TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
asya (madhura dasya; madhuradasya; madhura-dasya) ::: dasya in the relation of madhura bhava, "passionate service to the divine Beloved", giving "that joy of mastery of the finite nature by the Infinite and of service to the Highest by which there comes freedom from the ego and the lower nature"; the condition symbolised by the madhura dasi, in which the jiva or prakr.ti is the enamoured "slave". of the isvara so that with "a passionate delight it does all he wills it to do without questioning and bears all he would have it bear, because what it bears is the burden of the beloved being". madhura-d madhura-dasya asya bh bhava ava (madhura-dasya bhava; madhura dasya bhava)
* attachment must draw away altogether from the object of its love. The vital can be as absolute in its unquestioning self-giving as any other part or the nature ; nothing can be more generous than its movement when it forgets self for the Beloved. The vital and physical should both give themselves in the true way — the way of true love, not of ego-desire.
Bhakti (.Devotion) ::: Obedience is the sign of the servant, but that is the lowest stage of this relation, dasya. Afterwards we do not obey, but move to his will as the string replies to the finger of the musician. To be the instrument is this higher stage of self-surrender and submission. But this is the living and loving instrument and it ends in the whole nature of our being becoming the slave of God, rejoicing in his possession and its own blissful subjection to the divine grasp and mastery. With a passionate delight it does all he wills it to do without questioning and bears all he would have it bear, because what it bears is the burden of the beloved being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 603
consciousness with the physical experience of oneness, the pre- sence of the Beloved in every part, in c^'ery cell of the body.
Dido Also Elissa. Queen of Carthage in North Africa and traditionally its founder. According to Timaeus, her actual name was Theiosso, in Phoenician Helissa or Elissa; and Dido, the Phoenician equivalent of the Greek planes (wanderer), was given her because of her wanderings; Dido is also said to be the name of a Phoenician goddess and can be translated “the beloved.” After her husband was killed by her brother, Dido fled to Africa and founded a city which became Carthage. Rather than marry a local chieftain against her will, she killed herself; in the Aeneid she is said to have killed herself after being deserted by Aeneas.
dīn ::: creed, belief, religion. It is said that there is only one dīn; that which is the natural, intended, proper manner of life, acting in harmony with the will of the Creator and thereby in harmony with all of creation. The classical Arabic root d-y-n signifies that which is obedient, abased, submissive; doing service for; acting well towards; and also signifies receiving a loan, being indebted, repaying a debt. Thus dīn signifies repaying our debt to our Creator through humble submission and loving service. To do so, it is a common Sufi practice to strive to be like a perfect mirror, reflecting all of the magnificence and glory back to the Beloved and into this world, illuminating any darkness. Hazrat 'Ali said 'The love of the wise is a religion (dīn) with which Allah is served.'
Eurydice (Greek) She of wide power and justice; the beloved companion of Orpheus. After her untimely death, he gained access to the underworld in order to lead her back to earth, only to lose her again.
Hadiririon—“the beloved angel of God,”
Han Yongun. (韓龍雲) (1879-1944). Korean monk, poet, and writer, also known by his sobriquet Manhae or his ordination name Pongwan. In 1896, when Han was sixteen, both his parents and his brother were executed by the state for their connections to the Tonghak ("Eastern Learning") Rebellion. He subsequently joined the remaining forces of the Tonghak Rebellion and fought against the Choson-dynasty government but was forced to flee to Oseam hermitage on Mt. Sorak. He was ordained at the monastery of Paektamsa in 1905. Three years later, as one of the fifty-two monastic representatives, he participated in the establishment of the Won chong (Consummate Order) and the foundation of its headquarters at Wonhŭngsa. After returning from a sojourn in Japan, where he witnessed Japanese Buddhism's attempts to modernize in the face of the Meiji-era persecutions, Han Yongun wrote an influential tract in 1909 calling for radical changes in the Korean Buddhist tradition; this tract, entitled CHOSoN PULGYO YUSIN NON ("Treatise on the Reformation of Korean Buddhism"), set much of the agenda for Korean Buddhist modernization into the contemporary period. After Korea was formally annexed by Japan in 1910, Han devoted the rest of his life to the fight for independence. In opposition to the Korean monk Hoegwang Sason's (1862-1933) attempt to merge the Korean Won chong with the Japanese SoToSHu, Han Yongun helped to establish the IMJE CHONG (Linji order) with its headquarters at PoMoSA in Pusan. In 1919, he actively participated in the March First independence movement and signed the Korean Declaration of Independence as a representative of the Buddhist community. As a consequence, he was sentenced to three years in prison by Japanese colonial authorities. In prison, he composed the Choson Tongnip ŭi so ("Declaration of Korea's Independence"). In 1925, three years after he was released from prison, he published a book of poetry entitled Nim ŭi ch'immuk ("Silence of the Beloved"), a veiled call for the freedom of Korea (the "beloved" of the poem) and became a leader in resistance literature; this poem is widely regarded as a classic of Korean vernacular writing. In 1930, Han became publisher of the monthly journal Pulgyo ("Buddhism"), through which he attempted to popularize Buddhism and to raise the issue of Korean political sovereignty. Han Yongun continued to lobby for independence until his death in 1944 at the age of sixty-six, unable to witness the long-awaited independence of Korea that occurred a year later on August 15th, 1945, with Japan's surrender in World War II.
inspire (here pronounce the name of the beloved)
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
kantam ::: the beloved. kantam
madhura (bhava) ::: ["the sweet (sentiment)", in vaisnava bhakti. The relation between the lover and the Beloved].
Madhura: The attitude of a devotee expressing the emotion that exists between a lover and the beloved; the devotee looks upon God as his Beloved.
Master ::: “The Master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” The Life Divine
::: "Meditation, by the way, is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart, so if you want dhyana , you can"t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved.” Letters on Yoga
“Meditation, by the way, is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart, so if you want dhyana , you can’t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved.” Letters on Yoga
pamful, first, because it is obscure and docs not understand and, secondly, because there arc parts of it that want to be left to their crude notions and not to change. That is why the inter- vention of a psychic attitude is so heJpfuI. For the psychic has the happy confidence, the ready understanding and response, the spontaneous surrender ; it knows that the touch of the Guru is meant to help and not to hurt, or, like Radha in the poem, that whatever the Beloved does is meant to lead to the Divine
[The Sufi's] aim in life is to release the captive soul from the bondage of limitations, which he accomplishes by the repetition of the sacred names of God, and by constant thought of his divine ideal, and an ever-increasing love for the divine Beloved until the beloved God with His perfection becomes manifest to his vision, and his imperfect self vanishes from his sight.
This he calls Fanā, the merging in the ideal. In order to attain the final goal he gradually raises his ideal, first to Fanā-fī-Shaikh, the ideal seen in a mortal walking on the earth, and he drills himself as a soldier before battle in devotion to his ideal.
Then comes Fanā-fī-Rasūl, when he sees his ideal in spirit, and pictures Him in all sublimity, and fashions Him with beautiful qualities, which he wishes to obtain himself. And after this he raises it to Fanā-fī-Allāh, the love and devotion for that ideal which is beyond qualities and in which is the perfection of all qualities.
quote :::The Sufi in the East says to himself, 'Ishq Allah, Ma'bud Allah, which means 'God is Love, God is the Beloved', in other words it is God who is Love, Lover, and Beloved.
Sri Aurobindo: "The Master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Life Divine
There is and has been a great deal of confusion, not only at present but throughout the ages, about these matters, and several mystical schools have even chosen the language of the tavern and drinking house as the cloak for conveying occult or semi-occult teaching. A noted example is the Sufi school with its poems lauding the flowing bowl and the joys of the tavern and the bosom friends therein, and the beloved’s breast. Here the tavern was the universe, the flowing cup or wine was the wine of the spirit bringing inner ecstasy, the bosom of the beloved was the raising oneself into inner communion with the god within, of which the Jewish bosom of Abraham is a feeble correspondence. The friends of the tavern are those perfect human relations brought about by a community of spiritual and intellectual interests, and the associations of the tavern are the mysteries of the world around us with their marvels and arcana. Nevertheless in various countries as the fourth root-race ran toward its evil culmination, the mystic became translated into the material, the spiritual degenerated into the teaching of matter, so that indeed in later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in occult history have remained infamous. Yet even in the fifth root-race, due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system — a procedure always vigorously opposed by the theosophic occult school which has never at any time allowed it.
yuva kavih, priyo atithir amartyo mandrajihvah rtacit rtava ::: the Youth, the Seer, the beloved and immortal Guest vith his honeyed tongue of ecstasy, the Truthconscious, the Truth-finder. [Ved.]
KEYS (10k)
10 Sri Aurobindo
6 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Thomas A Kempis
2 Hazrat Inayat Khan
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Hafiz
1 Swami Ramakrishnananda
1 Suhrawardi
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Shams of Tabriz
1 Shah Ni'Matli'llah
1 Shabistari
1 Saint Leo the Great
1 Rupert Spria
1 Rabia al-Adawiyya
1 Nicholas of Cusa
1 Ghalib
1 Bulleh Shah
1 Baha-ullah "The Seven Valleys."
1 Baha-ullah
1 a poet]
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Plato
1 Kabir
1 Aleister Crowley
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
56 Rumi
28 Henri J M Nouwen
18 Viktor E Frankl
17 C S Lewis
15 Charles Haddon Spurgeon
15 Anonymous
12 Jalaluddin Rumi
12 Henri Nouwen
12 Hafiz
12 Bulleh Shah
11 Alain de Botton
10 Sri Aurobindo
10 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
9 Kabir
8 Ram Dass
8 Marcel Proust
7 Salman Rushdie
7 Percy Bysshe Shelley
7 Mason Cooley
7 Juan de la Cruz
1:To find the Beloved, you must become the Beloved. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
2:The lover of God will cry and weep until he finds rest in the Beloved's embrace. ~ Rabia al-Adawiyya, #KEYS
3:The lover only minds the welfare of the beloved and does not care for his own sufferings. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
4:Borrow eyes of the beloved, look through them and you'll see the beloved's face everywhere. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
5:In order for love to be experienced, both the lover and the beloved must vanish." ~ Rupert Spria, "Being Aware of Being Aware", (2017), #KEYS
6:Go you, sweep out the dwelling room of your heart; prepare it to be the home of the Beloved. When you go out, He will come in. ~ Shabistari, #KEYS
7:'My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover, and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.'" ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) Sufi., #KEYS
8:And love your Lord by serving Him. For lovers are but servants of the Beloved. ~ a poet], @Sufi_Path #KEYS
9:Have you ever heard how the sigh of a broken heart touches the Beloved?" ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
10:The intensity of love stems from the union of the beloved with the lover ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.26.8)., #KEYS
11:Unselfish love is the highest of all. The unselfish lover cares only for the welfare of the beloved. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
12:Fall in Love with
the agony of Love not the Ecstasy.
Then the Beloved will Fall in Love with you. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi,#KEYS
13:If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? ~ Kabir, #KEYS
14:Choose Love...
Because of the beloved
my heart is happy,
my soul illuminated. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path#KEYS
15:He who is not ready to suffer all things and to stand resigned to the will of the Beloved is not worthy to be called a lover. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
16:How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now? ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
17:Repeating The Name Of The Beloved :::
Repeating the name of the Beloved
I have become the Beloved myself.
Whom shall I call the Beloved now? ~ Bulleh Shah, [T5],#KEYS
18:A lover must embrace willingly all that is difficult and bitter for the sake of the Beloved, and he should not turn away from Him because of adversities. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
19:Stop, open up, surrender the beloved blind silence. Stay there until you see you're looking at the light with infinite eyes. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
20:Still it is not impossible to raise oneself even higher than that, for love itself is a veil between the lover and the Beloved. ~ Baha-ullah "The Seven Valleys.", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
21:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favorite of the Divine Lover and the self of the Beloved.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
22:The world is no more than the Beloved single face; In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist." ~ Ghalib, (1797 - 1869) prominent Urdu and Persian poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire, Wikipedia., #KEYS
23:When it comes to obeying the commandments or enduring adversity, the words uttered by the Father should always echo in our ears: 'This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' ~ Saint Leo the Great, #KEYS
24:Not of Paradise, nor of Hell My place is the Placeless, my Trace is the Traceless, 'Tis neither body nor soul, For I belong to the soul of the Beloved." ~ Shams of Tabriz, (1185-1248) Persian Muslim, spiritual teacher of Rumi, Wikipedia., #KEYS
25:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favourite of the divine Lover and the self of the Beloved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #KEYS
26:If we love God for what we can get from Him in the world, we really love the world, not God, and we can never be true devotees. The true devotee loves God just for the joy of loving Him, because God is the Beloved. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
27:In contemplation of the Beloved, tear aside the veils of all you see in this world, behold the Essence, be unveiled within, when the veil vanishes, you will become all light. ~ Suhrawardi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
28:In my belief, the beloved and the lover are one: the desire, the desired and the desirer, are one I am told, 'Seek His Essence,' but …how can I seek when the sought and the seeker are one!" ~ Shah Ni'Matli'llah, (1330-1431) Sufi Master and poet., #KEYS
29:The pilgim should never be discouraged; though he should struggle for a hundred thousand years without success to behold the beauty of the Beloved, still he should not give way to despair. ~ Baha-ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
30:It is necessary that some kind of knowledge be permitted to every lover seeking to rise up unknowingly to union with the Beloved. What is totally unknown can neither be loved, nor found; even if it is found, it is not apprehended as found. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, #KEYS
31:But in fact the one which is really beautiful and delicate, flawless and endowed with every blessing, is the beloved object, while the one which loves is by contrast of an entirely different character, such as I have just described. ~ Plato, Symposium, 204c, #KEYS
32:Oh my heart, don't become discouraged so easily. Have faith. In the hidden world, there are many mysteries, many wonders. Even if the whole planet threatens your life, don't let go of the Beloved's robe for even a breath. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
33:She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
The Mother was she of Beauty and Delight,
The Word in Brahma's vast creating clasp,
The World-Puissance on almighty Shiva's lap, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
34:Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
S ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
35:Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days... The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafiz, #KEYS
36:Light will someday split you open
Even if your life is now a cage.
Little by little, You will turn into stars.
Little by little, You will turn into
The whole sweet, amorous Universe.
Love will surely burst you wide open
Into an unfettered, booming new galaxy.
You will become so free
In a wonderful, secret
And pure Love That flows
From a conscious, One-pointed, Infinite Light.
Even then, my dear, The Beloved will have fulfilled
Just a fraction, Just a fraction!
Of a promise He wrote upon your heart.
~ Hafiz,#KEYS
37:God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?" Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
38:three paths as one :::
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
39:THE MASTER and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T1],#KEYS
40:I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,#KEYS
41:need for the soul's spiritualization :::
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 168,#KEYS
42:A supreme divine Love is a creative Power and, even though it can exist in itself silent and unchangeable, yet rejoices in external form and expression and is not condemned to be a speechless and bodiless godhead. It has even been said that creation itself was an act of love or at least the building up of a field in which Divine Love could devise its symbols and fulfil itself in act of mutuality and self-giving, and, if not the initial nature of creation, this may well be its ultimate object and motive. It does not so appear now because, even if a Divine Love is there in the world upholding all this evolution of creatures, yet the stuff of life and its action is made up of an egoistic formation, a division, a struggle of life and consciousness to exist and survive in an apparently indifferent, inclement or even hostile world of inanimate and inconscient Matter. In the confusion and obscurity of this struggle all are thrown against each other with a will in each to assert its own existence first and foremost and only secondarily to assert itself in others and very partially for others; for even man's altruism remains essentially egoistic and must be so till the soul finds the secret of the divine Oneness. It is to discover that at its supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up to the extreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the Yoga. All action, all creation must be turned into a form, a symbol of the cult, the adoration, the sacrifice; it must carry something that makes it bear in it the stamp of a dedication, a reception and translation of the Divine Consciousness, a service of the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever possible in the outward body and form of the act; it must be done always in its inward emotion and an intentsity that shows it to be an outflow from the soul towards the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 164,#KEYS
43:the ways of the Bhakta and man of Knowledge :::
In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration. 76-77,#KEYS
44:THE WAND
THE Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end; to will to be a thing is to admit that you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing, is to wander still further from it - any will but that to give up the self to the Beloved is Black Magick - yet this surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary. Further, the Self surrendered must not be less than the All-Self; one must not come before the altar of the Most High with an impure or an imperfect offering. As it is written in Liber LXV, "To await Thee is the end, not the beginning."
This training may lead through all sorts of complications, varying according to the nature of the student, and hence it may be necessary for him at any moment to will all sorts of things which to others might seem unconnected with the goal. Thus it is not "a priori" obvious why a billiard player should need a file.
Since, then, we may want "anything," let us see to it that our will is strong enough to obtain anything we want without loss of time.
It is therefore necessary to develop the will to its highest point, even though the last task but one is the total surrender of this will. Partial surrender of an imperfect will is of no account in Magick.
The will being a lever, a fulcrum is necessary; this fulcrum is the main aspiration of the student to attain. All wills which are not dependent upon this principal will are so many leakages; they are like fat to the athlete.
The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon.
How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
Vigilance and courage are obviously required. I was about to add self-denial, in deference to conventional speech; but how could I call that self-denial which is merely denial of those things which hamper the self? It is not suicide to kill the germs of malaria in one's blood.
Now there are very great difficulties to be overcome in the training of the mind. Perhaps the greatest is forgetfulness, which is probably the worst form of what the Buddhists call ignorance. Special practices for training the memory may be of some use as a preliminary for persons whose memory is naturally poor. In any case the Magical Record prescribed for Probationers of the A.'.A.'. is useful and necessary.
Above all the practices of Liber III must be done again and again, for these practices develop not only vigilance but those inhibiting centres in the brain which are, according to some psychologists, the mainspring of the mechanism by which civilized man has raised himself above the savage.
So far it has been spoken, as it were, in the negative. Aaron's rod has become a serpent, and swallowed the serpents of the other Magicians; it is now necessary to turn it once more into a rod.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Wand,#KEYS
45::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 2:no matter whether the beloved suffers weal or woe. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 3:Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 4:What? Are you still pretending you are separate from the Beloved? ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 5:Listen to me brother! bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 6:Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 7:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 8:The absence of the beloved, short though it may last, always lasts too long. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 9:Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 10:When you see the beloved all around you, everyone is family and everywhere is love. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 11:How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 12:The lover only minds the welfare of the beloved and does not care for his own sufferings. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 13:For lovers, the beauty of the beloved is their teacher. His face is their syllabus, lesson, and book. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 14:Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 15:We've gotten lost in our Ego and have forgotten that our Soul's only motive is to merge with the Beloved. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 16:There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 17:Repeating the name of the Beloved, I have become the Beloved myself.. Whom shall I call the Beloved now? ~ bulleh-shah, @wisdomtrove 18:From the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 19:When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 20:It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only in infinity. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 21:If you wish to find Love, don't look for the object of love but rather for the source of love. There you will find the Beloved. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove 22:The beloved is one who nurtures you, trusts you, supports you, encourages you, loves you without conditions. That's you. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 23:If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 24:Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 25:The promise, made when I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 26:holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on! ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 27:Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 28:They say, & 29:Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 30:Everyone, whether he is self-denying or self-indulgent, is seeking after the Beloved. Every place may be the shrine of love, whether it be mosque or synagogue. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 31:By ceaseless prayer He Who is Akhands (whole) is found. One's own Self, the Life of one's life, the Beloved of One's heart is the One to be eagerly sought. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 32:To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 33:For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 34:Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 35:You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer - listening to the voice of the one who calls you "the beloved." ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 36:The Beloved is inside you and also inside me. You know the tree is hidden inside the seed. Let your arrogance go. None of us has gone far. Inside love there is more power than we realize. ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 37:Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 38:Just as ice is nothing but water, so the Beloved is without form, without quality, and the question of manifestation does not arise. When this is realized, one has realized one’s Self. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 39:If you believe you are the beloved of God, you need to spend time listening to his voice - period! You can't say, "Yes God calls me the beloved, but I have to go out to do something now." ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 40:Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 41:Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 42:Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 43:Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths. It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. A lover whose passion is extreme loves even the faults of the beloved ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 44:Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 45:The practice of any art demands more than & 46:A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 47:Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, "You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it"? That's an important discipline. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 48:There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 49:To be in love involves the most irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 50:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 51:The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 52:Jesus humbled himself. He went from commanding angels to sleeping in the straw. From holding stars to clutching Mary's finger. The palm that held the universe took the nail of a soldier. Why? Because that's what love does. It puts the beloved before itself. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 53:Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 54:As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 55:I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 56:Resistance and nonviolence are not in themselves good. There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 57:As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 58:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 59:The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 60:The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 61:Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days… The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 62:The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 63:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace... We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 64:The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 65:Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the fight with fire’ method... is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community... Yes , love-which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies-is the solution ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 66:Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method... is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community... Yes , love-which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies-is the solution ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 67:Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved‚Ķ Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 68:If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves? ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 69:Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you & 70:There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear. Fear is a painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer. As long as we must trust for survival to our ability to out look or out maneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. Fear is torment. To know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved, this and only this can cast out fear. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 71:Children, when we go to the temple, do not hurry to have darshan, then make some offering and return home in a hurry. We should stand there patiently in silence for some time and try to visualize the beloved deity in our hearts. If possible, we should sit down and meditate. At each step, remember to do japa. Amma doesn't say that the offerings and worship are not necessary, but of all the offerings we make, what the Lord wants most is our hearts! ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 72:No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being until he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 73:Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window ‚Äì a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 74:Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us? ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 75:But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, "You are the beloved and on you my favour rests."... I want you to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 76:Do not get up immediately at the end of the archana. The beloved deity should be brought from the seat in front of us back into our hearts and re-installed there. Seeing the form of the deity seated in the heart, meditate for a little longer. If it is possible, it is good to sing 2 or 3 kirtans. After taking an injection, a patient is asked to rest for a few minutes to let the medicine spread throughout the body. Similarly, to obtain the full benefit of the mantras, we should keep the mind calm for a while after worship. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 77:God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?" Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 78:Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 79:A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison, in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:O Beloved, where is the Beloved? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
2:Repeating the name of the Beloved ~ Bulleh Shah, #NFDB
3:How can you ever hope to know the Beloved ~ Rumi, #NFDB
4:The beloved is the ultimate fetish. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
5:Open your arms if you want the Beloved's embrace. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
6:To find the Beloved, you must become the Beloved. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
7:Stop, open up, surrender the beloved blind silence. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
8:The Grail is the womb of the beloved. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
9:Let the Beloved be a hat pulled down firmly on my head. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
10:When you find yourself with the Beloved, embracing for ~ Rumi, #NFDB
11:No photograph can truly recall the beloved’s smile. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
12:Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
13:Love does not deck the beloved in chains. It just is. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
14:Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
15:To find the Beloved, you must become the Beloved. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #NFDB
16:In truth everything and everyone Is a shadow of the Beloved, ~ Rumi, #NFDB
17:Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
18:love has no end, because the Beloved has no end. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, #NFDB
19:The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved. ~ Faiz Ahmad Faiz, #NFDB
20:What? Are you still pretending you are separate from the Beloved? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
21:Jealousy is inconsolable because it cannot know the beloved ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
22:The Father’s love does not force itself on the beloved. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
23:Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
24:The lover visible, the Beloved invisible: whose crazy idea was this? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
25:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
26:Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #NFDB
27:Happy wounds, which make us seek the beloved Physician. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
28:to love means to realize there is a time to let the beloved one go ~ Tony Parsons, #NFDB
29:On the journey towards the beloved, you live by dying at every step ~ Nadeem Aslam, #NFDB
30:What a test of love it is, when the beloved is less than perfect. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
31:Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
32:The absence of the beloved, short though it may last, always lasts too long. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
33:Beauty without the beloved is a like a sword through the heart. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, #NFDB
34:As if he hadn't always known he was loved the best. That he was the Beloved. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
35:Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
36:To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one. ~ Edgar Lee Masters, #NFDB
37:Love prides itself not only in the one who loves, but also in the beloved. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
38:Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
39:Love is not love that doesn’t love the details of the beloved, the minute particulars. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
40:Is it the beloved who evokes love, or the lover who has love to give? ~ Douglas Carlton Abrams, #NFDB
41:When love ends, the beloved is no longer standing on a pedestal, but in a hole. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
42:When you see the beloved all around you, everyone is family and everywhere is love. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
43:Every life has a love story, even though the beloved may be imaginary, or a cat. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
44:Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
45:You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
46:He loves not who does not see the faults of the beloved as virtues. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
47:Love preserves one moment for ever, the moment of its birth. The beloved never ages. ~ Antal Szerb, #NFDB
48:The Beloved is with you in the midst of your seeking! He holds your hand wherever you wander. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
49:There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. ~ Carson McCullers, #NFDB
50:To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith! ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
51:We are all savages inside. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
52:A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there. ~ Amy Hempel, #NFDB
53:You are the Beloved, you are the Divine, you are a creation that is made into perfection. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
54:In every parting there comes a moment when the beloved is already no longer with us. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
55:The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
56:Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
57:In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved. ~ Dai Sijie, #NFDB
58:It is said that love is comfort, and that comfort comes from recognition of the beloved. ~ Lee Fullbright, #NFDB
59:Love isn't truly the body. Love is freedom to roam the heart and mind of the beloved. ~ Colleen McCullough, #NFDB
60:How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
61:The Church imposes nothing; she only proposes, she proposes like a lover to the beloved. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
62:Love is the greatest form of loyalty, one that places happiness of the beloved over the lover. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
63:To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
64:Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
65:Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
66:And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
67:Because the Beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
68:Love rushed into my veins emptying me of myself. Now filled with the Beloved my only possession is my name. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
69:the lover is more blessed than the beloved because God resides in the former, not the latter—probably ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
70:Love is that flame which, when it blazes up, consumes everything else but the Beloved (V, 588). ~ William C Chittick, #NFDB
71:We've gotten lost in our Ego and have forgotten that our Soul's only motive is to merge with the Beloved. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
72:As every parent and every lover knows, love can be rendered powerless if the beloved chooses to spurn it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
73:There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
74:Worship is love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
75:As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
76:As you allow the beloved to grow within you, you will discover a steadfastness to the spiritual journey. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
77:By virtue of love is the lover transformed in the beloved and the beloved transformed in the lover. ~ Angela of Foligno, #NFDB
78:Fold within fold, the beloved
drowns in its own being. This world
is drenched with that drowning. ~ Coleman Barks,#NFDB
79:Extremely intense love is often rejected by the beloved just because it is so demanding and unrealistic. ~ Elaine N Aron, #NFDB
80:From the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
81:Fall in Love with
the agony of Love not the Ecstasy.
Then the Beloved will Fall in Love with you. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi,#NFDB
82:He has never understood that sometimes real love requires one to let the beloved go. Probably he never will. ~ Sara Craven, #NFDB
83:Jesus is not a superhuman. He is God. The beloved, divine Son of Him who occupies the throne of all creation. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
84:Love is giving with no expectations...Love cures, heals, and rewards two people: the lover and the beloved. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
85:When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
86:"When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us." ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
87:Loving, not the beloved, is the joy of love. The beloved, knowing this, most resolutely declines to be grateful. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
88:The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
89:If the beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
90:I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
91:To a lover, the beloved is ocean and mountain, fatigue and relief, poison and amrit - indeed, all of churning itself ~ Amruta Patil, #NFDB
92:Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
93:You are the beloved. So take time to be the loved. The fact that you need time to be the loved means you are human. ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
94:It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only in infinity. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
95:becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
96:If you wish to find Love, don't look for the object of love but rather for the source of love. There you will find the Beloved. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
97:Love rushed into my veins
emtying me of myself.
Now filled with the Beloved .....
my only possession is
my name ~ Rumi,#NFDB
98:The world is no more than the Beloved's face. And the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist. ~ Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, #NFDB
99:I loved him so much. Love him so much. I don’t know why I use the past tense. It’s not as if love dies with the beloved. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
100:I loved her for what I couldn't understand about her. Love searches for the mystery in the beloved, seeks the unknowable. ~ John Dufresne, #NFDB
101:The beloved is one who nurtures you, trusts you, supports you, encourages you, loves you without conditions. That's you. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
102:“the lover strips the beloved of her identity no less than the blood-stained priest his human or animal (sacrificial) victim.” ~ Bataille, #NFDB
103:And will not spend them. ~ Witter Bynner, Coins, in The Beloved Stranger: Two Books of Song & a Divertisement for the Unknown Lover, 1919., #NFDB
104:If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? ~ Kabir, #NFDB
105:This is the way of love, I find; one longs so fervently for the beloved to achieve the best ends that he is spared nothing. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
106:If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? ~ Kabir, #NFDB
107:Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
108:You might not notice the moon very much. White and silent, it shines a cold light that is merely a ghost of the beloved day. ~ Sarah Graves, #NFDB
109:Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
110:A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
111:Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
112:The only paradise we know through our senses and intuition is that of the beloved, and the only hell, disappointment in love. ~ Mahmoud Darwish, #NFDB
113:It’s the way I walk through the world, carrying that fear, that the beloved will go, will die, and that I will be the one to blame. ~ Nick Flynn, #NFDB
114:It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved--is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
115:Shame is the raincoat over the soul repelling the living water of Jesus that would otherwise establish us as the beloved of God. ~ Andrew Comiskey, #NFDB
116:I am not from east or west not up from the ground or out of the ocean my place is placeless a trace of the traceless I belong to the beloved ~ Rumi, #NFDB
117:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepet meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
118:Of course, it was a rather hard lot, to be cherished. The beloved can so easily disappoint when they inevitably prove to be human. ~ Katherine Howe, #NFDB
119:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
120:Seek and Hide: the Lover gazes at the Beloved. The Beloved looks away. The Beloved turns and looks at the Lover. The Lover runs away. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
121:For the beloved should not allow me to turn my infantile fantasies into reality: On the contrary, he should help me to go beyond them. ~ Frantz Fanon, #NFDB
122:The promise, made when I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
123:He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
124:They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
125:Alice had to be small to enter Wonderland. Or, as Kierkegaard put it, “Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
126:I was moved, too, to see her excited as a child--but no, for there is no childhood excitement to equal the adult journey to the beloved. ~ Shirley Hazzard, #NFDB
127:The first glance from the eyes of the beloved is like the spirit that moved upon the face of the waters, giving birth to heaven and earth. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
128:My home has no address,
my tracks leave no trace.
I am neither body nor soul ...
What can I say?
I belong to the Self of the Beloved ~ Rumi,#NFDB
129:O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
130:All can hear that still small voice within. Try it. Be still and know that the I AM within you is God, the Beloved. Listen... then live by it. ~ Eileen Caddy, #NFDB
131:Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
132:For me, God is the one who calls me the Beloved, and I have a desire to express to others how I try to become more fully who I already am. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
133:Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.”10 ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
134:He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
135:Solomon’s Song belongs to those who have made the greatest renunciation of all: the renunciation of self. For them, only the Beloved counts. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
136:Still it is not impossible to raise oneself even higher than that, for love itself is a veil between the lover and the Beloved. ~ Baha-ullah “The Seven Valleys.”, #NFDB
137:THE BELOVED OBJECTS that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions. Every ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
138:All love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
139:I am not from east or west
not up from the ground
or out of the ocean
my place is placeless
a trace of the traceless
I belong to the beloved ~ Rumi,#NFDB
140:Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved! ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
141:A special spark rises
from the sorrow of a burning heart.
Have you ever heard
how the sigh of a broken heart
touches the Beloved? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
142:I belong to the beloved. Have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know. ...First, Last, Outer, Inner, only that breath breathing. HUMAN BEING. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
143:Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
144:Repeating The Name Of The Beloved
Repeating the name of the Beloved
I have become the Beloved myself.
Whom shall I call the Beloved now?
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
145:Everyone, whether he is self-denying or self-indulgent, is seeking after the Beloved. Every place may be the shrine of love, whether it be mosque or synagogue. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
146:I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no aches which are not yours. I too call myself I. ~ Kamala Suraiyya Das, #NFDB
147:Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.” Deuteronomy 33:12 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
148:Loneliness is only sweet to a man if it rids him of presences irksome and unwanted, and it is no longer sweet when the beloved presences are discovered. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
149:My heart is the throne of the Beloved, the Beloved the heart's destiny: Whoever breaks another's heart will find no homecoming in this world or any other. ~ Yunus Emre, #NFDB
150:landscape, that vast still life, invites description, not narration. It is lyric. It has no story: it is the beloved, and asks only to be contemplated. ~ Patricia Hampl, #NFDB
151:The lover's pleasure is in the pleasure of the beloved. The lover is satisfied when the beloved is fed. The lover is vain when the beloved is adorned. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
152:Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
153:To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
154:Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
155:Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment. —Thomas Mann, The Beloved Returns ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
156:The beloved of the LORD shall dwell in safety by him; and the LORD shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders.
DEUTERONOMY 33:12 ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
157:Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
158:There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you? You feel the separation from the Beloved. Invite Him to fill you up, embrace the fire. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
159:...love must feel the ego of the beloved person as important as one's own ego, and must realize the other's feelings and wishes as though they were one's own. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
160:The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed and given to evil habits, or else it can be a man in his late forties who works too much, or it can be an alarm clock. ~ Kelly Link, #NFDB
161:For love does not seek a joy that follows from its effect: its joy is in the effect itself, which is the good of the beloved...love, therefore, is its own reward. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
162:If love is a yearning to be like (even to become) the beloved, then hatred, it must be said, can be engendered by the same ambition, when it cannot be fulfilled. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
163:[I]f you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go. We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
164:Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
165:We are not what we do, we are not what we have, we are not what others think of us. Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving creator. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
166:Let us labour to feel what an evil thing this is-little love to our own dying Saviour, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
167:Repeating The Name Of The Beloved :::
Repeating the name of the Beloved
I have become the Beloved myself.
Whom shall I call the Beloved now? ~ Bulleh Shah, [T5], #index,#NFDB
168:At the core of love is a self-sacrificing pursuit of the beloved’s greatest good. Love saves. Love rescues. Love helps. And it does so, if necessary, at cost to the lover. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
169:If 'All' --quite seriously all---'for love' is implicit in the Beloved's attitude, his or her love is not worth having. It is not related in the right way to Love Himself. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
170:Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
171:The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved; the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
172:Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
173:Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
174:You are accompanied through life, Emily Jesse occasionally understood, not only by the beloved and accusing departed, but by your own ghost too, also accusing, also unappeased. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
175:When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate ~ John Berger, #NFDB
176:a love without satiety an ecstasy without an end, a surrender to the beloved— God—without ever falling back on egotistic loneliness. Marriage and celibacy are not contraries ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
177:And I also know that this is why love allows us to be so cruel to the beloved: so that the beloved doesn't make the mistake of loving us again or loving us for the first time. ~ Brock Clarke, #NFDB
178:And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.
-Revelations 20:9 ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
179:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favorite of the Divine Lover and the self of the Beloved.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
180:Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
181:You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer - listening to the voice of the one who calls you "the beloved." ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
182:For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint. ~ Marie de France, #NFDB
183:Discovering that one is loved in return really ought to disenchant the lover with the beloved. 'What? this person is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or-or- ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
184:The Beloved is inside you and also inside me. You know the tree is hidden inside the seed. Let your arrogance go. None of us has gone far. Inside love there is more power than we realize. ~ Kabir, #NFDB
185:I have always been the lover - never the beloved - and I have spent much of my life waiting for trains, planes, boats, footsteps, doorbells, letters, telephones, snow, rain, thunder. ~ John Cheever, #NFDB
186:Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
187:We need food. We need water. We need warmth. And the lover feels he/she needs the beloved. Plato had it right over two thousand years ago. The god of love “lives in a state of need.”41 ~ Helen Fisher, #NFDB
188:But as he lay dying in the bedroom of his Collingwood Street apartment, the beloved entertainer could hear the crowd chanting his name two blocks away: “Sylvester! Sylvester! Sylvester! ~ David Talbot, #NFDB
189:In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me. ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
190:The way the Beloved can fit in my heart, two thousand lives could fit in this body of mine. One kernel could contain a thousand bushels, and a hundred worlds pass through the eye of the needle. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
191:The pilgim should never be discouraged; though he should struggle for a hundred thousand years without success to behold the beauty of the Beloved, still he should not give way to despair. ~ Baha-ullah, #NFDB
192:You are a Divine creation, a Being of Light who showed up here as a human being at the exact moment you were supposed to. You are the Beloved, a miracle, a part of the eternal perfection. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
193:If you believe you are the beloved of God, you need to spend time listening to his voice - period! You can't say, "Yes God calls me the beloved, but I have to go out to do something now." ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
194:It was the downfall of love, Lamia thought wistfully, that it inspired the lover to toss away any shred of caution just to obtain the pure, desperate pleasure of talking about the beloved. ~ Shamim Sarif, #NFDB
195:I was perhaps moreover a little the dupe of that illusion of lovers that the beloved object must, somehow, respond, that an extremity of love not only merits but compels some return. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
196:Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
197:Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
198:I dreamt that the Beloved entered my body,
pulled out a dagger,
and went looking for my heart—
He couldn't find it.
So he struck anywhere.
I woke up
counting this as a blessing. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
199:The proper request of love is that our entire life should be oriented to the imitation of the Beloved. Let us therefore spare no effort to leave a transparent trace of God’s love in our life. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
200:all the good things our world has to offer are yours to enjoy. But you can enjoy them truly only when you can acknowledge them as affirmations of the truth that you are the Beloved of God. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
201:Isn’t it time that, loving, we freed ourselves
from the beloved, and, trembling, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be,
in its flight, something more than itself? ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
202:If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
203:Love is neither a tale nor a game.
Love is such a powerful torrent
that no one can stand in front of it.
Love is the flame which, when it blazes,
consumes everything other than the Beloved ~ Rumi,#NFDB
204:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favourite of the divine Lover and the self of the Beloved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #NFDB
205:When you find yourself with the Beloved, embracing for one breath,
In that moment you will find your true destiny.
Alas, don’t spoil this precious moment
Moments like this are very, very rare. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
206:Is it because she will return that I take pleasure in being alone?
Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
207:Love will make the beloved more & more free, love will give wings and love will open the vast sky. It cannot becomes a prison & enclosure. But the quality of love comes only when there is awareness. ~ Osho, #NFDB
208:Modern woman is no longer satisfied to be the beloved of a man; she looks for understanding, comradeship; she wants to be treated as a human being and not simply as an object for sexual gratification. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
209:I did love Kolkata as a mysterious woman, the beloved, my mother...I dont the outside world, my world is Kolkata... I do want to live, but Im certain that the death of Kolkata will bring my end ~ Sukanta Bhattacharya, #NFDB
210:Love's nationality is separate from all other religions, The lover's religion and nationality is the Beloved (God). The lover's cause is separate from all other causes Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
211:Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
212:Real love does not come off the rack; it is uniquely tailored by the lover to the beloved. Part of the pain of letting go of someone who really loved you is letting go of being loved in that special way. ~ David Richo, #NFDB
213:The heart is like a candle
longing to be lit.
Torn from the beloved
it yearns to be whole again,
but you have to bear the pain.
You cannot learn about love.
Love appears on the wings of grace. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
214:The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
215:Oh, there had been occasions of passion, but was that love? I had a sentimental notion... that love meant one would risk all, sacrifice all, overlook and endure all in order to be one with the beloved. ~ Susan Vreeland, #NFDB
216:Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths. It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. A lover whose passion is extreme loves even the faults of the beloved ~ Moliere, #NFDB
217:Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved inreality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
218:Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of anybody else. Everything is so insipid, so uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object! ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
219:Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
220:The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
221:Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else. Everything is so insipid, so uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object! ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
222:Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence. It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many. It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
223:When your heart is cleansed of everything you
think you are, you'll see yourself as an old beloved soul. It's not possible to see yourself without a mirror so gaze at the beloved; let his face become your mirror. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
224:Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence. It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many. It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
225:Those works whose ideal has not as much living reality and, as it were, personality as the beloved one or a friend had better remain unwritten. They would at least never become works of art. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
226:The way to restore the Wasteland is to embrace it with compassion, to become identified with it in exactly the same way that the lover identifies with the beloved: for what wounds the beloved wounds the lover. ~ John Matthews, #NFDB
227:Do we really fall in love repeatedly and feel it real every time, or we just pose the duplication of our first and foremost love we have ever experienced?
