick
Wikipedia - Connacht -- Traditional province in the west of Ireland
Wikipedia - Consolacion, Cebu -- Municipality in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Constantine Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Conway Reef -- Atoll in Nadroga-Navosa Province, Fiji
Wikipedia - Coorg Province -- Province of British India
Wikipedia - Copey District -- district in Dota canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Coponius -- Roman governor (prefect) of the Judaea province (6 CE to 9 CE)
Wikipedia - Copperbelt Province -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - Corcuera -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Cordoba Province, Argentina -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Cordova, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Corella, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Cornwall County, Province of New York -- Former county of New York
Wikipedia - Cornwall (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Coron, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Corralillo District -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Corredor District -- district in Corredores canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Corredores (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Corrientes Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Cortes, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Cotabato Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Cotabato, Philippines
Wikipedia - Cot District -- district in Oreamuno canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Cote District -- district in Guatuso canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Coto Brus (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - COVID-19 lockdown in Hubei -- Chinese quarantine effort in Hubei Province in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic
Wikipedia - COVID-19 pandemic in Henan -- Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in Henan Province, China
Wikipedia - COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei -- Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in Hubei Province, China
Wikipedia - COVID-19 pandemic in Sichuan -- Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in Sichuan Province, China
Wikipedia - Coyolar -- district in Orotina canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Crete and Cyrenaica -- Province of the Roman Empire (67 BC - c. 297 AD)
Wikipedia - CTV 2 Alberta -- CTV 2 cable channel in the province of Alberta
Wikipedia - Cuajiniquil District -- district in Santa Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Cuando Cubango Province -- province of Angola
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Wikipedia - Cuartero -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
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Wikipedia - Culpeper's Rebellion -- 1677 popular uprising in the Province of Carolina
Wikipedia - Cunene Province -- province of Angola
Wikipedia - CureM-CM-1a -- district in Sarapiqui canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Curridabat (canton) -- canton in San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Curridabat -- district in Curridabat canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Curubande de Liberia -- district in Liberia canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Cutris -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Dacia Ripensis -- Province of the Roman Empire in the Balkans in Late Antiquity
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Wikipedia - Dalmatia (Roman province) -- Roman province
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Wikipedia - Dana Island -- Island in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Danao, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Danao, Cebu -- City in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Daniel Flores District -- district in Perez Zeledon canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Dao, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
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Wikipedia - Dardania (Roman province)
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Wikipedia - Davao del Norte Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Davao del Norte, Philippines
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Wikipedia - Davao de Oro Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Davao de Oro, Philippines
Wikipedia - Davao Occidental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Davao Occidental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Davao Oriental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Davao Oriental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Davao (province) -- Former province of the Philippines
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Wikipedia - Despotate of the Morea -- Province of the Byzantine Empire
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Wikipedia - Dhadhawar -- Village development committee in Province No. 5, Nepal
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Wikipedia - Ecclesiastical province
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Wikipedia - Elias PiM-CM-1a Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
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Wikipedia - El Oro Province
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Wikipedia - El Rosario District -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Episcopal/Anglican Province of Alexandria
Wikipedia - Erdemli Yoruk Museum -- Museum in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Erzurum Eyalet -- Ottoman province
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Wikipedia - Escazu (district) -- district in Escazu canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Escobal District -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Eshab-i Kehf Kulliye -- Historical building complex in KahramanmaraM-EM-^_ Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Espaillat Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
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Wikipedia - Espiritu Santo District -- district in Esparza canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Esquipulas District -- district in Palmares canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Essex (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Estacion Cultural Lucinda Larrosa Museum -- Museum in Rio Negro Province, Argentina
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Wikipedia - Estremadura Province (historical) -- historical province of Portugal
Wikipedia - Estuaire Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - EtchM-EM-+ Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Etchu Province
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Wikipedia - Ettampitiya -- Place in Uva Province, Sri Lanka
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Wikipedia - Fabbriche di Careggine -- Human settlement in Careggine, Province of Lucca, Tuscany, Italy
Wikipedia - Fabrica, Sagay -- Barangay (or barrio) of Sagay City in the province of Negros Occidental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Farah-Chakansur Province -- Defunct province in Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Farah Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Fars Province
Wikipedia - Fars province
Wikipedia - Faryab Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Fengguo Temple -- Temple in Yixian, Liaoning Province, China
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Wikipedia - Feng Lixiang -- Chinese politician from Shanxi province
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Wikipedia - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope -- Radio telescope located in Guizhou Province, China
Wikipedia - Flag of Ontario -- Flag of the Canadian province of Ontario
Wikipedia - Flag of Ulster -- Flag of the Irish province of Ulster
Wikipedia - Flemish Brabant -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - Flevoland -- Province of the Netherlands
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Wikipedia - Florida District -- district in Siquirres canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Formosa Province -- Province of Argentina
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Wikipedia - Franco-Ontarian -- French-Canadian or francophone residents of the Canadian province of Ontario
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Wikipedia - Fujian-Taiwan relationship -- Relations between Taiwan and the mainland Chinese province of Fujian
Wikipedia - Fujian -- Province of China
Wikipedia - Further Austria -- Historical provinces of the House of Habsburg
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Wikipedia - Gallaecia -- Roman province
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Wikipedia - Garden Route National Park -- Coastal national park in the Garden Route region of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces in South Africa
Wikipedia - Gargar railway station -- Railway station in East Azerbaijan Province, Azerbaijan
Wikipedia - Garita District, Alajuela -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Gasan, Marinduque -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Marinduque
Wikipedia - Gaspe (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district in Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Gawler Craton -- A province of the larger West Australian Shield in central South Australia
Wikipedia - Gaza Province -- Province of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Gegharkunik Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Geissoloma -- Monotypic genus of flowering plants native to the Cape Province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Gelderland -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Generality Lands -- Lands controlled by the States-General of the Seven Provinces
Wikipedia - Geography of Saskatchewan -- Geography of the prairie and boreal province of Saskatchewan, Canada
Wikipedia - Geologic province -- A spatial entity with common geologic attributes
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Wikipedia - Germania District -- district in Siquirres canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - GhardaM-CM-/a Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Ghazni Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Ghazni -- City in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Ghor Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Ghwarband -- Valley in the Shangla District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan
Wikipedia - Gia Lai Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Gia M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Knh Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Gikongoro Province -- Former province of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Gilan Province -- Province of Iran
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Wikipedia - Gipuzkoa -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Gitega Province -- Province of Burundi
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Wikipedia - GM-CM-2 Cong Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - GM-CM-$strikland -- Historical province of Sweden
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Wikipedia - Golestan Province -- Province of Iran
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Wikipedia - Golfito -- district in Golfito canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Golfo de los Mosquitos -- A gulf on the north coast of Panama, extending from the Valiente Peninsula in Bocas del Toro, past the north coast of Veraguas to the province of Colon, Panama
Wikipedia - Gori Temple, Nagarparkar -- Gori Temple is a Jain temple in Nagarparkar, Tharparkar district of Sindh province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - Gorom-Gorom Department -- Department in Oudalan Province, Burkina Faso
Wikipedia - Gorontalo -- Province of Indonesia
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Wikipedia - Government of the Northern Cape -- Government of the Northern Cape Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Adana -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Adiyaman -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Afyonkarahisar -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Aksaray -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Amasya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of AM-DM-^_ri -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Ankara -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Antalya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Ardahan -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Artvin -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Aydin -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Balikesir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bartin -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bataan -- List of governors of Filipino province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bayburt -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bilecik -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bingol -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bitlis -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bolu -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Burdur -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Bursa -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Denizli -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Diyarbakir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Duzce -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Edirne -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of ElM-CM-"ziM-DM-^_ -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Erzincan -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Erzurum -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of EskiM-EM-^_ehir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Gaziantep -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Giresun -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of GumuM-EM-^_hane -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of HakkM-CM-"ri -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Hatay -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of IM-DM-^_dir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Isabela -- List of governors of Filipino province
Wikipedia - Governor of Isparta -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Istanbul -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of KahramanmaraM-EM-^_ -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Karabuk -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Karaman -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kars -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kastamonu -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kayseri -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kilis -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kirikkale -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of KirM-EM-^_ehir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kocaeli -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Konya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Kutahya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Malatya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Manisa -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Mardin -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of M-CM-^Ganakkale -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of M-CM-^Gankiri -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of M-CM-^Gorum -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of M-DM-0zmir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Mersin -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Misamis Oriental -- List of governors of Filipino province
Wikipedia - Governor of MuM-DM-^_la -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of MuM-EM-^_ -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of NevM-EM-^_ehir -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of NiM-DM-^_de -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of North Jeolla Province -- Local government head in South Korea
Wikipedia - Governor of Ordu -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Osmaniye -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Rize -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Sakarya -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Samsun -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Sanliurfa -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Siirt -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Sinop -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Sirnak -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Sivas -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of TekirdaM-DM-^_ -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Tokat -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Trabzon -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Tunceli -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of UM-EM-^_ak -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Yalova -- Governor of a Turkish Province
Wikipedia - Governor of Yozgat -- Governor of a Turkish Province
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Wikipedia - Granadilla District -- district in Curridabat canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Granma Province -- Province of Cuba
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Wikipedia - Great Fish River Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
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Wikipedia - Grecia, Costa Rica -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Grifo Alto -- district in Puriscal canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Grotta del Cavallone -- Cave in province of Chieti, Italy
Wikipedia - Guacimal District -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guacima -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guacimo (canton) -- canton in Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guacimo District -- district in Guacimo canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guadalupe, Costa Rica -- district in Goicoechea canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guadalupe District, Cartago -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guadalupe District, Zarcero -- district in Zarcero canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guaitil District -- district in Acosta canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guanacaste Province -- Province of Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Guangdong -- Most populous province of China, on the coast of the South China Sea
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Wikipedia - Guayas Province
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Wikipedia - Guizhou Province
Wikipedia - Guizhou -- Province of China
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Wikipedia - Gulgoze, Mardin -- Village in Mardin province, Turkey
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Wikipedia - Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester -- Governor of the Province of Quebec
Wikipedia - Guzelyayla, Belen -- Village in the Hatay province, Turkey
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Wikipedia - Ha BM-aM-:M-/c Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Hai Duong Province
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Wikipedia - Halton West (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
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Wikipedia - Hamilton (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Ha Nam Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Hatay Province
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Wikipedia - Ha TM-DM-)nh Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Hawke's Bay Province
Wikipedia - Hazara Province Movement -- A movement for a separate province in Pakistan
Wikipedia - Hearne Craton -- A craton in northern Canada which, together with the Rae Craton, forms the Western Churchill Province
Wikipedia - Hebei Province
Wikipedia - Hebi East railway station -- Railway station located in Hebi City, Henan Province, People's Republic of China.
Wikipedia - Heilongjiang -- Province of China
Wikipedia - Helmand Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - HemM-EM-^_in River -- Water stream in Rize province
Wikipedia - Henan cuisine -- Native cooking styles of the Henan province in China
Wikipedia - Henan Jiangbei province -- Province of the Yuan dynasty
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Wikipedia - Herat Province -- Province of Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Heredia Province -- Province of Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Hesse-Nassau Province
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Wikipedia - Hida Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Higo Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Hi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Hispania -- Roman province
Wikipedia - History of Uppland -- historical province
Wikipedia - Hitachi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Hizen Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Hluleka Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - HM-aM-:M-#i DM-FM-0M-FM-!ng Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - HM-aM-:M-#i HM-FM-0ng Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - HM-aM-:M--u Giang Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - HM-aM-:M--u NghM-DM-)a Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - HM-CM-2a BM-CM-,nh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - HM-CM-$lsingland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - HM-CM-$rjedalen -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - HM-EM-^Mki Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - HM-FM-0ng YM-CM-*n Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Holguin Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Holland -- Region and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Holy Week in Valladolid -- Cultural and religious events of Valladolid and the surrounding province during Holy Week in Spain
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Wikipedia - Hunan cuisine -- Branch of Chinese traditional cuisine native to Hunan province
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Wikipedia - HyM-EM-+ga Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iburi Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Iga Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Iki Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Illyricum (Roman province) -- Roman province from 27 BC to 69/79 AD
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Wikipedia - Ilog, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Iloilo Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Iloilo, Philippines
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Wikipedia - Inaba Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - India (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
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Wikipedia - In Guezzam Province -- Province of Algeria
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Wikipedia - Ise Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Isfahan Province
Wikipedia - Ishikari Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Islamic State's Central Africa Province
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Wikipedia - Iwaki Province (1868) -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iwaki Province (718) -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iwami Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iwase Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iwashiro Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Iyo Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Izumi Domain -- Historical estate in Mutsu province, Japan
Wikipedia - Izumi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Izumo Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Izu Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Jajarkot District -- District in Karnali province, Nepal
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Wikipedia - Jarilla, Caceres -- municipality in Caceres province, Extremadura, Spain
Wikipedia - Jaris -- district in Mora canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Jatibarang, Brebes -- District in Brebes Regency, Central Java Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Jazan Province -- Administrative region of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Jeju Province -- Special Self-Governing Province of South Korea
Wikipedia - Jeongseok Airport -- Airport in the Jeju province in South Korea
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Wikipedia - Jesus Maria District, San Mateo -- district in San Mateo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Jiangnan Province -- Former province of China
Wikipedia - Jiangsu cuisine -- Traditional cuisine of Jiangsu province, China
Wikipedia - Jiangsu -- Province of China
Wikipedia - Jiangxi -- Province of China
Wikipedia - Jiangzhe Province -- Province of the Yuan dynasty
Wikipedia - Ji'an railway station (Jiangxi) -- Railway station in Jiangxi Province, China
Wikipedia - Jijel Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Jilin -- Province of China
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Wikipedia - Jinanqiao Dam -- Dam in Lijiang City in Yunnan Province
Wikipedia - Jinzhou Province -- Defunct province in East Asia
Wikipedia - JM-CM-$mtland -- Historical province of Sweden
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Wikipedia - John Philip Roblin -- Politician in Upper Canada and Province of Canada
Wikipedia - John Prince (politician) -- Lawyer and political figure in Province of Canada
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Wikipedia - Joseph Woods (Province of Canada politician) -- Province of Canada politician
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Wikipedia - Jowzjan Province -- Province of Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Judea (Roman province) -- Province of the Roman Empire (6-135 CE)
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Wikipedia - Jugroom Fort -- Fort in Helmand Province, Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Jund Filastin -- One of the military districts of the Ummayad and Abbasid Caliphate province of Bilad al-Sham
Wikipedia - Jund Qinnasrin -- One of five sub-provinces of Syria under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates
Wikipedia - Kabalromih -- Village in Kampot Province, Cambodia
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Wikipedia - Kabul Province -- Province of Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Kaga Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kahshur-e Davud Ali -- Village in Khuzestan Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Kai Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kajiji Airport -- airport serving Kajiji, Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Kajikazawa in Kai Province -- Japanese woodblock print
Wikipedia - Kakaoh -- Commune in Moung Ruessei District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kalai, Cambodia -- Commune in Ou Chum District, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kalakan -- Village in Kabul Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kalasin Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Kalekoy -- Village of the Demre district in the Antalya Province of Turkey
Wikipedia - Kalinga-Apayao -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Kalinga Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Kalinga, Philippines
Wikipedia - Kalmare ledung -- 1123 crusade in the Swedish province of SmM-CM-%land
Wikipedia - Kalutara -- City in Western Province, Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Kamphaeng Phet Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Kampong Lpov -- Commune in Samlout District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kampong Preah -- Commune in Sangkae District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kampong Prieng -- Commune in Sangkae District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kampot (pepper) -- Cultivar of pepper (piper nigrum) grown in Kampot Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kanchanaburi Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Kandahar Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kang District -- District of Nimruz Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kanlidivane -- A sinkhole with ruins in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Kantueu Muoy -- Commune in Banan District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kantueu Pir -- Commune in Banan District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kaoh Chiveang -- Commune in Aek Phnum District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kaoh Pang -- Commune in Veun Sai District, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kaoh Peak -- Commune in Veun Sai District, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kaoh Thkov -- Commune in Chol Kiri District, Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kapisa Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kapisre Creek -- Water stream in Artvin province
Wikipedia - Karatsu Domain -- Japanese historical estate in Hizen province
Wikipedia - Karelia (historical province of Finland) -- Historical province of Finland
Wikipedia - Karnali Province -- Province of Nepal
Wikipedia - Karoo-Ferrar -- Two large igneous provinces in Southern Africa and Antarctica respectively
Wikipedia - Karuzi Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - KasaM-CM-/-Central -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - KasaM-CM-/-Oriental -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - KasaM-CM-/ Province -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Kasbah of Tifoultoute -- Kasbah in Ouarzazate Province, Morocco
Wikipedia - Katete -- Town in Eastern Province, Zambia
Wikipedia - Katira -- district in Guatuso canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Kawachi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kayali, Sirnak -- Village in the Sirnak province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Kayanza Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Kazusa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kdanh Commune -- Khum (commune) in Prey Kabbas District, Takeo Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kdol Doun Teav -- Sangkat of Krong Battambang, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kdol Tahen -- Commune in Bavel District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kear (khum) -- Commune in Moung Ruessei District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kennedy Island -- Small island in Western Province, Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Keno Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kent (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Kerabari Rural Municipality -- Gaupalika in Province No. 1, Nepal
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Wikipedia - Khanh HM-CM-2a Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Khemis Dades -- Locality in Tinghir Province, Morocco
Wikipedia - Khenchela Province -- Province of Algeria
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Wikipedia - Khorram Dasht Rural District (Markazi Province) -- Rural district in Markazi, Iran
Wikipedia - Khost Province -- Province of Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Khuzestan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Khwaja Umari -- Village in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa -- Province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - Kibi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kidnapping of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman -- Kidnapping in Ghazni Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kie-Ntem -- Province of Equatorial Guinea
Wikipedia - Kii Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kijinitini -- settlement in Coast Province, Kenya
Wikipedia - KiM-CM-*n Giang Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - King's commissioner -- Head of a province in the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Kingston (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Kirundo Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Kitami Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kivyihusha -- village in Bubanza Province, Burundi
Wikipedia - Kizilpinar Ataturk, M-CM-^Gerkezkoy -- Neighborhood in TekirdaM-DM-^_ Province, Marmara, Turkey
Wikipedia - KM-EM-^Mzuke Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Koas Krala (commune) -- Commune in Koas Krala District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Koba Island -- Island in Maluku Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Kogelberg Nature Reserve -- Protected area in the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Kohalpur -- Municipality in Lumbini Province, Nepal
Wikipedia - Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Kok Lak -- Commune in Veun Sai District, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kola Alkaline Province -- Alkaline-ultramafic rock complexes in the Kola Peninsula
Wikipedia - Kongo Central -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Kon Tum Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Konya Province
Wikipedia - Kordofan -- former province of Sudan
Wikipedia - Koshi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kotayk Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Kotiyagala -- Village in Central Province, Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Kouk Khmum -- Commune in Thma Koul District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Kouk Thlok Commune -- Commune in Takeo Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Krabi Province
Wikipedia - Krishak Sramik Party -- Anti-feudal political party in British Indian Bengal and then in Pakistan's East Bengal and East Pakistan provinces (1929-1958)
Wikipedia - Kuala Kencana -- District in Mimika Regency, Papua Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Kucukhuyuk, SinanpaM-EM-^_a -- Village in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Kunar Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kunduz Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Kurdistan Eyalet -- Former province of the Ottoman Empire
Wikipedia - Kurdistan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Kursk Province
Wikipedia - Kushiro Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Kuzucubelen Castle -- Castle in Mersin province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Kwango -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Kwilu Province -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - La Altagracia Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - La Amistad District -- district in Perez Zeledon canton, San Jose province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Asuncion District -- district in Belen canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Labrador District, San Mateo -- district in San Mateo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Castellana, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - La Ceiba District -- district in Orotina canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Colonia -- district in Pococi canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Cruz (canton) -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Cruz, Costa Rica -- district in La Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Cuesta -- district in Corredores canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Fortuna, Bagaces Canton -- district in Bagaces canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Fortuna, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Garita District -- district in La Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Laghouat Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - La Granja District -- district in Palmares canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Guajira Terrane -- Geological province in Colombia
Wikipedia - Laguna District -- district in Zarcero canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Laguna (province)
Wikipedia - Laguna Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Laguna, Philippines
Wikipedia - Laguna State Polytechnic University -- Public university in Laguna province, Philippines
Wikipedia - La Habana Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Lai ChM-CM-"u Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - La Isabel -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lake Quatre Lieues -- Lake in the province of Quebec, Canada
Wikipedia - L'ak -- Commune in Ou Chum District, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - La Libertad, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Lambunao -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Lampang Province -- Lampang Province
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Wikipedia - Lanao del Norte Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Lanao del Norte, Philippines
Wikipedia - Lanao del Sur Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Lanao del Sur, Philippines
Wikipedia - Lanao (province) -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Lanark (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Langebaan Lagoon Marine Protected Area -- A marine conservation area in the Langebaan lagoon in the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Lanus -- city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Lao Cai Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - La Palmera, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Pampa Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Lapland (Sweden) -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Laponian area -- Wildlife area in the Lapland province in northern Sweden
Wikipedia - Lapu-Lapu, Philippines -- City in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Larbi Ben M'hidi University of Oum El Bouaghi -- University in the Oum El Bouaghi Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - Larena -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Siquijor
Wikipedia - Large igneous provinces
Wikipedia - La Ribera District -- district in BelM-CM-)n canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Rioja Province, Argentina -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - La Rioja -- Autonomous community and province of Spain
Wikipedia - La Romana Province, Dominican Republic -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Las Horquetas -- district in Sarapiqui canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Las Juntas District -- district in Abangares canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Las Tunas Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - La Suiza District -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Tigra, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Trinidad District -- district in Moravia canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Union (canton) -- canton in Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Union District, Montes de Oro -- district in Montes de Oro canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Union Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of La Union, Philippines
Wikipedia - Laurel District -- district in Corredores canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - La Vega Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - La Virgen -- district in Sarapiqui canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lazi, Siquijor -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Siquijor
Wikipedia - Leeds (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Leganes, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada -- Historical Legislative Assembly in Canada
Wikipedia - Legislative districts of the Philippines -- Divisions of the Philippines' provinces and cities for representation in legislative bodies
Wikipedia - Legislature of Buenos Aires Province -- Provincial legislature in Argentina
Wikipedia - Legislatures of British India -- Legislative bodies in the presidencies and provinces of British India (1861-1947)
Wikipedia - Legua District -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lemery, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Leon, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Leon XIII -- district in Tibas canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lepanto-Bontoc -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Lepanto District -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown
Wikipedia - Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia -- Formal application to the King to approve the establishment of Province of South Australia, amending the South Australia Act 1834
Wikipedia - Leucadendron salignum -- The common sunshine conebush is a shrub in the family Proteaceae from the Cape provinces of South Africa
Wikipedia - Leucospermum arenarium -- Species of srub in the family Proteaceae from the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Leucospermum wittebergense -- Species of shrub in the family Proteaceae from the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Leuven -- Capital of Flemish Brabant province, Belgium
Wikipedia - Leyte Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Leyte, Philippines
Wikipedia - Lezama, Buenos Aires -- City in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Wikipedia - Lianhua Dam -- dam in Heilongjiang Province, China
Wikipedia - Liaoning -- Province of China
Wikipedia - Libano District -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Liberia (canton) -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Liege Province -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - Lila, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Liloan, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Limburg (Belgium) -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - Limburgish -- Low Franconian language spoken in the provinces of Limburg
Wikipedia - Limburg (Netherlands) -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Limi language -- Language spoken in western Yunnan province, China
Wikipedia - Limon (canton) -- canton in Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Limoncito District -- district in Coto Brus canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Limon Province -- Province of Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Limousin (province)
Wikipedia - Limpopo -- The northernmost province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Linapacan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Lisankhu Pakhar -- Rural municipality in Bagmati province, Nepal
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Guangdong -- Administrative divisions of Guangdong, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Hebei -- Administrative divisions of Hebei, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Henan -- Administrative divisions of Henan, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Hubei -- Administrative divisions of Hubei, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Hunan -- Administrative divisions of Hunan, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Shandong -- Administrative divisions of Shandong, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of administrative divisions of Shanxi -- Administrative divisions of Shanxi, a province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - List of Argentine provinces by gross regional product -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Argentine provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Belgian provinces by GDP -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Belgian provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Bulgarian provinces by GDP -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Bulgaria province name etymologies -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canada-related topics by provinces and territories -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian census agglomerations by province or territory -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian provinces and territories by area -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian provinces and territories by gross domestic product -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian provinces and territories by homicide rate -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian provinces and territories by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canadian provinces by unemployment rate -- Unemployment rate for Canadian provinces
Wikipedia - List of castra by province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Central Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Eastern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of North Central Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Northern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of North Western Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Southern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Uva Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Chief Ministers of Western Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of cities in Iran by province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of cities in the Netherlands by province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of cities, towns and villages in Bushehr Province -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of cities, towns and villages in Tehran Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of demonyms for Philippine provinces -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Eastern Province representative cricketers -- List of cricketers
Wikipedia - List of flood basalt provinces -- Continental flood basalts and oceanic plateaus
Wikipedia - List of Governors of Central Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of Eastern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of governors of Harare Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of governors of KasaM-CM-/ (former province) -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of North Central Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of North Eastern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of Northern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of North Western Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of Southern Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of the Province of Cartagena -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of governors of the Province of Trieste -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of governors of the Province of Zara -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of the United Provinces of British India -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of governors of Venezuela Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Governors of Western Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of high schools in Chlef Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Ankara Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Balikesir Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Bursa Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Izmir Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of hospitals in Northern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Indonesian provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Iranian provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Late Roman provinces -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Fujian province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Hainan province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Hebei province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Henan province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Hubei province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Hunan province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Jiangsu province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Jiangxi province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Jilin province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Liaoning province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of major power stations in Qinghai province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Ministers of Zambian provinces -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of mountain pases of North West (province) -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of municipalities in New Brunswick -- List of municipalities in New Brunswick, a province of Canada
Wikipedia - List of municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador -- List of municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador, a province of Canada
Wikipedia - List of municipalities in Ontario -- List of municipalities in Ontario, a province of Canada
Wikipedia - List of municipalities in Sakarya Province -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of municipalities of the Province of Syracuse -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of municipalities of the Province of Varese -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Gyeonggi Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Bergamo -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Brescia -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Como -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Cremona -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Lecco -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Lodi -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Mantua -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Milan -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Monza and Brianza -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Pavia -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Sondrio -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in Province of Varese -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in the province of Almeria -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of museums in the province of Cadiz -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of National Council of Provinces members of the 25th Parliament of South Africa -- Members of the National Council of Provinces, 2009M-bM-^AM- -2014
Wikipedia - List of National Council of Provinces members of the 26th Parliament of South Africa -- Members of the National Council of Provinces, 2014M-bM-^AM- -2019
Wikipedia - List of National Council of Provinces members of the 27th Parliament of South Africa -- Members of the National Council of Provinces, 2019-2024
Wikipedia - List of North Central Province representative cricketers -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Pakistani provinces by gross domestic product -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of people on the postage stamps of the Canadian provinces -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Philippine provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of populated places in AM-DM-^_ri Province -- List of places in Turkey
Wikipedia - List of populated places in Balikesir Province -- Places in Turkey
Wikipedia - List of populated places in Istanbul Province -- List of populated places in Istanbul Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - List of populated places in Kastamonu Province -- List of places in Turkey
Wikipedia - List of populated places in Morobe Province -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of prefects of the Province of Pola -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Presidents of the Chamber of Republics and Provinces of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of presidents of the Philippines by province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of proposed provinces and territories of Canada -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of provinces of Kenya by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of provinces of Mozambique by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of provinces of the Netherlands by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of railway stations in Buriram Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of railway stations in Surat Thani Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Central Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Northern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in North Western Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Sabaragamuwa Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Southern Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Uva Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schools in Western Province, Sri Lanka -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of secondary schools in Harare Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of secondary schools in Midlands Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Central Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in Central Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Eastern Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in Eastern Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Northern Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in Northern Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of settlements in North Western Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in North Western Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Sabaragamuwa Province -- List of settlements in Sabaragamuwa Province
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Southern Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in Southern Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Uva Province -- List of settlements in Uva Province
Wikipedia - List of settlements in Western Province (Sri Lanka) -- List of settlements in Western Province (Sri Lanka)
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by area -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by gross domestic product per capita -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by gross domestic product -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by Human Development Index -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by population density -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of South African provinces by population -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stadtholders for the Low Countries provinces -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Thai provinces by GPP -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of tornadoes by province (Canada) -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Turkish provinces by GDP -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of universities in Fars Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of universities in Isfahan Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of universities in Tehran Province -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Zimbabwean provinces by population -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Litoral (Equatorial Guinea) -- Province of Equatorial Guinea