The question remains yet again, who is the beloved? ~ M F Moonzajer,#NFDB
228:Yearning is inseparable from love, and since once doesn't have the object of love immediately, one has not fallen in the embrace of the beloved immediately, they are suffering. That's how they are related. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
229:Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
230:A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
231:They feel confident that their love will be transmitted bit by bit to the person they love. The one who loves has the humble pride that the beloved will one day realize that they are loved, even if no words are uttered ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
232:Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
233:love entered me
and became blood in my veins
emptied me of myself
and filled me with the beloved
every single particle of my body
is soaked in the beloved
my name is all that's left of me
he became the rest ~ Rumi,#NFDB
234:"Similar but not the same" - that's like the return of the beloved for me. And metamorphosis: the spirit of the beloved moving through things, not lingering long in any one thing or place, no matter how we might wish it. ~ Gregory Orr, #NFDB
235:Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, "You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it"? That's an important discipline. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
236:Beauty belongs to the beloved who returns the gaze, in whose eyes we see the sun. But in this . . . beauty, in the mutual gaze, also lies the beginning of terror --awe, idealization, overstimulation, violation, loss. ~ Jessica Benjamin, #NFDB
237:Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
238:The beloved's innocence brutalizes the lover. As the singing of a mad person behind you on the train enrages you, its beautiful animal-like teeth shining amid black planes of paint. As Helen enrages history. Senza uscita. ~ Anne Carson, #NFDB
239:His supper still remained spread; and going to the front door, and softly setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as watchers sit on Old-Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved. But she did not come. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
240:Instead of viewing God as one who helps me accomplish my purposes, it is now my joy to help God accomplish the divine purpose - seeking the best for others and seeking the growth of the beloved, which is to say everyone. ~ Philip Gulley, #NFDB
241:Love has the tendency of pressing together all the lights - all the rays emitted from the beloved object by the burning-glass of fantasy, - into one focus, and making of them one radiant sun without any spots. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
242:So the beloved children's book author took a deep breath, opened his own book to the very first page, and began reading, hoping with all his heart that the story would remind him where his sister went all those years ago.... ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
243:Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. ~ Louise Gl ck,#NFDB
244:For is my story really so unusual? To wake each morning as if things had gone differently -- the dead come back, the lost returned, the beloved in our arms -- is it really any more magic than the ordinary madness of hope? ~ Andrew Sean Greer, #NFDB
245:And the Top spoke no more of his old love; for that dies away when the beloved objects has lain for five years in a roof gutter and got wet through; yes, one does not know her again when one meets her in the dust box. ~ Hans Christian Andersen, #NFDB
246:Creation forgotten, Creator only known, Attention turned inward In love with the Beloved alone. [2597.jpg] -- from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger
~ Saint John of the Cross, The Sum of Perfection
,#NFDB
247:My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ; 'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
248:If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? ‘If s/he really is so wonderful, how could s/he could love someone like me?’ 2. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
249:Seeking a teacher is just ego seeking a reprieve. Giving oneself over to a teacher or a teaching or the Beloved Guru or whatever is all about staying asleep, not waking up. First rule in this business; you are completely on your own. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
250:Somehow I have become deaf to the voice that calls me the Beloved, have left the only place where I can hear that voice, and have gone off desperately hoping that I would find somewhere else what I could no longer find at home. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
251:The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
252:There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
253:Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
254:Listen, open the heart’s window
and keep looking at the Beloved.
The task of love is to open that window
so the heart can be illuminated by His Beauty.
Gaze incessantly at the Beloved's face.
That is your power, my friend ~ Rumi,#NFDB
255:Many observers have noticed that love eliminates the distinction between giving and receiving. Since the selves of the two lovers are intermingled, scrambled, and fused, it feels more delicious to give to the beloved than to receive. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
256:Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
257:He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:5-6; cf. v. 9). ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
258:The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
259:You who seek God, apart, apart The thing you seek, thou art, thou art. If you want to seek the Beloved’s face. Polish the mirror, gaze into that space. These words were written by Rumi as a tribute for his master guru Shams of Tabriz. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
260:Movies and music portrayed romantic passion, losing one’s self in the beloved, as the ultimate pleasure, the very pinnacle of human existence. But the thought of surrendering herself, her will, completely, even for pleasure, terrified her. ~ J D Horn, #NFDB
261:you’re not what you’ve done, what you’ve been, how others have taught you, or what has been done to you. You’re a part of the beloved, connected always to your source, and therefore connected to the unlimited power of the beloved. Your ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
262:To be in love involves the most irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
263:How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
264:It was the wish of Martin Luther that the Book of Revelation should be omitted from his translation of the Bible. In his opinion, the Apocalypse was of pagan origin, and was not a writing of the beloved John. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
265:Entangled and besotted as he was, he no longer wished for anything else than to pursue the beloved object that inflamed him, to dream about him when he was absent and to speak amorous phrases, after the manner of lovers, to his mere shadow. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
266:On a personal note: I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I intend to recover. I don't need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done. ~ Molly Ivins, #NFDB
267:My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ;
'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.
I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one;
One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
268:Remove the Curtain of your Heart and see the Beloved sitting inside yourself. Close your Ears to the Outside and hear the Cosmic Sound going on within you.
Intro to Part 2, Chapter 1. Credit given to Mira, poet-saint of Rajastan. ~ Deborah Moggach,#NFDB
269:Every soul is wretched that becomes bound in friendship to perishable things. The soul is torn apart when the thing loved is lost. The wretchedness was perhaps always there, masked by the beloved thing that has been stripped away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
270:But in fact the one which is really beautiful and delicate, flawless and endowed with every blessing, is the beloved object, while the one which loves is by contrast of an entirely different character, such as I have just described. ~ Plato, Symposium, 204c, #NFDB
271:I wonder if Peter was chosen not for being the most perfect among the disciples (John is the beloved disciple to whom Christ entrusts his own mother) but for being the one who was most willing to bring his imperfections to God for correction. ~ Leah Libresco, #NFDB
272:There the beloved red sweater,
bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.
Each confirming: I chose these, I.
But habit is different: it chooses.
And we, it's good horse,
opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit. ~ Jane Hirshfield,#NFDB
273:How could it be anything but hard! It was more than the human heart could bear: to fall beneath the beloved ax -- then have to justify its wisdom.
But that is the price a man pays for entrusting his God-given soul to human dogma. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,#NFDB
274:There's a fragment that goes, "Some say the most beautiful thing in the world is a great cavalry riding down over the hill. Others say it's a vast infantry on the march. But I say the most beautiful thing is the beloved." How political can you get? ~ Sam Hamill, #NFDB
275:Writing to touch with letters, with lips, with breath, to caress with the tongue, to lick with the soul, to taste the blood of the beloved body, of life in its remoteness; to saturate the distance with desire; in order to keep it from reading you. ~ H l ne Cixous, #NFDB
276:It's too late," she said, her voice trembling. "You are not the beautiful innocent vagabond walking toward me under the dogwood blossoms, with his trunks and his head full of worthless notions. And I am not the beloved, cherished ladies' maid... ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
277:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
278:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
279:/Farsi The sum total of our life is a breath spent in the company of the Beloved. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, The sum total of our life is a breath
,#NFDB
280:Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
281:The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
282:Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
283:Remain inside as the inside itself.Don't hold this thought that you are journeyingtowards the Beloved, because, strangely,that endorses and intensifies the sense of separation.What you are searching for is actually whatyou have never been apart from. A paradox. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
284:We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
285:When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavor, a salt sharpness in experience. It is when the beloved is unhappy or maimed or troubled that one misses with pain. ~ Winifred Holtby, #NFDB
286:Jesus humbled himself. He went from commanding angels to sleeping in the straw. From holding stars to clutching Mary's finger. The palm that held the universe took the nail of a soldier. Why? Because that's what love does. It puts the beloved before itself. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
287:O Farid, rent your silken veil and put on a rough, woolen mantle; wear whatever clothes you must to meet the Beloved. [2184.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth, Translated by Nirmal Dass
~ Baba Sheikh Farid, Wear whatever clothes you must
,#NFDB
288:One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
289:Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God’s essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
290:But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth? ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
291:Heartbreak is a little like falling in love, in the way it charges everything with a kind of incandescence, as though the beloved has stepped away and your gaze now rests with all the same intensity on all the items of the view that close-up person blocked. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
292:But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth? ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
293:The lover is moved by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which perceives, and it unites with it and they become one and the same thing... when the lover is united with the beloved it finds rest there; when the burden is laid down there it finds rest. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
294:What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
295:When we are attracted, we draw near; when we draw near, the sight that attracted us dissolves: the face of the beloved blurs or fractures as one draws near for a kiss, the smooth cone of Mount Fuji becomes rough rock rising from underfoot to blot out the sky. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
296:There is a place born of silence
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.
There is a place where voices sing your beauty
A place where every breath
carves your image
in my soul.
[465, translated by Jonathan Star, - In the Arms of the Beloved] ~ Rumi,#NFDB
297:Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
298:Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
299:She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
The Mother was she of Beauty and Delight,
The Word in Brahma’s vast creating clasp,
The World-Puissance on almighty Shiva’s lap, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#NFDB
300:Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
301:As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have now fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
302:Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
303:As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
304:We have to get to the Self beyond its physical and mental instrumentalities to realize we are not fragile mortal beings; there is an unbroken link between ourselves and the Beloved Mother of the Universe, the Divine Consciousness flowing through and permeating Infinity. ~ Daya Mata, #NFDB
305:In "He", Robert Johnson suggests that most moderns, no longer at home in the old mythic systems, have transferred their needs of the soul to romantic love. Images of the beloved are carried within each of us & projected onto one who can receive our unconscious material. ~ J Hollis, #NFDB
306:Love generates, or rather reveals, something which may be called absolute charm. In the beloved nothing is gauche. Every move of the head, every tone of the voice, every laugh or grunt or cough or twitch of the nose is as valuable and revealing as a glimpse of paradise. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
307:Moreover, the genuine lover always respects and even encourages this separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved. Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much mental illness and unnecessary suffering. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
308:I always hated those classic kid movies like Old Yeller or The Yearling where the beloved pet dies. What would be so wrong with having those damn kids learn their lessons about mortality from watching Grandpa kick? Then at least the dog would be around to comfort them. ~ Merrill Markoe, #NFDB
309:You are two hands, two legs, and two eyes,
But if your heart and the Beloved are also two,
what good is that?
You call out, 'I am the lover',
but these are mere words.
If you see lover and Beloved as two,
you either have double vision
or you can't count. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
310:I want you only for my dreams,’ they tell the beloved woman in verses they never send – they who dare not tell her anything. This ‘I want you only for my dreams’ is a verse from an old poem of mine. I record the memory with a smile, and don’t even comment on the smile. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
311:the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors... For from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
312:Love has come and it flows like blood beneath my skin, through my veins.
It has emptied me of my self and filled me with the Beloved.
The Beloved has penetrated every cell of my body.
Of myself there remains only a name, everything else is Him.
(Rumi) ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
313:Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
314:[T]he content of the discourse should be about loving the un-lovable object… The beloved and the friend are the immediate and direct objects of immediate love, the choice of passion and of inclination. And what is the ugly? It is the neighbor, whom one shall love (373). ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
315:The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
316:A poet I am not!
My verses aren’t worth
a piece of bread.
I don’t seek praise,
I don’t run from blame—
both are worthless to me.
All my skill and poetry
fit into a single cup—
Unless the wine comes from the Beloved’s hand
I will not drink one sip of it! ~ Rumi,#NFDB
317:I want you only to dream of you,’ they tell the beloved woman in verses they never send – they who dare not tell her anything. This ‘I want you only to dream of you’ is a verse from an old poem of mine. I record the memory with a smile, and don’t even comment on the smile. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
318:I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
319:It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve - the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman. ~ Oscar Niemeyer, #NFDB
320:Love on the part of someone who is happy is the wish to share the suffering of the beloved who is unhappy.
Love on the part of someone who is unhappy is to be filled with joy by the mere knowledge that his beloved is happy without sharing in this happiness or even wishing to do so ~ Simone Weil,#NFDB
321:Having the career of the beloved CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but that he is an ardent civil libertarian. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
322:Love on the part of someone who is happy is the wish to share the suffering of the beloved who is unhappy.
Love on the part of someone who is unhappy is to be filled with joy by the mere knowledge that his beloved is happy without sharing in this happiness or even wishing to do so. ~ Simone Weil,#NFDB
323:Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
S ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
324:Resistance and nonviolence are not in themselves good. There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
325:The Sufi relates to God not as a judge, nor as a father figure, nor as the creator, but as our own Beloved, who is so close, so near, so tender.
In the states of nearness the lover experiences an intimacy with the Beloved which carries the softness and ecstasy of love. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
326:The Beloved One going off to America and getting himself killed. The Defiant One trying to invent a flying machine. And now the Wild One, vandalizing statues and ruining innocent young women. The duke might be the devil's kin, but Crawley didn't envy His Grace The Wicked One one bit. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
327:We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
328:If you were blind you would hardly have fallen in love in the first place. But now, do you truly wish to see the beloved in the cold clarity of the visual apparatus? It may be in your better interest to throw a veil over the gaze, so as to keep her alive in her archetypal, goddesslike form. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
329:Love needs reality. What is more terrible than the discovery that through a bodily appearance we have been loving an imaginary being. It is much more terrible than death, from death does not prevent the Beloved from having lived.
That is the punishment for having fed love on imagination. ~ Simone Weil,#NFDB
330:Chanting, chanting the Beloved's name, I am myself become the Beloved. Whom then does that Name now name? [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger
~ Bulleh Shah, Chanting, chanting the Beloveds name
,#NFDB
331:In amorous passion particularly, one does not want the beloved being to be admired objectively; one prefers to think her unknown, unrecognized; the lover thinks that his appropriation of her is greater if he is alone in revealing her worth. That is the genuine thing offered by all passion. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
332:In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.”10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
333:The truth of death is a peculiar thing. For when they leave us the beloved are as if they never were. They vanish from this earth and vanish from the air. What remains are moors and mountains, the solid world upon which we find ourselves, and in which we reign. We are the wolves. We are the lions. ~ Sarah Hall, #NFDB
334:I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It ɹnds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
335:Male leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face persecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures of giants as homages. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
336:Once, I belonged to the future. The beloved future of my beloved mother, that was what counted; the present was a means, and the past no more than a dull shard of pottery, a bottle dug up by my father on the beach. Now, however, I belong to yesterday.
Is that a line from a song? I forget. Is it? ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
337:The word 'God' defines a personal relation, not an objective concept. Like the name of the beloved in every love. It does not imply separation and distance. Hearing the beloved name is an immediate awareness, a dimensionless proximity of presence. It is our life wholly transformed into relation. ~ Christos Yannaras, #NFDB
338:As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
339:How Heavy the Days. . .
How heavy the days are.
There's not a fire that can warm me,
Not a sun to laugh with me,
Everything bare,
Everything cold and merciless,
And even the beloved, clear
Stars look desolately down,
Since I learned in my heart that
Love can die. ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
340:Now, at the end of my visit to the Philippines, I commend you to Him, to Jesus who came among us as a child. May He enable all the beloved people of this country to work together, protecting one another, beginning with your families and communities, in building a world of justice, integrity and peace. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
341:At the end of a crazy-moon night the love of God rose. I said, It's me, Lalla. The Beloved woke. We became That, and the lake is crystal-clear. [1469.jpg] -- from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield
~ Lalla, At the end of a crazy-moon night
,#NFDB
342:I knew only one thing which I have learned well by now : love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. it find its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
343:There are moments of oneness with the Beloved, absolutely ecstasy and bliss. That is nothingness. And this nothingness loves you, responds to you, fulfills you utterly and yet there is nothing there. You flow out like a river without diminishing. This is the great mystical experience, the great ecstasy. ~ Irina Tweedie, #NFDB
344:Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
345:When an unconquered country is conquered, people are killed... . That the beloved of the Gods finds very pitiful and grievous. ... If anyone does him wrong, it will be forgiven as far as it can be forgiven... . The beloved of the Gods considers that the greatest of all victories is the victory of righteousness. ~ Ashoka, #NFDB
346:A sage once said, ‘How shall I open my heart, oh friend? It is forbidden for me to speak. I am about to die for lack of a kindred soul to understand my misery. Simply by looking in her eyes I find the beloved of my heart. But rare is such a soul who swims in ecstatic bliss on the high tide of heavenly love. ~ Trevor Hall, #NFDB
347:I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. We had made merry for the beloved child's return too - but what happens when the beloved child doesn't say she's sorry? The parable doesn't talk about that. Jesus figures of course you're sorry. Jesus, I thought, you blew it. Not everybody is sorry. ~ Caroline B Cooney, #NFDB
348:And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
349:Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
350:Love is a virtue and not a feeling. It is fed and fired by God- not by the favorable response of the beloved. Even when it doesn't seem to make a dime's worth of difference to the ones on whom it is lavished, it is still the most prized of all virtues because it is at the heart of the very character of God. ~ Rich Mullins, #NFDB
351:Percy (One) Our new dog, named for the beloved poet, ate a book which unfortunately we had left unguarded. Fortunately it was the Bhagavad Gita, of which many copies are available. Every day now, as Percy grows into the beauty of his life, we touch his wild, curly head and say, “Oh, wisest of little dogs. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
352:Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner dark-room the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
353:It is pleasant to spend time with Him, to lie close to His breast like the Beloved Disciple and to feel the infinite love present in His Heart....how can we not feel a renewed need to spend time in spiritual converse, in silent adoration, in heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament? ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
354:Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.,
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are Heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Music(2)
,#NFDB
355:The highest degree of love is Tatayyum (total enthrallment). The lowest degree is 'alaqah (attachment), when the heart is attached to the beloved: then comes sabahah (infatuation), when the heart is poured out: then gharam (passion), when love never leaves the heart: the nashaq (ardent love), and finally tatayyum. ~ Ibn Taymiyyah, #NFDB
356:him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
357:the beloved Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, the Shakespeare of Russia who gave up his life in the name of love. It was a silly duel over a woman. But, I guess, that’s about as romantic as it gets. And as virtuous as some may say that was, it was a bit ironic too—love took the life of Russia’s greatest romanticist. ~ Frank Scozzari, #NFDB
358:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
359:Chewing slowly,
Only after Id eaten
My grandmother,
Mother,
Son-in-law,
Two brothers-in-law,
And father-in-law
(His big family included)
In that order,
And had for dessert
The towns inhabitants,
Did I find, says Kabir,
The beloved that Ive become
One with.
~ Kabir, Chewing Slowly
,#NFDB
360:This species, the mute swan, became holy to Apollo. In remembrance of the death of the beloved Phaeton the bird is silent all its life until the very moment of its death, when it sings with terrible melancholy its strange and lovely goodbye, its swan song. In honour of Cygnus the young of all swans are called ‘cygnets’. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
361:The judge remembers to be a parent: a father in wistfulness, a mother in yearning, a God of grief flowing with tears beside the deathbed. The angry God remembers to be a God who cares about the beloved partner. God has noticed. God has noticed the mocking and the dying, the denial and the irrepressible pain.
To ~ Walter Brueggemann,#NFDB
362:We are to groan for glorification, but we are to wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best. Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. This "groaning" is a test. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
363:Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. That gnaws away at the night-time hours desperate for a sign and appears at breakfast so self-composed. That longs for certainty, fidelity, compassion, and plays roulette with anything precious. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
364:The next two who are called are also related. These are the brothers, James and John, James the just, the righteous judge, and his brother John, the beloved. Justice to be wise must be administered with love, ever turning the other cheek and at all times returning good for evil, love for hate, nonviolence for violence. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
365:Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days... The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
366:Do not despair
if the Beloved pushes you away.
If He pushes you away today
it's only so He can draw you back tomorrow.
If He closes the door on your face,
don't leave, wait—
you'll soon be by His side.
If He bars every passage,
don't lose hope—
He's about to show you
a secret way that nobody knows. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
367:Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days... The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafiz, #NFDB
368:This mania which Swann had for finding likenesses to people in pictures was defensible, for even what we call individual expression is—as we so painfully discover when we are in love and would fain believe in the unique reality of the beloved—something diffused and general, which can be found existing at different periods. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
369:We are to groan for glorification, but we are to wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best. Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. This "groaning" is a test. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. Some ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
370:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace... We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
371:The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings. ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB
372:The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
373:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace...We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
374:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness.
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
375:Rejoice then, believer, in this: thou art accepted “in the beloved.” Thou lookest within, and thou sayest, “There is nothing acceptable here!” But look at Christ, and see if there is not everything acceptable there. Thy sins trouble thee; but God has cast thy sins behind His back, and thou art accepted in the Righteous ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
376:The contrast between the two, the sweetness and the badness, wrenches the heart of the lover as such sweetness on its own would not, and the lover shudders all the more at dread of the beloved's recklessness, for the sake of the sweetness that is there, and the shudder only makes more violent the shuddering that announces love. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
377:The curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain. ~ Carson McCullers, #NFDB
378:For a little sould that cries oout aloud for continued personal existence for itseld and its beloved, there is no help. For the sould which know itself no more as a unit, but as part of the Universal Unit of which the Beloved also is part; which feels within itself the throb of the Universal Life; for that soul there is not death. ~ Olive Schreiner, #NFDB
379:Vishnu stories in the Ramayana, Bhagavata and Mahabharata reveal how he experiences birth, death and even heartbreak. Both Ram and Krishna display human emotions, yearning for the beloved. Though God, Ram cannot be with Sita, Krishna cannot be with Radha. Yet they do not turn bitter, angry or vengeful. They love unconditionally. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
380:Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places . . . He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ~ Paul the Apostle, #NFDB
381:Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after all, and what was left was a bond with another adult, who had once been the beloved child. ~ Nancy Kress, #NFDB
382:Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being, and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you...you are -we all are-the beloved of the beloved, and in every moment, in every event of your life , the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know. Who can ever explain this miracle? It simply is. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
383:Saint Thomas Aquinas remarks that “love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved.” And: “Love follows knowledge.”3 Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
384:When I love somebody, I like him to be around; I like him to take me out to dinner; I like to look at the sunset with him. But if not, I love him and I hope he's looking at the same sun I am. Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. Some of this wisdom came to me after I was 50 or 60. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
385:And Amy, smiling up at him, felt everything inside of her begin to melt as she gazed up into that clear, quietly observing stare. He had the warmest eyes. The warmest smile. The warmest hands. And, toward everyone but himself, the very warmest heart. The Beloved One, indeed. The power of her love for him nearly brought her to tears. She ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
386:Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, To-- Music, when soft voices die
,#NFDB
387:He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was beginning that crazy loss of one's self, that neglect of everything but one's dramatic thoughts about the beloved, that feverish inner life all turning upon the [loved one]. ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
388:To be useful in God’s hand, a man must be properly adjusted with respect to all three: his position, his life and his warfare. He falls short of God’s requirements if he underestimates the importance of any one of them, for each is a sphere in which God would express “the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (1:6). ~ Watchman Nee, #NFDB
389:/Farsi The day Love was illumined, Lovers learned from You how to burn, Beloved. The flame was set by the Friend to give the moth a gate to enter. Love is a gift from the Beloved to the Lover. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, The day Love was illumined
,#NFDB
390:The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
391:The dead do not
become stars or ghosts.
in fact, they are
hardly undone.
Soon their randomly
dispersed parts
reappear one
by one on
foreign hosts-
the beloved ear
or freckled arm,
separate as a
milagro or bracelet
charm. It is not
grotesque, though
odd. Even a piece
does us some good.
“Charms ~ Kay Ryan,#NFDB
392:Wept for the death of an ardent and immature love that had been unable to bring any comfort or peace to the beloved. And wept for the woman he had taken to wife with such high ideals—the woman who had just killed herself rather than face a final illness with only his arms to comfort her. Wept for his own frailty and infidelity. For his own humanness. He ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
393:All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins. ~ Elizabeth McCracken, #NFDB
394:Love is doing what will enthrall the beloved with the greatest and longest joy. What will enthrall the beloved this way is the glory of God. Love means doing all we can, at whatever cost to ourselves, to help people be enthralled with the glory of God. When they are, they are satisfied and God is glorified. Therefore loving people and glorifying God are one. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
395:Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
396:Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
397:We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others. ~ Clare of Assisi, #NFDB
398:Morning—means
"Morning"—means "Milking"—to the Farmer—
Dawn—to the Teneriffe—
Dice—to the Maid—
Morning means just Risk—to the Lover—
Just revelation—to the Beloved—
Epicures—date a Breakfast—by it—
Brides—an Apocalypse—
Worlds—a Flood—
Faint-going Lives—Their Lapse from Sighing—
Faith—The Experiment of Our Lord
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
399:There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved. And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?' The lover replied, 'It is I.' 'Go hence,' returned the voice; 'there is no room within for thee and me.' Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded, 'Who is there?' He answered, 'It is thou.' 'Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
400:Some ... have imagined that by arousing a baseless suspicion in the mind of the beloved we can revive a waning devotion. But this experiment is very dangerous. Those who recommend it are confident that so long as resentment is groundless one need only suffer it in silence and all will soon be well. I have observed however that this is by no means the case. ~ Murasaki Shikibu, #NFDB
401:What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
402:Balder the Beautiful--the Scandinavian Christ--was the beloved son of Odin. Balder was not warlike; his kindly and beautiful spirit brought peace and joy to the hearts of the gods, and they all loved him save one. As Jesus had a Judas among His twelve disciples, so one of the twelve gods was false--Loki, the personification of evil. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages, #NFDB
403:Rumi speaks often of the power of silence to take us to what we are looking for. In one poem he says: We search for him here and there while looking right at Him. Sitting at His side we ask, “O Beloved, where is the Beloved?” Enough with such questions! — Let silence take you to the core of life. All your talk is worthless When compared to one whisper of the Beloved. ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
404:Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
405:this love -- O Bulleh -- tormenting, unique the face of the idol akin to the divine in heaven can there be divinity without my beloved even if I have to contest the scriptures this love is fearless, marches to death in defiance dances and whirls like a street prostitute, to win a single smile from the beloved
~ Bulleh Shah, this love -- O Bulleh -- tormenting, unique
,#NFDB
406:What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness.
In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved ~ Nikos Kazantzakis,#NFDB
407:Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method...is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community...Yes , love-which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies-is the solution ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
408:What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The 'I' and the 'you' vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
409:So this was love then—wanting to give only pleasure to the beloved; constantly searching your mind for love tokens that would bring a smile to her lips or a sparkle to her eyes. He deeply regretted it had come so late in life, but since his heart’s desire was Eleanor who was so much younger than he, it could have been no other way. He was grateful it had come at all. ~ Virginia Henley, #NFDB
410:A Mixed-breed Apple"
A little mixed-breed apple,
half red, half yellow, tells this story.
A lover and beloved get separated.
Their being apart was one thing,
but they have opposite responses.
The lover feels pain and grows pale.
The beloved flushes and feels proud.
I am a thorn next to my master's rose.
We seem to be two, but we are not. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
411:It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I. ~ Kamala Suraiyya Das,#NFDB
412:I am committed now to one thing: lyric sequences. I want the intensity of lyric, but the scope and arc of narrative. so, I think I'll just write sequences for the foreseeable (the Beloved sequence doesn't have a 'plot' so I can just keep adding poems to it, it's like a giant bag I can just put beloved lyrics into - I think there are about 300 of them i've published by now). ~ Gregory Orr, #NFDB
413:/Farsi Love came and emptied me of self, every vein and every pore, made into a container to be filled by the Beloved. Of me, only a name is left, the rest is You my Friend, my Beloved. [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Love came and emptied me of self
,#NFDB
414:It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered. ~ Ahdaf Soueif, #NFDB
415:This Love - O Bulleh - Tormenting, Unique
This love - O Bulleh - tormenting, unique
the face of the idol akin to the divine in heaven
can there be divinity without my beloved
even if I have to contest the scriptures
this love is fearless, marches to death in defiance
dances and whirls like a street prostitute,
to win a single smile from the beloved
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
416:What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire. ~ Ben Brantley, #NFDB
417:There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved.
And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?'
The lover replied, 'It is I.'
'Go hence,' returned the voice;
'there is no room within for thee and me.'
Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded,
'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is thou.'
'Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
418:Spiritually, no action is more important than surrender. Surrender is the tenderest impulse of the heart, acting out of love to give whatever the beloved wants. Surrender is being alert to exactly what is happening now, not imposing expectations from the past. Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything, even when you cannot foresee the outcome of a situation. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
419:It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within. ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
420:Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of the same law which ordains that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar, #NFDB
421:/Farsi Love came flowed like blood beneath skin, through veins emptied me of my self filled me with the Beloved till every limb every organ was seized and occupied till only my name remains. the rest is It. [1501.jpg] -- from The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Love came
,#NFDB
422:Jesus goes up onto the mountain, gathers his disciples around him, and says: “How blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for uprightness, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness.” These words present a portrait of the child of God. It is a self-portrait of Jesus, the Beloved Son. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
423:We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We've come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself. ~ John Lewis, #NFDB
424:The Tao is in the Passage rather than the Path. It is the spirit of Cosmic Change,--the eternal growth which returns upon itself to produce new forms. It recoils upon itself like the dragon, the beloved symbol of the Taoists. It folds and unfolds as do the clouds. The Tao might be spoken of as the Great Transition. Subjectively it is the Mood of the Universe. Its Absolute is the Relative. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
425:Greeting 3 JOHN 1 a The elder to the beloved Gaius, b whom I love in truth. 2Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. 3For c I rejoiced greatly when the brothers [1] came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. 4I have no greater joy than to hear that d my children are walking in the truth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
426:'Morning' Means 'Milking' To The Farmer
300
'Morning'—means 'Milking'—to the Farmer—
Dawn—to the Teneriffe—
Dice—to the Maid—
Morning means just Risk—to the Lover—
Just revelation—to the Beloved—
Epicures—date a Breakfast—by it—
Brides—an Apocalypse—
Worlds—a Flood—
Faint-going Lives—Their Lapse from Sighing—
Faith—The Experiment of Our Lord
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
427:The owner of the vineyard, after having sent in vain several stewards to collect his share of the harvest, decides to send “his beloved son.” The tenants recognize that he is the heir and kill him to obtain the inheritance for themselves. This is the picture of the true son who obeys his father, not as a slave, but as the Beloved, and fulfills the will of the Father in full unity with him. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
428:Great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything, everything, everything exactly as it is – and yet why was this torment one you never gave voice to? Was it perhaps that you kept it to yourself, like the beloved whose name one still cannot bear the world to mention? For a poet buys this power of words to utter all the grim secrets of others at the cost of a little secret he himself cannot utter. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
429:I want language to help us live in a world of wonder/terror/change. I want it to be about "becoming" rather than "being." I think that being and nouns are part of our hopeless dream that time will stop and we will not die. but it's not that way. So, why not celebrate verbs and the beloved's metamorphosis into other people or creatures or places - the same spirit but moving through things, not static. ~ Gregory Orr, #NFDB
430:There’s nothing, of course, more damaging and hurtful to the psyche than that—searching grimly for things to despise and revile in a person you once loved. You may destroy the beloved image but at the same time you destroy part of the basis of your self-respect, plus a whole vital chunk out of your past. Because, if he is hateful now, what aberration once caused you to waste so much love on him? ~ Lynne Reid Banks, #NFDB
431:It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the beloved priest. "But Don Paolo, are you not happy?" she asked him. "Of course I am happy," he assured the little girl. "Why, then, aren't you crying? ~ Marlena de Blasi, #NFDB
432:Male leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face prosecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures as homages. They don't flirt shamelessly with the likes of me when they have Transylvanian girlfriends. What an effing jerk. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
433:When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover. ~ Dag Hammarskj ld, #NFDB
434:When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover. ~ Dag Hammarskjold, #NFDB
435:/Farsi Mansoor, that whale of the Oceans of Love, had separated his soul from the entanglements of this life. It was not him who claimed Ana-al-Haq (I am the truth), It was the Friend in whom he had lost his self. It was the Beloved. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Mansoor, that whale of the Oceans of Love
,#NFDB
436:Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. ~ Osho, #NFDB
437:My conscience does not render a positive verdict in God’s courtroom when I look inside myself. The only reason I can sleep well at night is that even though my heart is filled with corruption and even though I am not doing my best to please him, I have in heaven at the Father’s right hand the beloved Son, who has not only done his best for himself but has fulfilled all righteousness for me in my place. ~ Michael Horton, #NFDB
438:All our moves are based on four general principles: continued use of the rifle, no waiving of historical rights, no peace, and no negotiations... Whatever form of government is established in the territory when the shadow of occupation passes away, whenever I address my fighters and revolutionaries, I shall say: 'Let our rifles be aimed at the beloved land, the land of the homeland, the land of Palestine. ~ Yasser Arafat, #NFDB
439:Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
440:Unlike seeking, which is result-oriented and rooted in a sense of dissatisfaction and incompleteness, this kind of meditative inquiry is rooted in curiosity, interest and love. Much as a lover explores the beloved, this nondual, nonconceptual inquiry is an act of love and devotion. Much as a child explores the world with open curiosity and wonder, this kind of inquiry is a form of play and self-discovery. ~ Joan Tollifson, #NFDB
441:I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then, it is the eternal dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
442:World was in the face of the beloved--,
but suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world can not be grasped.
Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face
as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink
world, so near that I couldn't almost taste it?
Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank.
But I was filled up also, with too much
world, and, drinking, I myself ran over. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
443:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
444:the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. f 4 For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. g, h In love A 5 He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, 6 to the praise of His glorious grace i that He favored us with in the Beloved. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
445:But there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
446:When the rose is gone and the garden faded you will no longer hear the nightingale's song. The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing. If love withholds its strengthening care, the lover is left like a bird without care, the lover is left like a bird without wings. How will I be awake and aware if the light of the Beloved is absent? Love wills that this Word be brought forth. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
447:Never lose hope
when the Beloved
sends you away.
If you’re abandoned
if you’re left hopeless
tomorrow for sure
you’ll be called again.
If the door is shut
right in your face
keep waiting with patience
don’t leave right away.
Seeing your patience
your love will soon
summon you with grace
raise you like a champion.
let the sky be overcast
love will show the way ~ Rumi,#NFDB
448:What did it mean to love someone? What kind of power did that give someone over you? What kinds of ways could loving someone come back to haunt you? What kinds of ways could the beloved hurt you? By confessing your love, weren’t you essentially telling someone I need you? I don’t want to lose you? I’m vulnerable to you? It was like laying down all your weapons and asking for them to be used against you, wasn’t it? ~ Melanie Harlow, #NFDB
449:/Farsi If you do not give up the crowds you won't find your way to Oneness. If you do not drop your self you won't find your true worth. If you do not offer all you have to the Beloved, you will live this life free of that pain which makes it worth living. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, If you do not give up the crowds
,#NFDB
450:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing-which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
451:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
452:One of the old Church fathers said that we cannot better understand the Trinity than as a revelation of divine love—the Father, the loving One, the Fountain of love; the Son, the beloved one, the Reservoir of love, in whom the love was poured out; and the Spirit, the living love that united both and then overflowed into this world. The Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, is love. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
453:Mortal never won to view thee,
Yet a thousand lovers woo thee;
Not a nightingale but knows
In the rose-bud sleeps the rose.
Love is where the glory falls
Of thy face: on convent walls
Or on tavern floors the same
Unextinguishable flame.
Where the turban'd anchorite
Chanteth Allah day and night,
Church-bells ring the call to prayer,
And the Cross of Christ is there.
~ Hafiz, The Beloved
,#NFDB
454:Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you 'my beloved daughter,' 'my beloved son,' 'my beloved child.' To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
455:Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love.
In both states, the imagination's entirely occupied with one person. The beloved dwells at the heart of the world, and becomes a Rome: the roads of feeling all lead to him, all proceed from him. Everything that touches us seems to relate back to that center: there is no other emotional life, no place outside the universe of feeling centered on its pivotal figure. ~ Mark Doty,#NFDB
456:Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love.
In both states, the imagination's entirely occupied with one person. The beloved dwells at the heart of the world, and becomes a Rome: the roads of feeling all lead to him, all proceed from him. Everything that touches us seems to relate back to that center: there is no other emotional life, no place outside the universe of feeling centered on its pivotal figure. ~ Mark Doty,#NFDB
457:The beloved's features too were standardized in certain adjectives of color and shape and likened to natural objects, fruit and flowers especially. As a result, ingenuity in finding fresh ways to follow the pattern was required in addition to actual poetic powers. The challenge was great and it accounts for the quantity of verbal lovemaking in the blue, addressed to the remote or non-existent tribes of Celias and Delias. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
458:Father, what did I miss here, in this stage? Did I know I was the beloved son? Do I believe it even now? Come to me, in this place, over these years. Speak to me. Do I believe you want good things for me? Is my heart secure in your love? How was my young heart wounded in my life as a boy? And Jesus, you who came to heal the broken heart, come to me here. Heal this stage in my heart. Restore me as the beloved son. Father me. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
459:Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
460:/Farsi "This is My Face," said the Beloved, wearing a basket of roses. Thick, dark mystery flowing over the shoulder, "This is my hair!" A hundred musk incense sticks burning, "This is My Perfume." Fires everywhere, the whole creation aflame, "This is My Passion." [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, This is My Face, said the Beloved
,#NFDB
461:If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves? ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
462:When two people come together in God, the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved doesn’t seem to be a mere mortal. They seem for a while to be something else, something more. The truth is, they are something more. No one is anything less than the perfect Son of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant when we see the total truth about someone. They are perfect. That’s not just our imagination. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
463:Hang the body and the mind between the arms of the beloved,
in the ecstasy of love's joy:
Bring the tearful streams of the rainy clouds to your eyes,
and cover your heart with the shadow of darkness:
Bring your face nearer to his ear,
and speak of the deepest longings of your heart.
Kabir says: 'Listen to me brother!
bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart.'
~ Kabir, Hang Up The Swing Of Love Today!
,#NFDB
464:The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the— ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
465:I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
466:We have to let go of the passing names by which we have tried to name ourselves and become the “naked self before the naked God.” That will always feel like dying, because we are so attached to our passing names and identities. Your bare, undecorated self is already and forever the beloved child of God. When you can rest there, you will begin to share in the universal Christ consciousness, the very “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
467:/Farsi A pious one with a hundred beads on your rosary, or a drunkard in a tavern, any gift you bring the Beloved will be accepted as long as you come in longing. It is this most secret pain, this bleeding separation, which will guide you to your Heart of Hearts. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, A pious one with a hundred beads on your rosary
,#NFDB
468:All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God’s favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father’s home and choose to dwell in a “distant country. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
469:When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
470:If I had even been his friend, well and good: the artful indiscretion of the true friend is intelligible to everybody; but I only saw Pechorin once in my life—on the high-road—and, consequently, I cannot cherish towards him that inexplicable hatred, which, hiding its face under the mask of friendship, awaits but the death or misfortune of the beloved object to burst over its head in a storm of reproaches, admonitions, scoffs and regrets. ~ Mikhail Lermontov, #NFDB
471:If, when the prodigal came back to his father, there was the preparation of the fatted calf, and the music and dancing, and the gold ring and the best robe, what will be the preparation when we do not come home as prodigals, but as the bride prepared for her husband, or as the beloved children, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, coming home to the Father who shall see his own image in us, and rejoice over us with singing? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
472:When you make sex to a person, woman or man, you think it unites you. For a moment it gives you the illusion of unity, and then a vast division suddenly comes in. That's why after every sex act, a frustration, a depression sets in. One feels that one is so far away from the beloved. Sex divides, and when love goes deeper and deeper and unites more and more, there is no need for sex. Your inner energies can meet without sex, and you live in such a unity. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
473:[L]ove ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.... love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give; and vice versa, the beloved shares with the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
474:Pleasure and pain at once register upon the lover, inasmuch as the desirability of the love object derives, in part, from its lack. To whom is it lacking? To the lover. If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole. ~ Anne Carson, #NFDB
475:Children, when we go to the temple, do not hurry to have darshan, then make some offering and return home in a hurry. We should stand there patiently in silence for some time and try to visualize the beloved deity in our hearts. If possible, we should sit down and meditate. At each step, remember to do japa. Amma doesn't say that the offerings and worship are not necessary, but of all the offerings we make, what the Lord wants most is our hearts! ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
476:[L]ove ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.... love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give; and vice versa, the beloved shares with the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
477:Endlessly I sustain the discourse of the beloved's absence; actually a preposterous situation; the other is absent as referent, present as allocutory. The singular distortion generates a kind of insupportable present; I am wedged between two tenses, that of the reference and that of the allocution: you have gone (which I lament), you are here (since I am addressing you). Whereupon I know what the present, that difficult tense is: a pure portion of anxiety. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
478:My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
479:There’s a reason that some of our oldest and most important stories start with “Once upon a time . . .” Tucked among the fantastical characters and magical other-worlds are profound truths. Lloyd Alexander, author of the beloved Chronicles of Prydain, said, “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” With that, we present to you this collection of wise and beautiful quotes from some of the greatest authors in the fantasy genre. ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
480:emrz ch har rz, kharb-m kharb
ma-g'sh dar andsha-wo bar gr rabb
Sad gna namz-ast-o ruk`-ast-o sujd
n-r ke jaml- dst bsh-ad miHrb
Today, like every day, we are ruined, ruined (by "wine").