Wikipedia - Llano Bonito District -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Llano Grande District -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Llanos de Santa Lucia -- district in Paraiso canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Llanuras del Gaspar -- district in Sarapiqui canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Llorente District -- district in Flores canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - LM-aM-:M-!ng SM-FM-!n Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - LM-CM-"m M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Sng Province -- Province of Vietnam
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Wikipedia - Loboc, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Loei Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Lomami Province -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Long An Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Long Khanh Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Longmen Mountains -- Mountain range in Sichuan province
Wikipedia - Looc, Occidental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Looc, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Loon, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Lopburi Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Lori Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Lorraine (province)
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Wikipedia - Los Chiles -- district in Los Chiles canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Los Guido -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Lotbiniere (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district of the Parliament of the Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Lottulo -- Former municipality in Cuneo Province, Italy
Wikipedia - Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine -- Joint Premier of Province of Canada and father of responsible government
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Wikipedia - Luang Prabang Province -- Province of Laos
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Wikipedia - Luxembourg (Belgium) -- Province of Belgium
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Wikipedia - Matambu -- district in Hojancha canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mata Redonda -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - Matina District -- district in Matina canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
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Wikipedia - M-CM-^Alava -- Province of Spain
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Wikipedia - M-CM-^Angeles, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - M-CM-^Engermanland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - M-CM-^GaM-DM-^_layan River -- Water stream in Rize province
Wikipedia - M-CM-^Ganakci rock tombs -- Rock carved figures in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - M-CM-^Gatak, M-CM-^Gine -- Village in Aydin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - M-CM-^Vstergotland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - M-DM-0mamkullu relief -- Rock relief near the town of M-DM-0mamkullu, Kayseri Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - M-DM-0nceburun Lighthouse -- Lighthouse in the province of Sinop, Turkey
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PiM-aM-;M-^Gn BiM-CM-*n Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PM-aM-:M-/k LM-aM-:M-/k Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Knh TM-FM-0M-aM-;M-^]ng Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PM-aM-:M-/k Nong Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Sng Nai Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Sng Thap Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Mean Chey (commune) -- Commune in Samlout District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
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Wikipedia - Medelpad -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Medina Province (Saudi Arabia) -- Administrative region of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Memba Bay -- Bay in Nampula Province, Mozambique
Wikipedia - M-EM-^Lmi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - M-EM-^Lsumi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Mendoza Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Merced (district) -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mercedes District, Atenas -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mercedes District, Guacimo -- district in Guacimo canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mercedes District, Heredia -- district in Heredia canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mercedes District, Montes de Oca -- district in Montes de Oca canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mercedes Sur -- district in Puriscal canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Mesopotamia (Roman province) -- Two distinct Roman provinces
Wikipedia - Metropolitan municipalities in Turkey -- Turkish municipalities in bigger provinces
Wikipedia - Meukek -- District in Aceh Selatan Regency, Aceh Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Meydancik Castle -- Ruins of an ancient castle in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Miagao -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Mian people -- People living in Telefomin district, Sandaun province, Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Mikawa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Mikolaj of Kutno -- Governor of M-EM-^AM-DM-^Yczyca province
Wikipedia - Mila Province -- Province of Algeria
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Wikipedia - Mimetes argenteus -- Endemic shrub from the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Mimetes capitulatus -- The conical pagoda is a shrub in the family Proteaceae from the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Mimetes chrysanthus -- The golden pagoda is a shrub in the family Proteaceae from Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Mimetes cucullatus -- The common pagoda is an endemic shrub in the family Proteaceae from South Africa's Western Cape province
Wikipedia - Mimetes hottentoticus -- The matchstick pagoda is a shrub in the family Proteaceae from Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Mimetes splendidus -- The splended pagoda is a shrub in the family Proteaceae from Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Minamoto no Mitsuyuki -- Governor in Kawachi province
Wikipedia - Mindoro (province) -- Former province of the Philippines
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Wikipedia - Minh HM-aM-:M-#i Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Mino Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Miramar District -- district in Montes de Oro canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Misamis Occidental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Misamis Occidental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Misamis Oriental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Misamis Oriental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Misamis (province) -- Former province of the Philippines
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Wikipedia - Mogpog -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Marinduque
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Wikipedia - Montagne d'Ambre National Park -- Park in Antsiranana Province, Madagascar
Wikipedia - Monte Cristi Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Montenegro (province) -- Province in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Wikipedia - Monte Plata Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Monte Romo -- district in Hojancha canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Monterrey District, Aserri -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Monterrey, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Montes de Oca (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Montes de Oro (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Montreal Forum -- Former arena in Montreal, QuM-CM-)bec Province, Canada; now an entertainment complex
Wikipedia - Montreal (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district of the Province of Canada
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Wikipedia - Moravia (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Moravian Church of the British Province -- Moravian Church in the UK and Ireland
Wikipedia - Moro Province -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Moses Pitakaka -- Choisuel Province politician
Wikipedia - Moslem League of the Western Province -- Political party in Eritrea
Wikipedia - Mostaganem Province -- Province of Algeria
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Wikipedia - Mountain Zebra National Park -- A national park in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Mount Langya (Hebei) -- Mountain in Hebei province, China
Wikipedia - Mount Song -- Mountain in central China's Henan Province, along the southern bank of the Yellow River
Wikipedia - Moxico Province -- province of Angola
Wikipedia - Moyen-OgoouM-CM-) Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - Mpofu Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve in the Amatole district of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - M'Sila Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Muchinga Province -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - Muhammad Zia Hamdard -- governor of Daykundi Province
Wikipedia - Mukdahan Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Mukhurisi -- Central province of Lazica
Wikipedia - Mu Ko Ang Thong National Park -- Marine protected area in Surat Thani Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Mu Ko Lanta National Park -- Marine protected area in the southern part of Krabi Province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Municipalities of Peru -- organizations that govern the provinces and districts of Peru
Wikipedia - Munster Irish -- Dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Munster
Wikipedia - Munster -- Traditional province in the southwest of Ireland
Wikipedia - Muramvya Province -- Province of Burundi
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Wikipedia - Murcian wine cheese -- Fatty goatsM-bM-^@M-^Y milk cheese from the province of Murcia in the south-east of Spain
Wikipedia - Murgap, Turkmenistan -- City in Mary Province, Turkmenistan
Wikipedia - Musashi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Music FM Radio Guangdong -- Radio station in Guangdong Province, China
Wikipedia - Mutsu Province (1868) -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Muyinga Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Mwaro Province -- Province of Burundi
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Wikipedia - Naga, Cebu -- Component City in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Nagato Province -- Former province of Japan
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Wikipedia - Nagpur Province -- Province of British India
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Wikipedia - Nakhon Nayok Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nakhon Pathom Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nakhon Phanom Province -- Nakhon Phanom Province
Wikipedia - Nakhon Ratchasima Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nakhon Sawan Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Namaqua Fossil Forest Marine Protected Area -- A marine conservation area off the northwest cost of the Northern Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - NaM-CM-"ma Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Namibe Province -- province of Angola
Wikipedia - Nam M-DM-^PM-aM-;M-^Knh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Nampula Province -- Province of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Namur (province)
Wikipedia - Namur Province -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - Nandayure (canton) -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Nangarhar Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Nan Province -- Province of Thailand
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Wikipedia - Naranjito District -- district in Quepos canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Naranjo (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Naranjo de Alajuela -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Narathiwat Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Narra, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Natal Province
Wikipedia - Natonin -- Municipality of the Philippines in the Mountain Province
Wikipedia - Naujan, Oriental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Navarre -- Autonomous community and province of Spain
Wikipedia - Naxi District -- district of Luzhou, Sichuan Province, China
Wikipedia - Negros del Norte -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Negros Occidental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Negros Occidental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Negros Oriental Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Negros Oriental, Philippines
Wikipedia - Nemuro Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Netrawati Dabjong -- Rural Municipality in Province No. 3, Nepal
Wikipedia - NeuquM-CM-)n Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - New Brunswick -- Province on Canada's east coast
Wikipedia - Newfoundland and Labrador -- Province of Canada
Wikipedia - New Georgia -- Largest of the islands in Western Province, Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Newin Chidchob -- Thai politician from Buriram Province
Wikipedia - New Ireland Province -- province of Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - New Lucena -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - NghM-aM-;M-^G An Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - NghM-aM-;M-^G TM-DM-)nh Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - NgouniM-CM-) Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - Ngozi Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Niassa Province -- Province of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Nicolet (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Nicoya (canton) -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Nicoya -- district in Nicoya canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Nimoa Island -- Island in the Louisiade Archipelago, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Nimruz Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Ningxia wine -- Wine produced in the Ningxia province of China
Wikipedia - Ninh BM-CM-,nh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council -- First Nations government Tribal Council comprising bands in the Fraser Canyon and Thompson Canyon areas of the Canadian province of British Columbia
Wikipedia - NM-CM-$rke -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Nong Bua Lamphu Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nong Khai Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nonthaburi Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Nord-Ubangi -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Norrbotten -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - North Atlantic Craton -- An Archaean craton exposed in southern West Greenland, the Nain Province in Labrador, and the Lewisian complex in northwestern Scotland
Wikipedia - North Brabant -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - North Central Province, Sri Lanka -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - North Eastern Province (Kenya) -- Province of Kenya
Wikipedia - Northern Borders Province -- Administrative region of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Northern Cape Department of Education -- Education Department of the Northern Cape Province
Wikipedia - Northern Cape Department of Roads and Public Works -- Department of Roads and Public Works of the Northern Cape Province
Wikipedia - Northern Province, Rwanda -- Province of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Northern Province, Sierra Leone -- Province of Sierra Leone
Wikipedia - Northern Province, Sri Lanka -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Northern Province, Zambia -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - Northern Samar Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Northern Samar, Philippines
Wikipedia - North Holland -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - North Kalimantan -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - North Khorasan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - North Kivu -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - North Maluku -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - North Sulawesi -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - North Sumatra -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - North Western Province, Sri Lanka -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - North-Western Province, Zambia -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - North-West Frontier Province -- Former name of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, British India and Pakistan
Wikipedia - North West Province, Sierra Leone -- Province of Sierra Leone
Wikipedia - Nosara -- district in Nicoya canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Noto Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Nova Scotia -- Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Nsundi -- Province in the Kingdom of the Congo
Wikipedia - Nueva Ecija Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Nueva Ecija, Philippines
Wikipedia - Nueva Valencia -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Guimaras
Wikipedia - Nueva Vizcaya Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines
Wikipedia - Numidia (Roman province) -- Roman province
Wikipedia - Nuristan Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Nushabad -- City in Isfahan province, Iran
Wikipedia - Nyanga Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - Nyanza Province -- Province of Kenya
Wikipedia - Nyl River -- River in Limpopo Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - Occidental District -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Occidental Mindoro Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Occidental Mindoro, Philippines
Wikipedia - Odiongan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - OgoouM-CM-)-Ivindo Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - OgoouM-CM-)-Lolo Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - OgoouM-CM-)-Maritime Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - Oki Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Olabide ikastola -- Basque-language school in M-CM-^Alava province in the Basque Country
Wikipedia - Olba Aqueduct -- Roman aqueduct in Mersin Province, southern Turkey
Wikipedia - Once Upon a Time in the Provinces -- 2008 film
Wikipedia - Ontario Arts Council -- Arts council of the province of Ontario, Canada
Wikipedia - Ontario Superior Court of Justice -- Superior court of the province of Ontario, Canada
Wikipedia - Operation Panther's Claw -- British military operation of the Afghan War in Helmand Province
Wikipedia - Oran Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Oreamuno (canton) -- canton in Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Oriental District -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Oriental Mindoro Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Oriental Mindoro, Philippines
Wikipedia - Orosi, Cartago -- district in Paraiso canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Orotina (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Orotina -- district in Orotina canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Osa (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Oshima Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Oslob, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Oton -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Ottoman Cyprus -- Ottoman province
Wikipedia - Ouargla Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Oudomxay Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Ouled Djellal Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Oum El Bouaghi Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Overijssel -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Oviston Nature Reserve -- Protected area in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - Owari Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Pacayas -- district in Alvarado canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pacuarito -- district in Siquirres canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pagoda Forest at Shaolin Temple -- Number of stone or brick pagodas in Henan province, China
Wikipedia - Paktia Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Paktika Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Palau dels Esports de Barcelona -- Multi-purpose indoor arena in Barcelona Province, Spain
Wikipedia - Palawan Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Palawan, Philippines
Wikipedia - Palmar District -- district in Osa canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmares (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmares de Alajuela -- district in Palmares canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmichal -- district in Acosta canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmira District, CaM-CM-1as -- district in CaM-CM-1as canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmira District, Carrillo -- district in Carrillo canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmira District, Zarcero -- district in Zarcero canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palmitos District -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Palos de la Frontera -- Town and municipality in Spanish province Huelva
Wikipedia - Palo Seco, Catamarca -- Municipality and town in Catamarca Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Paluan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Pampanga Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Pampanga, Philippines
Wikipedia - Pamplona, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Pamukkale -- Natural site in Denizli Province in southwestern Turkey
Wikipedia - Panay, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Panchpokhari Thangpal -- Rural municipality in Bagmati province, Nepal
Wikipedia - Pangasinan Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Pangasinan, Philippines
Wikipedia - Pangasinan State University -- Public university in Pangasinan province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Panglao, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Panitan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Panjshir Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Pannonia Prima -- Roman province
Wikipedia - Pannonia (Roman province)
Wikipedia - Pannonia Secunda -- Roman province
Wikipedia - Pannonia -- Province of the Roman Empire (AD 20-107)
Wikipedia - Pantheon of the Duchess of Sevillano -- Building in Guadalajara Province, Spain
Wikipedia - Papua (province) -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Paquera -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Paracito -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Para District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Paraiso (canton) -- canton in Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Paraiso, Costa Rica -- district in Paraiso canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Paramo District -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Paranomus abrotanifolius -- Species of plant from the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Parliament of Lower Canada -- Legislature of the Province of Lower Canada
Wikipedia - Parliament of Upper Canada -- Legislature of the Province of Upper Canada
Wikipedia - Parrita (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Parrita -- district in Parrita canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Parsa District -- District in Province No. 2, Nepal
Wikipedia - Partidos of Buenos Aires -- Administrative territorial entity of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Parwan Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Pasargadae -- Archaeological site in Fars Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Passi, Iloilo -- City in Iloilo province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Patalillo -- district in Vazquez de Coronado canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Patarra -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pathum Thani Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Patientia Vincit Omnia -- Musical society in Soest, province of Utrecht, Netherlands
Wikipedia - Patio de Agua -- district in El Guarco canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Patriarchal Province of Seleucia-Ctesiphon
Wikipedia - Pavas -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pavon, Costa Rica -- district in Golfito canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pavones District -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pedernales, Dominican Republic -- capital of Pedernales Province, Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Pedernales Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Peel, Netherlands -- Bog area on the border of the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Limburg
Wikipedia - Pejibaye District, JimM-CM-)nez -- district in JimM-CM-)nez canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pejibaye District, PM-CM-)rez Zeledon -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Peloponnese (theme) -- Byzantine military-civilian province
Wikipedia - PeM-CM-1as Blancas District -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Peralta District -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Peravia Province -- province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Perochak -- Village in Punjab Province, Pakistan
Wikipedia - Peter Chanetsa -- Governor of Mashonaland West Province
Wikipedia - Phalelung -- Rural Municipality in Province No. 1, Nepal
Wikipedia - Phalgunanda Rural Municipality -- Rural Municipality in Province No. 1, Nepal
Wikipedia - Phang Nga Province -- Phang Nga Province
Wikipedia - Phetchabun Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Phichit Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Phitsanulok Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - PhM-FM-0M-aM-;M-^[c Long Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - PhM-FM-0M-aM-;M-^[c Thanh Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - PhM-FM-0M-aM-;M-^[c Tuy Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Phnom Santuk -- Mountain in [[Kampong Thom Province]], Cambodia
Wikipedia - Phongsaly Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Phrae Province -- Phrae Province
Wikipedia - Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Phra Tabong Province -- Former province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Phra That Kham Kaen -- Buddhist reliquary in Khon Kaen Province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Phuket Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Phu ThM-aM-;M-^M Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Phu YM-CM-*n Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Phyllostachys tianmuensis -- Species of bamboo found in Anhui, Zhejiang provinces of China
Wikipedia - Physiographic province -- Mid-level region in the Fenneman model of physiographic regionalization
Wikipedia - Picagres -- district in Mora canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piedades Norte -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piedades Sur -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piedades -- district in Santa Ana canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piedras Blancas District -- district in Osa canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piedras Negras District -- district in Mora canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pilar, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Pilar, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Pilar, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Pilas District -- district in Buenos Aires canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pinamalayan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Pinamungajan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Pinar del Rio Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Ping An Finance Centre -- Skyscraper in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China
Wikipedia - Pitahaya District -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pital, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pittier District -- district in Coto Brus canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Piyam railway station -- Railway station in East Azerbaijan Province. Iran
Wikipedia - Platanares -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - PM-CM-)rez Zeledon (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Poas (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pococi (canton) -- canton in Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pocofeltus -- Roman-Berber town in the province of Africa Proconsularis, located in present-day Tunisia
Wikipedia - Pocora -- district in Guacimo canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pocosol -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pola, Oriental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Polonnaruwa -- Town in North Central Province, Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Pomeranian Voivodeship -- province in northwestern Poland
Wikipedia - Pondoland Marine Protected Area -- A marine conservation area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Pontevedra, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Pontevedra, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Population of Canada by province and territory -- Population of Canada by province and territory
Wikipedia - Poro, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Porozal -- district in CaM-CM-1as canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Portal:Western Sahara/Featured article/9 -- Collection of refugee camps set up in the Tindouf Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - Portneuf (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Porvenir District -- district in Nandayure canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pototan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Potrero Cerrado -- district in Oreamuno canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Potrero Grande District -- district in Buenos Aires canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pozos -- district in Santa Ana canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Prachinburi Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Prachuap Khiri Khan Province -- Prachuap Khiri Khan Province
Wikipedia - Pradesh -- Province or territory in various languages
Wikipedia - Premier (Canada) -- Head of government of a Canadian province or territory
Wikipedia - Presidencies and provinces of British India -- Administrative divisions of British governance in India between 1612 AD and 1947 AD
Wikipedia - President Carlos P. Garcia, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - President Roxas, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Prime Minister of Bengal -- Head of government of Bengal Province in British India
Wikipedia - Prince Edward Island -- Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Protestant Revolution (Maryland) -- Rebellion in the Province of Maryland
Wikipedia - Province (Anglican)
Wikipedia - Province House (Boston, Massachusetts) -- Building in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Wikipedia - Province No. 1 -- Province of Nepal
Wikipedia - Province No. 2 -- Province of Nepal
Wikipedia - Province of A CoruM-CM-1a -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Albacete -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Alessandria -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Alicante -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Almeria -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Ancona -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Arezzo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Armagh (Church of Ireland) -- Ecclesiastical province of the Church of Ireland
Wikipedia - Province of Ascoli Piceno -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Asti -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Avellino -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Badajoz -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Barcelona -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Belluno -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Benevento -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Bergamo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Biella -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Brabant
Wikipedia - Province of Brandenburg
Wikipedia - Province of Brescia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Brindisi -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Burgos -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Cadiz -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Campobasso -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Canada -- 1841-1867 UK possession in North America
Wikipedia - Province of Canterbury
Wikipedia - Province of Carolina -- Colony in North America
Wikipedia - Province of Caserta -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Castellon -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Catanzaro -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Chieti -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Ciudad Real -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Como -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Cordoba (Spain) -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Cosenza -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Cremona -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Crotone -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Cuenca -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Cuneo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Dublin (Church of Ireland) -- Ecclesiastical province of the Church of Ireland
Wikipedia - Province of Equateur -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Province of Fermo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Ferrara -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Foggia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of ForlM-CM-,-Cesena -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Frosinone -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Georgia
Wikipedia - Province of Girona -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Granada -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Grosseto -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Guadalajara -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Hanover
Wikipedia - Province of Huelva -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Huesca -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Imperia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Isernia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of JaM-CM-)n (Spain) -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of L'Aquila -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Las Palmas -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of La Spezia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Latina -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Lecce -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Lecco -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Leon -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Livorno -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Lleida -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Lodi -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Lucca -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Lugo -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Macerata -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Mantua -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Massa and Carrara -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Massachusetts Bay -- English/British possession in North America (1691-1780)
Wikipedia - Province of Matera -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of M-CM-^Avila -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Messina
Wikipedia - Province of Milan
Wikipedia - Province of Modena -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Monza and Brianza -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Naples -- former province in the Campania region of southern Italy
Wikipedia - Province of New York
Wikipedia - Province of North Carolina -- Former British colony in North America
Wikipedia - Province of Novara -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Nuoro -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Oristano -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Ourense -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Padua -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Palencia -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Parma -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pavia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pennsylvania -- Historical British colony
Wikipedia - Province of Perugia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pesaro and Urbino -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pescara -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Piacenza -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pisa -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pistoia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Pomerania (1815-1945)
Wikipedia - Province of Posen -- Province of Prussia
Wikipedia - Province of Potenza -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Prato -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Quebec (1763-1791) -- UK possession in North America existing between 1763-1791
Wikipedia - Province of Ravenna -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Reggio Emilia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Rieti -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Rimini -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Rome
Wikipedia - Province of Rovigo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Salamanca -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Salerno -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Sassari -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Savona -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Saxony
Wikipedia - Province of Schleswig-Holstein
Wikipedia - Province of Segovia -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Seville -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Siena -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Silesia
Wikipedia - Province of Sondrio -- Province of Lombardy, Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Soria -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of South Sardinia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Syracuse
Wikipedia - Province of Taranto -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Teramo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Terni -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Teruel -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of the Anglican Church of Burundi
Wikipedia - Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Province of the Anglican Church of the Congo
Wikipedia - Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
Wikipedia - Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan
Wikipedia - Province of Tierra Firme -- Spain's New World Empire coastal possessions surrounding the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico
Wikipedia - Province of Toledo -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Treviso -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Turin
Wikipedia - Province of Valencia -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Valladolid -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Varese -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Verona -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Vibo Valentia -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Vicenza -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of Viterbo -- Province of Italy
Wikipedia - Province of West Prussia
Wikipedia - Province of Zamora -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Province of Zaragoza -- Province of Spain
Wikipedia - Provinces and territories of Canada -- Top-level subdivisions of Canada
Wikipedia - Provinces of Afghanistan -- First-level administrative territorial entity of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Algeria
Wikipedia - Provinces of Angola
Wikipedia - Provinces of Argentina -- Top level administrative division of Argentina
Wikipedia - Provinces of Belgium
Wikipedia - Provinces of Bolivia
Wikipedia - Provinces of Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Provinces of Burkina Faso
Wikipedia - Provinces of Burundi
Wikipedia - Provinces of Chile
Wikipedia - Provinces of China
Wikipedia - Provinces of Costa Rica -- First level administrative subdivision in Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Provinces of Cuba
Wikipedia - Provinces of Ecuador
Wikipedia - Provinces of Equatorial Guinea
Wikipedia - Provinces of Fiji
Wikipedia - Provinces of France
Wikipedia - Provinces of Gabon
Wikipedia - Provinces of Indonesia -- First-level subdivision of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Provinces of Iran
Wikipedia - Provinces of Ireland -- Historic territorial divisions of the island of Ireland
Wikipedia - Provinces of Italy
Wikipedia - Provinces of Kazakhstan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Kenya
Wikipedia - Provinces of Kyrgyzstan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Laos
Wikipedia - Provinces of Libya -- Traditional administrative divisions of Libya
Wikipedia - Provinces of Madagascar
Wikipedia - Provinces of Mongolia
Wikipedia - Provinces of Morocco
Wikipedia - Provinces of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Provinces of North Korea
Wikipedia - Provinces of Oman
Wikipedia - Provinces of Panama
Wikipedia - Provinces of Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Provinces of Peru
Wikipedia - Provinces of Portugal -- Overview of the provinces of Portugal
Wikipedia - Provinces of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Provinces of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Provinces of Sierra Leone
Wikipedia - Provinces of South Africa
Wikipedia - Provinces of South Korea -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Provinces of Spain
Wikipedia - Provinces of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Provinces of Sweden -- Historical and cultural geographical region
Wikipedia - Provinces of Tajikistan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Thailand -- 1st level administrative subdivision of Thailand
Wikipedia - Provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Provinces of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Provinces of the Netherlands -- First-level administrative division in the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Provinces of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Provinces of the Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Provinces of Turkey
Wikipedia - Provinces of Turkmenistan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Uzbekistan
Wikipedia - Provinces of Vanuatu
Wikipedia - Provinces of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Provinces of Zambia
Wikipedia - Provinces of Zimbabwe
Wikipedia - Provincetown Harbor -- Harbor in Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA
Wikipedia - Province -- A major administrative subdivision within a country or sovereign state
Wikipedia - Provincial legislature (South Africa) -- Legislative branch of a South African province
Wikipedia - Prusias ad Hypium -- Ruined city located in Duzce Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Pruzhany Palace -- Museum in the Belarus province of Brest Voblast
Wikipedia - P. S. M. Charles -- Current governor of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Puente de Piedra District -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Pu'er tea -- A variety of fermented tea produced in the Yunnan province of China
Wikipedia - Puerto Carrillo -- district in Hojancha canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puerto CortM-CM-)s District -- district in Osa canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puerto Galera -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Puerto JimM-CM-)nez -- district in Golfito canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puerto Plata Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
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Wikipedia - Pulupandan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Punjab, Pakistan -- Province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - Punjab Police (Pakistan) -- Police force in Punjab province, Pakistan
Wikipedia - Puntarenas (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puntarenas District -- district in Puntarenas canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puntarenas Province -- Province of Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puraba -- district in Santa Barbara canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Puriscal (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Purral -- district in Goicoechea canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - PUTCO -- Provider of commuter bus services in some provinces in South Africa
Wikipedia - Putha Uttarganga -- Rural municipality in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Puzhai -- Town in Guangdong Province, China
Wikipedia - Qaleh Kharabeh, Gorgan -- Fort and archaeological site in Golestan Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Qarabagh, Afghanistan -- Town in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan
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Wikipedia - Qataghan Province -- Defunct Afghan province
Wikipedia - Qazvin Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Qila Niazi -- Village near the city of Gardez, Paktia Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Qiya -- Village in Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Quebec City (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district in the Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Quebec County (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district in the Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Quebec -- province of Canada
Wikipedia - Quebrada Grande District -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quebrada Honda District -- district in Nicoya canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quebradilla -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quepos (canton) -- canton in Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quepos -- district in Quepos canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quesada, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Quezon, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Quezon Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Quezon, Philippines
Wikipedia - Quezon's 3rd congressional district -- Congressional district in Quezon Province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Quiapo, Chile -- Place in Arauco Province, Chile
Wikipedia - Quilcapuncu District -- District in San Antonio de Putina Province, Peru
Wikipedia - Quintus Didius -- Roman governor of the province of Syria
Wikipedia - Quirino Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Quirino, Philippines
Wikipedia - Quitirrisi -- district in Mora canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng BM-CM-,nh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng Nam Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng Ngai Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng Ninh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng Tin Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-aM-:M-#ng TrM-aM-;M-^K Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - QuM-CM-)bec City-Windsor Corridor (Via Rail) -- A Via Rail passenger train service area in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario
Wikipedia - QuM-CM-)bM-CM-)cois (word) -- Word used primarily to refer to a native or inhabitant of the Canadian province of Quebec
Wikipedia - Radio Betania -- Radio station in Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Raeren -- Municipality in Liege province, Belgium
Wikipedia - Rafael Castillo, Buenos Aires -- Place in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Wikipedia - Railway Guarantee Act (Province of Canada) -- Canadian rail transport law
Wikipedia - Rakka Eyalet -- Ottoman province (1586-1864)
Wikipedia - Rancho Redondo -- district in Goicoechea canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rapti Rural Municipality -- Gaunpalika in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Rapti-Sonari Rural Municipality -- Gaunpalika in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Rasi Salai Dam -- Sisaket Province dam
Wikipedia - Ratchaburi Province -- Ratchaburi Province
Wikipedia - Rayong Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Razavi Khorasan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Region of Murcia -- Autonomous community and province of Spain
Wikipedia - Relizane Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Republican Building (Jinan) -- Historic building in Jinan, Shandong Province, China
Wikipedia - Reventazon District -- district in Siquirres canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rewa Province -- province of Fiji
Wikipedia - Rhine Province
Wikipedia - Riau Islands -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Riau -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Ribera, M-CM-^Alava -- Abandoned village in the province of M-CM-^Alava, Spain
Wikipedia - Richelieu (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Electoral district of the Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians -- Physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division
Wikipedia - Rift Valley Province -- Province of Kenya
Wikipedia - RikuchM-EM-+ Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Rikuzen Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Rimouski (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Rincon de Sabanilla -- district in San Pablo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Azul District -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Blanco District -- district in Limon canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Cuarto (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Cuarto District -- district in Rio Cuarto canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio JimM-CM-)nez District -- district in Guacimo canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Naranjo District -- district in Bagaces canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Negro Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Rio Nuevo District -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rio Segundo District -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rita, Pococi -- district in Pococi canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rivas District -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - River Rock Casino Resort -- Casino in the province of British Columbia
Wikipedia - Riyadh Province -- Administrative region of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Rizal, Occidental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Rizal, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Rizal Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Rizal, Philippines
Wikipedia - Robben Island Marine Protected Area -- A marine conservation area around and offshore of Robben Island in Table Bay in the Western Cape province in South Africa
Wikipedia - Robert Baldwin -- Joint Premier of Province of Canada and father of responsible government
Wikipedia - Robert Bell (Province of Canada politician) -- Province of Canada politician
Wikipedia - Roberto Uy -- Filipino politician from the province of Zamboanga del Norte
Wikipedia - Rodriguez District -- district in Sarchi canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Rolpa District -- District in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin -- Lead diocese of the Metropolitan Province of Dublin, Ireland
Wikipedia - Roman Catholic Diocese of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatiere -- Diocese of the Catholic Church in the province of Quebec
Wikipedia - Roman Dacia -- Roman province
Wikipedia - Romania in Antiquity -- History of Romania between the foundation of Greek colonies in present-day Dobruja and the withdrawal of the Romans from "Dacia Trajana" province
Wikipedia - Roman province -- Major Roman administrative territorial entity outside of Italy
Wikipedia - Roman Syria -- Roman province
Wikipedia - Romblon Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Romblon, Philippines
Wikipedia - Romblon, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Ronda, Cebu -- 5th Class Municipality in the Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Rosario District, Desamparados -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Roseller Barinaga -- Filipino politician from the province of Zamboanga del Norte
Wikipedia - Rosendo Labadlabad -- Filipino politician from the province of Zamboanga del Norte
Wikipedia - Rouergue -- Former province of France
Wikipedia - Rouville (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Roxana, Pococi -- district in Pococi canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Roxas, Oriental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Roxas, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Rumonge Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Russfin Airport -- Airport in Tierra del Fuego Province, Chile
Wikipedia - Rutana Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Ruyigi Province -- Province of Burundi
Wikipedia - Rwindi -- A town in North Kivu Province
Wikipedia - Sabalito -- district in Coto Brus canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sabana Redonda -- district in Poas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sabanilla District, Montes de Oca -- district in Montes de Oca canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sabanillas -- district in Acosta canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sabaragamuwa Province -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Sablayan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Sado Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Saeedabad Taluka -- administrative subdivision in the Sindh province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - Safavid Daghestan -- A velayat (province) of the Safavid Empire (1501-1736)
Wikipedia - Safavid Georgia -- A velayat (province) of the Safavid Empire (1518-1736)
Wikipedia - Sagada -- Municipality of the Philippines in the Mountain Province
Wikipedia - Sagami Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Sagara Haruhiro -- Daimyo who ruled a region in Higo Province
Wikipedia - Sagbayan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Saguenay Graben -- A rift valley in the geological Grenville Province of southern Quebec, Canada.