Don't open the door of worry, but take up the lute!
There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration6
For the one whose prayer-niche, is the beauty of the Beloved
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, There Are A Hundred Kinds Of Prayer
,#NFDB
481:[Heaven] is not something other than this world; it is this world as it is perfectly offered now in the land of the Trinity. It is all the moments of time and all the conjunctions of space as Christ holds them reconciled for the praise of the glory of the Father's grace. And it is all of them held for our endless exploration of their depths - depths which we, even at our best, even at the moment of seeing the beloved's eyes, have only just begun to suspect. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
482:/Farsi Rise early at dawn, when our storytelling begins. In the dead of the night, when all other doors are locked, the door for the Lovers to enter opens. Be wide awake in the dark when Lovers begin fluttering around the Beloved's window, like homing pigeons arriving with flaming bodies. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Rise early at dawn, when our storytelling begins
,#NFDB
483:His happiness in knowing himself to have been so long the beloved of such a heart, must have been great enough to warrant any strength of language in which he could cloathe it to her or to himself; it must have been a delightful happiness! But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach. Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
484:In the head of the adoring male is the illusion that sublime beauty "is all head and wings, with no bottom to betray" it. In one of Swift's poems a young man explains the grotesque contradiction that is tearing him apart:
Nor wonder how I lost my Wits;
Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, shits!
In other words, in Swift's mind there was an absolute contradiction "between the state of being in love and an awareness of the excremental function of the beloved. ~ Ernest Becker,#NFDB
485:To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a peek at the water colors one did the day before, or even a few hours before, is like stealing a look at the beloved while she sleeps. The thrill is even greater if one has first to draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! … Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought! ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
486:Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again,the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence,... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence. ~ Emmanuel Levinas, #NFDB
487:It broke her heart that they had come to this: if one knew the future, all the unexpected glimpses of the beloved, one might have trouble finding the courage to go on. This was probably the reason nine-tenths of the human brain had been rendered useless: to make you stupidly intrepid. One was working with only the animal brain, the Pringle brain. The wizard-god brain, the one that could see the future and move objects without touching them, was asleep. Fucking bastard. ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
488:All the things that girls feel they are not when they fear that if they become, if they are, they will no longer be loved by the sisters whose hearts they have not meant to break. And besides, if the sisters are gone and only the beloved remains with his dense curls and his lips, how safe are you then? You have to have him or you will die if the sisters are gone with their listening ears and their feet to rub and their bodies to dress and their shared loneliness. ~ Francesca Lia Block, #NFDB
489:Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and our weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place? Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone to believe in--but how can we believe in the beloved now that they believe in us? ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
490:The face of our beloved can thus be described as an icon. Just as with an idol, it is the way we interact with an object, rather than a property in the object itself, that renders it an icon. But in the look of love, objects are exposed as icons. The face of our beloved is not a signpost, for a signpost is not the place where it points; yet neither is the face a pure manifestation of our beloved. Rather, the face is the place where the beloved is both revealed and hidden. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
491:HOS9.15 All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters. HOS9.16 Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. HOS9.17 My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
492:How blessed to know that we dwell in the domains of grace and not of law! When thinking of my state before God the question is not, "Am I perfect in myself before the law?" but, "Am I perfect in Christ Jesus?" That is a very different matter. We need not enquire, "Am I without sin naturally?" but, "Have I been washed in the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness?" It is not "Am I in myself well pleasing to God?" but it is "Am I accepted in the Beloved? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
493:Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices of my world telling me that my "little life" is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let these voices move to the background of my life and listen to that small soft voice calling me the Beloved, I know that there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act that leads me into the eternal embrace of my God whose love is everlasting. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
494:How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love? Who has not experienced the overwhelming power of melody? And what else is melody but the power of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; … feeling communicates itself. … Is it man that possesses love, or is it not … love that possesses man? When love impels a man to suffer death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power his own individual power, or is it not rather the power of love? ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
495:If we really believed that those who are gone from us were as truly alive as ourselves, we could not invest the subject with such awful depth of gloom as we do. If we could imbue our children with distinct faith in immortality, we should never speak of people as dead, but passed into another world. We should speak of the body as a cast-off garment, which the wearer had outgrown; consecrated indeed by the beloved being that used it for a season, but of no value within itself. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
496:Let sickness prostrate us, have we not seen hundreds of believers as happy in the weakness of disease as they would have been in the strength of hale and blooming health? Let death's arrows pierce us to the heart, our comfort dies not, for have not our ears full often heard the songs of saints as they have rejoiced because the living love of God was shed abroad in their hearts in dying moments? Yes, a sense of acceptance in the Beloved is an everlasting consolation. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
497:No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being until he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
498:Accordingly, the loss of the beloved one through a rival, or through death, is the greatest pain of all to those passionately in love; just because it is of a transcendental nature, since it affects him not merely as an individual, but also assails him in his essentia aeterna, in the life of the species, in whose special will and service he was here called. This is why jealousy is so tormenting and bitter, and the giving up of the loved one the greatest of all sacrifices. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
499:Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
500:But so far as the pleasure was concerned, I was naturally not conscious of it until some time later, when, back at the hotel, and in my room alone, I had become myself again. Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner dark-room the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
501:/Farsi When the desire for the Friend became real, all existence fell behind. The Beloved wasn't interested in my reasoning, I threw it away and became silent. The sanity I had been taught became a bore, it had to be ushered off. Insane, silent and in bliss, I spend my days with my head at the feet of My Beloved. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian
~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, When the desire for the Friend became real
,#NFDB
502:If it is true that we not only are the Beloved, but also have to become the Beloved; if it is true that we not only are children of God, but also have to become children of God; if it is true that we not only are brothers and sisters, but also have to become brothers and sisters . . . if all that is true, how then can we get a grip on this process of becoming? If the spiritual life is not simply a way of being, but also a way of becoming, what then is the nature of this becoming? ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
503:Falling in love gives a more realistic view of life by placing us in contact with our true self. We fall accidentally and temporarily into a state of expanded awareness that is exalted by the great mystic poets, who connect intense human love with divine love. The beloved Persian poet Rumi exults: Oh God, I have discovered love! How marvelous, how good, how beautiful it is! … I offer my salutation To the spirit of passion that aroused and excited this whole universe And all it contains. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
504:Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us? ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
505:a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved. The genuine lover always perceives the beloved as someone who has a totally separate identity. Moreover, the genuine lover always respects and even encourages this separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved. Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much mental illness and unnecessary suffering. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
506:Dye Me In Your Hue
Dye me in your hue, my love,
You are my man, oh beloved of Almighty;
Dye me in your hue.
My scarf, and the beloved's turban,
Both need to be dyed in the hue of spring;
Whatever be the price for dyeing, ask for it,
You can have my blossoming youth in mortgage;
Dye me in your hue.
I have come and fallen at your door step,
For you to safeguard my pride, my dignity,
You are my man, Oh beloved of Almighty,
Dye me in your hue.
~ Amir Khusro,#NFDB
507:World was in the face of the beloved,
but suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world can not be grasped.
Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face
as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink
world, so near that I couldn't almost taste it?
Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank.
But I was filled up also, with too much
world, and, drinking, I myself ran over.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, World Was In The Face Of The Beloved
,#NFDB
508:Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
509:Such were the factors that detached Ormus Cama from the ordinary ties of family life. The ties that strangle us, which we call love. Because of the loosening of these ties he became, with all the attendant pain of such becoming, free.
But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must forever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth? ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
510:Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit of the generations, welcoming the new generations, and chafing against the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another's infinity; he is conscious only of his own--flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
511:Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another... The most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others. ~ Olaf Stapledon, #NFDB
512:Take dopamine. Elevated levels of dopamine in the brain produce extremely focussed attention,2 as well as unwavering motivation and goal-directed behaviors.3 These are central characteristics of romantic love. Lovers intensely focus on the beloved, often to the exclusion of all around them. Indeed, they concentrate so relentlessly on the positive qualities of the adored one that they easily overlook his or her negative traits;4 they even dote on specific events and objects shared with this sweetheart. ~ Helen Fisher, #NFDB
513:The Beloved is all and the lover (but) a veil; the Beloved is living and the lover a dead thing.
When Love hath no care for him, he is left as a bird without wings. Alas for him then!
How should I have consciousness (of aught) before or behind when the light of my Beloved is not before me and behind?
Love wills that: this Word should be shown forth: if the mirror does not reflect, how is that?
Dost thou know why the mirror (of thy soul) reflects nothing? Because the rust is not cleared from its face. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
514:It was that time of life: Talents were rising to the surface, weaknesses were beginning to show through, we were finding out what kinds of people we would be. Some would turn out beautiful, some funny, some shy. Some would be smart, others smarter. THe chubby ones would likely always be chubby. THe beloved, I sensed, would be beloved for life. And I worried that loneliness might work that way, too. Maybe loneliness was imprinted in my genes, lying dormant for years but now coming into full bloom. ~ Karen Thompson Walker, #NFDB
515:on a wolf, and had snakes in place of a bridle. She asked Hethin for his company. “Nay,” said he. She said, “Thou shalt pay for this at the king’s toast.” That evening the great vows were taken; the sacred boar was brought in, the men laid their hands thereon, and took their vows at the king’s toast. Hethin vowed that he would have Svava, Eylimi’s daughter, the beloved of his brother Helgi ; then such great grief seized him that he went forth on wild paths southward over the land, and found Helgi, his brother. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
516:Love Has Nothing To Do With The Five Senses
Love has nothing to do with
the five senses and the six directions:
its goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Afterwards, perhaps, permission
will come from God:
the secrets that ought to be told will be told
with an eloquence nearer to the understanding
of these subtle confusing allusions.
The secret is partner with none
but the knower of the secret:
in the skeptic's ear
the secret is no secret at all. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
517:as an almost legendary figure. To his child she had always been presented as the beloved beauty of a golden age, a link with the great Victorians, a creature larger than life in power and importance, so that all through these last perturbing weeks Frances had comforted herself with the recollection that if the worse came to the worst, even though Meyrick himself was half across the world, there was always Gabrielle up at Hampstead. It was hard to realise now that the moment of appeal had come, that she was ~ Margery Allingham, #NFDB
518:Fool's Money Bags
Outside the long window,
With his head on the stone sill,
The dog is lying,
Gazing at his Beloved.
His eyes are wet and urgent,
And his body is taut and shaking.
It is cold on the terrace;
A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,
But the dog gazes through the glass
And is content.
The Beloved is writing a letter.
Occasionally she speaks to the dog,
But she is thinking of her writing.
Does she, too, give her devotion to one
Not worthy?
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB
519:But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, "You are the beloved and on you my favour rests."... I want you to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
520:The first ray -- as the blessing of the Lord --
Across the face of the beloved did creep,
Who, sleeping, went a little pale,
And then again more tightly went to sleep.
It seemed that warmth of ray of sun
Appeared to him just like a kiss.
And long with these my lips I have not touched
The tan strong shoulder or the dear lips.
And now, the deceased spirits in my long
Disconsolate wandering along the way,
I am now flying toward him as a song
And I caress him with a morning ray. ~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
521:He Who Is Stricken By Love
He who is stricken by Love
Sings and dances out of tune.
He who wears the garb of Love
Gets blessings from above.
Soon as he drinks from this cup
No questions and no answers remain.
He who is stricken by Love
Sings and dances out of tune.
He
He
No
He
who has the Beloved in his heart,
is fulfilled with his Love.
need he has for formality,
just enjoys his ecstasy.
He who is stricken by Love
Sings and dances out of tune.
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
522:Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living.
And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. ~ Marie Bostwick,#NFDB
523:the thirteenth-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, reject orthodoxy of any kind: I hold to no religion or creed, am neither Eastern nor Western, Muslim or infidel, Zoroastrian, Christian, Jew or Gentile. I come from neither land nor sea, am not related to those above or below, was not born nearby or far away, do not live either in Paradise or on this Earth, claim descent not from Adam and Eve or the Angels above. I transcend body and soul. My home is beyond place and name. It is with the beloved, in a space beyond space. ~ Stephen Kinzer, #NFDB
524:We fall in love for a smile, a glance, a bare shoulder. That is enough; then, in the long hours of hope or sorrow, we fabricate a person, we compose a character. And when later on we see much of the beloved person, we can no longer, whatever the cruel reality that confronts us, strip off that good character, that nature of a woman who loves us, from the person who bestows that glance, bares that shoulder, than we can when she has grown old eliminate her youthful face from a person whom we have known since her girlhood. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
525:Love has nothing to do with
the five senses and the six directions:
its goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Afterwards, perhaps, permission
will come from God:
the secrets that ought to be told will be told
with an eloquence nearer to the understanding
of these subtle confusing allusions.
The secret is partner with none
but the knower of the secret:
in the skeptic's ear
the secret is no secret at all.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Love Has Nothing To Do With The Five Senses
,#NFDB
526:And in all shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss and the next link of the Infinite Chain. This chain reaches from Eternity to Eternity, ever in triangles—is not my symbol a triangle?—ever in circles—is not the symbol of the Beloved a circle? Therein is all progress base illusion, for every circle is alike and every triangle alike! But the progress is progress, and progress is rapture, constant, dazzling, showers of light, waves of dew, flames of the hair of the Great Goddess, flowers of the roses that are about her neck, Amen! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
527:The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point—for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
528:To love there must be union with the beloved, but also separation. For love is a creative tension; it is like the string of a musical instrument---a single string yet pulled in opposite directions. If there is too little tension, or if there is too much so that the string breaks, it will give forth no sound. The perfection of love is like the perfect tuning of the string, for love attains fulfillment as there is the maximum of union between two beings who remain definitely separate. Unity in duality is the law of the finite. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
529:Do not get up immediately at the end of the archana. The beloved deity should be brought from the seat in front of us back into our hearts and re-installed there. Seeing the form of the deity seated in the heart, meditate for a little longer. If it is possible, it is good to sing 2 or 3 kirtans. After taking an injection, a patient is asked to rest for a few minutes to let the medicine spread throughout the body. Similarly, to obtain the full benefit of the mantras, we should keep the mind calm for a while after worship. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
530:God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?" Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
531:The historical periods I like to learn about aren’t so much costume dramas as slasher flicks. The French Revolution is a favorite because it features the beloved plot of carnage in service of democracy, but I prefer American history. And if I had to pick my pet domestic bloodbaths, nothing beats Salem or Gettysburg. I’m a sucker for Puritan New England and the Civil War. Because those two subjects feature the central tension of American life, the conflict between freedom and community, between individual will and the public good. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
532:God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?" Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
533:Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,
as the millstone grinding is explaining
how it believes in the river.
No metaphor can explain this,
but I cannot stop pointing to the beauty.
Every moment and place says,
Put this design in your carpet.
I want to be in such a passionate adoration
that my tent gets pitched against the sky.
Let the beloved come
and sit like a guard dog
in front of the tent.
When the ocean surges,
don't let me just hear it.
Let is splash inside my chest. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
534:Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
535:While all of the Church has maintained that there is a revealed and hidden side of God, the difference here is that we are rediscovering the Barthian insight that even the revealed side of God is mysterious. The emerging Church is thus able to leave aside the need for clarity and open up the way for us to accept the fact that what is important is that we are embraced by the beloved rather than finding agreement concerning how we ought to understand this beloved (as if a baby can only really love her mother if she understands her). ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
536:She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. There was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
537:She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. There was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year- old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
538:But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
539:Christian, if you are not now as you "were in months past," do not rest satisfied with wishing for a return of former happiness, but go at once to seek your Master, and tell him your sad state. Ask his grace and strength to help you to walk more closely with him; humble yourself before him, and he will lift you up, and give you yet again to enjoy the light of his countenance. Do not sit down to sigh and lament; while the beloved Physician lives there is hope, nay there is a certainty of recovery for the worst cases. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
540:Dolores Umbridge may have looked like an iced cupcake, but she was anything but sweet. She was savage, sadistic and remorseless. When she dared take control of Hogwarts from Albus Dumbledore, she committed all sorts of sinister acts. Under the newly created title of ‘High Inquisitor’ she single-handedly (well, with a little help from Filch) sucked the beloved school of all its joy, put every student in grave danger, and tortured Harry Potter. As far as we’re concerned, she more than deserved her fate at the hands (hooves?) of centaurs. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
541:Dr. Luce introduced the concept of “periphescence”. The word itself means nothing; Luce made it up to avoid any etymological associations. The state of periphescence, however, is well known. It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of the beloved’s hair. Periphescence denotes the inital drugged and happy bedtime where you sniff your lover like a scented poppy for hours running. (It lasts, Luce explained, up to two years--tops.) ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
542:If a person is cold and rigid, he feels within himself as if he were in a grave. He is not living, he cannot enjoy this life for he cannot express himself and he cannot see the light and life outside. What keeps man from developing the heart quality? His exacting attitude. He wants to make a business of love. He says, 'If you will love me, I will love you.' As soon as a man measures and weighs his favors and his services and all that he does for one whom he loves, he ceases to know what love is. Love sees the beloved and nothing else. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
543:Love is not only blind about the beloved; it is blind about other people, too. Thea went dreamily on with no idea that she was startling the Lockwoods and many of the boarders by her looks alone. In the pension, many girls were putting on the bloom of young womanhood, but Thea outshone them. Her hair glowed and curled with vitality, her eyes were full of light.... The eyes of the Lockwoods followed her uneasily. It looked as if their snubbing days were entirely over; you couldn't snub a girl who was turning into a beauty under your eyes. ~ Dorothy Whipple, #NFDB
544:The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one’s life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else’s life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor—and our enemy. Clearly true love has nothing to do with selfishness in any ~ Joseph Pearce, #NFDB
545:Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
546:Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
547:The truth of death is a peculiar thing. For when they leave us the beloved are as if they never were. They vanish from this earth and vanish from the air. What remains are moors and mountains, the solid world upon which we find ourselves, and in which we reign. We are the wolves. We are the lions. After so many nights treading the banks with the dogs and my brothers, intent on some mettlesome purpose I did not truly understand, night after night I dreamed of the river. I dream it now: a river of stolen perfumes, winding its way through our inverse Eden. ~ Sarah Hall, #NFDB
548:Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved, hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
549:We see by the light of who we are.
Look at us: You inside me
inside you. We've lived inside
each other from the beginning.
Before the world was ever found.
Before the world was found, I say,
I dwelled inside you,
and you breathed all through me,
in my body and it's happiness,
in my body and its loneliness.
After I found the world, I had to go
looking for you. Ever since the world,
I only lose you and find you.
Lose you. And find you.
The body of the beloved
is the lover's true homeland, she says. ~ Li Young Lee,#NFDB
550:Rumi says:
O seeker of the Truth! Be happy if you have sorrows!
They are the tricks of reunion that the Beloved has set for you since one remembers Allah and seeks refuge in Him when one is overcome by sorrow.
Sorrow is a treasure. Your illnesses and the
other troubles you face are all treasures.
Likewise, sorrow is as a blessed wind that blows on the mirror of the heart to clear the dust from it; never compare it with harmful winds.
In this path of love, no one but grief remembers me, thousands of thanks to it. ~ Osman Nuri Topba,#NFDB
551:Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved, hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. 10. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
552:It was on Iona years ago that I first became aware of the need to reclaim some of the features of ancient Christianity in the Celtic world as lost treasure for today. Part of that treasure is the much-cherished image of John the Evangelist, also known as John the Beloved, leaning against Jesus at the Last Supper. Celtic tradition holds that by doing this he heard the heartbeat of God. He became a symbol of the practice of listening—listening deep within ourselves, within one another, and within the body of the earth for the beat of the Sacred Presence. ~ John Philip Newell, #NFDB
553:I was quick to pounce on his moral flaws and slow to recognize my own blind sin. But because he stayed faithful, by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, he broke through my moral calluses. The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense149 of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority…. The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” And that is what Martin Luther King Jr. finally set into motion, even in racists like me. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
554:Of all our games, love’s play is the only one which threatens to unsettle our soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body’s ecstasy. …Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of that same law which ordained that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar, #NFDB
555:The “remembrance exercise” consists of trying to recall the glimpse of the Overself, not only during the set meditation periods but also in each moment during the whole working span of the day—in the same way as a mother who has lost her child can not let go of the thought of it no matter what she is doing outwardly, or as a lover who constantly holds the vivid image of the beloved in the back of his mind. In a similar way, you keep the memory of the Overself alive during this exercise and let it shine in the background while you go about your daily work. But ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
556:The sense they find in the words must be a sense small enough to pass through their narrow doors. And if mere words, without the interpreting sympathy, may mean, as they may, almost anything the receiver will or can attribute to them, how shall the man, bent at best on the salvation of his own soul, understand, for instance, the meaning of that apostle who was ready to encounter banishment itself from the presence of Christ, that the beloved brethren of his nation might enter in? To men who are not simple, simple words are the most inexplicable of riddles. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
557:What A Glow Everywhere I See
What a glow everywhere I see, Oh mother, what a glow;
I've found the beloved, yes I found him,
In my courtyard;
I have found my pir Nizamuddin Aulia.
I roamed around the entire world,
looking for an ideal beloved;
And finally this face has enchanted my heart.
The whole world has been opened for me,
Never seen a glow like this before.
Whenever I see now, he is with me,
Oh beloved, please dye me in yourself;
Dye me in the colour of the spring, beloved;
What a glow, Oh, what a glow.
~ Amir Khusro,#NFDB
558:Hang up the swing of love today! Hang the body and the mind between the arms of the beloved, in the ecstasy of love's joy: Bring the tearful streams of the rainy clouds to your eyes, and cover your heart with the shadow of darkness: Bring your face nearer to his ear, and speak of the deepest longings of your heart. Kabir says: 'Listen to me brother! bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart.' [bk1sm.gif] -- from One Hundred Poems of Kabir: Translated by Rabindranath Tagore, by Kabir / Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, Hang up the swing of love today!
,#NFDB
559:This was, as far as he was concerned, the real mystery of civilization – and for all that he exploited it he was, by the end, no closer to understanding it. This willingness of otherwise intelligent (well, reasonably intelligent) people to parcel up and then bargain away appalling percentages of their very limited lives, all in service to someone else. And the rewards? Ah, some security, perhaps. The cement that is stability. A sound roof, something on the plate, the beloved offspring each one destined to repeat the whole travail. And was that an even exchange? ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
560:Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
561:Both Rabih and Kirsten have learned how to reassure the anxious child selves concealed within their adult partners. That’s why they love each other. But they have in the process also unknowingly inherited a little of that dangerous, unfair, beautifully naive trust which little children place in their parents. Some primitive part of the grown-up Rabih and Kirsten insists that the beloved must control far more of the world than any human being in an adult relationship possibly could, which is what generates such anger and frustration when problems nevertheless arise. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
562:He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. He who wears the garb of Love Gets blessings from above. Soon as he drinks from this cup No questions and no answers remain. He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. He who has the Beloved in his heart, He is fulfilled with his Love. No need he has for formality, He just enjoys his ecstasy. He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. [2469.jpg] -- from Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal
~ Bulleh Shah, He Who is Stricken by Love
,#NFDB
563:The absence of the Beloved is Hell, is imprisonment. And that absence fuels love until the prisoner becomes a conflagration of yearning. Sometimes the absent beloved is a woman, sometimes it is democracy, sometimes it is the dreams of youth. But always, always, separation is just a catapult to a new level of love. Each time he was imprisoned, each time he and my mother were forced apart, he would write to her—half-teasing, half-tender—of his immersion in that metaphor. In part because he believed it; in part because he would do everything he could to keep her from pain. ~ Kamila Shamsie, #NFDB
564:To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life. Jesus listened. In John's Gospel we are told that Jesus was moved with the deepest emotions (11:33)... The gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn of reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
565:God's law reveals the way in which our world and our souls were designed. To disobey God's law is always bad for the beloved. Therefore, real love is concerned about truth. Any love that is afraid to confront the beloved is not really love, but a selfish desire to be loved. This kind of selfish love is afraid to do what is right (towards God and the beloved) if it risks loosing the beloved's affection. It makes an idol out of the beloved. ...in other words, it is loving yourself more than the person. So any "love" that cuts corners morally, or fails to confront, is not love at all. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
566:When longing is most intense separation is complete, and the purpose of separation, which was that Love might experience itself as Lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and union follows. And when union is attained, the lover knows that he himself was all along the Beloved whom he loved and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had placed in the path to himself. To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are! Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
567:Love, its power and authority, always gets there first, comes to believe first, and always waits for the others, especially the leaders, to catch up! This is the reality of what happened among the disciples and the community of the Beloved Disciple, John, and those closest to Jesus, called His friends. They mature and develop differently from other disciples, and the community of the Church has to struggle with the fact that the last one anyone thought would be the leader was the one who betrayed Him and contributed to the dissolution of the disciples when Jesus was arrested and crucified. ~ Megan McKenna, #NFDB
568:The purest joy in the world is joy in Christ Jesus. When the Spirit is poured down, his people get very near and clear views of the Lord Jesus. They eat his flesh and drink his blood. They come to a personal cleaving to the Lord. They taste that the Lord is gracious. His blood and righteousness appear infinitely perfect, full and free to their soul. They sit under his shadow with great delight. . . . They lean on the Beloved. They find infinite strength in him for the use of their soul — grace for grace — all they can need in any hour of trial and suffering to the very end. ~ Robert Murray M Cheyne, #NFDB
569:Aleksia laughed at her, putting a world of scorn and withering contempt into her voice--just as Kay would probably do in a temper. In fact, everything that she was doing now was to test her to see if her own self-worth was strong enough to stand up to the worst the one she loved could deliver. It is so much harder to take a hint of scorn from the beloved than a verbal battering from an enemy........Kay would always be more intelligent, more clever than Gerda was. She had to know, deep inside her, that what she offered was just as important and just as valuable as wit and intelligence. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
570:All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life - I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
571:"I am only the house of your beloved,
not the beloved herself:
true love is for the treasure,
not for the coffer that contains it."
The real beloved is that one who is unique,
who is your beginning and your end.
When you find that one,
you'll no longer expect anything else:
that is both the manifest and the mystery.
That one is the lord of states of feeling,
dependent on none;
month and year are slaves to that moon.
When he bids the "state,"
it does His bidding;
when that one wills, bodies become spirit.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, I Am Only The House Of Your Beloved
,#NFDB
572:If one has given oneself utterly, watching the beloved sleep can be a vile experience. Perhaps some of you have known that paralysis, staring down at features closed to your enquiry, locked away from you where you can never, ever go, into the other’s mind. As I say, for us who have given ourselves, that is a horror. One knows, in those moments, that one does not exist, except in relation to that face, that personality. Therefore, when that face is closed down, that personality is lost in its own unknowable world, one feels completely without purpose. A planet without a sun, revolving in darkness. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
573:Wholly absorbed into my own conduits to
an inner nature or subterranean lake
the depths or bounds of which I more and more
explore and know more
of, in that sense that other than that all else
closes out and I tend further to fall into
the Beloved Lake and I am blinder from
spending time as insistently in and on
this personal preserve from which
what I do do emerges more well-known than
other ways and other outside places which
don’t give as much and distract me from
keeping my attentions as clear
Charles Olson, "Additions", March 1968—2 ~ Charles Olson,#NFDB
574:Frequently, and not only in the popular usage, sadomasochism is confounded with love. Masochistic phenomena, especially, are looked upon as expressions of love. An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender of one's own rights and claims to another person have been praised as examples of "great love". It seems that there is no better proof for "love" than sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person. Actually, in these cases, "love" is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
575:Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
576:Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
577:The soul put on the white robe of faith on its going forth on this dark night, when walking in the darkness amidst interior trials, as I said before,7 it received no ray of light from the understanding; not from above, because heaven seemed shut and God hidden; not from below, because its spiritual directors gave it no comfort. It bore its trials patiently and persevered, without fainting or falling away from the Beloved, Who by these crosses and tribulations tried the faith of His bride, that it might be able hereafter truly to say with the Psalmist, “For the words of Thy lips, I have kept hard ways. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
578:There is usually a Marxist moment in every relationship, the moment when it becomes clear that love is reciprocated. The way it is resolved depends on the balance between self-love and self-hatred. If self-hatred gains the upper hand, then the one who has received love will declare that the beloved (on some excuse or other) is not good enough for them (not good enough by virtue of associating with no-goods). But if self-love gains the upper hand, both partners may accept that seeing their love reciprocated is not proof of how low the beloved is, but of how lovable they have themselves turned out to be. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
579:Accepting a religion, any, is a lot like someone in love. It doesn't matter what the beloved does or says, he or she will get a pass... Forever. It's easier that way. It's too difficult to accept fault or to admit contradictions or falsehoods. Someone who is religious is in love, and there is no talking them out of it, regardless of what others would take as silly notions or irrational thinking. I no longer try. Life is brief, despite what those longing for an afterlife might really need to believe. Peace and acceptance is something, however, I'll always back, no matter what vehicle it rides in on. ~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge, #NFDB
580:Solitude is listening to the voice who calls you the beloved. It is being alone with the one who says, `You are my beloved, I want to be with you. Don't go running around, don't start to prove to everybody that you're beloved. You are already beloved'. That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves. It asks us to let go of the other ways of proving which are a lot more satisfying. The voice that calls us the beloved is not the voice that satisfies the senses. That's what the whole mystical life is about; it is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
581:Behold the Beloved of God, perfectly spotless and holy, yet made an example of the severest vengeance; prostrate and agonizing in the garden; enduring the vilest insults from wicked men; torn with whips, and nails, and thorns; suspended, naked, wounded, and bleeding upon the cross, and there heavily complaining, that God had for a season forsaken him. Sin was the cause of all his anguish. He stood in the place of sinners, and therefore was not spared. Not any, or all, the evils which the world has known, afford such proof of the dreadful effects and detestable nature of sin, as the knowledge of Christ crucified.25 ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
582:THE MEANING OF LOVE Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
583:The Meaning of Love Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
584:LOVE Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In logotherapy, ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
585:First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
586:Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world’s waters, when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit of the generations, welcoming the new generation, and chafing against the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another’s infinity; he is conscious only of his own — flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
587:Of course, if Saint Peter could come out today upon these streets below he would find all he could wish, voices from nowhere, music from unpopulated boxes, men ascending divine distances in gas balloons, and traveling at the speed of sound, apparitions from nowhere appear on the screen; the sick are raised from the dead, life is prolonged so that every detail of pain may be relished, the blind are given eyes and the cripples forced to walk, and there is an item which can blow a city of the beloved enemy into a place where their sins will be brought home to them, with of course as much noise as the trumpets on the walls of Jericho ~ William Gaddis, #NFDB
588:Next comes the temptation to destroy ourselves for love of the other. The only value is love of the other. Self-sacrifice is an absolute value in itself. And the desire of the other is also absolute in itself. No matter what the lover desires, we will give up our life or even our soul to please him. This is the asceticism of Eros, which makes it a point of honor to follow the beloved even into hell. For what greater sacrifice could man offer on the altar of love than the sacrifice of his own immortal soul? Heroism in this sacrifice is measured precisely by madness: it is all the greater when it is offered for a more trivial motive. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
589:Sufis Know the Secrets of Love
"Longing takes us back to God, takes the lover back into the arms of the Beloved. This is the ancient path of the mystic, of those who are destined to make the journey to the further shores of love. Why we are called to this quest is always a mystery, for the ways of the heart cannot be understood by the mind. Love always draws us back to love, and longing is the fire that purifies us. Sufis know the secrets of love, of the way love takes and transforms us. They are the people of love who have kept alive the mysteries of divine loving, of what is hidden within the depths of the human being. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
590:Mountains & low hills would enclose us, & gardens & woods & green spaces would surround us - And each pretty house & its garden would hide itself in its very own corner - And the beloved & understanding people would stroll in & out just when they chose & read to each other under trees on lawns & tell stories on broad porches while the mountains & the clouds & the birds & the flowers would look & listen & delight & always understand what everybody meant because they would all belong.
-from Frances Hodgson Burnett: The unexpected life of the author of the Secret Garden ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
591:Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Only Breath
,#NFDB
592:Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
593:it is to be observed that four proximate effects may be ascribed to love: viz. melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor. Of these the first is "melting," which is opposed to freezing. For things that are frozen, are closely bound together, so as to be hard to pierce. But it belongs to love that the appetite is fitted to receive the good which is loved, inasmuch as the object loved is in the lover...Consequently the freezing or hardening of the heart is a disposition incompatible with love: while melting denotes a softening of the heart, whereby the heart shows itself to be ready for the entrance of the beloved. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), #NFDB
594:My dearest friend, for your tryst
You have chosen this stormy night
The sky is hopelessly crying
I have no sleep in my eyes
Opening my door
Again and again I am looking outside
I see nothing
My mind is full of worries
Where runs your way
Is it along the bank of the river
Or along the verge of the deep dark forest?
And in this darkness
Where are you crossing the stream?
Transcreation of one of the sweetest love songs Aji jhorer rate tomar abhisar by Rabindranath Tagore. Sung like a plain song it has been recorded by Debabrata Biswas. Transcreation by Kumud Biswas.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Waiting For The Beloved
,#NFDB
595:Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
596:
I THINK of thee, whene'er the sun his beams
O'er ocean flings;
I think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams
In silv'ry springs.
I see thee, when upon the distant ridge
The dust awakes;
At midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge
The wanderer quakes.
I hear thee, when yon billows rise on high,
With murmur deep.
To tread the silent grove oft wander I,
When all's asleep.
I'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be--
Thou, too, art near!
The sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me.
Would thou wert here!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proximity Of The Beloved One
,#NFDB
597:Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true - anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other - beneath the face of the beloved, however ancient, ruined, and scarred, is the face of the baby your love once was, and will always be, for you. Love serves, then, if memory doesn't, and passion, apart from its tense relation to agony, labors beneath the shadow of death. Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
598:Saying good-bye to a city is harder than breaking up with a lover. The grief and regret are more piercing because they are more complex and unmixed, changing from corner to corner, with each passing vista, each shift of the light. Breaking up with a city is unclouded by the suspicion that after the affair ends, you'll learn something about the beloved you wished you never knew. The city is as it will remain: gorgeous, unattainable, going on without you as if you'd never existed. What pain and longing the lover feels as he bids farewell to a tendril of ivy, a flower stall, the local butcher. The charming café where he meant to have coffee but never did. ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
599:smuggled away in whispers, by black familiars, unresisting, the beloved one leaves home, without a farewell, to darken those doors no more; henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light or warmth, without a voice near. Oh, Death, king of terrors! The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee. It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded. We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith. And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem. ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB
600:When I first read the Harry Potter books and learned about the lightning bolt scar on Harry's forehead, I thought, Of course. Of course love worked that way. Of course it left its mark on the beloved. This secret mark protected you, kept you safe from harm, reminded you of who you were. All it took was the smallest symbol and you were safe. As I grew older and discovered my love of literature, I externalized the markings, wrote them down in my Moleskine, kept my notebook close - so much so that when the LIA counselors took away my notebook years later, they took away much of this protection. But they didn't take all of it. The empty pages still carried ghosts. ~ Garrard Conley, #NFDB
601:At the beginning of all love there is a private treaty each of the lovers make with himself or herself, an agreement to set aside what is wrong with the other for the sake of what is right. Love is spring after winter. It comes to heal life's wounds, inflicted by the unloving cold. When that warmth is born in the heart the imperfections of the beloved are as nothing, less than nothing, and the secret treaty with oneself is easy to sign. The voice of doubt is stilled. Later, when love fades, the secret treaty looks like folly, but if so, it's a necessary folly, born of lovers' belief in beauty, which is to say, in the possibility of the impossible thing, true love. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
602:Jesus was handed over to those who killed him “by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). Jesus’ death was not an accident; it had to happen. At the same time, seeing the death of Christ as satisfaction for sin, as divine punishment, does not mean that there is a rift in the Godhead between an angry Father and the loving Son he punishes. Through Christ’s death, expiation of sins, righteousness, and eternal life are secured for believers. God’s grace does not nullify the satisfaction and merit of Christ but is the ultimate ground for that merit. It is the love of God that sent the Son into the world (John 3:16), and on the cross Jesus remained the beloved Son. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
603:From the Greek of Moschus.
Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,--
Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,
For the beloved Bion is no more.
Let every tender herb and plant and flower,
From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,
Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath
Of melancholy sweetness on the wind
Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,
Anemones grow paler for the loss
Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,
Utter thy legend now--yet more, dumb flower,
Than 'Ah! alas!'--thine is no common grief--
Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragment Of The Elegy On The Death Of Bion
,#NFDB
604:Mary Mcneely
Passer-by,
To love is to find your own soul
Through the soul of the beloved one.
When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul
Then you have lost your soul.
It is written: "I have a friend,
But my sorrow has no friend."
Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father,
Trying to get myself back,
And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self.
But there was my father with his sorrows,
Sitting under the cedar tree,
A picture that sank into my heart at last
Bringing infinite repose.
Oh, ye souls who have made life
Fragrant and white as tube roses
From earth's dark soil,
Eternal peace!
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
605:Within people there is a longing and a desire such that, even if a hundred thousand worlds were theirs to own, still they would find no rest or comfort. They try every trade and craft, studying astronomy, medicine and every other subject, but they reach no completion, for they have not found their true desire. Poets call the Beloved “heart’s ease,” because there the heart finds ease. How can we find peace and rest in anything but the Beloved?
All these pleasures and pursuits are like a ladder. The rungs of a ladder are not a place to make one’s home; they are for passing by. Fortunate are those who learn this. The long road becomes short for them, and they do not waste their lives upon the steps. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
606:Here A Riddle Has Drawn A Strange Nailmark
Here a riddle has drawn a strange nailmark. To sleep now!
I'll reread, understand with the light of the sun,
But until I am wakened, to touch the beloved
As I do has been given to none.
How I touched you! So touched were you even by the copper
Of my lips, as an audience is touched by a play,
And the kiss was like summer; it lingered and lingered,
Only later the thunderstorm came.
And I drank in long draughts, like the birds, half-unconscious.
The stars trickle slowly through the throat to the crop,
While the nightingales roll up their eyes in a shudder
From the firmament draining the night drop by drop.
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB
607:It is written (1 John 4:16): "He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him." Now charity is the love of God. Therefore, for the same reason, every love makes the beloved to be in the lover, and vice versa...the beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved abides in the apprehension of the lover, according to Philippians 1:7, "For that I have you in my heart": while the lover is said to be in the beloved, according to apprehension, inasmuch as the lover is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to the beloved, so as to penetrate into his very soul. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), #NFDB
608:hand. If I were forbidden to enter heaven, but were permitted to select my state for all eternity, I should choose to be as I sometimes fed in preaching the gospel. Heaven is foreshadowed in such a state: the mind shut out from all disturbing influences, adoring the majestic and consciously present God, every faculty aroused and .joyously excited to its utmost capability, all the thoughts and powers of the soul joyously occupied in contemplating the glory ,of the Lord, and extolling to listening crowds the Beloved of our soul; and all the while the purest conceivable benevolence towards one's fellow creatures urging the heart to plead with them on God's behalf–what state of mind can rival this? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
609:Perverse Times Have Come
Perverse times have come,
I know the mystery of the beloved
crows have begun to hunt hawks,
and sparrows feed on falcons
horses bear the whipping,
while donkeys graze on lush green
no love is lost between relatives,
be they younger or elder uncles
There is no accord between fathers and sons,
Nor any between mothers and daughters
The truthful ones are being pushed about,
the tricksters are seated close by
The front liners have become wretched,
the back benchers sit on carpets
Those in tatters have turned into kings,
the kings have taken to begging
O Bulleh, that which is His command
who can alter His decree.