Wikipedia - Saint Hyacinthe (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Saint Maurice (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Sainyabuli Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Sa Kaeo Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Sakon Nakhon Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Salavan Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Sales taxes in British Columbia -- Taxes levied in the Canadian province of British Columbia
Wikipedia - Salitral -- district in Santa Ana canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Salitrillos -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Salvador Benedicto -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Samana Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Samangan Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Samara -- district in Nicoya canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Samar Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Samar, Philippines
Wikipedia - Samboan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - SaM-CM-/da Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Sa M-DM-^PM-CM-)c Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Sampov Lun (commune) -- Commune in Sampov Lun District, Battambang Province, Cambodia
Wikipedia - Samuel Crane -- Businessman and politician in Province of Canada
Wikipedia - Samuel Harrison -- Province of Canada politician
Wikipedia - Samut Prakan Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Samut Sakhon Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Samut Songkhram Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - San Agustin, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - San Andres, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - San AndrM-CM-)s District, Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Alajuela -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Alajuelita -- district in Alajuelita canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, BelM-CM-)n -- district in BelM-CM-)n canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Desamparados -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Escazu -- district in Escazu canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Nicoya -- district in Nicoya canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Antonio District, Puriscal -- district in Puriscal canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Carlos (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Carlos District, Tarrazu -- district in Tarrazu canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sanchez District -- district in Curridabat canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sanchez Ramirez Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - San Clemente del Tuyu -- town in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Wikipedia - San Cristobal District, Costa Rica -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Cristobal Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Sancti Spiritus Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - San Diego District -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Enrique, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - San Enrique, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - San Fabian de Alico -- Town in San Fabian, M-CM-^Quble Province, Bio-Bio Region, Chile
Wikipedia - San Felipe District, Alajuelita -- district in Alajuelita canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Fernando, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - San Fernando, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - San Francisco de Dos Rios -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Francisco District, Goicoechea -- district in Goicoechea canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Francisco District, Heredia -- district in Heredia canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Francisco District, San Isidro -- district in San Isidro canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Gabriel District -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sani Bheri -- Rural municipality in Western Rukum District, Karnali Province, Nepal
Wikipedia - San Ignacio District, Acosta -- district in Acosta canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - San Isidro (canton) -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro de El General -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, Alajuela -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, Atenas -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, El Guarco -- district in El Guarco canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, Grecia -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, Montes de Oro -- district in Montes de Oro canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, San Isidro -- district in San Isidro canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Isidro, Vazquez de Coronado -- district in Vazquez de Coronado canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sanjak of Gelibolu -- Second-level Ottoman province
Wikipedia - Sanjak -- Second-level province of the Ottoman Empire
Wikipedia - San Jeronimo District, Esparza -- district in Esparza canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Jeronimo District, Moravia -- district in Moravia canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Jeronimo District, Naranjo -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Joaquin de Flores -- district in Flores canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Jorge District -- district in Los Chiles canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Josecito -- district in San Rafael canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Jose, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - San Jose, Occidental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - San Jose, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-)cito -- district in Alajuelita canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) de Alajuela -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) de la MontaM-CM-1a District -- district in Barva canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) de Ocoa Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) District, Atenas -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) District, Grecia -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) District, Naranjo -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) District, San Isidro -- district in San Isidro canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) District, Upala -- district in Upala canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San JosM-CM-) Province -- Province of Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan de Dios District -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan de Mata District -- district in Turrubares canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan de Santa Barbara -- district in Santa Barbara canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, Abangares -- district in Abangares canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, La Union -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, Naranjo -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, Poas -- district in Poas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan District, Tibas -- district in Tibas canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan Grande -- district in Esparza canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Juan Province, Argentina -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - San Juan Province (Dominican Republic) -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - San Juan, Siquijor -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Siquijor
Wikipedia - Sankuru -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - San Lorenzo District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Lorenzo District, Tarrazu -- district in Tarrazu canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Lorenzo, Guimaras -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Guimaras
Wikipedia - San Luis District -- district in Turrubares canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Luis Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - San Marcos, Costa Rica -- district in Tarrazu canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Mateo (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Mateo de Alajuela -- district in San Mateo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Miguel, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - San Miguel District, CaM-CM-1as -- district in CaM-CM-1as canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Miguel District, Desamparados -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Miguel District, Naranjo -- district in Naranjo canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Miguel District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Miguel, Iloilo -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - San Nicolas District, Cartago -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo (canton) -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo District, Barva -- district in Barva canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo District, Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo District, Nandayure -- district in Nandayure canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo District, San Pablo, Heredia -- district in San Pablo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pablo District, Turrubares -- district in Turrubares canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro, Costa Rica -- district in Montes de Oca canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro de Macoris Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - San Pedro de Poas -- district in Poas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro de Santa Barbara -- district in Santa Barbara canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro District, Barva -- district in Barva canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro District, PM-CM-)rez Zeledon -- district in PM-CM-)rez Zeledon canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro District, Sarchi -- district in Sarchi canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Pedro District, Turrubares -- district in Turrubares canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael Abajo -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael Arriba -- district in Desamparados canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael (canton) -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael de Guatuso -- district in Guatuso canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Alajuela -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Escazu -- district in Escazu canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Esparza -- district in Esparza canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, La Union -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Montes de Oca -- district in Montes de Oca canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Oreamuno -- district in Oreamuno canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Poas -- district in Poas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, Puriscal -- district in Puriscal canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, San Rafael -- district in San Rafael canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Rafael, Vazquez de Coronado -- district in Vazquez de Coronado canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Ramon (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Ramon, Costa Rica -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Ramon District, La Union -- district in La Union canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Remigio, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - San Roque District, Barva -- district in Barva canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Roque District, Grecia -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Sebastian (district) -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Ana (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Ana, Costa Rica -- district in Santa Ana canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Barbara (canton) -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Barbara de Heredia -- district in Santa Barbara canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Catalina, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Santa Cecilia District -- district in La Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz (canton), Costa Rica -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz District, Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro -- district in Leon CortM-CM-)s Castro canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz District, Santa Cruz, Guanacaste -- district in Santa Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz District, Turrialba -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz, Marinduque -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Marinduque
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz, Occidental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Occidental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Santa Cruz Province, Argentina -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Santa Elena District, La Cruz -- district in La Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Eulalia District, Atenas -- district in Atenas canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Fe, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Santa Fe Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Santa Fe, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Santa Isabel District, Rio Cuarto -- district in Rio Cuarto canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Maria District, Dota -- district in Dota canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Maria, Romblon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Romblon
Wikipedia - Santander, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Santa Rita District, Nandayure -- district in Nandayure canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Rita District, Rio Cuarto -- district in Rio Cuarto canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Rosa District, Oreamuno -- district in Oreamuno canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Rosa District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Rosa District, Tilaran -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Rosa District, Turrialba -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santa Teresita District -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Teodoro, Oriental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Santiago de Cuba Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Santiago del Estero Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Santiago District, Palmares -- district in Palmares canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santiago District, Paraiso -- district in Paraiso canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santiago District, Puriscal -- district in Puriscal canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santiago District, San Rafael -- district in San Rafael canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santiago District, San Ramon -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santiago Province (Dominican Republic) -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Santiago Rodriguez Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Santo Domingo, Costa Rica -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santo Domingo District, Santa Barbara -- district in Santa Barbara canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santo Domingo District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Santo Domingo Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Santo Tomas District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sanuki Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - San Vicente District, Santo Domingo -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Vicente, Moravia -- district in Moravia canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Vicente, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - San Vito (Costa Rica) -- district in Coto Brus canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - San Vito de Java Airport -- Airport in San Vito, Puntarenas Province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sapian -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Saraburi Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Saraikistan -- Proposed new province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - Sarangani Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Sarangani, Philippines
Wikipedia - Sarapiqui (canton) -- canton in Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sarchi (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sarchi Norte -- district in Sarchi canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sarchi Sur -- district in Sarchi canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sardinal -- district in Carrillo canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sardinia and Corsica -- Ancient Roman province
Wikipedia - Sar-e Pol Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Sarv-e Abarkuh -- Exceptionally old cypress tree in Yazd province, Iran
Wikipedia - Sasereme Airport -- Airport in Western Province, Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Satakunta (historical province)
Wikipedia - Satipo Province -- Province in Junin, Peru
Wikipedia - Satrap -- Ruler of a province in ancient Persia
Wikipedia - Satsuma Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Saucari Province -- Province in Oruro, Bolivia
Wikipedia - Saudi Aramco Medical Services Organization -- Hospital in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Savannakhet Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Savegre -- district in Quepos canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Savonia (historical province) -- Historical province of Finland
Wikipedia - Sayada, Algeria -- town in Mostaganem Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - Sayed Jafar Naderi -- Controller of Baghlan Province
Wikipedia - Scania -- Province in Sweden
Wikipedia - Schleswig-Holstein Province
Wikipedia - Sebkha el Melah -- Salt lake in BM-CM-)char Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - Second Revolution (Republic of China) -- 1913 revolt of southern provinces
Wikipedia - Sekong Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Semnan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Seniorate Province
Wikipedia - Separate school -- Type of school in some Canadian provinces
Wikipedia - Sergio Urribarri -- Argentine Justicialist Party (PJ) politician, governor of Entre Rios Province
Wikipedia - Settsu Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Seventeen Provinces -- Union of states in the Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries
Wikipedia - Sevilla, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Seydabad, Qom -- Village in Qom Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Shandong cuisine -- Branch of Chinese traditional cuisine native to Shandong province
Wikipedia - Shandong Normal University -- Institutions of higher learning established in Shandong Province since thI founding of the People's Republic of China.
Wikipedia - Shandong Province
Wikipedia - Shandong province
Wikipedia - Shanxi -- Province in North China
Wikipedia - Shaolin Monastery -- Chan Buddhist temple in Dengfeng County, Henan Province, China
Wikipedia - Shariff Kabunsuan -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Shefford (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Sher Alam Ibrahimi -- Former governor of Ghazni Province
Wikipedia - Sherbrooke County (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Shijiu Lake -- Lake in eastern China's Anhui and Jiangsu provinces
Wikipedia - Shima Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - ShimM-EM-^Msa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Shimotsuke Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Shinano Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Shindand -- Town in Herat Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Shirak Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Shiribeshi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Shirin Tagab River -- River in Faryab Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Shishu Subdistrict, Guangzhou -- Subdistrict of the Yuexiu District in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, southern China
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Wikipedia - Sibonga -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Sibulan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Sibunag -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Guimaras
Wikipedia - Sichuan Province
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Wikipedia - Siege of Sur (2016) -- Siege in Diyarbakir Province, Turkey
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Wikipedia - Sierra, Abangares -- district in Abangares canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sierra Bullones -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Sigma, Capiz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Sihanouk International Airport -- Cambodia's third international airport, located in Preah Sihanouk Province
Wikipedia - Sikatuna, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Silaka Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, near Port St Johns
Wikipedia - Similan Islands -- Marine protected area in Phang Nga Province, southern Thailand
Wikipedia - Sincansarnic, MustafakemalpaM-EM-^_a -- Neighborhood in Bursa Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Sindhi cap -- A cap from Sindh province.
Wikipedia - Sindhi clothing -- Clothing style of Sindh province
Wikipedia - Sind Province (1936-55) -- Province of British India (1936-1955)
Wikipedia - Sing Buri Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Sinja Valley -- Valley in Karnali Province, Nepal
Wikipedia - Siquijor Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Siquijor, Philippines
Wikipedia - Siquijor, Siquijor -- Municipality of the Philippines and capital of the province of Siquijor
Wikipedia - Siquirres (canton) -- canton in Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Siquirres -- district in Siquirres canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Sirince -- Village in M-DM-0zmir Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Sisaket Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Sisne (village) -- Former Village development committee in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Sisne -- Rural municipality in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Sixaola -- district in Talamanca canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Skikda Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Skudra -- 5th century BC Achaemenid province
Wikipedia - SM-CM-)tif Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - SM-FM-!n La Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - SmM-CM-%land -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina -- Former province of Serbia, Yugoslavia
Wikipedia - Soc Trang Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Sodermanland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Sofala Province -- Province of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Sogdia -- Ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire
Wikipedia - Sogod, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Song BM-CM-) Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Songkhla Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Sorsogon Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Sorsogon, Philippines
Wikipedia - Souk Ahras Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - South Cotabato Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of South Cotabato, Philippines
Wikipedia - Southeast Sulawesi -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Southern Leyte Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Southern Leyte, Philippines
Wikipedia - Southern Luzon State University -- Public university in Quezon province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Southern Province, Rwanda -- Province of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Southern Province, Sierra Leone -- Province of Sierra Leone
Wikipedia - Southern Province, Sri Lanka -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Southern Province, Zambia -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - South Gyeongsang Province
Wikipedia - South Holland -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - South Kalimantan -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - South Khorasan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - South Kivu -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - South Sulawesi -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - South Sumatra -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - South Tyrol -- Autonomous province of Italy
Wikipedia - South Western Province (Victoria) -- Former electoral province of the Victorian Legislative Council, Australia
Wikipedia - Spanish Texas -- Province of New Spain
Wikipedia - Sratsimirovo -- Village in Vidin Province, Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Stanstead (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - State of the Province Address (South Africa) -- State of the Province Address
Wikipedia - Stewart Derbishire -- Province of Canada politician
Wikipedia - Suarmin language -- Sepik language spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua-New Guinea
Wikipedia - Subahdar -- Governor of a province during the Mughal era
Wikipedia - Subah -- Title used for a province in the Mughal Empire
Wikipedia - Sudama, Nepal -- Ward Area in Province No.2, Nepal
Wikipedia - Sud-Ubangi -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Sudurpashchim Province -- Province of Nepal
Wikipedia - Suffragan diocese -- One of the dioceses other than the metropolitan archdiocese that constitute an ecclesiastical province
Wikipedia - Sukawati -- District in Gianyar Regency, Bali Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Sukhothai Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Suki Airport -- Airport in Western Province, Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Sultan Kudarat Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Sultan Kudarat, Philippines
Wikipedia - Sulu Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Sulu, Philippines
Wikipedia - SuM-EM-^M Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Sungguminasa -- Village in Gowa, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Surigao del Norte Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Surigao del Norte, Philippines
Wikipedia - Surigao del Sur Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Surigao del Sur, Philippines
Wikipedia - Surigao (province) -- Former province of the Philippines
Wikipedia - Surin Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Sur Lipez Province -- Province in Potosi Department, Bolivia
Wikipedia - Suruga Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Susta -- Rural municipality in Province No. 5, Nepal
Wikipedia - Suwa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Synod of Elvira -- Christian ecclesiastical synod held at Elvira in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica
Wikipedia - Syria (Roman province)
Wikipedia - Syunik Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Taal Lake -- Freshwater lake in the province of Batangas, Philippines
Wikipedia - Tabarcia -- district in Mora canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tabogon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Tabuelan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Tabuk Province -- Administrative region of Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Tacares -- district in Grecia canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tafraout, MM-CM-)dM-CM-)a -- Commune and town in MM-CM-)dM-CM-)a Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - Tagak-e Emam Abdollah -- Village in Golestan Province, Iran
Wikipedia - Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China -- Claimed province of the People's Republic of China
Wikipedia - Taiwan Provincial Government -- 1945-2018 government of Taiwan Province of the Republic of China
Wikipedia - Tajima Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Takhar Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Tak Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Talamanca (canton) -- canton in Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Talibon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Talisay, Cebu -- Component City in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Talish (region) -- Region and former province on the Persia
Wikipedia - Tamanrasset Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tamarindo, Costa Rica -- district in Santa Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tambor District -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tane Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Tanganyika Province -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Tango Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Tanna Island -- island in Tafea Province of Vanuatu
Wikipedia - Tapaz -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Capiz
Wikipedia - Tapesco -- district in Zarcero canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tapureli ruins -- Ruins of an ancientcity in Mersin Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Tarbaca -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tarcoles -- district in Garabito canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tarlac Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Tarlac, Philippines
Wikipedia - Tarrazu (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tarsino -- Village in Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Tarutao National Park -- Marine protected area off the coast of Satun Province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Tasbulat oil field -- Oil field in Mangystau Province
Wikipedia - Tatanua mask -- Traditional mask made by the natives in the province of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Taumako -- Island in Temotu Province, Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Tavush Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Tawi-Tawi Provincial Board -- Legislative body of the province of Tawi-Tawi, Philippines
Wikipedia - Tayasan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Taytay, Palawan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Palawan
Wikipedia - Tayutic -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tazona -- Human settlement in Albacete Province, Castile-La Mancha, Spain
Wikipedia - Tebessa Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tehrani accent -- Dialect of modern Persian spoken in Tehran Province
Wikipedia - Tehran Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - Telire District -- district in Talamanca canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tempate -- district in Santa Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tenerife Province (Colombia) -- Historic province in Colombia
Wikipedia - Teshio Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Tesso Nilo National Park -- A national park in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Tetepare Island -- Island in Western Province, Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Tete Province -- Province of Mozambique
Wikipedia - Thai BM-CM-,nh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Thai NguyM-CM-*n Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Thanh Hoa Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - The Dominican Province of Saint Joseph
Wikipedia - The Girl from the Provinces -- 1929 film
Wikipedia - The Province
Wikipedia - The Uncle from the Provinces -- 1926 film
Wikipedia - Third plague pandemic -- Bubonic plague pandemic that began in Yunnan province in China in 1855
Wikipedia - ThM-aM-;M-+a ThiM-CM-*n-HuM-aM-:M-? Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Thracia -- Roman province in the southeastern Balkan region
Wikipedia - Tianjin -- City and province-level municipality of China
Wikipedia - Tiaret Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tibas -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tibet Area (administrative division) -- former province-level administrative division of China
Wikipedia - Tiefa -- Town in Liaoning Province, China
Wikipedia - Tierra Blanca, Cartago -- district in Cartago canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Tierras Morenas -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tigbauan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Tigray Province -- Former province in northern Ethiopia
Wikipedia - Tilaran (canton) -- canton in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tilaran -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - TiM-aM-;M-^An Giang Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Timimoun Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tinakula -- Volcano and island in Temotu Province, Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Tindouf Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tipaza Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tirrases -- district in Curridabat canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tissa Vitharana -- Sri Lankan politician, leader of Lanka Sama Samaja Party and Governor of North Central Province
Wikipedia - Tissemsilt Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tizi Ouzou Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Tlemcen Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - TM-CM-"n An Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - TM-CM-"y Ninh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - TM-EM-^MtM-EM-^Mmi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Toba Batak language -- Austronesian language spoken in North Sumatra province in Indonesia
Wikipedia - Tobosi -- district in El Guarco canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Toboso, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Togashi Masachika -- General and daimyM-EM-^M from Kaga Province, Japan
Wikipedia - Tokachi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Toledo, Cebu -- City in Cebu province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Tonghua Province -- Defunct province in East Asia
Wikipedia - Torghundi -- town in Herat Province, Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Toro Amarillo -- district in Sarchi canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Torrijos, Marinduque -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Marinduque
Wikipedia - Tosa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Touggourt Province -- Province of Algeria
Wikipedia - Toyo Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Trang Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Transcaspian Oblast -- Province of the Russian Empire and early Soviet Russia
Wikipedia - Transvaal Province
Wikipedia - Trat Province Stadium -- Multi-purpose stadium in Trat Province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Trat Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Tra Vinh Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Trentino -- Autonomous province of Italy
Wikipedia - Tres Equis -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Trinidad, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Tripoli Eyalet -- Ottoman province (1579-1864)
Wikipedia - Tripurasundari, Sindhupalchok -- Rural municipality in Bagmati province, Nepal
Wikipedia - TrM-CM-)gor -- Historic province of Brittany
Wikipedia - Trogia venenata -- Species of toxic fungus in the family Marasmiaceae indigenous to Yunnan province
Wikipedia - Tronadora -- district in Tilaran canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Trongsa Province -- Historical Province of Bhutan
Wikipedia - Trowulan -- District in Mojokerto Regency, Jawa Timur Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Tshopo -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Tshuapa -- Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Tsolwana Nature Reserve -- Nature reserve on the edge of the Winterberg Mountain range in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - Tsukushi Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Tsushima Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Tubigon -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Tubungan -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Iloilo
Wikipedia - Tuburan, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Tucuman Province -- Province of Argentina
Wikipedia - Tucurrique -- district in JimM-CM-)nez canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tudela, Cebu -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Cebu
Wikipedia - Tuis District -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Tulamben -- Village in Karangasem, Bali Province, Indonesia
Wikipedia - Turan (Sasanian province) -- Province of the Sasanian Empire
Wikipedia - Tures -- district in Santo Domingo canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises -- Coal mining organization belonging to the Turkish government, which mines bituminous coal mainly in Zonguldak Province
Wikipedia - Turrialba (canton) -- canton in Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Turrialba (district) -- district in Turrialba canton, Cartago province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Turrubares (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Turrucares -- district in Alajuela canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - TuyM-CM-*n Quang Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Two Mountains (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Former Canadian electoral district
Wikipedia - Ubay, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Ubon Ratchathani Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Uda Aparekka -- town in Southern Province, Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Udon Thani Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Ugo Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Uige Province -- province of Angola
Wikipedia - Ulloa District -- district in Heredia canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Ulster -- Traditional province in the north of Ireland
Wikipedia - Umurbey, Gemlik -- Neighborhood in Bursa Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Underground Project 131 -- Undreground tunnel system in Hubei province, China
Wikipedia - Union of Utrecht -- 1579 treaty unifying the northern Netherlands provinces
Wikipedia - United Provinces (1937-50) -- Province of British India and later, the Dominion of India
Wikipedia - United Provinces of Agra and Oudh -- Province in British India
Wikipedia - United Provinces of British India -- Province of British India
Wikipedia - United Provinces of Central Italy -- Former Italian state (1859-1860)
Wikipedia - United Provinces of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - University of Bouira -- University in Bouira Province, Algeria
Wikipedia - University of Pangasinan -- Private university in Pangasinan province, Philippines
Wikipedia - University of Southern Mindanao -- Public university in Kabacan, Cotabato province, Philippines
Wikipedia - Upala (canton) -- canton in Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Upala -- district in Upala canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Upper South Province, Maldives -- former province of the Maldives
Wikipedia - Uppland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - Uruca District, Santa Ana -- district in Santa Ana canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Uruca -- district in San JosM-CM-) canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Uruzgan Province -- Province of Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Utrecht (province) -- Province of the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Utrecht -- City and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands
Wikipedia - Uttaradit Province -- Province of Thailand
Wikipedia - Uusimaa (historical province)
Wikipedia - Uva Province -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Uzen Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Uzunkum Nature Park -- Coastal area nature park in Kocaeli Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Vakif, Akyazi -- Neighborhood in Sakarya Province, Turkey
Wikipedia - Valencia, Bohol -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Bohol
Wikipedia - Valencia, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Valladolid, Negros Occidental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Occidental
Wikipedia - Valladolid (province)
Wikipedia - Vallehermoso, Negros Oriental -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Negros Oriental
Wikipedia - Valle La Estrella -- district in Limon canton, Limon province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Valleys of South Tyrol -- valleys of a mountainous province
Wikipedia - Valverde Province -- Province of the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Varablanca -- district in Heredia canton, Heredia province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Varat Eyalet -- Ottoman province
Wikipedia - Vaudreuil (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Vayots Dzor Province -- Province of Armenia
Wikipedia - Vazquez de Coronado (canton) -- canton in San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Veintisiete de Abril District -- district in Santa Cruz canton, Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Velingrad Municipality -- municipality in Pazardzhik Province, Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Velingrad -- town in Pazardzhik Province, Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Venado, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Vendel -- Parish in the Swedish province of Uppland
Wikipedia - Venecia, San Carlos -- district in San Carlos canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Vercheres (Province of Canada electoral district) -- Province of Canada electoral district
Wikipedia - Vergelegen -- Historic wine estate in Somerset West, in the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Vicente dela Serna -- Governor of the province of Cebu, Philippines (1992-1995) and Cebu 6th District representative (1987-1992)
Wikipedia - Victoria, Oriental Mindoro -- Municipality of the Philippines in the province of Oriental Mindoro
Wikipedia - Vientiane Province -- Province of Laos
Wikipedia - Villa Clara Province -- Province of Cuba
Wikipedia - Vishna -- Village in Burgas Province, Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Vitrasius Pollio -- 1st century AD governor of the Roman province of Egypt
Wikipedia - Vlaai -- Type of pie, originating from the Dutch province of Limburg, with a fluffier dough than cake
Wikipedia - VM-CM-$rmland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - VM-CM-$sterbotten -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - VM-CM-$stergotland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - VM-CM-$stmanland -- Historical province of Sweden
Wikipedia - VM-DM-)nh BM-CM-,nh Province -- Historic province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - VM-DM-)nh Long Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - VM-DM-)nh Phuc Province -- Province of Vietnam
Wikipedia - Voisey's Bay Mine -- Nickel mine in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador
Wikipedia - Vojvodina -- Autonomous province of Serbia
Wikipedia - Volcan District -- district in Buenos Aires canton, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Volio District -- district in San Ramon canton, Alajuela province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Vryburg High School -- School in Vryburg, North West Province, South Africa
Wikipedia - Vuelta de Jorco -- district in Aserri canton, San JosM-CM-) province, Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Wakasa Province -- Former province of Japan
Wikipedia - Walker Bay Whale Sanctuary -- A marine conservation area in the Western Cape province in South Africa
Wikipedia - Walloon Brabant -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - Wangjiawan -- Village in Hubei province, China
Wikipedia - Wang Saen Suk -- Buddhist temple located in Bang Saen city, Chonburi province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew -- Buddhist temple made of bottles in Khun Han district, Sisaket province, Thailand
Wikipedia - Wej province -- 10th century kingdom in modern Ethiopia
Wikipedia - Wele-Nzas -- Province of Equatorial Guinea
Wikipedia - West Azerbaijan Province -- Province of Iran
Wikipedia - West Coast National Park -- Conservation area north of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa
Wikipedia - Western Province (Kenya) -- Province of Kenya
Wikipedia - Western Province (rugby team) -- Rugby union team based in Cape Town, South Africa
Wikipedia - Western Province, Rwanda -- Province of Rwanda
Wikipedia - Western Province, Sri Lanka -- Province of Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Western Province, Zambia -- Province of Zambia
Wikipedia - Western Roman Empire -- Independently administered western provinces of the Roman Empire
Wikipedia - West Flanders -- Province of Belgium
Wikipedia - West Java -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - West Kalimantan -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - West Nusa Tenggara -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - West Pakistan -- Former Province of Pakistan
Wikipedia - West Papua (province) -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - West Prussia -- Province of Prussia
Wikipedia - West Sulawesi -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - West Sumatra -- Province of Indonesia
Wikipedia - Wilayah -- Administrative division approximating a state or province
Wikipedia - William Hill (colonial administrator) -- Proprietary Governor of the Province of Avalon in Newfoundland, now in Canada
Wikipedia - William Phips -- 17th-century royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
Wikipedia - William Stewart (Upper Canada and Canada West) -- Province of Canada businessman and politician
Wikipedia - Woleu-Ntem Province -- Province of Gabon
Wikipedia - WOMR -- Community radio station in Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States
Wikipedia - Wonsan -- port city in Kangwon Province, North Korea
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476189.Postcards_from_the_Province_of_Hyphens
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15775410-the-province-of-the-book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1956661.A_Little_Maid_of_Provincetown
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24070007-the-province
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/294731.Provinces_of_Night
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7251839-canadian-provinces
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/858992.The_Human_Province
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9232719-provinces
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Canadian_province
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Municipalities_of_Utrecht_(province)
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Settlements_in_Utrecht_(province)
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Utrecht_(province)
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Charlotte_County,_Province_of_New_York
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Map_provinces_Netherlands-en.svg
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_with_provinces.png
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Groningen_(province)
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_the_Netherlands