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
610:Yea, my friends, we have a king, whose name is Simurg, and whose residence is behind Mount Caucasus. He is close by, but we are far away from Him. The road to His throne is bestrewn with obstructions; more than a hundred thousand veils of light and darkness screen the throne. Hundreds of thousands of souls burn with an ardent passion to see Him, but no one is able to find his way to Him. Yet none can afford to do without Him. Supreme manliness, absolute fearlessness and complete self-effacement are needed to overcome those obstacles. If we succeed in getting a glimpse of His face, it will be an achievement indeed. If we do not attempt it, and if we fail to greet the Beloved, this life is not worth living.” The ~ Attar of Nishapur, #NFDB
611:Dreams Of The Beloved
HER IMAGE haunts me. Lo! I muse at even,
And straight it gathers from the gloom to make
My soul its mirror, which (as some deep lake
Impictures the cerulean smiles of heaven)
Through the hushed night retains it, when ’tis given
To take a warmer presence and incline
A glowing cheek all blushfully to mine,
Saying, “The heart for which thou long hast striven
With pale looks, fancy pale, I grant thee now,
And if for pity, yet more for Love’s sweet sake,
My lips shall seal this promise on thy brow.”
Thus blest in sleep, who would not weep to wake
When the cold truth from his belief must shake
Such vows, like blossoms from a shatter’d bough?
~ Charles Harpur,#NFDB
612:In any love-story there are usually two stages or phases. There is the initial stage, where love is expressed by the giving of gifts, especially the gift of self. Then there comes a time when it is no longer enough to give gifts to the beloved, but one has to be ready to suffer for her or for him. Only then can it be seen whether the love is real. In the story of a vocation to consecrated virginity there are also usually two stages. There is the initial stage of the vocation, when, spurred on by grace and attracted by the ideal, one joyfully and enthusiastically says, "Yes, Lord, here I am!" Then comes the time of solitude of heart, of weariness, of crisis, when, in order to maintain that "Yes," one has to die ~ Raniero Cantalamessa, #NFDB
613:Though no one notices at the time, in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person. If two people are in love, they tread on star dust for a time and live happily ever after—that is so long as this experience of divinity has obliterated time for them. Only when they come down to earth do they have to look at each other realistically and only then does the possibility of mature love exist. If one person is in love and the other not, the cooler one is likely to say, "We would have something better between us if you would look at me rather than at your image of me. ~ Robert A Johnson, #NFDB
614:What a great temptation she felt to escape from the cruelty of the empty nights, the darkness, the loneliness, the cold bed, the sheets that gradually lost the aroma of the beloved body that had been wrapped in them for so many years. But time does not stop. Despite the painful absence beside her, the sun came up and set each day, though as a veteran of loss, this fact no longer surprised her so much. The empty hours of the night do not pass unnoticed, because in their unrelenting cruelty, they do not allow one to rest; they force one to think, and they demand a great deal. Because it is at night that fear is most frightening, yes, but it is also when sorrow becomes deeper and one regrets what one did or did not do more. ~ Sof a Segovia, #NFDB
615:Lament
WHEN you hear the white-throat pealing
From a tree-top far away,
And the hills are touched with purple
At the borders of the day;
When the redwing sounds his whistle
At the coming on of spring,
And the joyous April pipers
Make the alder marshes ring;
When the wild new breath of being
Whispers to the World once more,
And before the shrine of beauty
Every spirit must adore;
When long thoughts come back with twilight,
And a tender deepened mood
Shows the eyes of the beloved
Like hepaticas in the wood;
Ah, remember, when to nothing
Save to love your heart gives heed,
And spring takes you to her bosom,—
So it was with Golden Weed!
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
616:She touched him. First the soft, wavy hair that swept back from his brow, then his temple, then his cheek, slightly rough beneath her palm, a man's cheek. His skin was warm, the faint light making his hair seem darker than it really was. He was splendid. Unbearably handsome. Beautiful in a very masculine sort of way. Oh, Lord Gareth with his good looks and easy charm, he was handsome, too. Lord Andrew with his defiant eyes and warm russet coloring — he would turn any woman's head. And Lucien, the duke — enigmatic, fascinating, everything about him emanating danger, power, omniscience — there was no word to describe him. But Charles . . . none of them, as far as Amy was concerned, held a candle to The Beloved One. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
617:Sonnet Xcvi: Life The Beloved
As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been
Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
As thy love's death-bound features never dead
To memory's glass return, but contravene
Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween,
Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—
So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
618:Sending Away the Beloved The bride says to the Bridegroom, “Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Bether” (2:17). I know of a Christian who was in solitary confinement for years and experienced much hunger and pain. Sometimes he was aware of Jesus asking him: “Is it too difficult for you? Shall I ease your lot?” Again and again he replied: “Please, Jesus, see to others. I can bear it. I’m all right.” This is the bride’s mentality. She tells Jesus to follow His calling as a king. She can carry the cross allotted to her in the hope that, when the evening comes, He will return to her. She is reluctant to make continual demands upon Him. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
619:To be chosen as the Beloved of God is something radically different. Instead of excluding others, it includes others. Instead of rejecting others as less valuable, it accepts others in their own uniqueness. It is not a competitive, but a compassionate choice. Our minds have great difficulty in coming to grips with such a reality. Maybe our minds will never understand it. Perhaps it is only our hearts that can accomplish this. Every time we hear about 'chosen people', 'chosen talents', or 'chosen friends', we almost automatically start thinking about elites and find ourselves not far from feelings of jealousy, anger, or resentment. Not seldom has the perception of others as being chosen led to aggression, violence, and war. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
620:How Many Demands...
How many demands the beloved can make!
The woman discarded, none.
How glad I am that today the water
Under the colorless ice is motionless.
And I stand - Christ help me! On this shroud that is brittle and bright,
But save my letters
So that our descendants can decide,
So that you, courageous and wise,
Will be seen by them with greater clarity.
Perhaps we may leave some gaps
In your glorious biography?
Too sweet is earthly drink,
Too tight the nets of love.
Sometime let the children read
My name in their lesson book,
And on learning the sad story,
Let them smile shyly. . .
Since you've given me neither love nor peace
Grant me bitter glory.
~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
621:All the things the poets say about them are true. Their joy, their energy, their patience, their readiness to forgive, their desire for the good of the beloved—all this is a real and all but adorable image of the Divine life. In its presence we are right to thank God ‘who has given such power to men’. We may say, quite truly and in an intelligible sense, that those who love greatly are ‘near’ to God. But of course it is ‘nearness by likeness’. It will not of itself produce ‘nearness of approach’. The likeness has been given us. It has no necessary connection with that slow and painful approach which must be our own (though by no means our unaided) task. Meanwhile, however, the likeness is a splendour. That is why we may mistake Like for Same. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
622:There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxi cation so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. ~ Mirabai Starr, #NFDB
623:Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become thevictor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal
dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing...and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance. ~ Michael Jackson,#NFDB
624:Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13
In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces,
of liberations, and beloved faces,
such as now ere dawn he sings.
It would not be easy, accustomed to these things,
to give up the old world, but he could try;
let it all rest, have a good cry.
Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing
cannot restore one instant’s good to, rest:
he’s left us now.
The panic died and in the panic’s dying
so did my old friend. I am headed west
also, also, somehow.
In the chambers of the end we’ll meet again
I will say Randall, he’ll say Pussycat
and all will be as before
whenas we sought, among the beloved faces,
eminence and were dissatisfied with that
and needed more. ~ John Berryman,#NFDB
625:Fairytaletopia 6: The Great New York Adventure,” he read. Unfortunately, the title didn’t trigger a memory like the rest of the books had. Mr. Bailey tried as hard as he could to remember what the book was about and the events that had inspired it, but he drew a blank at every turn. The answer might have escaped him completely, but he knew that the information he craved was somewhere inside the book. Even if he had misled his readers to a false happy ending, he was certain he could read between the lines and discover the truth. So the beloved children’s book author took a deep breath, opened his own book to the very first page, and began reading, hoping with all his heart that the story would remind him where his sister had gone all those years ago… ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
626:Mark’s Baptist admits that he himself is not the promised messiah—“There is one coming after me who is stronger than I am,” John says, “one whose sandals I am not worthy to untie” (Mark 1:7–8)—but strangely, John never actually acknowledges Jesus to be the one he is referring to. Even after Jesus’s perfunctory baptism, when the sky opens and the spirit of God descends upon him in the form of a dove as a heavenly voice says, “You are my son: the Beloved. In you I am well pleased,” John neither notices nor comments on this moment of divine interjection. To John, Jesus is merely another supplicant, another son of Abraham who journeys to the Jordan to be initiated into the renewed tribe of Israel. He simply moves on to the next person waiting to be baptized. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
627:Yes, and words are not deeds, Solanka allowed, moving off fretfully. Though words can become deeds. If said in the right place and at the right time, they can move mountains and change the world. Also, uh-huh, not knowing what you're doing - separating deeds from the words that define them - was apparently becoming an acceptable excuse. To say "I didn't mean it" was to erase meaning from your misdeeds, at least in the opinion of the Beloved ALis of the world. Could that be so? Obviously, no. No, it simply could not. Many people would say that even a genuine act of repentance could not atone for a crime, much less this unexplained blankness - an infinitely lesser excuse, a mere assertion of ignorance that wouldn't even register on any scale of regret. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
628:A woman isn't something to be used for as long as she has flavor, then tossed aside when your taste for her is gone. There's got to be some promise, some agreement that you'll be around."
Marjan's embarrassment had reached combustible levels. "Isn't Father Mahoney waiting for you?" She threw her sister an icy glance. "Don't want to be late for your lesson."
Julian did not seem at all perturbed by Bahar's interrogation. In fact, he seemed to be rather enjoying it. "I couldn't agree with you more. 'The Beloved is all, the Lover just a veil.'"
Bahar shook her head. "It'll take a lot more than poetry to impress. Every schoolkid knows his Rumi."
"Ah, but 'whatever is in the heart will come up to the tongue.' Isn't that what the old Persians used to say? ~ Marsha Mehran,#NFDB
629:three paths as one :::
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#NFDB
630:When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.” And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
631:I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
632:As long as man was in the moolight he desired to reach the moon…there was bliss in the moonlight but the moon itself was distant. Moonlight was near but man longed for the moon…man reached the moon but there he was without moonlight.
If one reaches the moon one does not find moonlight any longer and if one is in moonlight one does not find the moon. It is a strange fact that one is only because of the other…one is a sign of the other yet both are forever separate. If the Beloved is the Moon, moonlight is His remembrance. When the Beloved is present His remembrance is not and when His remembrance is present the Beloved is not. Proximity to one is distance from the other, Union with one is separation from the other. Thus union is hidden in every separation and separation in every union. ~ Wasif Ali Wasif,#NFDB
633:Enoch remembered the burial ceremony of the Sahandrians. They laid the body into a pit curled up in a sleeping posture. This expressed their belief that death was only a sleep from which they would one day awake. Around the body, they placed various mementos and souvenirs of the beloved’s life. They included fruits and vegetables because Adam had longed for the Garden to the very end. They had prepared the body by mixing red ochre powder with water to create a paste with which to cover the body. For them, it was a token of the red earth from which Adam himself had come. It was the red earth they all longed for in their souls. They had then covered the body with flowers of all kinds; yarrow, ragwort, hollyhock and others chosen for their medicinal purposes in life with hope for the afterlife. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
634:Dear friends, I want you to hear this: what is said of Jesus is said of you. I know this can be hard to affirm. You are the beloved daughter or son of God. Can you believe it? Can you hear it not only in your head through your physical ears but in your gut, hear it so that your whole life can be turned around? Go to the scriptures and read: “I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have written your name in the palm of my hand from all eternity. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you in your mother’s womb. I love you. I embrace you. You are mine and I am yours and you belong to me.” You have to hear this, because if you can hear this divine voice speak to you from all eternity, then your life will become more and more the life of the beloved, because that is who you are. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
635:Alexander And Lycon
‘What, no crown won,
These two whole years,
By man of fortitude beyond his peers,
In Thrace or Macedon?’
‘No, none.
But what deep trouble does my Lycon feel,
And hide 'neath chat about the commonweal?’
‘Glaucé but now the third time did again
The thing which I forbade. I had to box her ears.
'Twas ill to see her both blue eyes
Settled in tears
Despairing on the skies,
And the poor lip all pucker'd into pain;
Yet, for her sake, from kisses to refrain!’
‘Ho, Timocles, take down
That crown.
No, not that common one for blood with extreme valour spilt,
But yonder, with the berries gilt.
'Tis, Lycon, thy just meed.
To inflict unmoved
And firm to bear the woes of the Beloved
Is fortitude indeed.’
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
636:During times of physical separation, when touching and caressing is impossible, a deep, longing, almost a hunger, for the beloved can set in. We are used to thinking of this longing as only psychological, but it's actually physical. The brain is virtually in a drug-withdrawal state. During a separation, motivation for reunion can reach a fever pitch in the brain. Activities such as caressing, kissing, gazing, hugging, and orgasm can replenish the chemical bond of love and trust in the brain. The oxytocin-dopamine rush once again suppresses anxiety and skepticism and reinforces the love circuits in the brain. From an experiment we also know that oxytocin is naturally released in the brain after a twenty-second hug from a partner- sealing the bond between huggers and triggering the brain's trust circuits. ~ Louann Brizendine, #NFDB
637:/Farsi O Winebringer, the sun is up. Fill my goblet full of wine. Hurry, for night will come, and then we'll have to sleep. Outside, the doomsayers are announcing the end of the world. Quick! give us some of Your delicious wine! If it is fame and glory that you are looking for from the sun, Then go back to sleep; there is only divine knowledge to its rays. When Judgment Day arrives and the sky becomes a jug of poor clay, Make your skull into a clay cup, and fill it with this pitcher's wine. Now is not the time to be making small talk with your friends; Speak only of the cup and of the wine. Hafiz, get up! Get out of bed. You've work to do, And the worship of wine is all the worthwhile work there is! [1512.jpg] -- from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe
~ Hafiz, Sun Rays
,#NFDB
638:Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion
From the Greek of Moschus
Published from the Hunt manuscripts by Forman, "Poetical Works of P. B. S.", 1876.
Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,—
Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,
For the beloved Bion is no more.
Let every tender herb and plant and flower,
From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,
Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath
Of melancholy sweetness on the wind
Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,
Anemones grow paler for the loss
Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,
Utter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower,
Than 'Ah! alas!'—thine is no common grief—
Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.
NOTE:
2 tears]sorrow (as alternative) Hunt manuscript ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
639:English version by V. K. Sethi The one I longed for has come home; The raging fire of separation is quenched. Now I rejoice with Him, I sing in bliss. The peacocks at the cloud's roar Dance with unbound joy; I rejoice in ecstasy At the sight of my Beloved. I am absorbed in His love; My misery of wandering In the world has ended. The lily bursts into bloom At the sight of the full moon; Seeing Him, my heart blossoms in joy. Peace permeates this body of mine; His arrival has filled my home with bliss. That very Lord has become my own Who is ever the redeemer of His devotees. Mira's heart, scorched by the blaze of separation, Has become cool and refreshed; The pain of duality has vanished. [2594.jpg] -- from Mira: The Divine Lover (Mystics of the East Series), Translated by V. K. Sethi
~ Mirabai, The Beloved Comes Home
,#NFDB
640:/Farsi & Turkish Sacrifice your intellect in love for the Friend: for anyway, intellects come from where He is. The spiritually intelligent have sent their intellects back to Him: only the fool remains where the Beloved is not. If from bewilderment, this intellect of yours flies out of your head, every tip of your hair will become a new knowing. In the presence of the Beloved, the brain needn't labor; for there the brain and intellect spontaneously produce fields and orchards of spiritual knowledge. If you turn toward that field, you will hear a subtle discourse; in that oasis your palm tree will freshen and flourish. [2306.jpg] -- from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance , Edited by Camille Helmiski / Edited by Kabir Helminski
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Sacrifice your intellect in love for the Friend
,#NFDB
641:most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escape – temporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual’s ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more! In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
642:And it is because they contain thus within themselves the hours of the past that human bodies have the power to hurt so terribly those who love them, because they contain the memories of so many joys and desires already effaced for them, but still cruel for the lover who contemplates and prolongs in the dimension of Time the beloved body of which he is jealous, so jealous that he may even wish for its destruction. For after death Time withdraws from the body, and the memories, so indifferent, grown so pale, are effaced in her who no longer exists, as they soon will be in the lover whom for a while they continue to torment but in whom before long they will perish, once the desire that owed their inspiration to a living body is no longer there to sustain them. Profound Albertine, whom I at once saw sleeping, and who was dead. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
643:Dear Father
Why did you part me from yourself, dear father, why?
You've given houses with two stories to my brothers,
And to me, a foreign land? Why dear father, why?
We (daughters) are just cows tied to your peg,
Will move on to where ever you drive us to, dear father.
We are just flower-buds of your garden,
And are asked for, in every household, dear father.
We are just birds from your cage,
Will fly off when its dawn again, dear father.
I've left at home, alcoves full of dolls;
And parted from my buddies too, dear father.
When my palanquin passed beneath the terrace,
My brother fainted and fell, dear father.
As I remove the curtain from the palanquin,
I see we've reached the beloved's house, dear father.
Why did you part me from yourself, dear father, why?
~ Amir Khusro,#NFDB
644:What excuses have you to offer, my heart, for so many shortcomings? Such constancy on the part of the Beloved, such unfaithfulness on your own!
So much generosity on his side, on yours such niggling contrariness! So many graces from him, so many faults committed by you!
Such envy, such evil imaginings and dark thoughts in your heart, such drawing, such tasting, such munificence by him!
Why all this tasting? That your bitter soul may become sweet. Why all this drawing? That you may join the company of the saints.
You are repentant of your sins, you have the name of God on your lips; in that moment he draws you on, so that he may deliver you alive.
You are fearful at last of your wrongdoings, you seek desperately a way to salvation; in that instant why do you not see by your side him who is putting such fear into your heart? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
645:And of course anyone who could see him here now, with his fever and his sleeping bags, his eyephones and his cellular data port and his bottle of cooling piss, would think he was crazy too. But he isn’t. He knows he isn’t, in spite of everything. He has the syndrome now, the thing that came after every test subject from that Gainesville orphanage, but he isn’t crazy. Just obsessed. And the obsession has its own shape in his head, its own texture, its own weight. He knows it from himself, can differentiate, so he goes back to it whenever he needs to and checks on it. Monitors it. Makes sure it still isn’t him. It reminds him of having a sore tooth, or the way he felt once when he was in love and didn’t want to be. How his tongue always found the tooth, or how he’d always find that ache, that absence in the shape of the beloved. But ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
646:Every time we open one door, we close another. It's lovely to spend Sunday morning with our new love, cooking breakfast and taking a walk together. But in the midst of our happiness, we may feel nostalgia for our former Sunday morning ritual of uninterrupted time alone at a favorite restaurant reading the newspaper. We need to acknowledge the presence of both excitement and loss, to feel their rhythm as they ebb and flow through a new relationship. If we try to deny our losses, they lead to resentments, a gnawing discomfort, and a desire to withdraw.
Yet we also need to remind our ego that love means letting go of our entrenched rituals, of comparing, of wanting life to stay the same...Entering a relationship and living in the heart of the Beloved means our life will change, our shells will crack open and we will never be the same again. ~ Charlotte Kasl,#NFDB
647:Ghazal 1 By Attar
Since there is no one to be our companion in Love
the prayer-mat is for the pious; wine-dregs and vice for us.
A place where people's souls turn and twist like polo balls
is not a place for rogues; so what's that got to do with us?
If the wine-bringers of the spirit sit with the devout
their wine is for the ascetics; lees and hangovers for us.
Cure is for the purists, consternation for the broken,
joyfulness for the do-gooders; while grief is our remembrance.
O pretender, you are not here to witness our wealth
as the Beloved extorted all that we owned within us.
Words of experience came from the messenger of truth:
O weary, as you make your way, shed your grief for us.
Attar was absorbed in sorrow along this Path.
Because he's absolutely finished, his solace is with us.
~ Ali Alizadeh,#NFDB
648:Love is one, and love is changeless.
For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected–not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.
Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.
And our God is a consuming fire. ~ George MacDonald,#NFDB
649:Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country," (pp. 41 & 42). ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
650:Your passion stirs me into a frenzied dance: Thaiya, thaiya Come swiftly, my healer as breath escapes me The venom of passion resides within me The brimming bowl of poison I gulped down eagerly Your passion stirs me into a frenzied dance: Thaiya, thaiya Come swiftly, my healer as breath escapes me The peacock coos and beckons from the deep recesses of passion The sight of the Beloved is nothing less than pilgrimage He slits my heart with one stroke and never looks back Your passion stirs me into a frenzied dance: Thaiya, thaiya Come swiftly, my healer as breath escapes me This passion swirls me to the Teacher's doorstep who gifts me a palette of divine colors The Beloved appears everywhere I only have to stamp my heels Your passion stirs me into a frenzied dance: Thaiya, thaiya Come swiftly, my healer as breath escapes me
~ Bulleh Shah, Your passion stirs me
,#NFDB
651:In the mystery and the energy of loving, we all view time's shadow upon the beloved as wretchedly as any of Poe's narrators. We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen. In the wide circles of timelessness, everything material and temporal will fail, including the manifestation of the beloved. In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us. This is Poe's real story. As it is ours. And this is why we honor him, why we are fascinated far past the simple narratives. He writes about our own inescapable destiny. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
652:In the mystery and the energy of loving, we all view time's shadow upon the beloved as wretchedly as any of Poe's narrators. We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen. In the wide circles of timelessness, everything material and temporal will fail, including the manifestation of the beloved. In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us. This is Poe's real story. As it is ours. And this is why we honor him, why we are fascinated far past the simple narratives. He writes about our own inescapable destiny. His ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
653:Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centredness and towards another person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
654:To the other person, who looks at me from the outside, I seem an object, a thing; my subjectivity with its inner freedom escapes his gaze. Hence, his tendency is always to convert me into the object he sees. The gaze of the other penetrates the depths of my existence, freezes and congeals it. It is this, according to Sartre, that turns love and particularly sexual love into a perpetual tension and indeed warfare. The lover wishes to possess the beloved, by the freedom of the beloved (which is his or her human essence) cannot be possessed; hence, the lover tends to reduce the beloved to an object for the sake of possessing it. Love is menaced always by a perpetual oscillation between sadism and masochism: In sadism I reduce the other to a mere lump, to be beaten and manipulated as I choose, while in masochism I offer myself as an object, but in an attempt to entrap the other and undermine his freedom. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
655:Ever since happiness heard your name it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
And several times in the last week, God Himself has even come to my door
Asking me for your address!
Once I said, God, I thought You knew everything. Why are You asking me where
Your lovers live?
And the Beloved replied, Indeed, Hafiz, I do know everything.
But it is fun playing dumb once in a while. And I love intimate chat
And the warmth of your hearts fire.
Maybe we should make this poem into a song, I think it has potential!
How far does this refrain sound, for I know it is a Truth:
Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets
Trying to find you.
And several times in the last week, God Himself has come to my door,
So sweetly asking for your address, wanting the beautiful warmth of your hearts fire.
~ Hafiz, Several Times In The Last Week
,#NFDB
656:Attack the silence of Pythagoras, and the Orphic beans, and that preposterous brag, "Himself has spoken." Attack the "Ideas" of Plato, and the transbodiment and circulation of our souls, and the reminiscences, and the unlovely loves of lovely bodies, though directed to the beloved's soul. Attack the atheism of Epicurus, and his atoms, and his doctrine of pleasure, unworthy of a philosopher; or Aristotle's petty Providence, and his artificial system, and his discourses about the mortality of the soul, and the exclusively human focus his teaching. Attack the haughtiness of the Stoa, or the greed and vulgarity of the Cynic. Attack for me the emptiness that is full of absurdities - all that stuff about the gods and the sacrifices and the idols and the demons, whether beneficent or malignant, and all the tricks that people play with divination, the calling up of gods or of souls, and the power of stars. ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB
657:How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were - no, not a truer, for the other is false, but - a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
658:APRIL 15 Peculiar Treasure Now therefore, if you will obey My voice in truth and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own peculiar possession and treasure from among and above all peoples; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation [consecrated, set apart to the worship of God]. EXODUS 19:5-6 Self-rejection and self-hatred can almost seem pious in a sense. They can become a way of punishing yourself for your mistakes, failures, and inabilities. People cannot be perfect, so they sometimes reject and despise themselves. Do you lack appreciation for your own worth and value? You may not feel treasured or even acceptable, but you are. In Ephesians 1:6, Paul says that all who believe in Christ have been “accepted in the beloved.” What joyous and amazing affirmation! Surely you are valuable; otherwise your heavenly Father would not have paid such a heavy price for your redemption. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
659:He [Christ] is Isaac, the beloved Son of the Father who was offered as a sacrifice, but nevertheless did not succumb to the power of death. He is Jacob the watchful shepherd, who has such great care for the sheep which he guards. He is the good and compassionate brother Joseph, who in his glory was not ashamed to acknowledge his brothers, however lowly and abject their condition. He is the great sacrificer and bishop Melchizedek who has offered an eternal sacrifice once for all. He is the sovereign lawgiver Moses, writing his law on the tables of our hearts by his Spirit. He is the faithful captain and guide Joshua, to lead us to the Promised Land. He is the victorious and noble king David, bringing by his hand all rebellious power to subjection. He is the magnificent and triumphant king Solomon governing his kingdom in peace and prosperity. He is the strong and powerful Samson who by his death has overwhelmed all his enemies.5 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
660:Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day. ~ Martin Heidegger, #NFDB
661:Back
Keep the tale, it's free, just bring the book back.
Eat the fish, but bring the line and hook back.
No one out here lives by bread alone;
relish the coq au vin, but send the cook back.
Don't let a warning chill your lovely days,
just lock the door, please. Don't invite the crook back.
Accept this praise for a game well played, my friendand checkmate. Much too late to move that rook back.
What makes you so sure your puny dam
could hold even this innocuous little brook back?
Sure, you were young, and clueless, and unnerved.
Too late to win the dear one you forsook back.
A day will come when you'll be held to account
for every gift you gave and then took back.
Get that look of stunned surprise off your face.
You tried to shake the world. The world shook back.
How do you know she's still there, Eric? The Beloved,
that slut. She's ditched you before. Go on, look back.
~ Eric Torgersen,#NFDB
662: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,#NFDB
663:/Farsi & Turkish You have fallen in love my dear heart Congratulations! You have freed yourself from all attachments Congratulations! You have given up both worlds to be on your own the whole creation praises your solitude Congratulations! Your disbelief has turned into belief your bitterness, into sweetness Congratulations! You have now entered into Love's fire, my pure heart Congratulations! Inside the Sufi's heart there is always a feast dear heart, you are celebrating Congratulations! My heart, I have seen how your tears turned into a sea now every wave keeps saying Congratulations! O silent lover, seeker of the higher planes, may the Beloved always be with you Congratulations! You have struggled hard, may you grow wings and fly Congratulations! Keep silent my dear heart, you have done so well Congratulations! [2296.jpg] -- from Rumi: Hidden Music, Translated by Azima Melita Kolin / Translated by Maryam Mafi
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, You have fallen in love my dear heart
,#NFDB
664:We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice. ~ Rebecca Manley Pippert, #NFDB
665:In The Bleak Midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
666:I leaned back against the hearth, and the fire's warmth and fluttering light lulled me into gentler thoughts of Francesca. I closed my eyes and saw the beloved face dominated by wide-set antelope eyes. Her eyebrows arched like the wings of a swan, and the whites of her eyes, almost bluish, made a startling contrast to her caramel skin. I later learned that her great-great-grandmother had been kidnapped by slavers in Turkey, brought to Venice, and then sold to a German trader. It was a common story in Venice. Francesca's more recent ancestors had been German and Italian, and the result was a mix of northern ice and Mediterranean warmth.
Francesca's upper lip curved in that sensual way that caused jealous Muslim husbands to veil their wives' faces. Her smoldering Levantine beauty contrasted with her silver-blond Teutonic hair, shockingly fair next to her dusky complexion and the sultry hint of Byzantium flashing in her dark eyes. Her nostrils were shaped like perfect teardrops. ~ Elle Newmark,#NFDB
667:autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point — for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.’ How characteristic and how humourless a delineation of the magical gift: and yet how true… of Justine! ‘Every man ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
668:Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
669:The mother is your source. If you start floating towards the mother, you are going upstream. You have to move away. The river has to go away from the source to the ocean. But that doesn’t mean that you are not in love with your mother. So, remember, that love for the mother has to be more like respect, less like love. Love towards your mother has to be more of the quality of gratefulness, respect, deep respect. She has given you birth, she has brought you into the world. Your love has to be very, very prayerful towards her. So do whatsoever you can do to serve her. But don’t make your love like the love for a beloved; otherwise you are confusing your mother with the beloved. And when goals are confused, you will become confused. So remember well that your destiny is to find a lover—another woman, not your mother. Then only for the first time will you become perfectly mature, because finding another woman means that now you are completely cut away from the mother; the final cord has been cut now. That ~ Osho, #NFDB
670:She felt their envy and this broke her. The story ended, she couldn’t tell the rest, they’d hate her, she had to stop, she wasn’t any good, shut up you bad, bad, bad ugly girl and you don’t deserve any of this and so the spell was broken and she ran home through a tangle of words where the letters jumbled and made no sense and meant nothing, and the words were ugly and she was not to be heard or seen, she was blemished and too fat, too thin, not smart, too smart, not good, not a storyteller, not a creator, not a woman, not, not, not. All the things that girls feel they are not when they fear that if they become, if they are, they will no longer be loved by the sisters whose hearts have not meant to break. And besides, if the sisters are gone and only the beloved remains with his dense curls and his lips, how safe are you then? You have to have him or you will die if the sisters are gone with their listening ears and their feet to rub and their bodies to dress and their shared loneliness. ~ Francesca Lia Block, #NFDB
671:there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
672:All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
673:/Farsi O Saghi, pass around that cup of wine, then bring it to me. Love seemed easy at first, but grew so complicated later. The sabaa, unravels her braided tresses, spreading the musky scent of her black curls, How our hearts pound with this onrush of blood! How can there be in the house of the Beloved any assurance of settled comfort and pleasure, When at any moment the caravan bells can command us to pack up and leave? Even if the Master tells you to colour your prayer rug red with wine, As a disciple heed what the Tradition asks of you. Dark night ,frightening waves, terrifying whirlpools How could they know our state, those unaffected ones, sticking to the shore? All my selfish deeds finally led to this bad reputation How can that which people discuss openly be kept a secret? Hafiz, if you desire His presence, do not withhold yourself When you fulfill your deepest desire, when you encounter your Beloved, you relinquish every worldly thing.
~ Hafiz, O Saghi, pass around that cup of wine, then bring it to me
,#NFDB
674:Idle, she writes, to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts,; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining her or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point--for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
675:Idle’ she writes ‘to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point — for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
676:We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot, and is infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him (for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood). I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning. Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then open your heart to Him and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly, real, and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in His light he awakens as the Beloved in every last part of our body. [1527.jpg] -- from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell
~ Symeon the New Theologian, We awaken in Christs body
,#NFDB
677:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing-which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no menas of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thought, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversations with her would have been just as vivid and just as stisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
678:We say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that. We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past. And yet. Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living. And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable. ~ Marie Bostwick, #NFDB
679:THE MASTER and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T1],#NFDB
680:[F]or when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment. ~ Robert Penn Warren, #NFDB
681:How do you know if you’re in an infatuation? Here are the neurological markers according to Dr. Helen Fisher, a preeminent biological anthropologist who has written on the topic: • The lover focuses on the beloved’s better traits and overlooks or minimizes flaws. • Infatuated people exhibit extreme energy, hyperactivity, sleeplessness, impulsivity, euphoria, and mood swings. • One or both of the partners develops a goal-oriented fixation on winning the beloved. • Relational passion is heightened, not weakened, by adversity; the more the relationship is attacked, the more the passion grows. • The lovers become emotionally dependent on the relationship. • Partners reorder their daily priorities to remain in contact as much as humanly possible, and they even experience separation anxiety when apart. • Empathy is so powerful that many report they would “die for their beloved.” • An infatuated person thinks about their lover to an obsessive degree. • Sexual desire is intense, and the relationship becomes marked by extreme possessiveness. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
682:Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old’s fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn’t. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn’t. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn’t like his friends; he doesn’t like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other’s. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving. By ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
683:Testament Can Teach Us. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011. Kugel, James L. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York: Free Press, 2008. *———. Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Levenson, Jon D. Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. ———. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. ———. Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987. Levine, Amy-Jill, and Marc Zvi Brettler. The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. *Miller, J. M., and J. H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Second edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006. *Moore, Megan Bishop, and Brad E. Kell. Biblical History and Israel’s Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
684:Come so the rose we may spread, and, let wine into the goblet flow.
The roof of the sky we may cleave; and a new way seek more aglow.
If an army, the shedder of lovers' blood, raise sorrow
The Saki and I may join and its foundation pull thorough.
The rose water we pour into the goblet of ruddy wine:
Into the censer of the wind, the sugar and perfume, we cast in twine.
Minstrel! In thy hand resteth a merry instrument, a sweet melody play:
So we may sing a love-song, and dance to the merry note sans delay.
O breeze! To the abode of the Beloved, the soul of ours take;
That the Monarch of the lovely mayest deign our glance's sake
Of reason, one boasteth; another idle talk doth weave:
Come and to the just Umpire these disputes leave.
Come with us to the tavern if the Garden of Eden thou pine for;
So thee, we may cast at once into the pool of abundance galore.
In Shiraz, the verse, and eloquence, they do not know:
HAFIZ! Come so to another Land, we may go.
(Translated by Ismail Salami)
~ Hafiz, Sweet Melody
,#NFDB
685:A Christmas Carol
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there.
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
21
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part, Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
686:Clubs, fraternities, nations—these are the beloved barriers in the way of a workable world, these will have to surrender some of their rights and some of their ribs. A ‘fraternity’ is the antithesis of fraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality. Anyone who remembers back to his fraternity days at college recalls the enthusiasts in his group, the rabid members, both young and old, who were obsessed with the mystical charm of membership in their particular order. They were usually men who were incapable of genuine brotherhood, or at least unaware of its implications. Fraternity begins when the exclusion formula is found to be distasteful. The effect of any organization of a social and brotherly nature is to strengthen rather than diminish the lines which divide people into classes; the effects of states and nations is the same, and eventually these lines will have to be softened, these powers will have to be generalized. ~ E B White, #NFDB
687:At times it can feel like you are being nailed to the cross of Divine laws and truths, which dissolves all your own personal truths as surely as night follows day. This happens externally through the judgments, fears and persecutions of others unwilling to allow your soul to follow God out of fear of what it means for them and their attachments. Internally this occurs as you burn in your resistance to following divine laws, feeling the flame burning you up through your total feeling of any and all emotions, refusing projection onto anyone, or anything. This is your road and the fulfilling of your desire to meet God fully. As Christ said, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’33 The Passion is not a linear journey: we can experience some of the symptoms of each death at differing times, but to establish oneself in a new Sphere of love is another thing. It is a soulful journey, not for hard-core Buddhists or Yogis, although it can be. It is a journey of the Beloved, of the Lover of God. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha, #NFDB
688:Such a marvelous opportunity wasted. I mean for us, by us. Indians feel it too, don’t they? I mean, in spite of the proud chests and all the excitement of sitting down as free men at their own desks to work out a constitution. Won’t that constitution be a sort of love letter to the English—the kind an abandoned lover writes when the affair has ended in what passes at the time as civilized and dignified mutual recognition of incompatability? In a world grown suddenly dull because the beloved, thank God, has gone, offering his killing and unpredictable and selfish affections elsewhere, you attempt to recapture, don’t you, the moments of significant pleasure—which may not have been mutual at all, but anyway existed. But this recapture is always impossible. You settle for the second-rate, you settle for the lesson you appear to have learned and forget the lesson you hoped to learn and might have learned, and so learn nothing at all, because the second-rate is the world’s common factor, and any damned fool people can teach it, any damned fool people can inherit it. ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
689:Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a vehicle of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
690:/Farsi & Turkish Now comes the final merging, Now comes everlasting beauty. Now comes abundant grace, Now comes boundless purity. The infinite treasure is shining, The mighty ocean is roaring, The morning of grace has come -- Morning? -- No! This is the eternal Light of God! Who occupies this beautiful form? Who is the ruler and the prince? Who is the wise man? -- Nothing but a veil. The wine of love removes these veils. Drink with your head and your eyes -- Both your eyes, and both your heads! Your head of clay is from the earth, Your pure awareness is from heaven. O how vast is that treasure which lies beneath the clay! Every head you see depends on it! Behind every atom of this world hides an infinite universe. O Saaqi, free us from the facade of this world. Bring wine -- barrels full! Our eyes see too straight -- straight past the truth! The Light of Truth shines from Tabriz. It is beyond the beyond yet it is here, shining through every particle of this world. [2511.jpg] -- from Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, by Jonathan Star
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Now comes the final merging
,#NFDB
691:When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.
Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?
...
One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.
When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes. ~ David Lehman,#NFDB
692:On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved. Such a sacrifice must be the result of love... or is it that the life itself was already worn out? I had finished with that life, perhaps, and could not admit it, being stubborn or afraid, or perhaps did not known it, habit being a great binder. I think it is often so that those most in need of change choose to fall in love and then throw up their hands and blame it all on fate. But it is not fate, at least, not if fate is something outside of us; it is a choice made in secret after nights of longing.
... I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams... To be a muse may be enough. The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must. Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone again in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you.
The truth is, you never understood yourself. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
693:Because the letter has not—as the image of the beloved creature has—been contemplated by us in the melancholy calm of regret; we have read it, devoured it in the fearful anguish with which we were wrung by an unforeseen misfortune. Sorrows of this sort come to us in another way; from without; and it is along the road of the most cruel suffering that they have penetrated to our heart. The picture of our friend in our mind, which we believe to be old, original, authentic, has in reality been refashioned by her many times over. The cruel memory is not itself contemporary with the restored picture, it is of another age, it is one of the rare witnesses to a monstrous past. But inasmuch as this past continues to exist, save in ourselves, who have been pleased to substitute for it a miraculous age of gold, a paradise in which all mankind shall be reconciled, those memories, those letters carry us back to reality, and cannot but make us feel, by the sudden pang they give us, what a long way we have been borne from that reality by the baseless hopes engendered daily while we waited for something to happen ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
694:If some say that a man and woman must live together or that they must see each other, even that they must live in the same time in order to love, well, they are mistaken. A great lover has a life that prepares him for his love. She grooms herself for years without hope of any kind, yet stands by the crevice of the world. He sleeps inside of his own heart. She dries her hair with her tears and washes her skin with names and names and names. Then one day, he, she, hears the name of the beloved and it yet means nothing. She might see the beloved and it means nothing. But a wheel, far away, spins on thin spokes, and that name, that sight, grows solid as stone. Then wherever he is, he says, I known the name of my beloved, and it is . . . or I know the face of my beloved, and she is—there! And he returns to the place where she saw him, and she empties herself out—leaves herself like open water, beneath, past, in the distance, surrounding, able to be touched by the smallest gesture. And that is how the great loves begin. I can tell you because I have been a great love. I have had a great love. I was there. ~ Jesse Ball, #NFDB
695:When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass – may pass in the first half hour – into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to Friendship between the lovers. But this, so far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first, in the deep and full sense, your Friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as also your lover you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the Friendship. Nothing so enriches an erotic love as the discovery that the Beloved can deeply, truly and spontaneously enter into Friendship with the Friends you already had; to feel that not only are we two united by erotic love but we three or four or five are all travelers on the same quest, have all a common vision. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
696:Gilberte had still not come back to the Champs-Élysées. Yet I very much needed to set eyes on her, as I could not even remember her face. When we look at the person we love, our inquisitive, anxious, demanding gaze, our expectation of the words which will make us hope for (or despair of) another meeting tomorrow and, until those words are spoken, our obsession fluctuating between possible joy and sorrow, or imagining both of these together, all this distracts our tremulous attention and prevents it from getting a clear picture of the loved one. Also, it may be that this simultaneous activity of all the senses, striving to discover through the unaided eyes something that is out of their reach, is too mindful of the countless forms, all the savours and movements of the living person, all those things which, in a person with whom we are not in love, we immobilize. But the beloved model keeps moving; and the only snapshots we can take are always out of focus. I could not really say what the features of Gilberte’s face were like, except at those heavenly moments when she was there, displaying them to me. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
697:It is a source of refreshment, laughter, joy and life—and of more power. Remove power and you cut off life, the possibility of creating something new and better in this rich and recalcitrant world. Life is power. Power is life. And flourishing power leads to flourishing life. Of course, like life itself, power is nothing—worse than nothing—without love. But love without power is less than it was meant to be. Love without the capacity to make something of the world, without the ability to respond to and make room for the beloved’s flourishing, is frustrated love. This is why the love that is the heartbeat of the Christian story—the Father’s love for the Son and, through the Son, for the world—is not simply a sentimental feeling or a distant, ethereal theological truth, but has been signed and sealed by the most audacious act of true power in the history of the world, the resurrection of the Son from the dead. Power at its best is resurrection to full life, to full humanity. Whenever human beings become what they were meant to be, when even death cannot finally hold its prisoners, then we can truly speak of power. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
698:O nightingale! Bewail if my love thou desire.
For, we are weeping lovers; yet, tear is our task dire.
Where bloweth a perfumed breeze from the Friend's hair,
The Tartary musk-pods lose the aroma once so rare.
Give wine so we may the robe of hypocrisy dye;
For we are intoxicated with pride; yet, sober are we, aye.
To devise a fancy for Thy tress, fools do not care
To get into the chains of love is what the bold souls dare.
'Tis a deep charm which wakes the lover's flame
Not ruby lip, nor verdant down its name
Beauty is not the eye, lock, cheek and mole
A thousand subtle points the heart control.
The wayfarers purchase not for half a corn,
The satin coat that void of skill is born.
Difficult it seemeth to reach the Threshold of Thy Love:
Aye, difficult as ascending to the rooftop of the heaven above
At dawn, in a dream, to the abode of the Beloved did I wend:
Oh happy the dream in which one mayest see the Darling Friend.
HAFIZ! Wound not His heart with tears, and end:
For, eternal salvation in love doth bend
(Translated by Ismail Salami)
~ Hafiz, Bold Souls
,#NFDB
699:This figure upon the Cross is not a MVD agent or a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool. Was it not He Who told us, “I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7)? In the story of the prodigal, did He not describe the Father as saying, “Let us eat and make merry: because this my son was dead and is come to life again; was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23, 24)? Why is there more joy in Heaven for the repentant sinner than for the righteous? Because God’s attitude is not judgment but love. In judgment, one is not as joyful after doing wrong as before; but in love, there is joy because the danger and worry of losing that soul is past. He who is sick is loved more than he who is well, because he needs it more. Some will feign sickness to solicit love and pretend wounds that the beloved may bind them. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
700:/Farsi Now that I have raised the glass of pure wine to my lips, The nightingale starts to sing! Go to the librarian and ask for the book of this bird's songs, and Then go out into the desert. Do you really need college to read this book? Break all your ties with people who profess to teach, and learn from the Pure Bird. From Pole to Pole the news of those sitting in quiet solitude is spreading. On the front page of the newspaper, the alcoholic Chancellor of the University Said: "Wine is illegal. It's even worse than living off charity." It's not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet: drink up! And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace. The stories of the greed and fantasies of all the so-called "wise ones" Remind me of the mat-weavers who tell tourists that each strand is a yarn of gold. Hafiz says: The town's forger of false coins is also president of the city bank. So keep quiet, and hoard life's subtleties. A good wine is kept for drinking, never sold. [1512.jpg] -- from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe
~ Hafiz, The Essence of Grace
,#NFDB
701:If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--concerning the treacherous role that memory plays in a human life, consider how relentlessly the water of memory refuses to break, how it impedes that journey into the air of time. Time: the whisper beneath that word is death. With this unanswerable weight hanging heavier and heavier over one's head, the vision becomes cloudy, nothing is what it seems...
How then, can I trust my memory concerning that particular Sunday afternoon?...Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true--anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other--beneath the face of the beloved, however ancient, ruined, and scarred, is the face of the baby your love once was, and will always be, for you. Love serves, then, if memory doesn't, and passion, apart from its tense relation to agony, labors beneath the shadow of death. Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone. ~ James Baldwin,#NFDB
702:Most people nowadays would not consider love as related in any way to truth. Love is seen as an experience associated with the world of fleeting emotions, no longer with truth.
But is this an adequate description of love? Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centredness and towards another person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit. ~ Pope Francis,#NFDB
703:Whatever Happened?
What happened?
To the land of Oedipus tragedy is nothing new.
Do the gods of the Olympus still thirst for war?
Do they try to hypnotize
The cattle-rearing youth
By displaying the neutron bomb?
Remember the time before Alexander's
Expedition of triumph?
Remember too the cursed centuries
That followed?
Will Agamemnon ever come back?
Kill him if he does.
Will Clytemnestra be a party
To the murderous act?
Kill her outright, if she is.
She screams, the sister
Of the son who killed his mother
Who had killed her fatherThat scream reverberates over the sea
And on the hill.
When the night shrieks,
The tongue splits.
When the murder cry is heard
It splits the ear.
O Hellas that seeks to be reborn,
Hellas that had once left her husband for good,
And, having had enough of it,
Now returns from her lover.
To blind Homer
You are still the beloved daughter.
Penelope welcoming Odysseus
Who had sailed home in the gentle wind.
The dog still remembering his master.
Where have they all vanished?
~ Ayyappa Paniker,#NFDB
704:A tear can be shed in this place on several occasions. Assuming that beauty is the distribution of light in the fashion most congenial to one's retina, a tear is an acknowledgment of the retina's, as well as the tear's, failure to retain beauty. On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound. It is the deterioration of the greater speed to the lesser that moistens one's eye. Because one is finite, a departure from this place always feel final; leaving it behind is leaving it forever. For leaving is banishment of the eye to the provinces of the other senses; at best, to the crevices and crevasses of the brain. For the eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention. And to the eye, for purely optical reasons, departure is not the body leaving the city but the city abandoning the pupil. Likewise, disappearance of the beloved, especially a gradual one, causes grief no matter who, and for what peripatetic reason, is actually in motion. As the world goes, this city is the eye's beloved. After it, everything is a letdown. A tear is the anticipation of the eye's future. ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
705:One day in spring, a woman came
In my lonely woods,
In the lovely form of the Beloved.
Came, to give to my songs, melodies,
To give to my dreams, sweetness.
Suddenly a wild wave
Broke over my heart's shores
And drowned all language.
To my lips no name came,
She stood beneath the tree, turned,
Glanced at my face, made sad with pain,
And with quick steps, came and sat by me.
Taking my hands in hers, she said:
'You do not know me, nor I you
I wonder how this could be?'
I said:
'We two shall build, a bridge for ever
Between two beings, each to the other unknown,
This eager wonder is at the heart of things.'
The cry that is in my heart is also the cry of her heart;
The thread with which she binds me binds her too.
Her have I sought everywhere,
Her have I worshipped within me,
Hidden in that worship she has sought me too.
Crossing the wide oceans, she came to steal my heart.
She forgot to return, having lost her own.
Her own charms play traitor to her,
She spreads her net, knowing not
Whether she will catch or be caught.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, One Day In Spring....
,#NFDB
706:At the first light of the dawn
the loner knight asked:
"Do you happen to know-
the abode of The Beloved?"
The skies went silent,
save their mournful clouds,
save their falling stars.
The pilgrim gave up his glowing twig-
to the gloom of the sands-
and replied:
“Don’t you see that poplar tree?
Well, right before the tree,
There is a lane that you’ll reckon, I deem.
For it is greener than a heavenly dream,
For it is generously shaded-
with the deep blue’s of love.
Well, if you See!
So walk down that lane,
You’ll arrive to the garden of sense;
Turn to the direction of the loner lake;
Listen to the genial hymn of leaves;
Watch the eternal fountain-
that flows from the spring of ancient myths-
till you fade away-
In a plain fear.
When a rigid noise-
Clatters into the fluid intimacy of the space,
you'll find a child-
on the top of a tree-
next to the nest of owls-
in hope of a golden egg.
Well, if you See.
You may be sure: The Child will show you the way.
Well,
If you just ask about-
The Abode of The Beloved. ~ Sohrab Sepehri,#NFDB
707:And at that moment Charles's thoughts raced back to the time he'd lain blind and helpless in Sylvanus Leighton's house, with only Amy to look after him in his days of darkest despair. He recalled how many moments they'd shared together, how much they'd come to mean to each other, and a huge knot of emotion closed the back of his throat as the full magnitude of his love for this woman nearly crushed him beneath its weight. He could never live without her. Ever. And this time, of course, he had no guilt over Juliet, no feelings of self-doubt, and absolutely no reason this side of heaven not to give in to his most fervent desire: to be with Amy, always. He had come full circle, then. He was the man he had always been. The Beloved One. Charles tilted his head back within Amy's arms and, looking up into her eyes, saw such a wealth of love for him there that he thought his heart was going to come bursting right out of his chest. He lifted her hand to his lips. "Amy. My dearest, precious Amy. I love you. Will you marry me?" Her eyes suddenly misty, she looked up at Lucien. He only smiled. "I believe, my dear, that the traditional reply is 'I will." ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
708:THE rose is not fair without the beloved's face,
Nor merry the Spring without the sweet laughter of wine;
The path through the fields, and winds from a flower strewn place,
Without her bright check, which glows like a tulip fine,
Nor winds softly blowing, fields deep in corn, are fair.
And lips like to sugar, grace like a flower that sways,
Are nought without kisses many and dalliance sweet;
If thousands of voices sang not the rose's praise,
The joy of the cypress her opening bud to greet,
Nor dancing of boughs nor blossoming rose were fair.
Though limned by most skilful fingers, no pictures please
Unless the beloved's image is drawn therein;
The garden and flowers, and hair flowing loose on the breeze,
Unless to my Lady's side I may strive and win,
Nor garden, nor flowers, nor loose flying curls are fair.
Hast seen at a marriage-feast, when the mirth runs high,
The revellers scatter gold with a careless hand?
The gold of thy heart, oh Hafiz, despised doth lie,
Not worthy thy love to be cast by a drunken band
At the feet of her who is fairer than all that's fair.
~ Hafiz, The Rose Is Not Fair
,#NFDB
709:From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.
The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice—no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant—let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother’s sake. ~ Emmuska Orczy,#NFDB
710:The energies that make us act out of anger,fear,insecurity and doubt are extremely familiar. They are like an old,dark house we return to whenever things get too hard to handle.It feels risky to leave this house and see what's outside,yet we have to leave if we expect to be loved.
So we take the risk.We walk out into the light and offer ourselves to the beloved.This feels wonderful;it's like nothing we have imagined in our old,dark house.But when things get tough,we run back inside,we choose familiarity to fear and lovelessness over the vulnerability of love, until finally we feel safe enough to go back and try love again.
This is essentially the rhythm of every intimate relationship-risk and retreat. Over and over we repeat this rhythm,accepting love and pushing it away until finally something miraculous happiness. The old,dark house isn't necessary anymore.We look around, and we have a new house, a house of light. Where did it come from?How did we build it? It was built from the love of the heart.It has silently been weaving our higher and lower natures,blending fear,anger,survival and protection into the energies of devotion,trust,compassion and acceptance. ~ Deepak Chopra,#NFDB
711:The broken are not always gathered together,of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. We speak of "senseless tragedies" but really: Is there any other kind? Mothers and wives disappear without a trace. Childeren are killed. Madamen ravage the world, leaving wounds immeasurably deep, and endlessy mourned. loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view. Maybe we chase them clumsily, across railroad tracks and trafficked streets; Over roads new printed with their foot steps,the dust still whirling in the wake of them; through impossibly big cities people with strangers whose faces and bodies carry fragments of their faces and bodies, whose laughter, steadiness, pluck, stuberness remind us of the beloved we seek. Maybe we stay put, left behind, and look for them in our dreams. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon. we can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way. ~ Stephanie Kallos, #NFDB
712:A selfish love seldom respects the rights of the beloved to be an autonomous person. Far from respecting the true being of another and granting his personality room to grow and expand in its own original way, this love seeks to keep him in subjection to ourselves. It insists that he conform himself to us, and it works in every possible way to make him do so. A selfish love withers and dies unless it is sustained by the attention of the beloved. When we love thus, our friends exist only in order that we may love them. In loving them we seek to make pets of them, to keep them tame. Such love fears nothing more than the escape of the beloved. It requires his subjection because that is necessary for the nourishment of our own affections. Selfish love often appears to be unselfish, because it is willing to make any concession to the beloved in order to keep him prisoner. But it is supreme selfishness to buy what is best in a person, his liberty, his integrity, his own autonomous dignity as a person, at the price of far lesser goods. Such selfishness is all the more abominable when it takes a complacent pleasure in its concessions, deluded that they are all acts of selfless charity. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
713:THE happy lot of which the soul is singing in the first of these three lines befell it through those means of which it speaks in the two lines that follow it; making use of a metaphor, it describes itself as one who, for the better execution of his purpose, goes out of his house by night, in the dark, the inmates of which are at rest, in order that none might hinder him. The soul having to perform so heroic and so rare an act, that of being united to the divine Beloved, sallies forth, because the Beloved is to be found only without, in solitude. The bride therefore desired to find Him alone, saying: “Who shall give Thee to me for my brother, sucking the breasts of my mother, that I may find Thee without and kiss Thee?”1 It is necessary for the enamored soul, in order to obtain the end desired, to act in the same way; to go out by night when all the inmates of its house repose and sleep; that is, when its lower operations, passions, and desires are at rest and asleep in this night. These are the inmates of its house which when awake ever hinder its good, enemies of its freedom. These are they of whom our Savior says in the holy gospel, “A man’s enemies shall be they of his own household! ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
714:One Whisper of the Beloved
Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels,
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water
In truth, everyone is a shadow of the Beloved –
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.
At times we flow toward the Beloved
like a dancing stream.
At times we are still water
held in His pitcher.
At times we boil in a pot
turning to vapor –
that is the job of the Beloved.
He breathes into my ear
until my soul
takes on His fragrance.
He is the soul of my soul –
How can I escape?
But why would any soul in this world
want to escape from the Beloved?
He will melt your pride
making you thin as a strand of hair,
Yet do not trade, even for both worlds,
One strand of His hair.
We search for Him here and there
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side we ask,
"O Beloved, where is the Beloved?"
Enough with such questions! –
Let silence take you to the core of life.
All your talk is worthless
When compared to one whisper
of the Beloved. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
715:/Farsi Hey you, parrot! speaking in riddles, Sugar wouldn't melt in your mouth! Clear your head so your heart will be happy, And then mimic the words of the Beloved! To everyone who walks by, you have given mixed messages; For God's sake, tell us something we don't know. O Winebringer, throw some of Your best wine in our face, For it is time to wake up! What chord was it last night that the Minstrel played That caused the drunk and the pious both to dance? What drug did You put in their cups That caused them to lose both their hats and their heads? Not even to Alexander the Great would Your lovers give the Wine of Life; He hadn't the power or the gold for that price. Today, treason is the currency of the world, But compared with Love, even alchemy has lost its flash. Come, and listen to our stories of pain; Even with few words, the truth is still there. O Lord, don't tell our secrets to those who don't drink; One cannot give a picture on the wall Your enlightened touch. To a millionaire, money is the standard of the world; Hafiz says: O beggars, I have exchanged all my money for these poems! [1512.jpg] -- from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe
~ Hafiz, It Is Time to Wake Up!
,#NFDB
716:English. I believe the ultimate gauge of success is this: Does the text free the reader? Does it contribute to our physical and emotional health? Does it put “golden tools” into our hands that can help excavate the Beloved whom we and society have buried so deep inside? Persian poets of Hafiz’s era would often address themselves in their poems, making the poem an intimate conversation. This was also a method of “signing” the poem, as one might sign a letter to a friend, or a painting. It should also be noted that sometimes Hafiz speaks as a seeker, other times as a master and guide. Hafiz also has a unique vocabulary of names for God—as one might have endearing pet names for one’s own family members. To Hafiz, God is more than just the Father, the Mother, the Infinite, or a Being beyond comprehension. Hafiz gives God a vast range of names, such as Sweet Uncle, the Generous Merchant, the Problem Giver, the Problem Solver, the Friend, the Beloved. The words Ocean, Sky, Sun, Moon, and Love, among others, when capitalized in these poems, can sometimes be synonyms for God, as it is a Hafiz trait to offer these poems to many levels of interpretation simultaneously. To Hafiz, God is Someone we can meet, enter, and eternally explore. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
717:Vigils
I.
It is a repose in the light,
neither fever nor languor,
on a bed or on a meadow.
It is the friend neither violent nor weak.
The friend.
It is the beloved neither
tormenting nor tormented.
The beloved.
Air and the world not sought.
Life. --Was it really this?
--And the dream grew cold.
II.
The lighting comes round
to the crown post again.
From the two extremities of the room
-- decorations negligible
-- harmonic elevations join.
The wall opposite the watcher
is a psychological succession
of atmospheric sections of friezes,
bands, and geological accidents.
Intense quick dream
of sentimental groups
with people of all possible characters
amidst all possible appearances.
III.
The lamps and the rugs
of the vigil make the noise
of waves in the night,
along the hull and around the steerage.
The sea of the vigil, like Emily's breasts.
The hangings, halfway up,
undergrowth of emerald tinted lace,
228
where dart the vigil doves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The plaque of the black hearth,
real suns of seashores! ah! magic wells;
only sight of dawn, this time.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
718:Modern readers are responsive to Proust’s tireless and brilliant analyses of love because we, too, no longer take love for granted. Readers today are always making the personal public, the intimate political, the instinctual philosophical. Proust may have attacked love, but he did know a lot about it. Like us, he took nothing for granted. He was not on smug, cozy terms with his own experience. We read Proust because he knows so much about the links between childhood anguish and adult passion. We read Proust because, despite his intelligence, he holds reasoned evaluations in contempt and knows that only the gnarled knowledge that suffering brings us is of any real use. We read Proust because he knows that in the terminal stage of passion we no longer love the beloved; the object of our love has been overshadowed by love itself: “And this malady which Swann’s love had become had so proliferated, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so utterly inseparable from him, that it would have been impossible to eradicate it without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his love was no longer operable. ~ Edmund White, #NFDB
719:Still later, I read Ira Katznelson’s history of discrimination, When Affirmative Action Was White, which argued that similar exclusions applied to other “color-blind” New Deal programs, such as the beloved GI Bill, social security, and unemployment insurance. I was slowly apprehending that a rising tide, too, could be made to discriminate. A raft of well-researched books and articles pointed me this way. From historians, I learned that the New Deal’s exclusion of blacks was the price FDR paid to the southern senators for its passage. The price black people paid was being forced out of the greatest government-backed wealth-building opportunity in the twentieth century. The price of discrimination had more dimensions than those that were immediately observable. Since the country’s wealth was distributed along the lines of race and because black families were cordoned off, resources accrued and compounded for whites while relative poverty accrued for blacks. And so it was not simply that black people were more likely to be poor but that black people—of all classes—were more likely to live in poor neighborhoods. So thick was the barrier of segregation that upper-class blacks were more likely to live in poor neighborhoods than poor whites. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
720:Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during the day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings.
Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
721:I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,#NFDB
722:What A Carefree Game He Plays!
He said, 'Let there be,' and it happened.
He made the latent turn into the manifest,
Out of the formless He created the form.
What a wondrous game He played!
What a carefree game He plays!
When He disclosed the hidden secret,
He lifted the veil from over His face.
Why does He now hide from me?
The Real permeates everyone.
What a carefree game He plays!
He said, 'We have honored mankind;
None has been created like you;
You are the crown of all creation.'
What a proclamation with the beat of drum!
What a carefree game He plays!
He himself indulges in these carefree acts;
He himself feels frightened of himself;
He has taken abode in every house;
And the people keep wandering in delusion.
What a carefree game He plays!
He himself aroused longing to become mad in love.
He himself became Laila to steal Majnun's heart.
Himself He wept, himself consoled himself.
0, what a game of love He plays!
What a carefree game He plays!
Himself the lover, He himself is the Beloved.
Here logic and reason have no part to play.
Bullah rejoices in his union with the Beloved.
Why does He create separation now?
What a carefree game He plays!
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
723:Songs of the Soul
On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing -
O exquisite risk! -
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.
Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.
That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.
This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me
- The one I knew so intimately -
In a place where no one could find us.
O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!
Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.
Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.
I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind,
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten. ~ Juan de la Cruz,#NFDB
724:I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,#NFDB
725:He said, "Let there be," and it happened. He made the latent turn into the manifest, Out of the formless He created the form. What a wondrous game He played! What a carefree game He plays! When He disclosed the hidden secret, He lifted the veil from over His face. Why does He now hide from me? The Real permeates everyone. What a carefree game He plays! He said, "We have honored mankind; None has been created like you; You are the crown of all creation." What a proclamation with the beat of drum! What a carefree game He plays! He himself indulges in these carefree acts; He himself feels frightened of himself; He has taken abode in every house; And the people keep wandering in delusion. What a carefree game He plays! He himself aroused longing to become mad in love. He himself became Laila to steal Majnun's heart. Himself He wept, himself consoled himself. 0, what a game of love He plays! What a carefree game He plays! Himself the lover, He himself is the Beloved. Here logic and reason have no part to play. Bullah rejoices in his union with the Beloved. Why does He create separation now? What a carefree game He plays! [bk1sm.gif] -- from Bulleh Shah: The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast (Mystics of the East series), by J. R. Puri / Tilaka Raja Puri
~ Bulleh Shah, What a carefree game He plays!
,#NFDB
726:The Cloud On The Mountain
Elevation bestows the sky's nearness to my abode
I am the mountain's cloud, my skirt sprinkles roses
Now the wilderness, now the rose garden is my abode
City and wilderness are mine, ocean is mine, forest is mine
If I want to return to some valley for the night
The mountain's verdure is my carpet of velvet
Nature has taught me to be a pearl spreader
To chant the camel song for the camel of the Beloved of Mercy
To be the comforter of the dispirited farmer's heart
To be the elegance of the assembly of the garden's trees
I spread out over the face of the earth like the locks
I get arranged and adorned by the breeze's
I tantalize the expecting eye from a distance
As I pass silently over some habitation
As I approach strolling towards a brook's bank
I endow the brook with ear rings of whirlpools
I am the hope of the freshly grown field's verdure
I am the ocean's offspring, I am nourished by the sun
I gave ocean's tumult to the mountain spring
I charmed the birds into thrilling chants
I pronounced 'Rise' standing by the verdure's head
I conferred the taste for smile to the rose-bud
By my benevolence farmers' huts on the mountain side
Are converted into bed chambers of the opulent.
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
727:Over the white and green robes, as the crown and perfection of its disguise, the soul puts on the third, the splendid robe of purple. This is the emblem of charity, which not only enhances the beauty of the others, but which so elevates the soul and renders it so lovely and pleasing in His eyes that it ventures to say to Him, “I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, therefore hath the king loved me and brought me into His secret chamber.”15 This robe of charity, which is that of love, not only defends and protects the soul from its third enemy, the flesh—for where the true love of God is there is no room for self-love or for selfishness—but strengthens the other virtues also, and makes them flourish for the protection of the soul, beautifying it and adorning it with grace, so that it shall please the Beloved; for without charity no virtue is pleasing unto God. This is the purple, spoken of in the Canticle, by which the soul ascends to the seat where God reposes: “the seat of gold, the going up of purple.”16 It is vested in this robe of purple that the soul journeys, as the first stanza declares, when in the dark night it went out of itself, and from all created things, with anxious love inflamed, by the secret ladder of contemplation to the perfect union of the love of God its beloved Savior. 11. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
728:The word for teardrinkers is lachryphagous, and for the eaters of human flesh it is anthropophagous, and the rest of us feed on sorrow all the time. It is the essence of many of the most beautiful ballads and pop songs, and why sorrow and heartbreak are so delicious might have to do with the emotions it stirs in us, the empathy for others' suffering, and the small comfort of not being alone with our own. With a sad song we feel a delicate grief, as though we mourn for three minutes a loss we can't remember but taste again, sorrow like salt tears, and then close it up like a letter in the final notes. Sadness the blue like dusk, the reminder that all things are emphemeral, and that because there is time there is change and that is another name for change, if you look back toward what is vanishing in the distance, is loss.
But sadness is also beautiful, maybe because it rings so true and goes so deep, because it is about the distances in our lives, the things we lose, the abyss between what the lover and the beloved want and imagine and understand that may widen to become unbridgeable any moment, the distance between the hope at the onset and the eventual outcome, the journeys we have to travel, including the last one out of being and on past becoming into the unimaginable: the moth flown into the pure dark. ~ Rebecca Solnit,#NFDB
729:The Dark Night
One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
On that glad night
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything
with no other light or guide
than the One that burned in my heart.
This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the Beloved into his Lover.
Upon my flowering breast,
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies. ~ Juan de la Cruz,#NFDB
730:reject Satan’s lie that I will never amount to anything. I have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit and am an important member of the Body of Christ. I renounce the lie that I would be better off dead. I have a life to live doing the will of God that will bring glory to You, my Savior. I renounce the lie that I am not worthy to be loved. I am loved by You, Almighty God, who knows me completely, and I am worthy to be loved by others as well. I renounce the lie that I will always be alone. I am a member of Your family, Father, and have a host of brothers and sisters who will welcome me into community. I confess my failure to love and to like myself, and repudiate the lie of Satan that I once believed. I am accepted in the beloved. You, Lord, see me as Your treasured possession, and it is right that I both like and love myself. I reject the lie that nothing I do is ever good enough. You, Lord, take my efforts, no matter how feeble, and work through me by Your Spirit. I renounce the idea that there is no use trying. I reject self-hatred and self-condemnation along with false guilt. And I affirm that You, Lord Jesus, will enable me to do anything that You call me do. I renounce fear of failure and that sense of hopelessness, which are also Satan’s lies. I believe Your promise, that You give me “hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). ~ Lawrence O Richards, #NFDB
731:115 The month of fasting has come, the emperor’s banner has arrived; withhold your hand from food, the spirit’s table has arrived. The soul has escaped from separation and bound nature’s hands; the heart of error is defeated, the army of faith has arrived. The army of the snorting chargers has put its hand to plunder, from the fire of the strikers of fire the soul is brought to lamentation. The Cow was goodly, Moses son of ‘Imrān appeared; through him the dead became living when it was sacrificed. Fasting is as our sacrifice, it is the life of our soul; let us sacrifice all our body, since the soul has arrived as guest. Fortitude is as a sweet cloud, wisdom rains from it, because it was in such a month of fortitude that the Koran arrived. When the carnal soul is in need, the spirit goes into Ascension; when the gate of the prison is broken, the soul reaches the Beloved. The heart has rent the curtain of darkness and winged up to the sky; the heart, being of the angels, has again arrived at them. Quickly clutch the rope out of this body’s well; at the top of the well of water cry, “Joseph of Canaan has arrived.” When Jesus escaped from the ass his prayers became accepted; wash your hands, for the Table has arrived from heaven. Wash your hands and your mouth, neither eat nor speak; seek that speech and that morsel which has come to the silent ones. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
732:If enough individuals are full of despair and anger in their hearts, there will be violence in the streets. If enough individuals are full of greed and fear in their hearts, there will be racism and oppression in society. You can't remove the external social symptoms without treating the corresponding internal personal diseases...Pope Francis draws our attention to the 'invisible thread' of the market, which he describes as 'the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.' This mentality generates inequality, which in turn generates 'a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control'...changed individuals cross racial, religious, ethnic, class or political boundaries to build friendships. These friendship work like sutures, healing wounds in the social fabric. They 'humanize the other,' making it harder for groups to stereotype or scapegoat. They create little zones where the beloved community is manifest...They help people envision the common good--a situation where all are safe, free, and able to thrive. As my friend Shane Claiborne says, our problem isn't that rich people don't care about poor people; it's that all too often, rich people don't know any poor people. Knowing one another makes interpersonal change and reconciliation possible. (p. 167-168) ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
733:THE SIMPLE UNION
Listen to me, O friend.
Be thou a yogi, a monk, a priest,
A devout lover of God,
A pilgrim searching for Happiness, Bathing in holy rivers,
Visiting sacred shrines,
The occasional worshipper of a day,
A great reader of books, Or a builder of many temples -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
This vain struggle,
This long toil,
This ceaseless sorrow,
This changing pleasure,
This burning doubt,
This burden of life,
All these will cease, O friend -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
Have I pilgrimage the earth,
Have I loved the reflections,
Have I chanted, singing in ecstasy,
Have I donned the robe,
Have I put on ashes,
Have I listened to the temple bells,
Have I grown old with study,
Have I searched,
Was I lost?
Yea, much have I known -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved,
O friend,
Wouldst thou love the reflection,
If I can give thee the reality?
Throw away thy bells, thine incense,
Thy fears and thy gods,
Set aside thy systems, thy philosophies.
Come,
Put aside all these.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
O friend,
The simple union is the best.
This is the way to the heart of the Beloved. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
734:I am thinking now of old Moses sitting on a mountain - sitting with God - looking across the Jordan into the Promised Land. I am thinking of the lump in his throat, that weary ache in his heart, that nearly bitter longing sweetened by the company of God...
And then God - the great eternal God - takes Moses' thin-worn, thread-bare little body into His hands - hands into whose hollows you could pour the oceans of the world, hands whose breadth marked off the heavens - and with these enormous and enormously gentle hands, God folds Moses' pale lifeless arms across his chest for burial.
I don't know if God wept at Moses' funeral. I don't know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man's earliest ancestors. I don't know who will bury me -
...Of God, on whose breast old Moses lays his head like John the Beloved would lay his on the Christ's. And God sits there quietly with Moses - for Moses - and lets His little man cry out his last moments of life.
But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet Him again and I lay my head on His breast, and He shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence. ~ Rich Mullins,#NFDB
735:(Songs of the soul delighted at having reached the high state of perfection, the union with God, by way of spiritual negation.) On a darkened night, Anxious, by love inflamed, -- O happy chance! -- Unnoticed, I took flight, My house at last at peace and quiet. Safe, disguised by the night, By the secret ladder I took flight, -- O happy chance! -- Cloaked by darkness, I scaled the height, My house at last at peace and quiet. On that blessed night, In secret, and seen by none, None in sight, I saw with no other guide or light, But the one burning in my heart bright. This guide, this light, Brighter than the midday sun, Led me to the waiting One I knew so well -- my delight! To a place with none in sight. O night! O guide! O night more loving than the dawn! O night that joined The lover with the Beloved; Transformed, the lover into the Beloved drawn! Upon my flowered breast, For him alone kept fair, There he slept, There I caressed, There the cedars gave us air. I drank the turret's cool air, Spreading playfully his hair. And his hand, so serene, Cut my throat. Drained Of senses, I dropped unaware. Lost to myself and yet remaining, Inclined so only the Beloved I spy. All has ceased, all rests, Even my cares, even I; Lost among the lilies, there I die. [2597.jpg] -- from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger
~ Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night
,#NFDB
736:3. To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. Such love cannot seem to be love unless it pretends to seek the good of the one loved. But since it actually cares nothing for the truth, and never considers that it may go astray, it proves itself to be selfish. It does not seek the true advantage of the beloved or even our own. It is not interested in the truth, but only in itself. It proclaims itself content with an apparent good: which is the exercise of love for its own sake, without any consideration of the good or bad effects of loving. When such love exists on the level of bodily passion it is easily recognized for what it is. It is selfish, and, therefore, it is not love. Those whose love does not transcend the desires of their bodies, generally do not even bother to deceive themselves with good motives. They follow their passions. Since they do not deceive themselves, they are more honest, as well as more miserable, than those who pretend to love on a spiritual plane without realizing that their “unselfishness” is only a deception. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
737:The first condition, then, of what is called a selfish love among men is lacking with God. He has no natural necessities, no passion, to compete with His wish for the beloved's welfare; or if there is in Him something which we have to imagine after the analogy of a passion, a want it is there by His own will and for our sakes. And the second condition is lacking too. The real interests of a child may differ from that which his father's affection instinctively demands, because the child is a separate being from the father with a nature which has its own needs and does not exist solely for the father nor find its whole perfection in being loved by him and which the father does not fully understand. But creatures are not thus separate from their Creator, nor can He misunderstand them. The place for which He designs them in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over. When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go, if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
738:A number of terrible things about falling in love make it not worth the time and the effort. But the worst of these is that we can never truly fall in love with a person, but only what we think that person is - more precisely, we fall in love with an image of a person that we create in our minds based on a few inconsequential traits: hair color; bloodline; timbre of voice; preference in music or literature. We are so quick to make a judgment on first sight, and it is so easy for us to decide that the object of our love is unquestionably perfect. And while people can only be human at best, these same fallible humans are more than capable of imagining each other to be infallible gods.
Any relationship we have with another human being is an ongoing process of error correction, altering this image that we see in our mind's eye whenever we lay love-blinded eyes on our beloved. It changes bit by bit until it matches the beloved herself, who is invariably less than perfect, often unworthy of love, and often incapable of giving love. This is why any extended interpersonal relationship other than the most superficial, be it a friendship, a romance, or a tie between father and daughter, must by necessity involve disappointment and pain. When the woman you worship behaves as a human being eventually will, she does not merely disappoint; she commits sacrilege, as if the God we worship were to somehow damn Himself. ~ Dexter Palmer,#NFDB
739:At the beginning we have to learn the art of listening, the art of being present, attentive, and empty. We have to learn to catch the still, small voice of our Beloved, and not interrupt, not ask too many questions. We have to learn to be silent, because listening is born from silence. But the listening of the heart is always an act of love, a coming together, even when nothing is heard. Listening is a wisdom so easily overlooked, because it is feminine, receptive, hidden, and our culture values only what is visible. But Rûmî knew how central a part it plays in our loving, in our wordless relationship with our Beloved:
'Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being, and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you, just to you and for you, without any need for my words or anyone else’s. You are--we all are--the beloved of the Beloved, and in every moment, in every event of your life, the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know. Who can ever explain this miracle? It simply is. Listen and you will discover it every passing moment. Listen, and your whole life will become a conversation in thought and act between you and Him, directly, wordlessly, now and always.'
How can we learn this art of listening? How can we learn to hear what He says? How can we learn to be a part of His silence when nothing is said? How does the heart listen? ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
740:Its All About Choice - The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today. Nevertheless their idea of Hell owed a lot to the sight of fire consuming and the ashes remaining - as well as to their experience of the pain of burns. When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match : a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate. Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye's retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - though not necessarily within arm's reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. (Close your eyes, move round the room and notice how the faculty of touch is like a static, limited form of sight.) We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. - Pg. 8 ~ John Berger, #NFDB
741:These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light —
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing,
so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harbored
a final haven for the stars, and we would find it.
We had no doubt that night’s vagrant wave would stray
towards the shore,
that the heart rocked with sorrow would at last reach its port.
Friends, our blood shaped its own mysterious roads.
When hands tugged at our sleeves, enticing us to stay,
and from wondrous chambers Sirens cried out
with their beguiling arms, with their bare bodies,
our eyes remained fixed on that beckoning Dawn,
forever vivid in her muslins of transparent light.
Our blood was young — what could hold us back?
Now listen to the terrible rampant lie:
Light has forever been severed from the Dark;
our feet, it is heard, are now one with their goal.
See our leaders polish their manner clean of our suffering:
Indeed, we must confess only to bliss;
we must surrender any utterance for the Beloved — all yearning
is outlawed.
But the heart, the eye, the yet deeper heart —
Still ablaze for the Beloved, their turmoil shines.
In the lantern by the road the flame is stalled for news:
Did the morning breeze ever come? Where has it gone?
Night weighs us down, it still weighs us down.
Friends, come away from this false light. Come, we must
search for that promised Dawn. ~ Faiz Ahmad Faiz,#NFDB
742:It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion—as distinct from a transient fit of appetite—that makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires makes promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seems to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity.
Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue. Every experienced adult knows this to be so as regards all erotic passions (except the one he himself is feeling at the moment). We discount the world-without-end pretensions of our friends’ amours easily enough. We know that such things sometimes last—and sometimes don’t. And when they do last, this is not because they promised at the outset to do so. When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people.
If we establish a “right to (sexual) happiness” which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what our passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
743:In the valleys, it was already night, lamps coming on in the mossy, textured loam, the fresh-smelling darkness expanding, unfolding its foliage. The three of them drank Old Monk, watched as the black climbed all the way past their toes and their knees, the cabbage-leafed shadows reaching out and touching them on their cheeks, noses, enveloping their faces. The black climbed over the tops of their heads and on to extinguish Kachenjunga glowing a last brazen pornographic pink... each of them separately remembered how many evenings they'd spent like this... how unimaginable it was that they would soon come to an end. Here Sai had learned how music, alcohol, and friendship together could create a grand civilization. "Nothing so sweet, dear friends -" Uncle Potty would say raising his glass before he drank.
There were concert halls in Europe to which Father Booty would soon return, opera houses where music molded entire audiences into a single grieving or celebrating heart, and where the applause rang like a downpour...
But could they feel as they did here? Hanging over the mountain, hearts half empty-half full, longing for beauty, for innocence that now knows. With passion for the beloved or for the wide world or for worlds beyond this one...
Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was gone now, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance. ~ Kiran Desai,#NFDB
744:WHEN the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 5
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished, 15
Weary with the march of life!
They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more! 20
And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.
With a slow and noiseless footstep 25
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.
And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes, 30
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.
Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 35
Breathing from her lips of air.
Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,#NFDB
745:He approached the great glass barrier dividing the room, and the speaker at the end of the table. "Cyclops?" he whispered, stepping closer, clearing his tight throat, "Cyclops, it's me, Gordon."
The glow in the pearly lens was subdued. But the row of little lights still flashed--a complex pattern that repeated over and over like an urgent message from a distant ship in some lost code--ever, hypnotically, the same.
Gordon felt a frantic dread rise within him, as when, during his boyhood, he had encountered his grandfather lying perfectly still on the porch swing, and feared to find that the beloved old man had died.
The pattern of lights repeated, over and over.
Gordon wondered. How many people would recall, after the hell of the last seventeen years, that the parity displays of a great supercomputer never repeated themselves? Gordon remembered a cyberneticist friend telling him the patterns of light were like snowflakes, none ever the same as any other.
"Cyclops," he said evenly, "Answer me! I demand you answer--in the name of decency! In the name of the United St--"
He stopped. He couldn't bring himself to meet this lie with another. Here, the only living mind he would fool would be himself.
The room was warmer than it had seemed during his interview. He looked for, and found, the little vents through which cool air could be directed at a visitor seated in the guest chair, giving an impression of great cold just beyond the glass wall.
"Dry ice," he muttered, "to fool the citizens of Oz. ~ David Brin,#NFDB
746:Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, “You are my beloved. On you my favor rests,” the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam. The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the beloved of my heavenly Father, “I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear.” As the beloved I can “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.” Having “received without charge,” I can “give without charge.” As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that he heard at the river Jordan and on Mount Tabor can also be heard by me. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
747:need for the soul's spiritualization :::
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 168,#NFDB
748:Brother And Sister
The shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path,
Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky,
Draws towards the downward slope: some sorrow hath
Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares
Along her foot-searched way without knowing why
She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs.
Some day they see, though I have never seen,
The dead moon heaped within the new moon’s arms;
For surely the fragile, fine young thing had been
Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so.
But my heart stands still, as a new, strong dread alarms
Me; might a young girl be heaped with such shadow of woe?
Since Death from the mother moon has pared us down to the quick,
And cast us forth like shorn, thin moons, to travel
An uncharted way among the myriad thick
Strewn stars of silent people, and luminous litter
Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark mice chavel
To nought, diminishing each star’s glitter,
Since Death has delivered us utterly, naked and white,
Since the month of childhood is over, and we stand alone,
Since the beloved, faded moon that set us alight
Is delivered from us and pays no heed though we moan
In sorrow, since we stand in bewilderment, strange
And fearful to sally forth down the sky’s long range.
We may not cry to her still to sustain us here,
We may not hold her shadow back from the dark.
Oh, let us here forget, let us take the sheer
Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark
Of the covenant onwards where she cannot go.