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Provincetown_Cemetery
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Seventeen_Provinces
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Utrecht_Province
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Utrecht_(province)
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Utrecht_(province)#ImageMap_2_1037416646
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https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Crime_in_Farah_Province
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https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Campaignbox_Kandahar_province_campaign
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_the_Province_of_Posen
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Province_of_Melanesia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_province
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Iudaea_Province
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https://threekingdoms.wikia.org/wiki/Liang_Province_Rebellion
https://threekingdoms.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_provinces,_commanderies_and_cities
https://threekingdoms.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_provinces,_commanderies_and_counties
dedroidify.blogspot - drjohn-lilly-in-province-of-mind
Dharmapedia - Liberal_Catholic_Church,_Province_of_the_United_States_of_America
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Province
Brotherhood Of The Wolf(2001) - In 18th century France, the Chevalier de Fronsac and his native American friend Mani are sent by the King to the Gevaudan province to investigate the killings of hundreds by a mysterious beast.
Back to 1942 (2012) ::: 6.8/10 -- Yi jiu si er (original title) -- Back to 1942 Poster -- A deadly drought in 1942 takes its toll on central China's Henan province during the war against Japan. Director: Xiaogang Feng Writers:
Memories of Murder (2003) ::: 8.1/10 -- Salinui chueok (original title) -- Memories of Murder Poster -- In a small Korean province in 1986, two detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit. Director: Bong Joon Ho Writers:
Mr. Pip (2012) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 56min | Drama, War | 3 October 2013 (New Zealand) -- As a war rages on in the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, a young girl becomes transfixed by the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is being read at school by the only white man in the village. Director: Andrew Adamson Writers:
Theeb (2014) ::: 7.2/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 40min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller | 19 March 2015 -- Theeb Poster -- In the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I, a young Bedouin boy experiences a greatly hastened coming-of-age as he embarks on a perilous desert journey to guide a British officer to his secret destination. Director: Naji Abu Nowar
The Robe (1953) ::: 6.8/10 -- Unrated | 2h 15min | Drama, History | 4 December 1953 (France) -- In the Roman province of Judea during the 1st century, Roman tribune Marcellus Gallio is ordered to crucify Jesus of Nazareth but is tormented by his guilty conscience afterwards. Director: Henry Koster Writers:
Zorro (1975) ::: 6.5/10 -- G | 2h | Action, Adventure, Comedy | June 1976 (USA) -- In the New World, a new Spanish governor finds the province of Nueva Aragn under the iron fist of the corrupt Colonel Huerta and vows to bring justice under the guise of a masked avenger. Director: Duccio Tessari Writers: Giorgio Arlorio (story), Giorgio Arlorio (screenplay) Stars:
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Confederate_Provinces_of_Canada
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Chosain_Province
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https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline:Khopshef_Province
https://apicultura.fandom.com/wiki/Buenos_Ayres,_and_the_provinces_of_the_Rio_de_La_Plata
https://billybat.fandom.com/wiki/Iga_Province
https://canada.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_and_Territories
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraftia_(province)
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_and_Regions_of_Robloxia
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_of_Azara
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_of_Minecraftia
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_of_Qualicia
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/San_Juan_(province)
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Shintoist_Province_and_Scarlet_Devil_of_Minecraftia
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Shintoist_Province_and_Scarlet_Devil_of_Team_Crimson
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Trois-Rivi%C3%A8res_(province)
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Vehicle_Registration_Plates_of_Minecraftia_Province
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Verde_Province
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Yellowbrick_(province)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Province
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Province_(Arena)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Province
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_of_Tamriel
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Eastern_Provinces
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Qeynos_Province_District
https://forgeofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Province_Owners
https://forgeofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Aru_Province
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Flame_(province)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Maeshi_province
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Miyama_Province
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_of_magic
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sand_(province)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_(province)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Universal_province
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Universal_(province)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Wind_(province)
https://list.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_provinces_and_states_in_North_America
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Central_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dahkur_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eastern_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Golar_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hedrikspool_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hill_Provinces
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kendra_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ketha_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lonar_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Musilla_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Northern_province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rakantha_Province
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tozhat_Province
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Hedrikspool_Province
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Kendra_Province
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Lonar_Province
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Musilla_Province
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Province
https://oldschoolrunescape.fandom.com/wiki/Western_Provinces_Achievements
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tann_Province
https://swfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Iyo_Province
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Madhya_Province
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Seventeen_Provinces
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Tunguska_province
https://tera.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces
https://totalwar.fandom.com/wiki/Provinces_(Troy)
https://treeofsavior.fandom.com/wiki/Kaliss_Province
https://treeofsavior.fandom.com/wiki/Kiren_Province
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Zhu_Province
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Zouchin_Province
https://xenoblade.fandom.com/wiki/Gormott_Province
Cardfight!! Vanguard: overDress -- -- Kinema Citrus -- 12 eps -- Original -- Action Game -- Cardfight!! Vanguard: overDress Cardfight!! Vanguard: overDress -- Yu-yu is a boy living in Kanazawa, Kaga Province. He is 15 years old and in his third year of junior high school. He has the ability to sense the feelings of others, but he is troubled by the fact that he cannot say no when asked. -- -- One day, Yu-yu could no longer stand going along with his sister's hobby, so he ran away from home. The one who saves him is Megumi Okura. Megumi invites Yu-yu to a nighttime amusement park called "Wonder Hill" where her friends hang out. At the amusement park, Yu-yu meets Megumi, Zakusa Ishikame, and Tomari Seto, members of "Team Blackout," a group that meets to play Vanguard every night. -- -- Tonight, a serious fight for the team's flag will take place. Blackout's leader, Danji Momoyama, and the mysterious and powerful fighter, Touya Ebata. As Yu-yu stares at them, the card fight is soon eroded into a world of images. -- -- This is how Yu-yu encounters Vanguard, a world he has never seen before, and is drawn in by its powerful allure- making new friends along the way. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 5,929 6.23
Kemono no Souja Erin -- -- Production I.G, Trans Arts -- 50 eps -- Novel -- Drama Fantasy Slice of Life -- Kemono no Souja Erin Kemono no Souja Erin -- In the land of Ryoza, the neighboring provinces of Shin-Ou and Tai-Kou have been at peace. Queen Shinou is the ruler of Ryoza and her greatest general, Grand Duke Taikou, defends the kingdom with his army of powerful war-lizards known as the "Touda." Although the two regions have enjoyed a long-standing alliance, mounting tensions threaten to spark a fierce civil war. -- -- Within Ake, a village in Tai-Kou tasked with raising the Grand Duke's army, lives Erin, a bright girl who spends her days watching the work of her mother Soyon, the village's head Touda doctor. But while under Soyon's care, a disastrous incident befalls the Grand Duke's strongest Touda, and the peace that Erin and her mother had been enjoying vanishes as Soyon is punished severely. In a desperate attempt to save her mother, Erin ends up falling in a river and is swept towards Shin-Ou. -- -- Unable to return home, Erin must learn to lead a new life with completely different people, all while hunting for the truth of both beasts and humanity itself, with tensions between the two regions constantly escalating. -- -- TV - Jan 10, 2009 -- 70,335 8.34
Kyonyuu Fantasy -- -- Majin -- 2 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem Hentai Demons Supernatural Fantasy -- Kyonyuu Fantasy Kyonyuu Fantasy -- An OVA based on the WAFFLE game. The story follows Ryuuto Hende, a soldier with unbelievable luck who was assigned to the province where a succubus is drying out men to death, and the local "first lady", who happens to be sexually frustrated. The H-parts show mostly a big-breasts theme and mutual love/appreciation. -- OVA - May 25, 2012 -- 22,678 7.37
Reikenzan: Hoshikuzu-tachi no Utage -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Magic Fantasy -- Reikenzan: Hoshikuzu-tachi no Utage Reikenzan: Hoshikuzu-tachi no Utage -- Long ago in the nine provinces of Kyushu, a calamitous event was prophesied to take place: falling comets would exhaust the spiritual energies of both the heavens and the lands and thus bring about an age of chaos upon the world. But contrary to the prophecy, the comets passed by with no calamity taking place. At the same time, as if touched by the phenomenon, a boy was born in a remote village of the Sokei region by the name of Ouriku. -- -- Twelve years later, as the memories of the event have faded from people's minds, the Reikenzan clan—one of the five supreme sects of the nine provinces—decides to hold an examination in order to gather the most talented individuals fit to become disciples and eventually sages. Hearing about this news, Ouriku and his servant Ouchou head toward the site, unaware that the organizer Oubu, despite her elegant appearance, is infamous for being extremely irresponsible and carefree; hence, making the trials in the examination unpredictable. -- -- Reikenzan: Hoshikuzu-tachi no Utage follows the story of Ouriku as he journeys through these trials to become a powerful sage. -- -- 79,165 7.10
Saiunkoku Monogatari 2nd Season -- -- Madhouse -- 39 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Historical Romance -- Saiunkoku Monogatari 2nd Season Saiunkoku Monogatari 2nd Season -- Shuurei Kou and her friend Eigetsu To, a boy prodigy of humble origins, have been appointed co-governors of the Sa province, one of the eight provinces in Saiunkoku. Together, they decide to make the province an academic research center in the hopes of bringing a long overdue prosperity to the region. -- -- However, while Shuurei goes to the capital to obtain approvals for the ambitious project, the Sa province's recently established tranquility is threatened by a pandemic that brings both death and turmoil as it begins to spread among the people. Counting on Eigetsu to monitor the situation until her return, Shuurei seeks support from her allies to find a suitable treatment. Yet, Eigetsu's past personal conflicts distract him, providing an opportunity for opponents of Shuurei's position to take advantage of the troubles and undermine her authority. -- -- Becoming a government official has been Shuurei's lifelong dream, but it is no easy task for the first woman undertaking such a position. Will she step up and overcome this great challenge or give in to the looming adversities? -- -- TV - Apr 7, 2007 -- 35,268 8.06
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Utrecht_(province)
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Antwerp_(province)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Births_in_Sofia_Province
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Chubut_Province
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ecclesiastical_Province_of_Western_Australia_(Anglican_Church_of_Australia)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ecclesiastical_provinces
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ecclesiastical_provinces_by_country
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Rizal_(province)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Old_acacia_trees_in_Rizal_(province)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Province_of_Chieti
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Province_of_Savona
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Provinces
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Provinces_by_country
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_Catholic_ecclesiastical_provinces
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Blank_version_of_a_map_of_the_provinces_of_Vietnam_I_can_alter_with_Microsoft_Paint
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodhisattva_Amida_Buddha_Northern_Qi_Dynasty_Hebei_Province_China_550-577_CE_02.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodhisattva_Amida_Buddha_Northern_Qi_Dynasty_Hebei_Province_China_550-577_CE.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodhisattva_Northern_Qi_Dynasty_(550-577_CE)_Hebei_Province_China_Penn_Museum_02.jpg
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'Asir Province
17th MMC Plovdiv-province
1947 North-West Frontier Province referendum
1978 Dutch province hall hostage crisis
1987 Eastern Province massacres
2007 Helmand Province airstrikes
2011 Helmand Province killing
2011 Logar province bombing
2011 Nimruz province bombing
2011 Zabul province bombing
2014 Mountain Province bus accident
2018 quateur province Ebola outbreak
26th MMC Sofia-province
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Land alienation in Ratanakiri Province
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List of Argentine provinces by Human Development Index
List of Armenian provinces by Human Development Index
List of barangays in Abra (province)
List of barangays in Aurora (province)
List of barangays in Isabela (province)
List of barangays in Mountain Province
List of Belgian provinces by GDP
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of A Corua
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of lava
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Albacete
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Alicante
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Almera
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of vila
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Badajoz
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Barcelona
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Biscay
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Burgos
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Cceres
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Cdiz
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Castelln
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Ciudad Real
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Crdoba
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Cuenca
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Gipuzkoa
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Girona
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Granada
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Guadalajara
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Huelva
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Huesca
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Jan
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of La Rioja
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Las Palmas
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Len
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Mlaga
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Palencia
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Pontevedra
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Salamanca
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Segovia
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Seville
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Soria
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Tarragona
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Teruel
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Toledo
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Valencia
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Valladolid
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Zamora
List of Bienes de Inters Cultural in the Province of Zaragoza
List of biogeographic provinces
List of borgs in Groningen (province)
List of bridges in Konar Province
List of Bulgarian provinces by GDP
List of Bulgaria province name etymologies
List of Cambodian provinces by Human Development Index
List of Canada-related topics by provinces and territories
List of Canadian census agglomerations by province or territory
List of Canadian provinces and territories' largest municipalities
List of Canadian provinces and territories by area
List of Canadian provinces and territories by gross domestic product
List of Canadian provinces and territories by Human Development Index
List of castra by province
List of Chairmen of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province
List of Chief Commissioners of Coorg Province
List of Chief Ministers of Central Province
List of Chief Ministers of Eastern Province
List of Chief Ministers of North Central Province
List of Chief Ministers of North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
List of Chief Ministers of Northern Province
List of Chief Ministers of North Western Province
List of Chief Ministers of Southern Province
List of Chief Ministers of Uva Province
List of Chief Ministers of Western Province
List of cities and counties of Gyeonggi Province
List of cities and counties of North Chungcheong Province
List of cities and counties of South Chungcheong Province
List of cities and towns in Surat Thani Province
List of cities in Iran by province
List of cities in the Netherlands by province
List of cities, towns and villages in West Azerbaijan Province
List of communes in Bn Tre Province
List of Costa Rican provinces by Human Development Index
List of demonyms for Philippine provinces
List of Divisional Secretariats of Central Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of North Central Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of Northern Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of North Western Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of Sabaragamuwa Province
List of Divisional Secretariats of Southern Province, Sri Lanka
List of Divisional Secretariats of Uva Province
List of Divisional Secretariats of Western Province, Sri Lanka
List of Dominican Republic Provinces by etymology
List of flood basalt provinces
List of Gabonese provinces by Human Development Index
List of Governors of Bihar and Orissa Province
List of Governors of Central Province
List of Governors of Eastern Province
List of governors of quateur (former province)
List of governors of Kasa (former province)
List of governors of Kasa Oriental Province
List of Governors of North Central Province
List of Governors of North Eastern Province
List of Governors of Northern Province, Sri Lanka
List of Governors of North Western Province
List of governors of Orientale Province
List of Governors of Southern Province
List of Governors of the Central Provinces and Berar
List of governors of the Province of Trieste
List of governors of the Province of Zara
List of Governors of the United Provinces
List of Governors of the United Provinces of British India
List of governors of Venezuela Province
List of Governors of Western Province
List of heritage sites in the Western Cape Province, South Africa
List of highest points of Canadian provinces and territories
List of historical structures in Isfahan Province
List of hospitals in Ankara Province
List of hospitals in Balkesir Province
List of hospitals in Bursa Province
List of hospitals in Izmir Province
List of Indonesian provinces by GRP per capita
List of Indonesian provinces by Human Development Index
List of Iranian provinces by Human Development Index
List of Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada
List of large volume volcanic eruptions in the Basin and Range Province
List of Lieutenant-Governors of the North-Western Provinces
List of Lieutenant-Governors of the North-Western Provinces and Chief Commissioners of Oudh
List of Lieutenant-Governors of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh
List of monuments in Bagmati Province
List of monuments in Gandaki Province
List of monuments in Karnali Province
List of monuments in Lumbini Province
List of monuments in Sudurpashchim Province
List of mountain pases of North West (province)
List of municipalities in Adana Province
List of municipalities in Adyaman Province
List of municipalities in Afyonkarahisar Province
List of municipalities in Ar Province
List of municipalities in Aksaray Province
List of municipalities in Amasya Province
List of municipalities in Ankara Province
List of municipalities in Antalya Province
List of municipalities in Ardahan Province
List of municipalities in Artvin Province
List of municipalities in Aydn Province
List of municipalities in Balkesir Province
List of municipalities in Bartn Province
List of municipalities in Batman Province
List of municipalities in Bayburt Province
List of municipalities in Bilecik Province
List of municipalities in Bingl Province
List of municipalities in Bitlis Province
List of municipalities in Bolu Province
List of municipalities in Burdur Province
List of municipalities in Bursa Province
List of municipalities in anakkale Province
List of municipalities in ankr Province