Let us rise and leave her now, she will never know.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
749:M-m-master, when I was on the Quasar I had a paracoita, a doll, you see, a genicon, so beautiful with her great pupils as dark as wells, her i-irises purple like asters or pansies blooming in summer, Master, whole beds of them, I thought, had b-been gathered to make those eyes, that flesh that always felt sun-warmed. Wh-wh-where is she now, my own scopolagna, my poppet? Let h-h-hooks be buried in the hands that took her! Crush them, master, beneath stones. Where has she gone from the lemon-wood box I made for her, where she never slept at all, for she lay with me all night, not in the box, the lemon-wood box where she waited all day, watch-and-watch, Master, smiling when I laid her in so she might smile when I drew her out. How soft her hands were, her little hands. Like d-d-doves. She might have flown with them about the cabin had she not chosen instead to lie with me. W-w-wind their guts about your w-windlass, snuff their eyes into their mouths. Unman them, shave them clean below so their doxies may not know them, their lemans may rebuke them, leave them to the brazen laughter of the brazen mouths of st-st-strumpets. Work your will upon those guilty. Where was their mercy on the innocent? When did they tremble, when weep? What kind of men could do as they have done—thieves, false friends, betrayers, bad shipmates, no shipmates, murderers and kidnappers. W-without you, where are their nightmares, where are their restitutions, so long promised? Where are their abacinations, that shall leave them blind? Where are the defenestrations that shall break their bones, where is the estrapade that shall grind their joints? Where is she, the beloved whom I lost? ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
750:Couplet
Oh Khusrau, the river of love runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns, and one who drowns, gets across.
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise.
If I cannot see her, at least I can think of her, and so be happy;
To light the beggar's hut no candle is better than moonlight.
My heart is a wanderer in love, may it ever remain so.
My life's been rendered miserable in love, may it grow more and more miserable.
People think they are alive because they have soul in them,
But I am alive because I have love in myself,
And I'm a martyr due to the beloved's affliction,
(for, to a lover, nothing is dearer than
the affliction brought forth by the beloved) .
My beloved speaks Turkish, and Turkish I do not know;
How I wish if her tongue would have been in my mouth.
Old age and lovemaking do not go together;
But O Khusrau, you still remain a proof against this reasoning.
If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this
You look sleepless, in whose embrace did you pass the night;
Your intoxicated eye has still the signs of tipsiness.
The dust of your doorstep is just the right thing to apply,
If Surmah (kohl powder) does not show its beauty in the eye!
10
How can her eyes reflect any sympathy, with my night-long wakefulness?
For she herself knows of nothing, in the night, except sleeping.
11
I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul;
So that no one can say hereafter, that you are someone, and me someone else.
~ Amir Khusro,#NFDB
751: ~ glow of the light of daybreak is in your emerald vault, the goblet of the blood of twilight is your blood-measuring bowl
author class:Jalaluddin Rumi
/Farsi & Turkish The glow of the light of daybreak is in your emerald vault, the goblet of the blood of twilight is your blood-measuring bowl. Mile on mile, torrent on torrent come dancing and gliding to the shore of your sea. With all the abstention and aspiration of the moon, the cap falls off the head of the moon when the moon raises its face to gaze upon your height. Every morn the nightingales lament like the heart-forlorn ones to the melodies of those attaining your verdant meadow. The spirits seek vision, the hearts all seek the Beloved; you in whose broad orchard four streams are let flow -- one stream pure water, another honey, the third fresh milk, the fourth your ruby wine. You never give me a chance, you are giving wine upon wine; where is the head, that I may describe the drinking-cup of your wine? Yet who am I? Heaven itself in the round of this heavy bumper finds not a moment's peace from your love and the craving for you. Moon of silver girdle, you have experience of love; heaven, loverhood is apparent in your features. When love is yoked to the heart it wearies of the heart's chatter; heart, be silent! How long this striving and inquiring of yours? The heart said, "I am His reed pipe, I wail as the breath inn me." I said, "Be lamenting now, the slave of whose passion is the soul." We have opened your door; do not desert your companions; in thankfulness for an all-embracing love which has seized you from head to toe. [1494.jpg] -- from Mystical Poems of Rumi: Volume 2, Translated by A. J. Arberry
,#NFDB
752:This, then, is that disguise which the soul says it puts on in the night of faith on the secret ladder; and these are the three colors of it, namely, a certain most fitting disposition for its union with God in its three powers, memory, understanding, and will. Faith blinds the understanding, and empties it of all natural intelligence, and thereby disposes it for union with the divine wisdom. Hope empties the memory and withdraws it from all created things which can possess it; for as St. Paul says, “Hope that is seen is not hope.”17 Thus the memory is withdrawn from all things on which it might dwell in this life, and is fixed on what the soul hopes to possess. Hope in God alone, therefore, purely disposes the memory according to the measure of the emptiness it has wrought for union with Him. 12. Charity in the same way empties the affections and desires of the will of everything that is not God, and fixes them on Him alone. This virtue of charity, then, disposes the will and unites it with God in love. And because these virtues—it being their special work—withdraw the soul from all that is not God, so also do they serve to unite the soul to Him. It is impossible for the soul to attain to the perfection of the love of God unless it journeys, in earnest, in the robes of these three virtues. This disguise, therefore, which the soul assumed when it went forth in order to obtain that which it aimed at, the loving and delightful union with the Beloved, was most necessary and expedient. And it was also a great happiness to have succeeded in thus disguising itself and persevering in it until it obtained the desired end, the union of love, as it declares in the next line. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
753:The Legend of Rainbow Bridge by William N. Britton
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge
When a pet dies who has been especially close to a person here on earth, that pet goes to a Rainbow Bridge.
There are beautiful meadows and grassy hills there for all our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is always plenty of their favorite food to eat, plenty of fresh spring water for them to drink, and every day is filled with sunshine so our little friends are warm and comfortable.
All the pets that had been ill or old are now restored to health and youth.
Those that had been hurt or maimed are now whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days gone by.
The pets we loved are happy and content except for one small thing.
Each one misses someone very special who was left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one of them suddenly stops and looks off into the distant hills.
It is as if they heard a whistle or were given a signal of some kind.
Their eyes are bright and intent.
Their body beings to quiver.
All at once they break away from the group, flying like a deer over the grass, their little legs carrying them faster and faster.
You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you hug and cling to them in joyous reunion, never to be parted again.
Happy kisses rain upon your face.
Your hands once again caress the beloved head.
You look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet so long gone from your life, but never gone from your heart.
Then with your beloved pet by your side, you will cross the Rainbow Bridge together.
Your Sacred Circle is now complete again. ~ Sylvia Browne,#NFDB
754:One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In the same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their lives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion? Humans were so preoccupied with love. They were all desperate to form an attachment to one person they could refer to as their “other half.” It seemed from my reading of literature that being in love meant becoming the beloved’s entire world. The rest of the universe paled into insignificance compared to the lovers. When they were separated, each fell into a melancholy state, and only when they were reunited did their hearts start beating again. Only when they were together could they really see the colors of the world. When they were apart, that color leached away, leaving everything a hazy gray. I lay in bed, wondering about the intensity of this emotion that was so irrational and so irrefutably human. What if a person’s face was so sacred to you it was permanently inscribed in your memory? What if their smell and touch were dearer to you than life itself? Of course, I knew nothing about human love, but the idea had always been intriguing to me. Celestial beings never pretended to understand the intensity of human relationships; but I found it amazing how humans could allow another person to take over their hearts and minds. It was ironic how love could awaken them to the wonders of the universe, while at the same time confine their attention to one another. ~ Alexandra Adornetto, #NFDB
755:The soul then, thus disguised and clad in the vesture of hope, is secure from its second foe, the world, for St. Paul calls hope the helmet of salvation.10 Now a helmet is armor which protects and covers the whole head, and has no opening except in one place, where the eyes may look through. Hope is such a helmet, for it covers all the senses of the head of the soul in such a way that they cannot be lost in worldly things, and leaves no part of them exposed to the arrows of the world. It has one loophole only through which the eyes may look upwards only; this is the ordinary work of hope, to direct the eyes of the soul to God alone; as David says, “My eyes are always to our Lord,”11 looking for succor nowhere else; as he says in another psalm, “As the eyes of the handmaid on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes to our Lord God until He have mercy on us,”12 hoping in Him. 9. The green vesture of hope—for the soul is then ever looking upwards unto God, disregarding all else, and delighting only in Him—is so pleasing to the Beloved that the soul obtains from Him all it hopes for. This is why He tells the soul in the Canticle, “Thou hast wounded My heart in one of thine eyes.”13 It would have been useless for the soul, if it had not put on the green robe of hope in God, to claim such love, for it would not have succeeded, because that which influences the Beloved, and prevails, is persevering hope. It is in the vesture of hope that the soul goes forth disguised in this secret and dark night; seeing that it goes forth so detached from all possession, without any consolations, that it regards nothing, and that its sole anxiety is about God, putting its “mouth in the dust if so be there may be hope” in the words of Jeremiah quoted already.14 10. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
756:Sakhiya Wah Ghar Sabse Nyara,
Jaha Puran Purush Humara
Jaha Nahi Sukh Dukh
Sanch Jhuth Nahi
Pap Na Pun Pasara
Nahin Din Reyn Chand Nahi Suraj,
Bina Jyoti Ujyara
Nahin Tahan Gyan Dhyan
Nahin Jap Tap
Ved Kiteb Na Bani
Karni Dharni Rehni Gehni,
Yeh Sub Jahan Hirani
Ghar Nahin Aghar Na Bahar Bhitar,
Pind Brahmand Kachu Nahin
Panch Tatva Gun Tin Nahin Tahan,
Sakhi Shabd Na Tahin
Mul Na Phul Beli Nahin Bija,
Bina Braksh Phal Sohe,
Oham Soham Ardh Urdh Nahin,
Swasa Lekhan Kou Hai
Jahan Purush Tahwan Kachu Nahin,
Kahe Kabir Hum Jana
Humri Sain Lakhe Jo Koi,
Pawe Pad Nirvana
English Translation
Oh Companion That Abode Is Unmatched,
Where My Complete Beloved Is.
In that Place There Is No Happiness or Unhappiness,
No Truth or Untruth
Neither Sin Nor Virtue.
There Is No Day or Night, No Moon or Sun,
There Is Radiance Without Light.
There Is No Knowledge or Meditation
No Repetition of Mantra or Austerities,
Neither Speech Coming From Vedas or Books.
Doing, Not-Doing, Holding, Leaving
All These Are All Lost Too In This Place.
No Home, No Homeless, Neither Outside or Inside,
Micro and Macrocosm Are Non-Existent.
Five Elemental Constituents and the Trinity Are Both Not There
Witnessing Un-struck Shabad Sound is Also Not There.
No Root or Flower, Neither Branch or Seed,
Without a Tree Fruits are Adorning,
Primordial Om Sound, Breath-Synchronized Soham,
This and That - All Are Absent, The Breath Too Unknown
Where the Beloved Is There is Utterly Nothing
Says Kabir I Have Come To Realize.
Whoever Sees My Indicative Sign
Will Accomplish the Goal of Liberation.
~ Kabir, Abode Of The Beloved
,#NFDB
757:April 4 MORNING “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21 MOURNING Christian! why weepest thou? Art thou mourning over thine own corruptions? Look to thy perfect Lord, and remember, thou art complete in Him; thou art in God’s sight as perfect as if thou hadst never sinned; nay, more than that, the Lord our Righteousness hath put a divine garment upon thee, so that thou hast more than the righteousness of man — thou hast the righteousness of God. O thou who art mourning by reason of inbred sin and depravity, remember, none of thy sins can condemn thee. Thou hast learned to hate sin; but thou hast learned also to know that sin is not thine — it was laid upon Christ’s head. Thy standing is not in thyself — it is in Christ; thine acceptance is not in thyself, but in thy Lord; thou art as much accepted of God to-day, with all thy sinfulness, as thou wilt be when thou standest before His throne, free from all corruption. O, I beseech thee, lay hold on this precious thought, perfection in Christ! For thou art “complete in Him.” With thy Saviour’s garment on, thou art holy as the Holy one. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Christian, let thy heart rejoice, for thou art “accepted in the beloved” — what hast thou to fear? Let thy face ever wear a smile; live near thy Master; live in the suburbs of the Celestial City; for soon, when thy time has come, thou shalt rise up where thy Jesus sits, and reign at His right hand; and all this because the divine Lord “was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
758:Do you remember…(doesn’t that appear in each of my letters?), do you remember that you spoke of how eagerly you experienced that period when for the first time autumn and winter were to meet you not in the city, but among the trees whose happiness you knew, whose spring and summer rang in your earliest memories and were mingled with everything warm and dear and tender and with the infinitely blissful melancholies of summer evenings and of long, yearning nights of spring. You knew just as much of them as of the dear people in your surroundings, among whom also summer and spring, kindness and happiness were dedicated to you and whose influence held sway above your growing up and maturing, and whose other experiences would touch you only by report and rarely like a shot in the wood of which superstitious folk tell for a long time. But now you were to remain out in the country house that was growing lonely and were to see the beloved trees suffer in the rising wind, and were to see how the dense park is torn apart before the windows and becomes spacious and everywhere, even in very deep places, discloses the sky which, with infinite weariness, lets itself rain and strikes with heavy drops on the aging leaves that are dying in touching humility. And you were to see suffering where until now was only rapture and anticipation, and were to learn to endure dying in the very place where the heart of life had beaten most loudly upon yours. And you were to behave like the grownups who all at once may know everything, yes, who become grown up just because of the fact that even the darkest and saddest things do not have to be hidden from them, that one does not cover up the dead when they enter, nor hide those whose faces are sawed and torn by a sharp pain.”
―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf (Sunday, November 18, 1900) ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
759:May 15 MORNING “All that believe are justified.” — Acts 13:39 THE believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts Him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified now? — so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises to celestial harps. The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are to-day accepted in the Beloved, to-day absolved from sin, to-day acquitted at the bar of God. Oh! soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol’s vine which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven; but this is a bough which runneth over the wall. This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutriment with which God supplies us in our journeying to and fro. We are now — even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of His people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
760:January 28 MORNING “Perfect in Christ Jesus.” — Colossians 1:28 DO you not feel in your own soul that perfection is not in you? Does not every day teach you that? Every tear which trickles from your eye, weeps “imperfection;” every sigh which bursts from your heart, cries “imperfection;” every harsh word which proceeds from your lip, mutters “imperfection.” You have too frequently had a view of your own heart to dream for a moment of any perfection in yourself. But amidst this sad consciousness of imperfection, here is comfort for you — you are “perfect in Christ Jesus.” In God’s sight, you are “complete in Him;” even now you are “accepted in the Beloved.” But there is a second perfection, yet to be realized, which is sure to all the seed. Is it not delightful to look forward to the time when every stain of sin shall be removed from the believer, and he shall be presented faultless before the throne, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing? The Church of Christ then will be so pure, that not even the eye of Omniscience will see a spot or blemish in her; so holy and so glorious, that Hart did not go beyond the truth when he said — With my Saviour’s garments on, Holy as the Holy One.” Then shall we know, and taste, and feel the happiness of this vast but short sentence, “Complete in Christ.” Not till then shall we fully comprehend the heights and depths of the salvation of Jesus. Doth not thy heart leap for joy at the thought of it? Black as thou art, thou shalt be white one day; filthy as thou art, thou shalt be clean. Oh, it is a marvellous salvation this! Christ takes a worm and transforms it into an angel; Christ takes a black and deformed thing and makes it clean and matchless in His glory, peerless in His beauty, and fit to be the companion of seraphs. O my soul, stand and admire this blessed truth of perfection in Christ. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
761:We say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that. We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past. And yet. Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living. And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable. We hold our breath, try to imagine what it would be like never to take another and what the departed know now that we don’t. We try to conjure what the life we have left would look like if such knowledge were ours. We try to imagine ourselves kind and expansive and giving, balanced and patient, more honest, more thankful, more peaceful, content with what we have, mindless of what we have not. We imagine ourselves happy. For a moment, we believe we can be. And then, because we can’t help ourselves, we breathe and, breathing, are reminded of the many other things we cannot help. The faith of a moment fades and hope is replaced by the intimate knowledge of our imperfections. Lonely, weeping, we stand with our feet anchored to the ground, watching our better angels fly above us and beyond us to time out of mind, and we mourn. ~ Marie Bostwick, #NFDB
762:When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting.
A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn’t everyone want love?
He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.
Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns—
That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there’d be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.
Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn’t imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.
He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone’s Girlhood.
A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you
but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you’re dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true. ~ Louise Gl ck,#NFDB
763:I wanna hear about yer brothers," Mira said. "Are they all like Lucien?" Charles made a noise of amusement. "Thank God, no. I'm the second oldest, and then there's Gareth. He's the black sheep of the family and leads a group of ne'er do wells who've styled themselves after the Hellfire Club and call themselves the Den of Debauchery. Gareth is irresponsible and dissolute, and Lucien despairs of him ever making anything of himself besides a general public nuisance — but I have rather more faith in him than that." "And what do the villagers call him?" "The Wild One." "He sounds fun," Mira said. "Is he betrothed?" Charles laughed. "No mama in her right mind would want their daughter married to Gareth. His reputation is not undeserved." He leaned back, his elbows sinking into the sand, the sun warming his upturned face. "And then of course there's Andrew, my youngest brother, who aspires to be an inventor and is, according to the last letter I received from him, hoping to construct a flying machine." "A flying machine?" cried both girls in unison. "Yes. A preposterous notion, isn't it? However, I suppose that if anyone can do it, Andrew can. He has a clever brain, and did very well at Oxford." "What's his nickname?" "The Defiant One." "Why?" "Because he is fiery and independent, and is ever at odds with Lucien." There was long silence. And then, softly, Amy said, "And what did the villagers call you, Charles?" Everything stilled inside him. He sat up, feeling a sudden rush of self-loathing and loss. "The Beloved One," he said quietly. Head bent, he picked up a handful of sand, letting it trickle out through his fingers. "Because I always did everything right, always lived up to what everyone expected of me, always succeeded at whatever I put my mind to — and never let anyone down." He turned his face toward the salty breeze. "Until now." Even ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
764:WHAT is wrought in the forge of the living and life--
All things are nought! Ho! fill me the bowl,
For nought is the gear of the world and the strife!
One passion has quickened the heart and the soul,
The Beloved's presence alone they have sought--
Love at least exists; yet if Love were not,
Heart and soul would sink to the common lot--
All things are nought!
Like an empty cup is the fate of each,
That each must fill from Life's mighty flood;
Nought thy toil, though to Paradise gate thou reach,
If Another has filled up thy cup with blood;
Neither shade from the sweet-fruited trees could be bought
By thy praying-oh Cypress of Truth, dost not see
That Sidreh and Tuba were nought, and to thee
All then were nought!
The span of thy life is as five little days,
Brief hours and swift in this halting-place;
Rest softly, ah rest! while the Shadow delays,
For Time's self is nought and the dial's face.
On the lip of Oblivion we linger, and short
Is the way from the Lip to the Mouth where we pass
While the moment is thine, fill, oh Saki, the glass
Ere all is nought!
Consider the rose that breaks into flower,
Neither repines though she fade and die--
The powers of the world endure for an hour,
But nought shall remain of their majesty.
Be not too sure of your crown, you who thought
That virtue was easy and recompense yours;
From the monastery to the wine-tavern doors
The way is nought
What though I, too, have tasted the salt of my tears,
Though I, too, have burnt in the fires of grief,
Shall I cry aloud to unheeding ears?
Mourn and be silent! nought brings relief.
Thou, Hafiz, art praised for the songs thou hast wrought,
But bearing a stained or an honoured name,
The lovers of wine shall make light of thy fame--
All things are nought!
~ Hafiz, Lifes Mighty Flood
,#NFDB
765:The contrast between the two, the sweetness and the badness, wrenches the heart of the lover as such sweetness on its own would not, and the lover shudders all the more at dread of the beloved’s recklessness, for the sake of the sweetness that is there, and the shudder only makes more violent the shuddering that announces love (Phaedrus 251). I do not think, but for that sweetness, the friend of whom I spoke would have become impassioned as he did and he would have recognized that such a one, entirely wanting in the desire to become better than what he knows himself to be, was not worthy of his love. She who signs herself “I Don’t Know How (Or If) to Love Him” repeated the word “exciting” three times. A VBB (and let us remember that there are also, though perhaps they are rarer, VBGs) creates around himself or herself a separate world in which all that happens is exciting, for exciting it must be. Excitement is the air they breathe, and they cannot exist without it. And when they pull others into their world, then these others leave the world of common air and now they breathe the rare air of excitement, which they are not accustomed to, and in their confused state they are more apt to think that the excitement they breathe is the excitement of love. She asks whether she should continue to love her VBB, but I do not think she really loves him, just as he, and this for a certainty, does not love her. For I think even the best man of his day of whom I just wrote did not love that boy as he thought he did. Perhaps if your questioner thinks more on the true nature of the excitement she feels, she will be able to see the wisdom of the course of action that you and I both urge on her, and then she will find the strength to break the spell that her VBB casts upon her. Last, let her think on this, that though love is a profound disturbance, not all profound disturbances are love. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
766:A supreme divine Love is a creative Power and, even though it can exist in itself silent and unchangeable, yet rejoices in external form and expression and is not condemned to be a speechless and bodiless godhead. It has even been said that creation itself was an act of love or at least the building up of a field in which Divine Love could devise its symbols and fulfil itself in act of mutuality and self-giving, and, if not the initial nature of creation, this may well be its ultimate object and motive. It does not so appear now because, even if a Divine Love is there in the world upholding all this evolution of creatures, yet the stuff of life and its action is made up of an egoistic formation, a division, a struggle of life and consciousness to exist and survive in an apparently indifferent, inclement or even hostile world of inanimate and inconscient Matter. In the confusion and obscurity of this struggle all are thrown against each other with a will in each to assert its own existence first and foremost and only secondarily to assert itself in others and very partially for others; for even man's altruism remains essentially egoistic and must be so till the soul finds the secret of the divine Oneness. It is to discover that at its supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up to the extreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the Yoga. All action, all creation must be turned into a form, a symbol of the cult, the adoration, the sacrifice; it must carry something that makes it bear in it the stamp of a dedication, a reception and translation of the Divine Consciousness, a service of the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever possible in the outward body and form of the act; it must be done always in its inward emotion and an intentsity that shows it to be an outflow from the soul towards the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 164,#NFDB
767:Here we should notice a peculiar fact: that there are movements which are both essentially involuntary and yet confined to persons - to creatures with a self-conscious perspective. Smiles and blushes are the two most prominent examples. Milton puts the point finely in Paradise Lost:
for smiles from Reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food.
These physiognomic movements owe their rich intentionality to this involuntary character, for it is this which suggests that they show the other 'as he really is'. Hence they become the pivot and focus of our interpersonal responses, and of no response more than sexual desire. The voluntary smile is not a smile at all, but a kind of grimace which, while it may have its own species of sincerity—as in the smile of Royalty, which as it were pays lip-service to good nature — is not esteemed as an expression of the soul. On the contrary, it is perceived as a mask, which conceals the 'real being' of the person who wears it. Smiling must be understood as a response to another person, to a thought or perception of his presence, and it has its own intentionality. To smile is to smile at something or someone, and hence when we see someone smiling in the street we think of him as 'smiling to himself, meaning that there is some hidden object of his present thought and feeling.
The smile of love is a kind of intimate recognition and acceptance of the other's presence - an involuntary acknowledgement that his existence gives you pleasure.
The smile of the beloved is not flesh, but a kind of stasis in the movement of the flesh. It is a paradigm of 'incarnation': of the other made flesh, and so transforming the flesh in which he is made. Thus the smile of Beatrice conveys her spiritual reality; Dante must be fortified in order to bear it, for to look at it is to look at the sun (Paradiso, XXIII, 47—8): tu hai vedute cose, che possente set fatto a sostener lo riso mio. ~ Roger Scruton,#NFDB
768:April 16 MORNING “The precious blood of Christ.” — 1 Peter 1:19 STANDING at the foot of the cross, we see hands, and feet, and side, all distilling crimson streams of precious blood. It is “precious” because of its redeeming and atoning efficacy. By it the sins of Christ’s people are atoned for; they are redeemed from under the law; they are reconciled to God, made one with Him. Christ’s blood is also “precious” in its cleansing power; it “cleanseth from all sin.” “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Through Jesus’ blood there is not a spot left upon any believer, no wrinkle nor any such thing remains. O precious blood, which makes us clean, removing the stains of abundant iniquity, and permitting us to stand accepted in the Beloved, notwithstanding the many ways in which we have rebelled against our God. The blood of Christ is likewise “precious” in its preserving power. We are safe from the destroying angel under the sprinkled blood. Remember it is God’s seeing the blood which is the true reason for our being spared. Here is comfort for us when the eye of faith is dim, for God’s eye is still the same. The blood of Christ is “precious” also in its sanctifying influence. The same blood which justifies by taking away sin, does in its after-action, quicken the new nature and lead it onward to subdue sin and to follow out the commands of God. There is no motive for holiness so great as that which streams from the veins of Jesus. And “precious,” unspeakably precious, is this blood, because it has an overcoming power. It is written, “They overcame through the blood of the Lamb.” How could they do otherwise? He who fights with the precious blood of Jesus, fights with a weapon which cannot know defeat. The blood of Jesus! sin dies at its presence, death ceases to be death: heaven’s gates are opened. The blood of Jesus! we shall march on, conquering and to conquer, so long as we can trust its power! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
769:Nothing,’ said Kaushalya wistfully. ‘The sun will rise. The birds will chirp and the city will go about its business. The world does not need us, my husband. We need the world. Come, let us go inside and prepare for Bharata’s coronation. Fortunes and misfortunes come and go but life continues.’ The motif of the beloved leaving on a chariot is a recurring one in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ram leaves Ayodhya on his chariot and the people of Ayodhya try to stop him. Krishna leaves Vrindavan on his chariot and the milkmaids of Vrindavan try to stop him by hurling themselves before the chariot. Krishna does not keep his promise to return but Ram does. Unlike the departure of the Buddha that takes place in secret, Ram’s departure is public, with everyone weeping as the beloved is bound by duty to leave. Ram’s stoic calm while leaving the city is what makes him divine in the eyes of most people. He does what no ordinary human can do; he represents the acme of human potential. According to the Kashmiri Ramayana, Dashratha weeps so much that he becomes blind. Guha, the Boatman The chariot stopped when it reached the banks of the river Ganga. ‘Let us rest,’ said Ram. So everyone sat on the ground around the chariot. Slowly, the night’s events began to take their toll. People began to yawn and stretch. No sooner did their heads touch the ground than they fell asleep. Sita saw Ram watching over the people with a mother’s loving gaze. ‘Why don’t you sleep for some time?’ asked Sita. ‘No, the forest awaits.’ As the soft sounds of sleep filled the air, Ram alighted from the chariot and told Sumantra, ‘We will take our leave as they sleep. When they awaken tell the men and women of Ayodhya that if they truly love me, they must return home. I will see you, and them, again in fourteen years. No eclipse lasts forever.’ Ram walked upriver. Sita and Lakshman followed him. Sumantra watched them disappear into the bushes. The sky was red by the time they reached a village of fisherfolk; the sun would soon be up. ‘Guha,’ Ram ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
770:Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more comprehensive explanation, which includes that of Westermarck. When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples, called ‘obsessive reproaches’ which raises the question whether she herself has not been guilty through carelessness or neglect, of the death of the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt can put an end to the torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings of this affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justified and therefore are immune to refutation or objections. Not that the mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but still there was something in her, a wish of which she herself was unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, and which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong enough. The reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person, indeed it represents the classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of human emotions. There is always more or less of this ambivalence in everybody’s disposition; normally it is not strong enough to give rise to the obsessive reproaches we have described. But where there is abundant predisposition for it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we love most, precisely where you would least expect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis which we have so often taken for comparison with taboo problems, is distinguished by a particularly high degree of this original ambivalence of emotions. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
771:fear of death.” Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more comprehensive explanation, which includes that of Westermarck. When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples, called ‘obsessive reproaches’ which raises the question whether she herself has not been guilty through carelessness or neglect, of the death of the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt can put an end to the torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings of this affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justified and therefore are immune to refutation or objections. Not that the mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but still there was something in her, a wish of which she herself was unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, and which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong enough. The reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person, indeed it represents the classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of human emotions. There is always more or less of this ambivalence in everybody’s disposition; normally it is not strong enough to give rise to the obsessive reproaches we have described. But where there is abundant predisposition for it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we love most, precisely where you would least expect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis which we have so often taken for comparison with taboo problems, is distinguished by a particularly high degree of this original ambivalence of emotions. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
772:Will’s fleshy face contorted and a memory swept over him like a chilling wind. He did
not move slowly over the past, it was all there in one flash, all of the years, a picture, a feeling and a despair, all stopped the way a fast camera stops the world. There was the flashing Samuel, beautiful as dawn with a fancy like a swallow’s flight, and the brilliant, brooding Tom who was dark fire, Una who rode the storms, and the lovely Mollie, Dessie of laughter, George handsome and with a sweetness that filled a room like the perfume of flowers, and there was Joe, the youngest, the beloved. Each one without effort brought some gift into the family.
Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering. He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self-destruction. He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had—care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn’t even know they needed him. He had the ability to get money and to keep it. He thought the Hamiltons despised him for his one ability. He had loved them doggedly, had always been at hand with his money to pull them out of their errors. He thought they were ashamed of him, and he fought bitterly for their recognition. All of this was in the frozen wind that blew through him.
His slightly bulging eyes were damp as he stared past Cal, and the boy asked, “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? Don’t you feel well?”
Will had sensed his family but he had not understood them. And they had accepted him without knowing there was anything to understand. And now this boy came along. Will understood him, felt him, sensed him, recognized him. This was the son he should have had, or the brother, or the father. And the cold wind of memory changed to a warmth toward Cal which gripped him in the stomach and pushed up against his lungs. ~ John Steinbeck,#NFDB
773:Our feast, our wedding
Will be auspicious to the world.
God fit the feast and wedding
To our length like a proper garment.
Venus and the moon
Will be matched to each other,
The parrot with sugar.
The most beautifully-faced Beloved
Makes a different kind of wedding every night.
With the favor of our Sultan's prosperity,
Hearts become spacious
And men pair up with each other.
Troubles and anxieties are all gone.
Here tonight, You go again
To the wedding and feasting.
O beauty who adorned our city,
You will be groom to the beauties.
How nicely You walk in our neighborhood,
Coming to us so beautifully.
O our river, O One
Who is searching for us,
How nicely You flow in our stream.
How nicely You flow with our desires,
Unfastening the binding of our feet.
You make us walk so nicely, holding our hand,
O Joseph of our world.
Cruelty suits You well.
It's a mistake for us to expect Your loyalty.
Step as You wish on our bloody Soul.
O Soul of my Soul, pull our Souls
To our Beloved's temple.
Take this piece of bone.
Give it as a gift to our Huma*.
O wise ones, give thanks
To our Sultan's kindness, who adds Souls to Soul,
Keep dancing, O considerate ones.
Keep whirling and dancing.
At the wedding night of rose and Nasrin*
I hang the drum on my neck.
Tonight, the tambourine and small drum
Will become our clothes.
Be silent! Venus becomes the Cupbearer tonight
And offers glasses to our sweetheart,
Whose skin is fair and rosy,
Who takes a glass and drinks.
For the sake of God, because of our praying,
Now Sufis become exuberant
At the assembly of God's Absence.
They put the belt of zeal on their waists
And start Sama'*.
One group of people froth like the sea,
Prostrating like waves.
The other group battles like swords,
Drinking the blood of our glasses.
Be silent! Tonight, the Sultan
Went to the kitchen.
He is cooking with joy.
But a most unusual thing,
Tonight, the Beloved is cooking our Halva ~ Rumi,#NFDB
774:The mystic knows that the essence of prayer is the hidden secret, “I am He whom I love, He whom I love is me.” In the deepest prayer of the heart there is only oneness, for when the heart is open and looks towards God, He reveals His unity. In this state of prayer there are a merging and melting that transcend the mind and its notions of duality: the heart overwhelms us with His presence which obliterates any sense of our own self.
These moments of prayer are moments of union in which the lover is lost. The lover has stepped from the shore of his own being into the limitless ocean of the Beloved.
(...)
When love reveals its real nature we come to know that there is neither lover nor Beloved. There is no one to pray and no one to pray to. We do not even know that we are lost; we return from these states of merging only knowing that we gave ourself and were taken. Our gift of ourself was accepted so completely that we knew nothing. We looked towards Him and He took us in His arms, embraced us in oneness, dissolved us in nearness. For so many years we cried to Him, we called to Him, and when He came the meeting was so intimate that we knew nothing.
But when we return from this merging of oneness,
when the mind again surrounds us, we can see the footprints that led us to this shore, to the place where the two worlds meet. We can tell stories of the journey that led us to the edge of the heart’s infinite ocean, of the nights we called to Him, and the tears we cried in our calling. For so many years our need was all that we knew, a need born of the despair of separation, the deepest despair known to the soul.
This need was our first prayer, planted in the soul by Him who loves us, who wants us for Himself. This need of the soul is the bond of love, the mystic’s pledge to remember Him. The awakening of this remembrance is the knowledge of our forgetfulness, the knowledge of separation. The lover is made to know that she is separate from her Beloved, that she has forgotten Him. Awakening to this knowledge, the lover brings into consciousness the soul’s need to return Home, to journey from separation to union. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee,#NFDB
775:From the Greek of Bion.
I mourn Adonis deadloveliest Adonis--
Dead, dead Adonis--and the Loves lament.
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof--
Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown
Of Death,--'tis Misery calls,--for he is dead.
The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,
His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce
Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.
The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy limbs,
His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,
The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there
That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.
A deep, deep wound Adonis...
A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
See, his beloved dogs are gathering round--
The Oread nymphs are weeping--Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled--the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.
Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on
Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,
Her love, her husband, calls--the purple blood
From his struck thigh stains her white navel now,
Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.
Alas for Cythereathe Loves mourn--
The lovely, the beloved is gone!--and now
Her sacred beauty vanishes away.
For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair--
Alas! her loveliness is dead with him.
The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!
The springs their waters change to tears and weep--
The flowers are withered up with grief...
Ai! ai! ... Adonis is dead
Echo resounds ... Adonis dead.
Who will weep not thy dreadful woe. O Venus?
Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound
Of her Adonissaw the life-blood flow
From his fair thigh, now wasting,wailing loud
She clasped him, and cried ... 'Stay, Adonis!
Stay, dearest one,...
and mix my lips with thine--
Wake yet a while, Adonisoh, but once,
That I may kiss thee now for the last time--
But for as long as one short kiss may live--
Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul
Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck
That...'
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragment Of The Elegy On The Death Of Adonis
,#NFDB
776:Most such criticism and confrontation, usually made impulsively in anger or annoyance, does more to increase the amount of confusion in the world than the amount of enlightenment. For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confrontation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one’s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person. (I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person, valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, “I am right, you are wrong; I know better than you what is good for you.” But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved’s own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership. The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves. This self-scrutiny, as objective as possible, is the essence of humility or meekness. In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, “Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
777:Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love. Hence the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself. The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received. 2. Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. It has only one good, that of the beloved, which is, at the same time, my own. Love shares the good with another not by dividing it with him, but by identifying itself with him so that his good becomes my own. The same good is enjoyed in its wholeness by two in one spirit, not halved and shared by two souls. Where love is really disinterested, the lover does not even stop to inquire whether he can safely appropriate for himself some part of the good which he wills for his friend. Love seeks its whole good in the good of the beloved, and to divide that good would be to diminish love. Such a division would not only weaken the action of love, but in doing so would also diminish its joy. For love does not seek a joy that follows from its effect: its joy is in the effect itself, which is the good of the beloved. Consequently, if my love be pure I do not even have to seek for myself the satisfaction of loving. Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
778:First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain. ~ Carson McCullers,#NFDB
779:Some people are naturally solitary. They want to live lone lives, and are content. Most, however, have a need for enduring, close relationships. These provide both a psychic and social framework for personal growth, understanding, and development. It is an easy enough matter to shout to the skies: "I love my fellow men," when on the other hand you ronn no strong, enduring relationship with others. It is easy to claim an equal love for all members of the species, but love itself requires an understanding that at your level of activity is based upon intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know-not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.
To love someone, you must appreciate how that person differs from yourself and from others. You must hold that person in mind so that to some extent love is a kind of meditation-a loving focus upon another individual. Once you experience that kind of love you can translate it into other tenns. The love itself spreads out, expands, so that you can then see others in love's light.
Love is naturally creative and explorative-that is, you want to creatively explore the aspects of the beloved one. Even characteristics that would otherwise appear as mults attain a certain loving significance. They are acceptedseen, and yet they make no difference. Because these are still attributes of the beloved one, even the seeming faults are redeemed. The beloved attains prominence over all others.
The span of a god's love can perhaps equally hold within its vision the existences of all individuals at one time in an infinite loving glance that beholds each person, seeing each with all his or her peculiar characteristics and tendencies. Such a god's glance would delight in each person's difference from each other person. This would not be a blanket love, a soupy porridge of a glance in which individuality melted, but a love based on a full understanding of each individual. The emotion of love brings you closest to an understanding of the nature of All That Is. Love incites dedication, commitment. It specifies. You cannot, therefore, honestly insist that you love humanity and all people equally if you do not love one other person. If you do not love yourself, it is quite difficult to love another. ~ Seth,#NFDB
780:Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis
Prom the Greek of Bion
Published by Forman, "Poetical Works of P. B. S.", 1876.
I mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis—
Dead, dead Adonis—and the Loves lament.
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof—
Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown
Of Death,—'tis Misery calls,—for he is dead.
The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,
His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce
Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.
The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy limbs,
His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,
The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there
That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.
A deep, deep wound Adonis...
A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
See, his beloved dogs are gathering round—
The Oread nymphs are weeping—Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.
Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on
Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,
Her love, her husband, calls—the purple blood
From his struck thigh stains her white navel now,
Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.
Alas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn—
The lovely, the beloved is gone!—and now
Her sacred beauty vanishes away.
For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair—
Alas! her loveliness is dead with him.
The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!
The springs their waters change to tears and weep—
The flowers are withered up with grief...
Ai! ai! ... Adonis is dead
Echo resounds ... Adonis dead.
Who will weep not thy dreadful woe. O Venus?
Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound
Of her Adonis—saw the life-blood flow
From his fair thigh, now wasting,—wailing loud
She clasped him, and cried ... 'Stay, Adonis!
Stay, dearest one,...
and mix my lips with thine—
Wake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once,
That I may kiss thee now for the last time—
But for as long as one short kiss may live—
Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul
Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck
That...'
NOTE:
23 his Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry; her Boscombe manuscript, Forman ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
781:Maybe nostalgia is itself the problem. A Democrat I met in Macon during a conversation we had about the local enthusiasm for Trump told me that “people want to go back to Mayberry”, the setting of the beloved old Andy Griffith Show. (As it happens, the actual model for Mayberry, Mount Airy, a bedraggled town in North Carolina, has gone all in on the Trump revolution, as the Washington Post recently reported.)
Maybe it’s also true, as my liberal friends believe, that what people in this part of the country secretly long to go back to are the days when the Klan was riding high or when Quantrill was terrorizing the people of neighboring Kansas, or when Dred Scott was losing his famous court case. For sure, there is a streak of that ugly sentiment in the Trump phenomenon.
But I want to suggest something different: that the nostalgic urge does not necessarily have to be a reactionary one. There is nothing un-progressive about wanting your town to thrive, about recognizing that it isn’t thriving today, about figuring out that the mid-century, liberal way worked better.
For me, at least, that is how nostalgia unfolds. When I drive around this part of the country, I always do so with a WPA guidebook in hand, the better to help me locate the architectural achievements of the Roosevelt years. I used to patronize a list of restaurants supposedly favored by Harry Truman (they are slowly disappearing).
And these days, as I pass Trump sign after Trump sign, I wonder what has made so many of Truman’s people cast their lot with this blustering would-be caudillo.
Maybe what I’m pining for is a liberal Magic Kingdom, a non-racist midwest where things function again. For a countryside dotted with small towns where the business district has reasonable job-creating businesses in it, taverns too.