List of municipalities in orum Province
List of municipalities in Denizli Province
List of municipalities in Diyarbakr Province
List of municipalities in Dzce Province
List of municipalities in Edirne Province
List of municipalities in Elaz Province
List of municipalities in Erzincan Province
List of municipalities in Erzurum Province
List of municipalities in Eskiehir Province
List of municipalities in Gaziantep Province
List of municipalities in Giresun Province
List of municipalities in Gmhane Province
List of municipalities in Hakkari Province
List of municipalities in Hatay Province
List of municipalities in Idr Province
List of municipalities in Isparta Province
List of municipalities in stanbul Province
List of municipalities in zmir Province
List of municipalities in Kahramanmara Province
List of municipalities in Karabk Province
List of municipalities in Karaman Province
List of municipalities in Kars Province
List of municipalities in Kastamonu Province
List of municipalities in Kayseri Province
List of municipalities in Kilis Province
List of municipalities in Krkkale Province
List of municipalities in Krklareli Province
List of municipalities in Krehir Province
List of municipalities in Kocaeli Province
List of municipalities in Konya Province
List of municipalities in Ktahya Province
List of municipalities in Malatya Province
List of municipalities in Manisa Province
List of municipalities in Mardin Province
List of municipalities in Mersin Province
List of municipalities in Mula Province
List of municipalities in Mu Province
List of municipalities in Nakhon Ratchasima Province
List of municipalities in Nevehir Province
List of municipalities in Nide Province
List of municipalities in Ordu Province
List of municipalities in Osmaniye Province
List of municipalities in Rize Province
List of municipalities in Sakarya Province
List of municipalities in Samsun Province
List of municipalities in anlurfa Province
List of municipalities in Siirt Province
List of municipalities in Sinop Province
List of municipalities in rnak Province
List of municipalities in Sivas Province
List of municipalities in Tekirda Province
List of municipalities in the Province of Pomerania, AH
List of municipalities in the Province of Pomerania, AZ
List of municipalities in the Province of Pomerania, IP
List of municipalities in the Province of Pomerania, QZ
List of municipalities in Tokat Province
List of municipalities in Trabzon Province
List of municipalities in Tunceli Province
List of municipalities in Uak Province
List of municipalities in Van Province
List of municipalities in Yalova Province
List of municipalities in Yozgat Province
List of municipalities in Zonguldak Province
List of municipalities of the Province of Agrigento
List of municipalities of the Province of Alessandria
List of municipalities of the Province of Ancona
List of municipalities of the Province of Arezzo
List of municipalities of the Province of Ascoli Piceno
List of municipalities of the Province of Asti
List of municipalities of the Province of Avellino
List of municipalities of the Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani
List of municipalities of the Province of Belluno
List of municipalities of the Province of Benevento
List of municipalities of the Province of Bergamo
List of municipalities of the Province of Biella
List of municipalities of the Province of Brescia
List of municipalities of the Province of Brindisi
List of municipalities of the Province of Caltanissetta
List of municipalities of the Province of Campobasso
List of municipalities of the Province of Carbonia-Iglesias
List of municipalities of the Province of Caserta
List of municipalities of the Province of Catanzaro
List of municipalities of the Province of Chieti
List of municipalities of the Province of Como
List of municipalities of the Province of Cosenza
List of municipalities of the Province of Cremona
List of municipalities of the Province of Crotone
List of municipalities of the Province of Cuneo
List of municipalities of the Province of Enna
List of municipalities of the Province of Fermo
List of municipalities of the Province of Ferrara
List of municipalities of the Province of Foggia
List of municipalities of the Province of Forl-Cesena
List of municipalities of the Province of Frosinone
List of municipalities of the Province of Gorizia
List of municipalities of the Province of Grosseto
List of municipalities of the Province of Imperia
List of municipalities of the Province of Isernia
List of municipalities of the Province of L'Aquila
List of municipalities of the Province of La Spezia
List of municipalities of the Province of Latina
List of municipalities of the Province of Lecce
List of municipalities of the Province of Lecco
List of municipalities of the Province of Livorno
List of municipalities of the Province of Lodi
List of municipalities of the Province of Lucca
List of municipalities of the Province of Macerata
List of municipalities of the Province of Mantua
List of municipalities of the Province of Massa-Carrara
List of municipalities of the Province of Matera
List of municipalities of the Province of Medio Campidano
List of municipalities of the Province of Modena
List of municipalities of the Province of Monza and Brianza
List of municipalities of the Province of Novara
List of municipalities of the Province of Nuoro
List of municipalities of the Province of Ogliastra
List of municipalities of the Province of Olbia-Tempio
List of municipalities of the Province of Oristano
List of municipalities of the Province of Padua
List of municipalities of the Province of Parma
List of municipalities of the Province of Pavia
List of municipalities of the Province of Perugia
List of municipalities of the Province of Pesaro and Urbino
List of municipalities of the Province of Pescara
List of municipalities of the Province of Piacenza
List of municipalities of the Province of Pisa
List of municipalities of the Province of Pistoia
List of municipalities of the Province of Pordenone
List of municipalities of the Province of Potenza
List of municipalities of the Province of Prato
List of municipalities of the Province of Ragusa
List of municipalities of the Province of Ravenna
List of municipalities of the Province of Reggio Emilia
List of municipalities of the Province of Rieti
List of municipalities of the Province of Rimini
List of municipalities of the Province of Rovigo
List of municipalities of the Province of Salerno
List of municipalities of the Province of Sassari
List of municipalities of the Province of Savona
List of municipalities of the Province of Siena
List of municipalities of the Province of Sondrio
List of municipalities of the Province of South Sardinia
List of municipalities of the Province of Syracuse
List of municipalities of the Province of Taranto
List of municipalities of the Province of Teramo
List of municipalities of the Province of Terni
List of municipalities of the Province of Trapani
List of municipalities of the Province of Treviso
List of municipalities of the Province of Udine
List of municipalities of the Province of Varese
List of municipalities of the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
List of municipalities of the Province of Vercelli
List of municipalities of the Province of Verona
List of municipalities of the Province of Vibo Valentia
List of municipalities of the Province of Vicenza
List of municipalities of the Province of Viterbo
List of museums in Province of Varese
List of museums in the province of Almera
List of museums in the province of Cdiz
List of National Council of Provinces members of the 24th Parliament of South Africa
List of National Council of Provinces members of the 26th Parliament of South Africa
List of natural monuments in Province No. 2
List of Pakistani provinces by gross domestic product
List of people on the postage stamps of the Canadian provinces
List of Philippine provinces by Human Development Index
List of populated places in Adyaman Province
List of populated places in Aydn Province
List of populated places in Bartn Province
List of populated places in anakkale Province
List of populated places in Diyarbakr Province
List of populated places in Dzce Province
List of populated places in Elaz Province
List of populated places in Eskiehir Province
List of populated places in Gmhane Province
List of populated places in Hakkari Province
List of populated places in Hatay Province
List of populated places in Idr Province
List of populated places in Istanbul Province
List of populated places in zmir Province
List of populated places in Karabk Province
List of populated places in Krkkale Province
List of populated places in Krklareli Province
List of populated places in Krehir Province
List of populated places in Malatya Province
List of populated places in Mula Province
List of populated places in Mu Province
List of populated places in Nevehir Province
List of populated places in Nide Province
List of populated places in Tekirda Province
List of populated places in Tunceli Province
List of populated places in Uak Province
List of post-1692 Anglican parishes in the Province of Maryland
List of prefects of the Province of Pola
List of presidents of the Philippines by province
List of proposed provinces and territories of Canada
List of protected heritage sites in Neufchteau, Luxembourg Province
List of provinces and indigenous regions of Panama by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Angola by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Balhae
List of provinces of Kenya by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Laos by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Mozambique by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Papua New Guinea by Human Development Index
List of provinces of Rwanda by Human Development Index
List of provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo by Human Development Index
List of provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
List of provinces of the Netherlands by Human Development Index
List of settlements in Central Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in Eastern Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in North Central Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in Northern Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in North Western Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in Sabaragamuwa Province
List of settlements in Southern Province (Sri Lanka)
List of settlements in Uva Province
List of settlements in Western Province (Sri Lanka)
List of South African provinces by fertility rate
List of South African provinces by Human Development Index
List of South African provinces by life expectancy
List of Spanish provinces by sequence or length of coastline
List of stadtholders for the Low Countries provinces
List of Thai provinces by GPP
List of tourist attractions in Tehran Province
List of towns and villages in Montana Province
List of Turkish provinces by GDP
List of universities in Fars Province
List of universities in Isfahan Province
List of universities in Tehran Province
List of windmills in Antwerp (province)
List of windmills in Hainaut (province)
List of windmills in Namur (province)
List of Zambian provinces by Human Development Index
List of Zimbabwean provinces by Human Development Index
Lists of protected heritage sites in Hainaut (province)
Lists of protected heritage sites in Lige (province)
Lists of protected heritage sites in Namur (province)
Lists of Spanish provinces
Litoral Province
Liu Bei's takeover of Yi Province
Loayza Province
Loei Province
Loei Province Stadium
Logar Province
Loja Province
Lomaiviti Province
Lomami Province
Long An Province
Long Khnh Province
Lopburi Province
Lorestan Province
Lori Province
Loroum Province
Los Altos, Province of Burgos
Los Andes Province (Bolivia)
Los Andes Province, Chile
Los Ros Province
Los Santos Province
Lovech Province
Lower Central Province
Lower North Province
Lower Silesia Province
Loyalty Islands Province
Lozen, Sofia City Province
Lualaba Province
Luanda Province
Luang Namtha Province
Luang Prabang Province
Luapula Province
Luapula Province border dispute
Luau, Moxico Province
Luluabourg Province
Lulua Province
Lumbini Province
L Meng's invasion of Jing Province
Lunda Norte Province
Lunda Sul Province
Lusaka Province
Luya Province
M'Sila Province
Macedonia (Roman province)
Macuata Province
Madang Province
Madan, Montana Province
Madan, Smolyan Province
Madre de Dios Province
Mae Hong Son Province
Magallanes Province
Mahajanga Province
Maha Sarakham Province
Maidan Wardak Province
Mai-Ndombe Province
Maine (province)
Maipo Province
Maishan (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
Makira-Ulawa Province
Malaita Province
Malampa Province
Malanje Province
Malatya Province
Malleco Province
Maluku (province)
Mamor Province
Manab Province
Manco Kapac Province
Manhush, Khuzestan Province
Manicaland Province
Manila (province)
Manisa Province
Mansourah District (Bordj Bou Arrridj Province)
Mansourah District (Ghardaa Province)
Manuel Mara Caballero Province
Man Province
Manuripi Province
Manus Province
Maputo Province
Maracaibo Province
Maraka, Central Province
Maran Province
Marbn Province
Marchevo, Blagoevgrad Province
Mardin Province
Margarita Province
Mara Trinidad Snchez Province
Marie Byrd Land Volcanic Province
Mari language (Madang Province)
Mariscal Cceres Province
Mariscal Luzuriaga Province
Mariscal Ramn Castilla Province
Maritime province
Markazi Province
Marlborough Province
Mrquez Province
Martakert Province
Martuni Province
Mascara Province
Mashonaland Central Province
Mashonaland East Province
Mashonaland West Province
Maskinong (Province of Canada electoral district)
Masovian Province
Masvingo Province
Matabeleland North Province
Matabeleland South Province
Matanzas Province
Maynas Province, Peru
Mazandaran Province
Mecca Province
Mda Province
Medina Province
Medina Province, Cundinamarca
Medina Province (Saudi Arabia)
Mdiouna Province
Mehrabad Rural District (Tehran Province)
Mendoza Province
Mrida Province
Mrida Province (16221676)
Mrida Province (Venezuela)
Mersin Province
Merv (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
Mesopotamia (Roman province)
Metropolitan Province (Western Australia)
Metropolitan-Suburban Province
Miankuh Rural District (Razavi Khorasan Province)
Mid-Continent oil province
Midlands Province
Mikawa Province
Mikkeli Province
Milagros, Province of Burgos
Mila Province
Milne Bay Province
Mimasaka Province
Mindoro (province)
Minh Hi Province
Minho Province
Mino District (Sanuki Province)
Mino Province
Mirabello Province
Misamis (province)
Misiones Province
Mizque Province
Modesto Omiste Province
Mogilev Province
Mompox Province
Monarchy in the Canadian provinces
Monasterio de la Victoria, Province of Cadiz
Mondulkiri Province
Monseor Nouel Province
Montana Province
Monte Cristi Province
Montenegro (province)
Monte Plata Province
Montorio, Province of Burgos
Moravian Church of the British Province
Morobe Province
Morona-Santiago Province
Morropn Province
Moscow Province
Mostaganem Province
Mosul Province
Mouhoun Province
Moulay Yacoub Province
Mountain Province
Mountain Province Diamonds
Moxico Province
Moxos Province
Moyen-Ogoou Province
Muchinga Province
Mughan (province)
Mula Province
Muhovo, Sofia Province
Mukdahan Province
Muecas Province
Musa Da (Antalya Province)
Musashi Province
Mu Province
Mutsu Province
Mutsu Province (1868)
Nama Province
Nador Province
Nadroga-Navosa Province
Nagasena, Central Province
Nagato Province
Nagoya Castle (Hizen Province)
Na Hom, Bolikhamsai Province, Laos
Nahouri Province
Nain Province
Naitasiri Province
Najran Province
Nakhon Champassak Province
Nakhon Nayok Province
Nakhon Pathom Province
Nakhon Phanom Province
Nakhon Ratchasima Province
Nakhon Sawan Province
Nakhon Sawan Province Stadium
Nakhon Si Thammarat Province
Nakhon Si Thammarat Province Stadium
Nakhon Suvarnabhumi Province
Nam nh Province
Namentenga Province
Namibe Province
Namosi Province
Nampula Province
Namur Province
Nangarhar Province
Nan Province
Napo Province
Narathiwat Province
Narciso Campero Province
Nasca Province
Natal (province)
National Council of Provinces
Nayala Province
Negros (province)
Nelson Province
Nemuro Province
Nenjiang Province
Neufchteau, Luxembourg Province
Neuqun Province
Nevehir Province
New Andalusia Province
New Ireland Province
New Leinster Province
New Munster Province
New Serbia (historical province)
New Ulster Province
Ngh An Province
Ngh Tnh Province
Ngouni Province
Niassa Province
Nicols Surez Province
Nide Province
Nimruz Province
Nine Provinces
Ninh Bnh Province
Ninh Thun Province
Nisibis (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
Nong Bua Lamphu Province
Nong Bua Lamphu Province Stadium
Nong Khai Province
Nong Khai Province Stadium
Non-governmental organizations in Ratanakiri Province
Nonthaburi Province
Nonthaburi Province Stadium
Nor Carangas Province
Nor Chichas Province
Nor Cinti Province
Nor Lpez Province
North Atlantic Igneous Province
North Central Province
North Central Province, Maldives
North Central Province, Sri Lanka
North Chungcheong Province
Northeastern Province
North Eastern Province (Kenya)
North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
North Eastern Province (Victoria)
Northern Borders Province
Northern Boyac Province
Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province
Northern Karelia Province
Northern Province
Northern Province, Rwanda
Northern Province, Sierra Leone
Northern Province, Sri Lanka
Northern Province, Zambia
North Gyeonggi Province
North Gyeongsang Province
North Hamgyeong Province (Republic of Korea)
North Hamgyong Province
North Hwanghae Province
North Jeolla Province
North Khorasan Province
North Province, Maldives
North Province, New Caledonia
North Pyeongan Province (Republic of Korea)
North Pyongan Province
Northwestern Province
North-Western Provinces
North Western Province, Sri Lanka
North Western Province (Victoria)
North-Western Province, Zambia
North-West Frontier Province
North West (South African province)
North Yarra Province
Nor Yungas Province
Noto Province
Nouaceur Province
Noumbiel Province
Novgorod Province
Novi Pazar, Shumen Province
uble Province
Nuevo Cartago y Costa Rica Province
uflo de Chvez Province
Numidia (Roman province)
Nuristan Province
Nuwakot, Bagmati Province
Nyanga Province
Nyanza Province
Obama Castle (Mutsu Province)
Obama Castle (Wakasa Province)
Obispo Santistevan Province
Oddar Meanchey Province
Ognyanovo, Blagoevgrad Province
Ogoou-Ivindo Province
Ogoou-Lolo Province
Ogoou-Maritime Province
Oki Province
Omasuyos Province
mi Province
mngovi Province
Once Upon a Time in the Provinces
no Castle (Chikuzen Province)
no Castle (Echizen Province)
Opanets, Dobrich Province
Oran Province
Orders, decorations, and medals of the Canadian provinces
Orellana Province
Oreshets, Haskovo Province
Orientale Province
Oriente Province
Orissa Province
Orkhon Province
Oropeza Province
Oro Province
Oshima Province
Osmaniye Province
Osorno Province
Osroene (Roman province)
Ostrobothnia (historical province)
sumi Province
Otago Province
Ouargla Province
Ouarzazate Province
Oubritenga Province
Oudalan Province
Oudomxay Province
Oued Ed-Dahab Province
Oulu Province
Oum El Bouaghi Province
Out of My Province
Overseas province
vrkhangai Province
Owari Province
Oyn Province
Pacajes Province
Pailin Province
Paktia Province
Paktika Province
Palena Province
Pallasca Province
Palpa Province
Panam Oeste Province
Panam Province
Pangala, North Central Province
Panjshir Province
Pannonia (Byzantine province)
Pantalen Dalence Province
Panth-Piploda Province
Pnuco (province)
Papua (province)
Paraso, Panam Province
Paran Province
Par Province
Parinacochas Province
Parliament of the Province of Canada
Partido (historical province)
Party of the Hope of the Province of Buenos Aires
Parvenets, Plovdiv Province
Parwan Province
Paskouh Rural District (South Khorasan Province)
Passor Province
Pastaza Province
Pathum Thani Province
Patras Province
Patriarchal Province of Seleucia-Ctesiphon
Pattani Province
Pattani Province Stadium
Paucar del Sara Sara Province
Pazardzhik Province
Pedernales Province
Pedro Domingo Murillo Province
Penama Province
Peravia Province
Pernik Province
Petrich, Sofia Province
Petsamo Province
Phang Nga Province
Phang Nga Province Stadium
Phatthalung Province
Phatthalung Province Stadium
Phayao Province
Phetchabun Province
Phetchaburi Province
Phetchaburi Province Stadium
Phichit Province
Philippines, Province of China banners
Phitsanulok Province
Phoenice (Roman province)
Phong in District, Tha Thin-Hu Province
Phongsaly Province
Phrae Province
Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province
Phra Tabong Province
Phuket Province
Phc Long District, Bc Liu Province
Phc Long Province
Phc Thnh Province
Phc Tuy Province
Ph Tn District, An Giang Province
Ph Tn District, C Mau Province
Ph Th Province
Ph Yn Province
Physiographic province
Pichincha Province
Pilar, Crdoba Province
Pinar del Ro Province
Pingyuan Province
Pishkuh Rural District (South Khorasan Province)
Pleven Province
Plovdiv Province
Pola (Italian province)
Politics of Khuzestan Province
Poltava Province
Pomerania Province
Poni Province
Poop Province
Popayn Province
Population of Canada by province and territory
Prachinburi Province
Prachuap Khiri Khan Province
Prachuap Khiri Khan Province Stadium
Preah Vihear Province
Prehistory of Laguna (province)
Presidencies and provinces of British India
Prey Veng Province
Proposal for the Province of Montreal
Proposal for the Province of Toronto
Province
Province-building
Province class
Province-class fast attack craft
Province flowers of Sweden
Province House
Province House (Nova Scotia)
Province House (Prince Edward Island)
Province Island
Province Lake
Province No. 2
Province of A Corua
Province of Agrigento
Province of Albacete
Province of Alessandria
Province of Alicante
Province of Almera
Province of Ancona
Province of Arezzo
Province of Armagh
Province of Armagh (Church of Ireland)
Province of Ascoli Piceno
Province of Asti
Province of Avalon
Province of Avellino
Province of vila
Province of Badajoz
Province of Barcelona
Province of Bari
Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani
Province of Belluno
Province of Benevento
Province of Bergamo
Province of Biella
Province of Bologna
Province of Bosnia
Province of Brabant
Province of Brandenburg
Province of Brescia
Province of Brindisi
Province of Buffalo
Province of Bumbunga
Province of Burgos
Province of Cceres
Province of Cdiz
Province of Cagliari
Province of Calatayud
Province of Caltanissetta
Province of Campobasso
Province of Canada
Province of Canterbury
Province of Cape Breton Island
Province of Carbonia-Iglesias
Province of Carnaro
Province of Carolina
Province of Caserta
Province of Castelln
Province of Catania
Province of Catanzaro
Province of Chieti
Province of Ciudad Real
Province of Como
Province of Crdoba (Spain)
Province of Cosenza
Province of Cremona
Province of Crotone
Province of Cuenca
Province of Cuneo
Province of Dublin
Province of Enna
Province of quateur
Province of Fermo
Province of Ferrara
Province of Florence
Province of Foggia
Province of Forl-Cesena
Province of Frosinone
Province of Genoa
Province of Georgia
Province of German Bohemia
Province of Girona
Province of Gorizia
Province of Granada
Province of Grosseto
Province of Guadalajara
Province of Hanover
Province of Hohenzollern
Province of Huelva
Province of Huesca
Province of Imperia
Province of Isernia
Province of Jan (Spain)
Province of Jtiva
Province of Jlich-Cleves-Berg
Province of Kurhessen
Province of L'Aquila
Province of Las Palmas
Province of La Spezia
Province of Latina
Province of Lecce
Province of Lecco
Province of Len
Province of Limburg (181539)
Province of Livorno
Province of Ljubljana
Province of Lleida
Province of Lodi
Province of Lower Silesia
Province of Lucca
Province of Lugo
Province of Macerata
Province of Magdeburg
Province of Maine
Province of Mlaga
Province of Mantua
Province of Maryland
Province of Massa and Carrara
Province of Massachusetts Bay
Province of Matera
Province of Medio Campidano
Province of Messina
Province of Milan
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