For a state where the giant chain stores haven’t succeeded in putting everyone out of business. For an economy where workers can form unions and buy new cars every couple of years, where farmers enjoy the protection of the laws, and where corporate management has not been permitted to use every trick available to them to drive down wages and play desperate cities off one against the other.
Maybe it’s just an impossible utopia, a shimmering Mayberry dream. But somehow I don’t think so. ~ Thomas Frank,#NFDB
782:To The Beloved
Beauty beloved, who hast my heart inspired,
Seen from afar, or with thy face concealed,
Save, when in visions of the night revealed,
Or seen in daydreams bright,
When all the fields are filled with light,
And Nature's smile is sweet,
Say, hast thou blessed
Some golden age of innocence,
And floatest, now, a shadow, o'er the earth?
Or hath Fate's envious doom
Reserved thee for some happier day to come?
To see thee e'er alive,
No hope remains to me;
Unless perchance, when from this body free,
My wandering spirit, lone,
O'er some new path, to some new world hath flown.
E'en here, at first, I, at the dawn
Of this, my day, so dreary and forlorn,
Sought thee, to guide me on my weary way:
But none on earth resembles thee. E'en if
One were in looks and acts and words thy peer,
Though like thee, she less lovely would appear.
Amidst the deepest grief
That fate hath e'er to human lot assigned,
Could one but love thee on this earth,
Alive, and such as my thought painteth thee,
He would be happy in his misery:
And I most clearly see, how, still,
As in my earliest days,
Thy love would make me cling to virtue's ways.
Unto _my_ grief heaven hath no comfort brought;
And yet with thee, this mortal life would seem
Like that in heaven, of which we fondly dream.
Along the valleys where is heard
The song of the laborious husbandman,
And where I sit and moan
138
O'er youth's illusions gone;
Along the hills, where I recall with tears,
The vanished joys and hopes of earlier years,
At thought of thee, my heart revives again.
O could I still thy image dear retain,
In this dark age, and in this baleful air!
To loss of thee, O let me be resigned,
And in thy image still some comfort find!
If thou art one of those
Ideas eternal, which the Eternal Mind
Refused in earthly form to clothe,
Nor would subject unto the pain and strife
Of this, our frail and dreary life;
Or if thou hast a mansion fair,
Amid the boundless realms of space,
That lighted is by a more genial sun,
And breathest there a more benignant air;
From here, where brief and wretched are our days,
Receive thy humble lover's hymn of praise!
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
783:Her Going
The Wife
Child, why do you linger beside her portal?
None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor*
All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage.
None shall behold you.
Truth
Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady!
I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her.
Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely
Shared in her fleetness!
Tell me her going.
The Wife
You are a child. How tell you?
Truth
I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow.
Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman.
I own the ages.
The Wife
Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling.
She awoke, departing, they say, in silence.
I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens.
Hate is upon me.
It was hard to live down the day, and wonder,
Wonder why the tears were forever welling,
Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted
Turning to claim him.
Truth
Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered,
Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice.
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow?
Who shal1 uphold her?
The Wife
It was hard to know that peace had forsaken
All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor
Babe or book, so to forget a moment
I was forgotten.
Truth
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow,
Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers,
Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn?
Ah, the beloved!
The Wife
Go, go, bringer of ache and discord!
Truth
Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me.
Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment
Rises forever.
The Wife
Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold,
Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter.
Truth
Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman.
The Wife
Sharp tongue, have pity! . . .
Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all.
I said in my heart: 'Time shall bring buds to blossom.'
I almost saw the flower of the flame descending.
Then she came toying.
He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages!
Mine, mine, mine yes, body and spirit!
I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow.
Hate is upon me.
Oh, the bar over which my soul would see
All that eludes my soul, while he remembers!
You, dispel if you can my avenging passion
Clouds are before me!
~ Eleanor Agnes Lee,#NFDB
784:1
One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked: “Who is there?” He answered: “It is I.”
The voice said: “There is no room here for me and thee.”
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation
this man returned to the door of the Beloved.
He knocked.
A voice from within asked: “Who is there?”
The man said: “It is Thou.”
The door was opened for him.
2
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
they’re in each other all along.
3
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
4
When your chest is free of your limiting ego,
Then you will see the ageless Beloved.
You can not see yourself without a mirror;
Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror.
5
Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky
And you lift me up out of the two worlds.
I want your sun to reach my raindrops,
So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.
6
There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled.
In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be
stitched.
O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning
fire of love–
Love comes of its own free will, it can’t be learned
in any school.
7
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
785:the ways of the Bhakta and man of Knowledge :::
In the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or another of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted into inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of the heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to the activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind's thirst for knowledge. All the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He has no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The man of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in the mind's inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of Nature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions, deaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, -- the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and leave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their demands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing world are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of inner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the only chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration. 76-77,#NFDB
786:The Morning Sun
Far from the ignoble strife of Man's tavern you are
The wine-cup adorning the sky's assemblage you are
The jewel which should be the pearl of the morning's bride's ear you are
The ornament which would be the pride of horizon's forehead you are
The blot of night's ink from time's page has been removed!
The star from sky like a spurious picture has been removed!
When from the roof of the sky your beauty appears
Effect of sleep's wine suddenly from eyes disappears
Perception's expanse gets filled with light
Though opens only the material eye your light
The spectacle which the eyes seek is desired
The effulgence which would open the insight is desired
The desires for freedom were not fulfilled in this life
We remained imprisoned in chains of dependence all life
The high and the low are alike for your eye
I too have longing for such a discerning eye
May my eye shedding tears in sympathy for others' woes be!
May my heart free from the prejudice of nation and customs be!
May my tongue be not bound with discrimination of color
May mankind be my nation, the whole world my country be
May secret of Nature's organization clear to my insight be
May smoke of my imagination's candle rising to the sky be
May search for secrets of opposites not make me restless!
May the Love-creating Beauty in everything appear to me!
If the rose petals get damaged by the breeze
May its pain dropping from my eye as a tear be
54
May the heart contain that little spark of Love's fire
The light of which may contain the secret of the Truth
May my heart not mine but the Beloved's mirror be!
May no thought in my mind except human sympathy be!
If you cannot endure the hardships of the tumultuous world
O the Great Luminary that is not the mark of greatness!
As you are not aware of your world-decorating beauty
You cannot be equal to a speck of dust at the Man's door!
The light of Man eager for the Spectacle ever remained
And you obligated to the tomorrow's morning ever remained
Longing for the Light of the Truth is only in our hearts
Abode of Lailah of desire for search is only in this litter
Opening of the difficult knot, Oh what a pleasure it is!
The pleasure of universal gain in our endless effort is!
Your bosom is unacquainted with the pain of investigation
You are not familiar with searching of the secrets of Nature
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
787:When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.
When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"
When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.
Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?
When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.
They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.
One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.
When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes. ~ David Lehman,#NFDB
788:English Gingerbread Cake Serves: 12 to 16 Baking Time: 50 to 60 minutes Kyle Cathie, editor for the British version of The Cake Bible (and now a publisher), informed me in no uncertain terms that a book could not be called a cake "bible" in England if it did not contain the beloved gingerbread cake. When I went to England to retest all the cakes using British flour and ingredients, I developed this gingerbread recipe. Now that I have tasted it, I quite agree with Kyle. It is a moist spicy cake with an intriguing blend of buttery, lemony, wheaty, and treacly flavors. Cut into squares and decorated with pumpkin faces, it makes a delightful "treat" for Halloween. Batter Volume Ounce Gram unsalted butter (65° to 75°F/19° to 23°C) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) 4 113 golden syrup or light corn syrup 1¼ cups (10 fluid ounces) 15 425 dark brown sugar, preferably Muscovado ¼ cup, firmly packed 2 60 orange marmalade 1 heaping tablespoon 1.5 40 2 large eggs, at room temperature ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 fluid ounces) 3.5 100 milk 2/3 cup (5.3 fluid ounces) 5.6 160 cake flour (or bleached all-purpose flour) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (or 1 cup), sifted into the cup and leveled off 4 115 whole wheat flour 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon (lightly spooned into the cup) 4 115 baking powder 1½ teaspoons . . cinnamon 1 teaspoon . . ground ginger 1 teaspoon . . baking soda ½ teaspoon . . salt pinch . . Special Equipment One 8 by 2-inch square cake pan or 9 by 2-inch round pan (see Note), wrapped with a cake strip, bottom coated with shortening, topped with a parchment square (or round), then coated with baking spray with flour Preheat the Oven Twenty minutes or more before baking, set an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C. Mix the Liquid Ingredients In a small heavy saucepan, stir together the butter, golden syrup, sugar, and marmalade over medium-low heat until melted and uniform in color. Set aside uncovered until just barely warm, about 10 minutes. Whisk in the eggs and milk. Make the Batter In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter mixture, stirring with a large silicone spatula or spoon just until smooth and the consistency of thick soup. Using the silicone spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the Cake Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven. Cool the Cake Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. While the cake is cooling, make the syrup. ~ Rose Levy Beranbaum, #NFDB
789:On the two kinds of certainty of eternal life. In this life there are two kinds of certainty concerning the life which is eternal: the one consists in those occasions when God tells us of it either himself or through an angel or special revelation, although this happens rarely and only to a few. The other kind of knowledge is better and more beneficial and falls frequently to those whose love is perfect. This happens to those whose love for and intimacy with their God is so great that they trust him completely and are so sure of him that they can no longer have any doubts, their certainty being founded on their love for him in all creatures without distinction. And if all creatures were to reject and abjure him, even if God himself were to do so, then they would not cease to trust, for love is not capable of mistrust but can only trust all that is good. And there is no need for anything to be said to either the lover or the beloved, for as soon as God senses that this person is his friend, he immediately knows all that is good for them and that belongs to their well-being. For however devoted you are to him, you may be sure that he is immeasurably more devoted to you and has incomparably more faith in you. For he is faithfulness itself – of this we can be certain as those who love him are certain. This type of certainty is far greater, more perfect and true than the other and it cannot deceive us, while the first kind can be deceptive and can easily be an illusion. Indeed, the second type is experienced in all the faculties of our soul and cannot deceive those who truly love God; indeed they no more doubt it than they doubt God himself, for love drives out all fear. ‘Love knows no fear’ as St John12 (1 John 4:18) says, and it is also written: ‘Love covers a multitude of sins’ (1 Peter 4:8). For where there is sin, there can be neither complete trust nor love, since love completely covers over sins and knows nothing of them. Not in such a way as if we had not sinned, but rather it wipes them away and drives them out, as if they had never existed. For all God’s works are so utterly perfect and overflowing that whoever he forgives, he forgives totally and absolutely, preferring to forgive big sins rather than little ones, all of which creates perfect trust. I hold this kind of knowledge to be incomparably better, more rewarding and more authentic than the other, since neither sin nor anything else can obstruct it. For when God finds people in the same degree of love, then he judges them in the same way, regardless of whether they have sinned greatly or not at all. But those to whom more is forgiven, should have a greater love, as our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘They to whom more is forgiven must love more’ (Luke 7:47). ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
790:It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly those whom psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant, traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and unnurturing. Such people feel their boundaries to be protecting and comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escapetemporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more!
In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt away into the darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love is essentially the same as the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to be king of the family and the world with power unlimited.
Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving. ~ M Scott Peck,#NFDB
791:When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian! ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
792:You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him--the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints--is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual--but it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours-- ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
793:As everyone knows, Islam set up a social order from the outset, in contrast, for example, to Christianity. Islamic social teachings are so basic to the religion that still today many people, including Muslims, are completely unaware of Islam's spiritual dimensions. Social order demands rules and regulations, fear of the king, respect for the police, acknowledgement of authority. It has to be set up on the basis of God's majesty and severity. It pays primary attention to the external realm, the realm of the body and the desires of the lower soul, the realm where God is distant from the world. In contrast, Islamic spiritual teachings allow for intimacy, love, boldness, ecstatic expressions, and intoxication in the Beloved. All these are qualities that pertain to nearness to God. (...) In short, on the social level, Islam affirms the primacy of God as King, Majestic, Lord, Ruler. It establishes a theological patriarchy even if Muslim theologians refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God. God is yang, while the world, human beings, and society are yin. Thereby order is established and maintained. Awe and distance are the ruling qualities. On the spiritual level, the picture is different. In this domain many Muslim authorities affirm the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving. Here they establish a spiritual matriarchy, though again such terms are not employed. God is yin and human beings are yang. Human spiritual aspiration is accepted and welcomed by God. Intimacy and nearness are the ruling qualities. This helps explain why one can easily find positive evaluations of women and the feminine dimension of things in Sufism.
(...) Again, this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level, since it undermines the authority of the law. If we take in isolation the Koranic statement, "Despair not of God's mercy surely God forgives all sins" (39:53), then we can throw the Sharia out the window. In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. Freedom, lack of limitation and constraint, bold expansivenessis achieved only by moving toward God, not by rebelling against Him and moving away.
Attar (d. 618/1221) makes the same point more explicitly in an anecdote he tells about the great Sufi shaykh, Abu'l- Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1033): It is related that one night the Shaykh was busy with prayer. He heard a voice saying, "Beware, Abu'l-Hasan! Do you want me to tell people what I know about you so that they will stone you to death?" The Shaykh replied, "O God the Creator! Do You want me to tell the people what I know about Your mercy and what I see of Your generosity? Then no one will prostrate himself to You." A voice came, "You keep quiet, and so will I."
Sufism is concerned with "maintaining the secret" (hifz al-sirr) for more reasons than one. The secret of God's mercy threatens the plain fact of His wrath. If "She" came out of the closet, "He" would be overthrown. But then She could not be found, for it is He who shows the way to Her door. ~ Sachiko Murata,#NFDB
794:Pain wrung his heart. So, then, it was to be the same in death as it had always been in life. He concealed the bitter ache, pretending to laugh at something Chilcot was going on about. It was inevitable that during all those years they were growing up, people had compared him and Charles with each other. After all, they'd both been so close in age, so similar in looks and build. But in the eyes of those adults around them — adults who behaved as though neither child had ears nor feelings — Charles had been the golden boy — the Beloved One. Gareth's carefree, devil-may-care nature had never stood a chance against Charles's serious-minded ambition, his dogged pursuit of perfection at whatever he did. It was Charles who had the keener wit, the better brain, the more serious mind. It was Charles who'd make a magnificent MP or glittering ambassador in some faraway post, Charles who was a credit to his family, Charles, Charles, Charles — while he, Gareth ... well, God and the devil only knew what would become of poor Gareth. Charles had never been one to gloat or rub it in. Indeed, he'd resented the inevitable comparisons far more than Gareth, who laughingly pretended to accept them and then did his best to live down to what people expected of him. And why not? He had nothing to prove, no expectations to aspire to. Besides, he hadn't envied Charles. Not really. While Charles had been groomed to succeed to the dukedom should Lucien die without issue, he, Gareth, had been having the time of his life — running wild over Berkshire, over Eton, and most recently, over Oxford. Never in his twenty-three years, had he allowed himself to feel any envy or resentment toward his perfect, incomparable older brother. Until now — when he found himself wanting the one thing Charles had owned that he himself did not have: the love of Juliet Paige. He looked at her now, standing off by herself with her head bent over Charlotte as she tried to soothe her. The child was screaming loudly enough to make the dead throw off their tombstones and rise up in protest, but her mother remained calm, holding the little girl against her bosom and patting her back. Gareth watched them, feeling excluded. Charles's bride. Charles's daughter. God help me. He knew he was staring at them with the desperation of one confined to hell and looking wistfully toward heaven. He thought of his wife's face when he'd taken Charles's ring off and put it on her other finger, the guilty gratitude in her eyes at this noble act of generosity that had cost him so little but had obviously meant so much to her. What could he do to deserve such a look of unabashed worship again? Why, she was looking at me as she must have looked at Charles. She still loved his brother. Everyone had loved his brother. He could only wonder what it might take to make her love him. But it's not me she wants. It's him. 'Sdeath. I could never compete with Charles when he was alive. How can I compete with him now? Lucien's cold judgment of the previous morning rang in his head: You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. He took a deep breath, and stared up through the great stained glass windows. You are an embarrassment to this family — and especially to me. He was second-best. Second choice. Perry ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
795:Ode to the Beloved’s Hips"
Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered
percussion in the morning—are the morning.
Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little
longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me—
I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock
right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb
chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna.
How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed
Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur.
My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena,
ecstatic devourer.
O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped
the amber—fast honey—from their openness—
Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked
smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa
coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire
to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet-
dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond—
to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue—
come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips,
I am—strummed-song and succubus.
They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book—
the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel.
Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays,
Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray.
Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera.
Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle:
What do I see? Hips:
Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone.
Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread,
wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be:
Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel.
Bone basin bone throne bone lamp.
Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery—
slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade
in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me
to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit,
laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God,
I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth
for pear upon apple upon fig.
More than all that are your hips.
They are a city. They are Kingdom—
Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire—
thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth.
Beloved, your hips are the war.
At night your legs, love, are boulevards
leading me beggared and hungry to your candy
house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late
and the tables have been cleared,
in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake.
O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve,
a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are
kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning
comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon,
let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me
circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming
for your dark matter.
Along las calles de tus muslos I wander—
follow the parade of pulse like a drum line—
descend into your Plaza del Toros—
hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros.
Your arched hips—ay, mi torera.
Down the long corridor, your wet walls
lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed.
I am the animal born to rush your rich red
muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan,
a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner
thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre
Manolete—press and part you like a wound—
make the crowd pounding in the grandstand
of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer. ~ Natalie D az,#NFDB
796:The Candle
O Candle! I am also an afflicted person in the world assembly
Constant complaint is my lot in the manner of the rue
Love gave the warmth of internal pathos to you
It made me the florist selling blood-mixed tears
Whether you be the candle of a celebrating assembly or one at the grave
In every condition associated with the tears of sorrow you remain
Your eye views all with equity like the Secret's Lovers
My eye is the pride of the tumult of discrimination
Your illumination is alike in the Ka'bah and the temple
I am entangled in the temple and the Haram's discrimination
Your black smoke contains the sigh's elegance
Is some heart hidden in the place of your manifestation?
You burn with pathos due to distance from Tajalli's Light
Your pathos the callous ones consider your light
Though you are burning you are unaware of it all
You see but do not encompass the internal pathos
I quiver like mercury with the excitement of vexation
As well I am aware of vexations of the restless heart
This was also the elegance of some Beloved
Which gave me perception of my own pathos
This cognition of mine keeps me restless
Innumerable fire temples are asleep in this spark
Discrimination between high and low is created by this alone!
Fragrance in flower, ecstasy in wine is created by this alone!
Garden, nightingale, flower, fragrance this Cognition is
41
Root of the struggle of ‘I and you' this Cognition is
At creation's dawn as Beauty became the abode of Love
The sound of "Kun" taught warmth to the spirit of Love
The command came Beauty of Kun's garden to witness
With one eye a thousand dreadful dreams to witness
Do not ask me of the nature of the veil of being
The eve of separation was the dawn of my being
Gone are the days when unaware of imprisonment I was
That my abode the adornment of the tree of Tur was
I am a prisoner but consider the cage to be a garden
This exile's hovel of sorrow I consider the homeland
Memories of the homeland a needless melancholy became
Now the desire for sight, now Longing for search became
O Candle! Look at the excessive illusion of thought
Look at the end of the one worshipped by celestial denizens
Theme of separation I am, the exalted one I am
Design of the Will of the Universe's Lord I am
He desired my display as He designed me
When at the head of Existence' Divan He wrote me
The pearl likes living in a handful of dust
Style may be dull the subject is excellent
Not seeing it rightly is the fault of shortsighted perception
The universe is the show of effulgence of taste for Cognizance
This network of time and space is the scaling ladder of the Universe
It is the necklace of the neck of Eternal BeautyI
have lost the way, Longing for the goal I am
O Candle! Captive of perception's illusion I am
I am the hunter as well as the circle of tyranny's net!
I am the Haram's roof as well as the bird on Haram's roofAm I the Beauty or
head to foot the melting love am I?
42
It is not clear whether the beloved or the Lover am I?
am afraid the old secret may come up to my lips again
Lest story of suffering on the Cross may come up again.
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
797:I'M Going Together With Jogi
Going to Makkah is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of prayers are offered
Going to River Ganges is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of cleansing (Baptisms) are done
Going to Gaya is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of worships are done
~ Bulleh Shah
the ultimate is
When the "I" is removed from the heart
[He] Read a lot and became a scholar
But [he] never read himself
[He] goes enters into the temple & mosque
But [he] never entered into his own heart
He fights with the devil every day for nothing
He never wrestled with his own ego
~ Bulleh Shah
he grabs for heavenly flying things
But doesn't grasp the one who's sitting at home
Religious scholars stay awake at night
But dogs stay awake at night, higher than you
They don't cease from barking at night
Then they go sleep in yards, higher than you
They [dogs] don't leave the beloved's doorstep
Even if they're beaten hundreds of times, higher than you
~ Bulleh Shah
get up and make up with the beloved
Otherwise dogs will win the contest, better than you
O friends, don't call Ranjha a shepherd
I shy away from calling him a shepherd
22
I am like a thousand Heers to him
Who am I, like countless others
He's the ruler of Hazara's throne
And I am forever the plain Heer
~ Bulleh Shah
may God hear my wail
And I'll become shepherded by the Shepherd
Ranjha became a Jogi and arrived
He exchanged into a unique disguise
He changed his name from Ahad (One God) to Ahmad (Prophet Mohammad
PBUH)
I'm going together with Jogi
Someone's with someone else, this one's with that one
I'm together with Jogi
Since I have become Jogi's
I have no "I" left in me
Repeating Ranjha Ranjha
I became Ranjha myself
Call me Ranjha
Nobody call me Heer
It's not me, it's he himself
He amuses his own self
The one with whom I connected my heart
I became just like him, O friends
Jogi is with me
I am with Jogi
I'm going together with Jogi
After putting earrings in my ears
and decorating my forehead with Tilak
Hey he's not [a] Jogi
23
He's some form of God
He's disguised as Jogi
This Jogi has attracted me
This Jogi has established residence in my heart
I swear by the Quran it's true
Jogi is my belief and faith
This Jogi has marked me
Hey I belong to him
Now I'm not worth any one else (Now there's no other Jogi)
I'm floating, I've drifted across, O people
My eyes inter-meshed with Jogi's, O people
Call me Jogi's female Jogi
Heer is dead, O people
In Khayrray they have deep talks
I have to listen to accusations about
I don't know anything about anyone else
If I know anything, I only know Jogi
No one has attained what he has attained
His shadow is on both worlds
His fame is celebrated in both world
His shoes were kissed by Heaven
This Jogi is full of wonders
In his hand is the rosary of "There is Nothing But One God"
Hey, his name is [Mohammad] "The One With The Shawl"
If Jogi comes to my home
All your fights will end
I will embrace him
And celebrate a million praises
24
~ Bulleh Shah
a Jogi came
To our door….(…? …)
He stole away Heer of Sayal
He came in a disguise
~ Bulleh Shah,#NFDB
798:September
Now hath the summer reached her golden close,
And, lost amid her corn-fields, bright of soul,
Scarcely perceives from her divine repose
How near, how swift, the inevitable goal:
Still, still, she smiles, though from her careless feet
The bounty and the fruitful strength are gone,
And through the soft long wondering days goes on
The silent sere decadence sad and sweet.
The kingbird and the pensive thrush are fled,
Children of light, too fearful of the gloom;
The sun falls low, the secret word is said,
The mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb;
Even the fields have lost their sovereign grace,
The cone-flower and the marguerite; and no more,
Across the river's shadow-haunted floor,
The paths of skimming swallows interlace.
Already in the outland wilderness
The forests echo with unwonted dins;
In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press
Northward, and the stern winter's toil begins.
Around the long low shanties, whose rough lines
Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake,
Already in the frost-clear morns awake
The crash and thunder of the falling pines.
Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free,
Naked and yellow from the harvest lies,
By many a loft and busy granary,
The hum and tumult of the thrashers rise;
There the tanned farmers labor without slack,
Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill,
Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will,
Pitching waist-deep upon the dusty stack.
Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass,
Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet
The leaf, the water, the beloved grass;
141
Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat
I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light,
The blue long-shadowed distance, and, between,
The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green,
The dark pine forest and the watchful height.
I see the broad rough meadow stretched away
Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod,
Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray,
Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod;
And yonder, toward the sunlit summit, strewn
With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed,
Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed,
Long silver fleeces shining like the noon.
In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry
Gray shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed
In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie,
Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field
The sleek red horses o'er the sun-warmed ground
Stand pensively about in companies,
While all around them from the motionless trees
The long clean shadows sleep without a sound.
Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream,
Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth
The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream,
A liquid cool elixir-all its girth
Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency,
Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills
The utmost valleys and the thin last hills,
Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.
Thus without grief the golden days go by,
So soft we scarcely notice how they wend,
And like a smile half happy, or a sigh,
The summer passes to her quiet end;
And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves
Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise,
And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise
October with the rain of ruined leaves.
142
~ Archibald Lampman,#NFDB
799:THE WAND
THE Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end; to will to be a thing is to admit that you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing, is to wander still further from it - any will but that to give up the self to the Beloved is Black Magick - yet this surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary. Further, the Self surrendered must not be less than the All-Self; one must not come before the altar of the Most High with an impure or an imperfect offering. As it is written in Liber LXV, "To await Thee is the end, not the beginning."
This training may lead through all sorts of complications, varying according to the nature of the student, and hence it may be necessary for him at any moment to will all sorts of things which to others might seem unconnected with the goal. Thus it is not "a priori" obvious why a billiard player should need a file.
Since, then, we may want "anything," let us see to it that our will is strong enough to obtain anything we want without loss of time.
It is therefore necessary to develop the will to its highest point, even though the last task but one is the total surrender of this will. Partial surrender of an imperfect will is of no account in Magick.
The will being a lever, a fulcrum is necessary; this fulcrum is the main aspiration of the student to attain. All wills which are not dependent upon this principal will are so many leakages; they are like fat to the athlete.
The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon.
How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
Vigilance and courage are obviously required. I was about to add self-denial, in deference to conventional speech; but how could I call that self-denial which is merely denial of those things which hamper the self? It is not suicide to kill the germs of malaria in one's blood.
Now there are very great difficulties to be overcome in the training of the mind. Perhaps the greatest is forgetfulness, which is probably the worst form of what the Buddhists call ignorance. Special practices for training the memory may be of some use as a preliminary for persons whose memory is naturally poor. In any case the Magical Record prescribed for Probationers of the A.'.A.'. is useful and necessary.
Above all the practices of Liber III must be done again and again, for these practices develop not only vigilance but those inhibiting centres in the brain which are, according to some psychologists, the mainspring of the mechanism by which civilized man has raised himself above the savage.
So far it has been spoken, as it were, in the negative. Aaron's rod has become a serpent, and swallowed the serpents of the other Magicians; it is now necessary to turn it once more into a rod.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Wand,#NFDB
800:English version by K. N. Upadhyaya So priceless is the birth, O brother, That in it, the Supreme Lord can be met. The human body is the Door to salvation. If the meeting is not accomplished while alive, If the contact is not made while alive, If the Lord of the universe is not found while alive, Then one is simply drowned. The One who has made this temple of our hearts, He alone dwells in this temple. None else but our Beloved is in our hearts. With thee is thy Friend. Let thyself recognize Him. Look not at a distance. Know Him as thy reflection, O Dadu. God is within all beings. He accompanies all and is close by. Musk is in the musk deer, and yet it goes around smelling grass. The self knows not God, although God is with the self. Being deaf to the Holy Sound of the Master, sadly does he wander. He for whom thou searchest in the world dwells within thyself. Thou knowest Him not, because the veil of 'mine' and 'thine' is there. He dwells within all beings, yet rarely anyone knows Him. He alone who is a devotee of God will know Him. A true Master unites us with God And shows all within the body. Within the body is the Creator, And within the body is Onkar [divinity of the second heaven]. The sky is within the body, and close by Is the earth within the body. Air and light are within the body. So is water contained within the body. Within the body are the Sun and the Moon. And the Bagpipe is played within the body. By rendering service within the heart, See thou the One who is indestructible and boundless, Having no limit either on this end or on that end, sayeth Dadu. After entering within, let one, O Dadu, bolt the doors of the house. Let one, O Dadu, serve the Lord at the Door of Eternity. God is within the self, His worship alone is to be done. Search thou for the Beloved close to the place Wherefrom the Sound emerges, and thou shalt find Him, sayeth Dadu. There is solitude there, and there is luster of Light. One who, turning the attention inward, Brings it within the self, And fixes it on the Radiant Form of the Master, Is indeed wise, O Dadu. Where the self is, there is God; all is filled with Him. Fix thine attention within, O valiant servant. So does Dadu proclaim. Fix thine attention within, and sing always within the self. This mind then dances with ecstasy, and beats with pleasure the rhythm. God is within the self; He is close to the worshipper. But leaving Him aside, men serve external constructions, lamenteth Dadu. This is the true mosque, this is the true temple. So hath the Master shown. The service and worship are performed within. Destroy delusion, O mind, by means of the Name of God and the Word bestowed by the Guru. The mind is then united with the One untouched by karmas. Liquidate thereby thy karmas, O Dadu. If the mind stays with the Name of the Supreme Lord even for a moment, O Dadu, All its karmas will be destroyed then and there, within the twinkling of an eye. The aspirant who fills his pot with drops of Celestial Melody, alone survives. How can he die, O Dadu? He drinks the divine Nectar. The artistic Creator is playing the instrument in perfect harmony. Melody is the essence of the five [elements], and through the self is the Melody expressed, O Dadu. By enabling people to hear the Sound, the Master can awaken them at His will. He may, at His pleasure, speak within them, and merge them in his own form. The knowledge of the Sound Current imparted by the Guru merges one easily into Truth. It carries me to the abode of my Beloved, says Dadu. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Dadu: The Compassionate Mystic, Translated by K. N. Upadhyaya
~ Dadu Dayal, So priceless is the birth, O brother
,#NFDB
801:Memory
I.
Clear water; [stinging] like the salt of a child's tears,
the whiteness of women's bodies attacking the sun;
silken, in masses and pure lily, banners under the walls a maiden defended;
The frolic of angels - No… the current of gold in motion moves its arms,
dark and above all cool, of green. She [the weed] sinks,
and having the blue Heaven for a canopy,
takes for curtains the shade of the hill and of the arch.
II.
Oh! The wet surface stretches out its clear bubbles!
The water covers the made beds with pale and bottomless gold;
[it is as if] the faded green dresses of little girls
[were] playing at willows, out of which leap the unbridled birds.
Purer than a gold louis, yellow warm eyelid, the marsh marigold thy conjugal faith O Spouse! - at noon sharp,
from its dull mirror, envies the rosy beloved
Sphere in the sky wan with heat.
III.
Madame holds herself too erect in the neighbouring meadow
where the threads of [the spider's] toil are snowing down'
parasol in her fingers; crushing the cow-parsley;
too proud for her; children reading
in the flowery greenness; their red morocco book! Alas,
He, like a thousand white angels parting on the roadway,
makes off beyond the mountain!
She, quite cold, and dark, runs!
After the flight of the man!
IV.
Nostalgia for the thick young arms of pure green!
Gold of the April moons in the heart of the hallowed bed!
Joy of the abandoned boat-yards, the prey to the August evenings
which quickened these corruptions!
How she weeps, now, under he ramparts!
The breath of the poplars above is all there is for a breeze.
Then it is the sheet of water without reflections
and without a spring, grey: an old man, a dredger,
93
in his motionless boat, labours.
V.
Plaything of this eye of mournful water, I cannot reach O boat without motion! O too short arms! either this flower or that one: neither the yellow one
which importunes me here; nor the blue one,
the beloved in the ashes water.
Ah! The pollen of willows which a wing shakes!
The roses of the reeds, long since eaten away!
My boat still fast; and its anchor chain taut to the bottom
of this limitless eye of water, - in what slime? --------------What does it matter to us, my heart,
the sheets of blood And of red-hot coals,
and a thousand murders, and long howls Of rage ;
sobbings from every inferno destroying Every (kind of) order ;
and still the North wind across the wreckage ;
And all the vengeance ? Nothing !... But still, yes We desire it ! Industrialists, princes,
senates, Perish ! Power, justice, history : down !
It is our due. Blood ! blood ! the golden flame !
All to war, to vengeance, to terror, My soul !
Let us turn in the wound : Ah !
away with you, Republics of this world !
Of Emperors, Regiments, colonists, peoples, enough !
Who should stir the vortices of furious flames
But we and those whom we imagine brothers ?
It's our turn, romantic friends : we are Going to enjoy it.
Never shall we labour, O fiery waves !
Europe, Asia, America - vanish !
Our march of vengeance has occupied every place,
Cities and countrysides ! - We shall be smashed !
The volcanoes will explode ! And the Ocean, smitten...
Oh ! my friends ! - My heart, it is certain ; they are brothers ;
Dark strangers, if we began ! Come on ! Come on ! O evil fortune ! I feel myself tremble, the old earth,
On me who am more and more yours ! the earth melts.
It is nothing : I am here ; I am still here.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
802:Hearken to the reed-flute, how it complains,
Lamenting its banishment from its home:
"Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,
My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.
I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs,
And to express the pangs of my yearning for my home.
He who abides far away from his home
Is ever longing for the day he shall return.
My wailing is heard in every throng,
In concert with them that rejoice and them that weep.
Each interprets my notes in harmony with his own feelings,
But not one fathoms the secrets of my heart.
My secrets are not alien from my plaintive notes,
Yet they are not manifest to the sensual eye and ear.
Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body,
Yet no man hath ever seen a soul."
This plaint of the flute is fire, not mere air.
Let him who lacks this fire be accounted dead!
'Tis the fire of love that inspires the flute, l
'Tis the ferment of love that possesses the wine.
The flute is the confidant of all unhappy lovers;
Yea, its strains lay bare my inmost secrets.
Who hath seen a poison and an antidote like the flute?
Who hath seen a sympathetic consoler like the flute?
The flute tells the tale of love's bloodstained path,
It recounts the story of Majnun's love toils.
None is privy to these feelings save one distracted,
As ear inclines to the whispers of the tongue.
Through grief my days are as labor and sorrow,
My days move on, hand in hand with anguish.
Yet, though my days vanish thus, 'tis no matter,
Do thou abide, O Incomparable Pure One! 2
But all who are not fishes are soon tired of water;
And they who lack daily bread find the day very long;
So the "Raw" comprehend not the state of the "Ripe;" 3
Therefore it behoves me to shorten my discourse.
Arise, O son! burst thy bonds and be free!
How long wilt thou be captive to silver and gold?
Though thou pour the ocean into thy pitcher,
It can hold no more than one day's store.
The pitcher of the desire of the covetous never fills,
The oyster-shell fills not with pearls till it is content;
Only he whose garment is rent by the violence of love
Is wholly pure from covetousness and sin.
Hail to thee, then, O LOVE, sweet madness!
Thou who healest all our infirmities!
Who art the physician of our pride and self-conceit!
Who art our Plato and our Galen!
Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven,
And makes the very hills to dance with joy!
O Iover, 'twas love that gave life to Mount Sinai, 4
When "it quaked, and Moses fell down in a swoon."
Did my Beloved only touch me with his lips,
I too, like the flute, would burst out in melody.
But he who is parted from them that speak his tongue,
Though he possess a hundred voices, is perforce dumb.
When the rose has faded and the garden is withered,
The song of the nightingale is no longer to be heard.
The BELOVED is all in all, the lover only veils Him; 5
The BELOVED is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
When the lover feels no longer LOVE's quickening,
He becomes like a bird who has lost its wings. Alas!
How can I retain my senses about me,
When the BELOVED shows not the light of His countenance?
LOVE desires that this secret should be revealed,
For if a mirror reflects not, of what use is it?
Knowest thou why thy mirror reflects not?
Because the rust has not been scoured from its face.
If it were purified from all rust and defilement,
It would reflect the shining of the SUN Of GOD.
O friends, ye have now heard this tale,
Which sets forth the very essence of my case.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Book 1 - Prologue
,#NFDB
803:Lenox Hill
(In Lenox Hill Hospital, after surgery,
my mother said the sirens sounded like the
elephants of Mihiragula when his men drove
them off cliffs in the Pir Panjal Range.)
The Hun so loved the cry, one falling elephant's,
he wished to hear it again. At dawn, my mother
heard, in her hospital-dream of elephants,
sirens wail through Manhattan like elephants
forced off Pir Panjal's rock cliffs in Kashmir:
the soldiers, so ruled, had rushed the elephant,
The greatest of all footprints is the elephant's,
said the Buddha. But not lifted from the universe,
those prints vanished forever into the universe,
though nomads still break news of those elephants
as if it were just yesterday the air spread the dye
("War's annals will fade into night / Ere their story die"),
the punishing khaki whereby the world sees us die
out, mourning you, O massacred elephants!
Months later, in Amherst, she dreamt: She was, with diamonds, being stoned to death. I prayed: If she must die,
let it only be some dream. But there were times, Mother,
while you slept, that I prayed, 'Saints, let her die.'
Not, I swear by you, that I wished you to die
but to save you as you were, young, in song in Kashmir,
and I, one festival, crowned Krishna by you, Kashmir
listening to my flute. You never let gods die.
Thus I swear, here and now, not to forgive the universe
that would let me get used to a universe
without you. She, she alone, was the universe
as she earned, like a galaxy, her right not to die,
defying the Merciful of the Universe,
Master of Disease, "in the circle of her traverse"
of drug-bound time. And where was the god of elephants,
plump with Fate, when tusk to tusk, the universe,
dyed green, became ivory? Then let the universe,
like Paradise, be considered a tomb. Mother,
they asked me, So how's the writing? I answered My mother
17
is my poem. What did they expect? For no verse
sufficed except the promise, fading, of Kashmir
and the cries that reached you from the cliffs of Kashmir
(across fifteen centuries) in the hospital. Kashmir,
she's dying! How her breathing drowns out the universe
as she sleeps in Amherst. Windows open on Kashmir:
There, the fragile wood-shrines—so far away—of Kashmir!
O Destroyer, let her return there, if just to die.
Save the right she gave its earth to cover her, Kashmir
has no rights. When the windows close on Kashmir,
I see the blizzard-fall of ghost-elephants.
I hold back—she couldn't bear it—one elephant's
story: his return (in a country far from Kashmir)
to the jungle where each year, on the day his mother
died, he touches with his trunk the bones of his mother.
'As you sit here by me, you're just like my mother,'
she tells me. I imagine her: a bride in Kashmir,
she's watching, at the Regal, her first film with Father.
If only I could gather you in my arms, Mother,
I'd save you—now my daughter—from God. The universe
opens its ledger. I write: How helpless was God's mother!
Each page is turned to enter grief's accounts. Mother,
I see a hand. Tell me it's not God's. Let it die.
I see it. It's filling with diamonds. Please let it die.
Are you somewhere alive, somewhere alive, Mother?
Do you hear what I once held back: in one elephant's
cry, by his mother's bones, the cries of those elephants
that stunned the abyss? Ivory blots out the elephants.
I enter this: The Beloved leaves one behind to die.
For compared to my grief for you, what are those of Kashmir,
and what (I close the ledger) are the griefs of the universe
when I remember you—beyond all accounting—O my mother?
~ Agha Shahid Ali,#NFDB
804::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#NFDB
805:The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion
of a single being even to God, that is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself
alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being
becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be
jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made
creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with
a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the
palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God.
Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to
render that being transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when,
whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its
knees.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1577
Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical
devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They
are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to
each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means
to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds,
the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light
of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation.
And why not? All the works of God are made to serve
love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its
messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to
minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill
eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature.
Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible,
imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us,
which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine,
and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even
to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in
the very depths of heaven.
Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds
which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange
with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other!
You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos
in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes
dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves
from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse
the destinies of men.
1578 Les Miserables
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love,
except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an
eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase
in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on
the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God
is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous,
and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter
radiance and a greater mystery, woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings.
We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love
is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.
When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred
and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so
far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more
than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no
longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love,
soar.
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits
light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains
for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is
constrained to think of you.
What love commences can be finished by God alone. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
806:The Dying Man"
in memoriam W.B. Yeats
1. His words
I heard a dying man
Say to his gathered kin,
“My soul’s hung out to dry,
Like a fresh salted skin;
I doubt I’ll use it again.
“What’s done is yet to come;
The flesh deserts the bone,
But a kiss widens the rose
I know, as the dying know
Eternity is Now.
“A man sees, as he dies,
Death’s possibilities;
My heart sways with the world.
I am that final thing,
A man learning to sing.
2. What Now?
Caught in the dying light,
I thought myself reborn.
My hand turn into hooves.
I wear the leaden weight
Of what I did not do.
Places great with their dead,
The mire, the sodden wood,
Remind me to stay alive.
I am the clumsy man
The instant ages on.
I burned the flesh away,
In love, in lively May.
I turn my look upon
Another shape than hers
Now, as the casement blurs.
In the worst night of my will,
I dared to question all,
And would the same again.
What’s beating at the gate?
Who’s come can wait.
3. The Wall
A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind
To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn!
The figure at my back is not my friend;
The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn.
I found my father when I did my work,
Only to lose myself in this small dark.
Though it reject dry borders of the seen,
What sensual eye can keep and image pure,
Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn?
A slow growth is a hard thing to endure.
When figures our of obscure shadow rave,
All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave.
The wall has entered: I must love the wall,
A madman staring at perpetual night,
A spirit raging at the visible.
I breathe alone until my dark is bright.
Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn
When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun.
4. The Exulting
Once I delighted in a single tree;
The loose air sent me running like a child–
I love the world; I want more than the world,
Or after image of the inner eye.
Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone;
I die into this life, alone yet not alone.
Was it a god his suffering renewed?–
I saw my father shrinking in his skin;
He turned his face: there was another man,
Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid.
He quivered like a bird in birdless air,
Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere.
Fish feed on fish, according to their need:
My enemies renew me, and my blood
Beats slower in my careless solitude.
I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed.
I think a bird, and it begins to fly.
By dying daily, I have come to be.
All exultation is a dangerous thing.
I see you, love, I see you in a dream;
I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum,
And that slow humming rises into song.
A breath is but a breath: I have the earth;
I shall undo all dying with my death.
5. They Sing, They Sing
All women loved dance in a dying light–
The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon!
Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one,
Then settles back to shade and the long night.
A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn,
And that cry takes me back where I was born.
Who thought love but a motion in the mind?
Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing?
I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing;
Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend.
I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds,
They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds.
I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone:
What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!–
Eternity defined, and strewn with straw,
The fury of the slug beneath the stone.
The vision moves, and yet remains the same.
In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am.
The edges of the summit still appall
When we brood on the dead or the beloved;
Nor can imagination do it all
In this last place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things. ~ Theodore Roethke,#NFDB
807:In Memoryt Of Saretta Deakin
_Who Died on October 25th_, 1899.
THERE was a day,
A horrible Autumn day,
When from her home, the home she made for ours
And that day made a nightmare of white flowers
And folk in black who whispered pityingly,
They carried her away;
And left our hearts all cold
And empty, yet with such a store to hold
Of sodden grief the slow drops still ooze out,
And, falling on all fair things, they wither these.
Tears came with time--but not with time went by.
And still we wander desolate about
The poor changed house, the garden and the croft,
Warm kitchen, sunny parlour, with the soft
Intolerable pervading memories
Of her whose face and voice made melodies,
Sweet unforgotten songs of mother-love-Dear songs of all the little joys that were.
We see the sun, and have no joy thereof,
Because she gathered in her dying hands
And carried with her to the fair far lands
The flower of all our joy, because she went
Out of the garden where her days were spent,
And took the very sun away with her.
The cross stands at her head.
Over her breast, that loving mother-breast,
Close buds of pansies purple and white are pressed.
It seems a place for rest,
For happy folded sleep; but ah, not there,
Not there, not there, our hardest tears are shed,
But in the house made empty for her sake.
Here, in the night intolerable, wake
The hungry passionate pains of Love still strong
To fight with death the bitter slow night long.
Then the rich price that poor Love has to pay
141
Is paid, slow drop by drop, till the new day
With thin cold fingers pushes back night's wings,
And drags us out to common cruel things
That sting, and barb their stings with memory.
O Love--and is the price too hard to give?
Thine is the splendour of all things that live,
And this thy pain the price of life to thee-The sacrament that binds to the beloved,
The chain that holds though mountains be removed,
The portent of thine immortality.
So, in the house of pain imprisoned, we
Endure our bondage, and work out our time,
Nor seek from out our dungeon walls to climb-Bondsmen, who would not, if we could, be free.
Thank God, our hands still hold Love's cord--and she-Do not her hands still clasp the cord we hold,
Drawing us near, coiling bright fold on fold,
Till the far day when it shall draw us near
To the sight of her--her living hands, her dear
Tired face, grown weary of watching for our face?
And we shall hold her, in the happy place,
And hear her voice, the old same voice we knew-'Ah! children, I am tired of wanting you!'
Or, in some world more beautiful and dear
Than any she ever even dreamed of here,
Where time is changed, does she await the day
She longed for, and so little a while away,
When all the love we watered with our tears
Shall bloom, transplanted by the kindly years?
Dreaming through her new garden does she go,
Remembering the old garden, long ago,
Tending new flowers more fair than those that grow
In this sad garden where such sad flowers blow;
And, fondly touching bud and leaf and shoot,
Training her flowers to perfect branch and root,
Does she sometimes entreat some darling flower
To wait a little for its opening hour?
Can you not hear her voice: 'Ah, not to-day,
While my dear flowers, my own, are far away.
Be patient, bud! to-morrow soon will come:
142
Ah! blossom when my little girl comes home!'
But now. But here.
The empty house, the always empty place-The black remembrance that no night blots out,
The memories, white, unbearable, and dear
That no white sunlight makes less cruel and clear?
The resistless riotous rout
Of cruel conquering thoughts, the night, the day?
Love is immortal: this the price to pay.
Worse than all pain it would be to forget-On Love's brave brow the crown of thorns is set.
Love is no niggard: though the price be high
Into God's market Love goes forth to buy
With royal meed God's greatest gifts and gain,
Love offers up his whole rich store of pain,
And buys of God Love's immortality.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
808: ON THE PITYING
My friends, a gibe was related to your friend: "Look
at Zarathustral Does he not walk among us as if we
were animals?"
But it were better said: "He who has knowledge
walks among men as among animals."
To him who has knowledge, man himself is "the
animal with red cheeks." How did this come about? Is
it not because man has had to be ashamed too often?
0 my friends Thus speaks he who has knowledge:
shame, shame, shame-that is the history of man. And
that is why he who is noble bids himself not to shame:
shame he imposes on himself before all who suffer.
Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel
blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in
shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known;
and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.
I should also like to shroud my face and flee before
I am recognized; and thus I bid you do, my friends.
Would that my destiny led those like you, who do not
suffer, across my way, and those with whom I may
share hope and meal and honey. Verily, I may have
done this and that for sufferers; but always I seemed to
have done better when I learned to feel better joys. As
long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy:
that alone, my brothers, is our original sin. And learning
better to feel joy, we learn best not to hurt others or to
plan hurts for them.
Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped the
sufferer; therefore I wipe even my soul. Having seen the
sufferer suffer, I was ashamed for the sake of his shame;
and when I helped him, I transgressed grievously
against his pride.
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but
vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns
into a gnawing worm.
"Be reserved in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!"
Thus I advise those who have nothing to give.
But I am a giver of gifts. I like to give, as a friend to
friends. Strangers, however, and the poor may themselves pluck the fruit from my tree: that will cause them
less shame.
But beggars should be abolished entirely! Verily, it is
annoying to give to them and it is annoying not to give
to them.
And also sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my
friends: the bite of conscience teaches men to bite.
Worst of all, however, are petty thoughts. Verily,
even evil deeds are better than petty thoughts.
To be sure, you say: "The pleasure in a lot of petty
nastiness saves us from many a big evil deed." But here
one should not wish to save.
An evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and
breaks open-it speaks honestly. "Behold, I am disease"
-thus speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty.
But a petty thought is like a fungus: it creeps and
stoops and does not want to be anywhere-until the
whole body is rotten and withered with little fungi.
But to him who is possessed by the devil I whisper
this' word: "Better for you to rear up your devil! Even
for you there is still a way to greatness!"
My brothers, one knows a little too much about
everybody. And we can even see through some men and
yet we can by no means pass through them.
It is difficult to live with people because it is so difficult to be silent. And not against him who is repugnant
to us are we most unfair, but against him who is no
concern of ours.
But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place
for his suffering, but a hard bed as it were, a field cot:
thus will you profit him best.
And if a friend does you evil, then say: 'I forgive
you what you did to me; but that you have done it to
yourself-how could I forgive that?" Thus speaks all
great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it
go, one soon loses control of the head too. Alas, where
in the world has there been more folly than among the
pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the folly of the pitying? Woe to all who love
without having a height that is above their pityl
Thus spoke the devil to me once: "God too has his
hell: that is his love of man." And most recently I heard
him say this: "God is dead; God died of his pity for
man.
Thus be warned of pity: from there a heavy cloud
will yet come to man. Verily, I understand weather
signs. But mark this too: all great love is even above all
its pity; for it still wants to create the beloved.
"Myself I sacrifice to my love, and my neighbor as
myself}-thus runs the speech of all creators. But all
creators are hard.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE PITYING
,#NFDB
809:Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.
Yes, the springtime were in need of you. Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved? (Where would you find a place
to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts
coming and going and often staying for the night.)
When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and
desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving
than those gratified. Begin ever new again
the praise you cannot attain; remember:
the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall
was for him only a pretext for achieving
his final birth. But nature, exhausted, takes lovers
back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be
achieved a second time.
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently:
that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel
from that far intenser example of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves
from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,
and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Listen my heart, as only saints
have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
clear off the ground. Yet they went on, impossibly,
kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was
their listening. Not that you could endure
the voice of God -far from it! But listen
to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message
that forms itself out of silence. They sweep
toward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples,
did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently
as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want of me? to quietly remove
the appearance of suffered injustice that,
at times, hinders a little their spirits from
freely proceeding onward.
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire;
not to observe roses and other things that promised
so much in terms of a human future, no longer
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to even discard one's own name as easily as a child
abandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering
so loosely in space. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a
trace of eternity. -Yes, but the liviing make
the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in
its thunderous roar.
In the end the early departed have no longer
need of us. One is gently weaned from things
of this world as a child outgrows the need
of its mother's breast. But we who have need
of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is
so often the source of spiritual growth,
could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning
in the midst of the mourning for Linos?
the daring first sounds of song piercing
the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,
and the emptiness felt for the first time
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture
and comfort and help us.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Elegy I
,#NFDB
810:The light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright: The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's detachment beats the time. Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens; and Kabir says "My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the sky." Do you know how the moments perform their adoration? Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship day and night, There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy: There the sound of the unseen bells is heard. Kabir says: "There adoration never ceases; there the Lord of the Universe sitteth on His throne." The whole world does its works and commits its errors: but few are the lovers who know the Beloved. The devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of Ganges and Jumna; In his heart the sacred water flows day and night; and thus the round of births and deaths is brought to an end. Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit! and he enjoys it, who makes himself meet for it. Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy sways to and fro; and a mighty sound breaks forth in song. See what a lotus blooms there without water! and Kabir says "My heart's bee drinks its nectar." What a wonderful lotus it is, that blooms at the heart of the spinning wheel of the universe! Only a few pure souls know of its true delight. Music is all around it, and there the heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea. Kabir says: "Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness: thus let all errors of life and of death flee away." Behold how the thirst of the five senses is quenched there! and the three forms of misery are no more! Kabir says: "It is the sport of the Unattainable One: look within, and behold how the moon-beams of that Hidden One shine in you." There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death: Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light. There the Unstruck Music is sounded; it is the music of the love of the three worlds. There millions of lamps of sun and of moon are burning; There the drum beats, and the lover swings in play. There love-songs resound, and light rains in showers; and the worshipper is entranced in the taste of the heavenly nectar. Look upon life and death; there is no separation between them, The right hand and the left hand are one and the same. Kabir says: "There the wise man is speechless; for this truth may never be found in Vedas or in books." I have had my Seat on the Self-poised One, I have drunk of the Cup of the Ineffable, I have found the Key of the Mystery, I have reached the Root of Union. Travelling by no track, I have come to the Sorrowless Land: very easily has the mercy of the great Lord come upon me. They have sung of Him as infinite and unattainable: but I in my meditations have seen Him without sight. That is indeed the sorrowless land, and none know the path that leads there: Only he who is on that path has surely transcended all sorrow. Wonderful is that land of rest, to which no merit can win; It is the wise who has seen it, it is the wise who has sung of it. This is the Ultimate Word: but can any express its marvelous savour? He who has savoured it once, he knows what joy it can give. Kabir says: "Knowing it, the ignorant man becomes wise, and the wise man becomes speechless and silent, The worshipper is utterly inebriated, His wisdom and his detachment are made perfect; He drinks from the cup of the inbreathings and the outbreathings of love." There the whole sky is filled with sound, and there that music is made without fingers and without strings; There the game of pleasure and pain does not cease. Kabir says: "If you merge your life in the Ocean of Life, you will find your life in the Supreme Land of Bliss." What a frenzy of ecstasy there is in every hour! and the worshipper is pressing out and drinking the essence of the hours: he lives in the life of Brahma. I speak truth, for I have accepted truth in life; I am now attached to truth, I have swept all tinsel away. Kabir says: "Thus is the worshipper set free from fear; thus have all errors of life and of death left him." There the sky is filled with music: There it rains nectar: There the harp-strings jingle, and there the drums beat. What a secret splendour is there, in the mansion of the sky! There no mention is made of the rising and the setting of the sun; In the ocean of manifestation, which is the light of love, day and night are felt to be one. Joy for ever, no sorrow,--no struggle! There have I seen joy filled to the brim, perfection of joy; No place for error is there. Kabir says: "There have I witnessed the sport of One Bliss!" I have known in my body the sport of the universe: I have escaped from the error of this world. The inward and the outward are become as one sky, the Infinite and the finite are united: I am drunken with the sight of this All! This Light of Thine fulfills the universe: the lamp of love that burns on the salver of knowledge. Kabir says: "There error cannot enter, and the conflict of life and death is felt no more." [bk1sm.gif] -- from One Hundred Poems of Kabir: Translated by Rabindranath Tagore, by Kabir / Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, The light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright
,#NFDB
811:THE light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright:
The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's detachment beats the time.
Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens; and Kabr says
"My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the sky."
Do you know how the moments perform their adoration?
Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship day and night,
There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy:
There the sound of the unseen bells is heard.
Kabr says: "There adoration never ceases; there the Lord of the Universe sitteth on His throne."
The whole world does its works and commits its errors: but few are the lovers who know the Beloved.
The devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of Ganges and Jumna;
In his heart the sacred water flows day and night; and thus the round of births and deaths is brought to an end.
Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit! and he enjoys it, who makes himself meet for it.
Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy sways to and fro; and a mighty sound breaks forth in song.
See what a lotus blooms there without water! and Kabr says
"My heart's bee drinks its nectar."
What a wonderful lotus it is, that blooms at the heart of the spinning wheel of the universe! Only a few pure souls know of its true delight.
Music is all around it, and there the heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea.
Kabr says: "Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness: thus let all errors of life and of death flee away."
Behold how the thirst of the five senses is quenched there! and the three forms of misery are no more!
Kabr says: "It is the sport of the Unattainable One: look within, and behold how the moon-beams of that Hidden One shine in you."
There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death:
Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light.
There the Unstruck Music is sounded; it is the music of the love of the three worlds.
There millions of lamps of sun and of moon are burning;
There the drum beats, and the lover swings in play.
There love-songs resound, and light rains in showers; and the worshipper is entranced in the taste of the heavenly nectar.
Look upon life and death; there is no separation between them,
The right hand and the left hand are one and the same.
Kabr says: "There the wise man is speechless; for this truth may never be found in Vadas or in books."
I have had my Seat on the Self-poised One,
I have drunk of the Cup of the Ineffable,
I have found the Key of the Mystery,
I have reached the Root of Union.
Travelling by no track, I have come to the Sorrowless Land: very easily has the mercy of the great Lord come upon me.
They have sung of Him as infinite and unattainable: but I in my meditations have seen Him without sight.
That is indeed the sorrowless land, and none know the path that leads there:
Only he who is on that path has surely transcended all sorrow.
Wonderful is that land of rest, to which no merit can win;
It is the wise who has seen it, it is the wise who has sung of it.
This is the Ultimate Word: but can any express its marvellous savour? {p. 65}
He who has savoured it once, he knows what joy it can give.
Kabr says: "Knowing it, the ignorant man becomes wise, and the wise man becomes speechless and silent,
The worshipper is utterly inebriated,
His wisdom and his detachment are made perfect;
He drinks from the cup of the inbreathings and the outbreathings of love."
There the whole sky is filled with sound, and there that music is made without fingers and without strings;
There the game of pleasure and pain does not cease.
Kabr says: "If you merge your life in the Ocean of Life, you will find your life in the Supreme Land of Bliss."
What a frenzy of ecstasy there is in every hour! and the worshipper is pressing out and drinking the essence of the hours: he lives in the life of Brahma.
I speak truth, for I have accepted truth in life; I am now attached to truth, I have swept all tinsel away.
Kabr says: "Thus is the worshipper set free from fear; thus have all errors of life and of death left him."
There the sky is filled with music:
There it rains nectar:
There the harp-strings jingle, and there the drums beat.
What a secret splendour is there, in the mansion of the sky!
There no mention is made of the rising and the setting of the sun;
In the ocean of manifestation, which is the light of love, day and night are felt to be one.
Joy for ever, no sorrow,no struggle!
There have I seen joy filled to the brim, perfection of joy;
No place for error is there.
Kabr says: "There have I witnessed the sport of One Bliss!"
I have known in my body the sport of the universe: I have escaped from the error of this world..
The inward and the outward are become as one sky, the Infinite and the finite are united: I am drunken with the sight of this All!
This Light of Thine fulfils the universe: the lamp of love that burns on the salver of knowledge.
Kabr says: "There error cannot enter, and the conflict of life and death is felt no more."
~ Kabir, The Light of the Sun
,#NFDB
812:Paradiso: Canto I
The glory of Him who moveth everything
Doth penetrate the universe, and shine
In one part more and in another less.
Within that heaven which most his light receives
Was I, and things beheld which to repeat
Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends;
Because in drawing near to its desire
Our intellect ingulphs itself so far,
That after it the memory cannot go.
Truly whatever of the holy realm
I had the power to treasure in my mind
Shall now become the subject of my song.
O good Apollo, for this last emprise
Make of me such a vessel of thy power
As giving the beloved laurel asks!
One summit of Parnassus hitherto
Has been enough for me, but now with both
I needs must enter the arena left.
Enter into my bosom, thou, and breathe
As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw
Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his.
O power divine, lend'st thou thyself to me
So that the shadow of the blessed realm
Stamped in my brain I can make manifest,
Thou'lt see me come unto thy darling tree,
And crown myself thereafter with those leaves
Of which the theme and thou shall make me worthy.
So seldom, Father, do we gather them
For triumph or of Caesar or of Poet,
(The fault and shame of human inclinations,)
277
That the Peneian foliage should bring forth
Joy to the joyous Delphic deity,
When any one it makes to thirst for it.
A little spark is followed by great flame;
Perchance with better voices after me
Shall prayer be made that Cyrrha may respond!
To mortal men by passages diverse
Uprises the world's lamp; but by that one
Which circles four uniteth with three crosses,
With better course and with a better star
Conjoined it issues, and the mundane wax
Tempers and stamps more after its own fashion.
Almost that passage had made morning there
And evening here, and there was wholly white
That hemisphere, and black the other part,
When Beatrice towards the left-hand side
I saw turned round, and gazing at the sun;
Never did eagle fasten so upon it!
And even as a second ray is wont
To issue from the first and reascend,
Like to a pilgrim who would fain return,
Thus of her action, through the eyes infused
In my imagination, mine I made,
And sunward fixed mine eyes beyond our wont.
There much is lawful which is here unlawful
Unto our powers, by virtue of the place
Made for the human species as its own.
Not long I bore it, nor so little while
But I beheld it sparkle round about
Like iron that comes molten from the fire;
And suddenly it seemed that day to day
278
Was added, as if He who has the power
Had with another sun the heaven adorned.
With eyes upon the everlasting wheels
Stood Beatrice all intent, and I, on her
Fixing my vision from above removed,
Such at her aspect inwardly became
As Glaucus, tasting of the herb that made him
Peer of the other gods beneath the sea.
To represent transhumanise in words
Impossible were; the example, then, suffice
Him for whom Grace the experience reserves.
If I was merely what of me thou newly
Createdst, Love who governest the heaven,
Thou knowest, who didst lift me with thy light!
When now the wheel, which thou dost make eternal
Desiring thee, made me attentive to it
By harmony thou dost modulate and measure,
Then seemed to me so much of heaven enkindled
By the sun's flame, that neither rain nor river
E'er made a lake so widely spread abroad.
The newness of the sound and the great light
Kindled in me a longing for their cause,
Never before with such acuteness felt;
Whence she, who saw me as I saw myself,
To quiet in me my perturbed mind,
Opened her mouth, ere I did mine to ask,
And she began: 'Thou makest thyself so dull
With false imagining, that thou seest not
What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off.
Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest;
But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site,
Ne'er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest.'
279
If of my former doubt I was divested
By these brief little words more smiled than spoken,
I in a new one was the more ensnared;
And said: 'Already did I rest content
From great amazement; but am now amazed
In what way I transcend these bodies light.'
Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh,
Her eyes directed tow'rds me with that look
A mother casts on a delirious child;
And she began: 'All things whate'er they be
Have order among themselves, and this is form,
That makes the universe resemble God.
Here do the higher creatures see the footprints
Of the Eternal Power, which is the end
Whereto is made the law already mentioned.
In the order that I speak of are inclined
All natures, by their destinies diverse,
More or less near unto their origin;
Hence they move onward unto ports diverse
O'er the great sea of being; and each one
With instinct given it which bears it on.
This bears away the fire towards the moon;
This is in mortal hearts the motive power
This binds together and unites the earth.
Nor only the created things that are
Without intelligence this bow shoots forth,
But those that have both intellect and love.
The Providence that regulates all this
Makes with its light the heaven forever quiet,
Wherein that turns which has the greatest haste.
And thither now, as to a site decreed,
280
Bears us away the virtue of that cord
Which aims its arrows at a joyous mark.
True is it, that as oftentimes the form
Accords not with the intention of the art,
Because in answering is matter deaf,
So likewise from this course doth deviate
Sometimes the creature, who the power possesses,
Though thus impelled, to swerve some other way,
(In the same wise as one may see the fire
Fall from a cloud,) if the first impetus
Earthward is wrested by some false delight.
Thou shouldst not wonder more, if well I judge,
At thine ascent, than at a rivulet
From some high mount descending to the lowland.
Marvel it would be in thee, if deprived
Of hindrance, thou wert seated down below,
As if on earth the living fire were quiet.'
Thereat she heavenward turned again her face.
~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
813:At The Gate
THE monastery towers, as pure and fair
As virgin vows, reached up white hands to Heaven;
The walls, to guard the hidden heart of prayer,
Were strong as sin, and white as sin forgiven;
And there came holy men, by world's woe driven;
And all about the gold-green meadows lay
Flower-decked, like children dear that keep May-holiday.
'Here,' said the Abbot, 'let us spend our days,
Days sweetened by the lilies of pure prayer,
Hung with white garlands of the rose of praise;
And, lest the World should enter with her snare-Enter and laugh and take us unaware
With her red rose, her purple and her gold-Choose we a stranger's hand the porter's keys to hold.'
They chose a beggar from the world outside
To keep their worldward door for them, and he,
Filled with a humble and adoring pride,
Built up a wall of proud humility
Between the monastery's sanctity
And the poor, foolish, humble folk who came
To ask for love and care, in the dear Saviour's name.
For when the poor crept to the guarded gate
To ask for succour, when the tired asked rest,
When weary souls, bereft and desolate,
Craved comfort, when the murmur of the oppressed
Surged round the grove where prayer had made her nest,
The porter bade such take their griefs away,
And at some other door their bane and burden lay.
'For this,' he said, 'is the white house of prayer,
Where day and night the holy voices rise
Through the chill trouble of our earthly air,
And enter at the gate of Paradise.
Trample no more our flower-fields in such wise,
Nor crave the alms of our deep-laden bough;
The prayers of holy men are alms enough, I trow.'
67
So, seeing that no sick or sorrowing folk
Came ever to be healed or comforted,
The Abbot to his brothers gladly spoke:
'God has accepted our poor prayers,' he said;
'Over our land His answering smile is spread.
He has put forth His strong and loving hand,
And sorrow and sin and pain have ceased in all the land.
'So make we yet more rich our hymns of praise,
Warm we our prayers against our happy heart.
Since God hath taken the gift of all our days
To make a spell that bids all wrong depart,
Has turned our praise to balm for the world's smart,
Fulfilled of prayer and praise be every hour,
For God transfigures praise, and transmutes prayer, to power.'
So went the years. The flowers blossomed now
Untrampled by the dusty, weary feet;
Unbroken hung the green and golden bough,
For none came now to ask for fruit or meat,
For ghostly food, or common bread to eat;
And dreaming, praying, the monks were satisfied,
Till, God remembering him, the beggar-porter died.
When they had covered up the foolish head,
And on the foolish loving heart heaped clay,
'Which of us, brothers, now,' the Abbot said,
'Will face the world, to keep the world away?'
But all their hearts were hard with prayer, and 'Nay,'
They cried, 'ah, bid us not our prayers to leave;
Ah, father, not to-day, for this is Easter Eve'.
And, while they murmured, to their midst there came
A beggar saying, 'Brothers, peace, be still!
I am your Brother, in our Father's name,
And I will be your porter, if ye will,
Guarding your gate with what I have of skill'.
So all they welcomed him and closed the door,
And gat them gladly back unto their prayers once more.
But, lo! no sooner did the prayer arise,
68
A golden flame athwart the chancel dim,
Then came the porter crying, 'Haste, arise!
A sick old man waits you to tend on him;
And many wait--a knight whose wound gapes grim,
A red-stained man, with red sins to confess,
A mother pale, who brings her child for you to bless'.
The brothers hastened to the gate, and there
With unaccustomed hand and voice they tried
To ease the body's pain, the spirit's care;
But ere the task was done, the porter cried:
'Behold, the Lord sets your gate open wide,
For here be starving folk who must be fed,
And little ones that cry for love and daily bread!'
And, with each slow-foot hour, came ever a throng
Of piteous wanderers, sinful folk and sad,
And still the brothers ministered, but long
The day seemed, with no prayer to make them glad;
No holy, meditative joys they had,
No moment's brooding-place could poor prayer find,
Mid all those heart to heal and all those wounds to bind.
And when the crowded, sunlit day at last
Left the field lonely with its trampled flowers,
Into the chapel's peace the brothers passed
To quell the memory of those hurrying hours.
'Our holy time,' they said, 'once more is ours!
Come, let us pay our debt of prayer and praise,
Forgetting in God's light the darkness of man's ways!'
But, ere their voices reached the first psalm's end,
They heard a new, strange rustling round their house;
Then came the porter: 'Here comes many a friend,
Pushing aside your budding orchard boughs;
Come, brothers, justify your holy vows.
Here be God's patient, poor, four-footed things
Seek healing at God's well, whence loving-kindness springs.'
Then cried the Abbot in a vexed amaze,
'Our brethren we must aid, if 'tis God's will;
But the wild creatures of the forest ways
69
Himself God heals with His Almighty skill.
And charity is good, and love--but still
God shall not look in vain for the white prayers
We send on silver feet to climb the starry stairs;
'For, of all worthy things, prayer has most worth,
It rises like sweet incense up to heaven,
And from God's hand falls back upon the earth,
Being of heavenly bread the accepted leaven.
Through prayer is virtue saved and sin forgiven;
In prayer the impulse and the force are found
That bring in purple and gold the fruitful seasons round.
'For prayer comes down from heaven in the sun
That giveth life and joy to all things made;
Prayer falls in rain to make broad rivers run
And quickens the seeds in earth's brown bosom laid;
By prayer the red-hung branch is earthward weighed,
By prayer the barn grows full, and full the fold,
For by man's prayer God works his wonders manifold.'
The porter seemed to bow to the reproof;
But when the echo of the night's last prayer
Died in the mystery of the vaulted roof,
A whispered memory in the hallowed air,
The Abbot turned to find him standing there.
'Brother,' he said, 'I have healed the woodland things
And they go happy and whole--blessing Love's ministerings,
'And, having healed them, I shall crave your leave
To leave you--for to-night I journey far.
But I have kept your gate this Easter Eve,
And now your house to heaven shines like a star
To show the Angels where God's children are;
And in this day your house has served God more
Than in the praise and prayer of all its years before.
'Yet I must leave you, though I fain would stay,
For there are other gates I go to keep
Of houses round whose walls, long day by day,
Shut out of hope and love, poor sinners weep-Barred folds that keep out God's poor wandering sheep--
70
I must teach these that gates where God comes in
Must not be shut at all to pain, or want, or sin.
'The voice of prayer is very soft and weak,
And sorrow and sin have voices very strong;
Prayer is not heard in heaven when those twain speak,
The voice of prayer faints in the voice of wrong
By the just man endured--oh, Lord, how long?-If ye would have your prayers in heaven be heard,
Look that wrong clamour not with too intense a word.
'But when true love is shed on want and sin,
Their cry is changed, and grows to such a voice
As clamours sweetly at heaven to be let in-Such sound as makes the saints in heaven rejoice;
Pure gold of prayer, purged of the vain alloys
Of idleness--that is the sound most dear
Of all the earthly sounds God leans from heaven to hear.
'Oh, brother, I must leave thee, and for me
The work is heavy, and the burden great.
Thine be this charge I lay upon thee: See
That never again stands barred thy abbey gate;
Look that God's poor be not left desolate;
Ah me! that chidden my shepherds needs must be
When my poor wandering sheep have so great need of me.
'Brother, forgive thy Brother if he chide,
Thy Brother loves thee--and has loved--for see
The nails are in my hands, and in my side
The spear-wound; and the thorns weigh heavily
Upon my brow--brother, I died for thee-For thee, and for my sheep that are astray,
And rose to live for thee, and them, on Easter Day!'
'My Master and my Lord!' the Abbot cried.
But, where that face had been, shone the new day;
Only on the marble by the Abbot's side,
Where those dear feet had stood, a lily lay-A lily white for the white Easter Day.
He sought the gate--no sorrow clamoured there-And, not till then, he dared to sink his soul in prayer.
71
And from that day himself he kept the gate
Wide open; and the poor from far and wide,
The weary, and wicked, and disconsolate,
Came there for succour and were not denied;
The sick were healed, the repentant sanctified;
And from their hearts rises more prayer and praise
Than ever the abbey knew in all its prayer-filled days.
And there the Heavenly vision comes no more,
Only, each Easter now, a lily sweet
Lies white and dewy on the chancel floor
Where once had stood the beloved wounded feet;
And the old Abbot feels the nearing beat
Of wings that bring him leave at last to go
And meet his Master, where the immortal lilies grow.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
814:The Bounty
[for Alix Walcott]
Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah's elations
force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto
cores the dawn clouds with concentric radiance,
the breadfruit opens its palms in praise of the bounty,
bois-pain, tree of bread, slave food, the bliss of John Clare,
torn, wandering Tom, stoat-stroker in his county
of reeds and stalk-crickets, fiddling the dank air,
lacing his boots with vines, steering glazed beetles
with the tenderest prods, knight of the cockchafer,
wrapped in the mists of shires, their snail-horned steeples
palms opening to the cupped pool—but his soul safer
than ours, though iron streams fetter his ankles.
Frost whitening his stubble, he stands in the ford
of a brook like the Baptist lifting his branches to bless
cathedrals and snails, the breaking of this new day,
and the shadows of the beach road near which my mother lies,
with the traffic of insects going to work anyway.
The lizard on the white wall fixed on the hieroglyph
of its stone shadow, the palms' rustling archery,
the souls and sails of circling gulls rhyme with:
"In la sua volont è nostra pace,"
In His will is our peace. Peace in white harbours,
in marinas whose masts agree, in crescent melons
left all night in the fridge, in the Egyptian labours
of ants moving boulders of sugar, words in this sentence,
shadow and light, who live next door like neighbours,
57
and in sardines with pepper sauce. My mother lies
near the white beach stones, John Clare near the sea-almonds,
yet the bounty returns each daybreak, to my surprise,
to my surprise and betrayal, yes, both at once.
I am moved like you, mad Tom, by a line of ants;
I behold their industry and they are giants.
ii
There on the beach, in the desert, lies the dark well
where the rose of my life was lowered, near the shaken plants,
near a pool of fresh tears, tolled by the golden bell
of allamanda, thorns of the bougainvillea, and that is
their bounty! They shine with defiance from weed and flower,
even those that flourish elsewhere, vetch, ivy, clematis,
on whom the sun now rises with all its power,
not for the Tourist Board or for Dante Alighieri,
but because there is no other path for its wheel to take
except to make the ruts of the beach road an allegory
of this poem's career, of yours, that she died for the sake
of a crowning wreath of false laurel; so, John Clare, forgive me,
for this morning's sake, forgive me, coffee, and pardon me,
milk with two packets of artificial sugar,
as I watch these lines grow and the art of poetry harden me
into sorrow as measured as this, to draw the veiled figure
of Mamma entering the standard elegiac.
No, there is grief, there will always be, but it must not madden,
like Clare, who wept for a beetle's loss, for the weight
of the world in a bead of dew on clematis or vetch,
and the fire in these tinder-dry lines of this poem I hate
as much as I love her, poor rain-beaten wretch,
redeemer of mice, earl of the doomed protectorate
of cavalry under your cloak; come on now, enough!
58
iii
Bounty!
In the bells of tree-frogs with their steady clamour
in the indigo dark before dawn, the fading morse
of fireflies and crickets, then light on the beetle's armour,
and the toad's too-late presages, nettles of remorse
that shall spring from her grave from the spade's heartbreak.
And yet not to have loved her enough is to love more,
if I confess it, and I confess it. The trickle of underground
springs, the babble of swollen gulches under drenched ferns,
loosening the grip of their roots, till their hairy clods
like unclenching fists swirl wherever the gulch turns
them, and the shuddering aftermath bends the rods
of wild cane. Bounty in the ant's waking fury,
in the snail's chapel stirring under wild yams,
praise in decay and process, awe in the ordinary
in wind that reads the lines of the breadfruit's palms
in the sun contained in a globe of the crystal dew,
bounty in the ants' continuing a line of raw flour,
mercy on the mongoose scuttling past my door,
in the light's parallelogram laid on the kitchen floor,
for Thine is the Kingdom, the Glory, and the Power,
the bells of Saint Clement's in the marigolds on the altar,
in the bougainvillea's thorns, in the imperial lilac
and the feathery palms that nodded at the entry
into Jerusalem, the weight of the world on the back
of an ass; dismounting, He left His cross there for sentry
and sneering centurion; then I believed in His Word,
in a widow's immaculate husband, in pews of brown wood,
when the cattle-bell of the chapel summoned our herd
59
into the varnished stalls, in whose rustling hymnals I heard
the fresh Jacobean springs, the murmur Clare heard
of bounty abiding, the clear language she taught us,
"as the hart panteth," at this, her keen ears pronged
while her three fawns nibbled the soul-freshening waters,
"as the hart panteth for the water-brooks" that belonged
to the language in which I mourn her now, or when
I showed her my first elegy, her husband's, and then her own.
iv
But can she or can she not read this? Can you read this,
Mamma, or hear it? If I took the pulpit, lay-preacher
like tender Clare, like poor Tom, so that look, Miss!
the ants come to you like children, their beloved teacher
Alix, but unlike the silent recitation of the infants,
the choir that Clare and Tom heard in their rainy county,
we have no solace but utterance, hence this wild cry.
Snails move into harbour, the breadfruit plants on the Bounty
will be heaved aboard, and the white God is Captain Bligh.
Across white feathery grave-grass the shadow of the soul
passes, the canvas cracks open on the cross-trees of the Bounty,
and the Trades lift the shrouds of the resurrected sail.
All move in their passage to the same mother-country,
the dirt-clawing weasel, the blank owl or sunning seal.
Faith grows mutinous. The ribbed body with its cargo
stalls in its doldrums, the God-captain is cast adrift
by a mutinous Christian, in the wake of the turning Argo
plants bob in the ocean's furrows, their shoots dip and lift,
and the soul's Australia is like the New Testament
after the Old World, the code of an eye for an eye;
the horizon spins slowly and Authority's argument
60
diminishes in power, in the longboat with Captain Bligh.
This was one of your earliest lessons, how the Christ-Son
questions the Father, to settle on another island, haunted by Him,
by the speck of a raging deity on the ruled horizon,
diminishing in meaning and distance, growing more dim:
all these predictable passages that we first disobey
before we become what we challenged; but you never altered
your voice, either sighing or sewing, you would pray
to your husband aloud, pedalling the hymns we all heard
in the varnished pew: "There Is a Green Hill Far Away,"
"Jerusalem the Golden." Your melody faltered
but never your faith in the bounty which is His Word.
All of these waves crepitate from the culture of Ovid,
its sibilants and consonants; a universal metre
piles up these signatures like inscriptions of seaweed
that dry in the pungent sun, lines ruled by mitre
and laurel, or spray swiftly garlanding the forehead
of an outcrop (and I hope this settles the matter
of presences). No soul was ever invented,
yet every presence is transparent; if I met her
(in her nightdress ankling barefoot, crooning to the shallows),
should I call her shadow that of a pattern invented
by Graeco-Roman design, columns of shadows
cast by the Forum, Augustan perspectives—
poplars, casuarina-colonnades, the in-and-out light of almonds
made from original Latin, no leaf but the olive's?
Questions of pitch. Faced with seraphic radiance
(don't interrupt!), mortals rub their skeptical eyes
that hell is a beach-fire at night where embers dance,
with temporal fireflies like thoughts of Paradise;
61
but there are inexplicable instincts that keep recurring
not from hope or fear only, that are real as stones,
the faces of the dead we wait for as ants are transferring
their cities, though we no longer believe in the shining ones.
I half-expect to see you no longer, then more than half,
almost never, or never then—there I have said it—
but felt something less than final at the edge of your grave,
some other something somewhere, equally dreaded,
since the fear of the infinite is the same as death,
unendurable brightness, the substantial dreading
its own substance, dissolving to gases and vapours,
like our dread of distance; we need a horizon,
a dividing line that turns the stars into neighbours
though infinity separates them, we can think of only one sun:
all I am saying is that the dread of death is in the faces
we love, the dread of our dying, or theirs;
therefore we see in the glint of immeasurable spaces
not stars or falling embers, not meteors, but tears.
vi
The mango trees serenely rust when they are in flower,
nobody knows the name for that voluble cedar
whose bell-flowers fall, the pomme-arac purples its floor.
The blue hills in late afternoon always look sadder.
The country night waiting to come in outside the door;
the firefly keeps striking matches, and the hillside fumes
with a bluish signal of charcoal, then the smoke burns
into a larger question, one that forms and unforms,
then loses itself in a cloud, till the question returns.
Buckets clatter under pipes, villages begin at corners.
A man and his trotting dog come back from their garden.
62
The sea blazes beyond the rust roofs, dark is on us
before we know it. The earth smells of what's done,
small yards brighten, day dies and its mourners
begin, the first wreath of gnats; this was when we sat down
on bright verandahs watching the hills die. Nothing is trite
once the beloved have vanished; empty clothes in a row,
but perhaps our sadness tires them who cherished delight;
not only are they relieved of our customary sorrow,
they are without hunger, without any appetite,
but are part of earth's vegetal fury; their veins grow
with the wild mammy-apple, the open-handed breadfruit,
their heart in the open pomegranate, in the sliced avocado;
ground-doves pick from their palms; ants carry the freight
of their sweetness, their absence in all that we eat,
their savour that sweetens all of our multiple juices,
their faith that we break and chew in a wedge of cassava,
and here at first is the astonishment: that earth rejoices
in the middle of our agony, earth that will have her
for good: wind shines white stones and the shallows' voices.
vii
In spring, after the bear's self-burial, the stuttering
crocuses open and choir, glaciers shelve and thaw,
frozen ponds crack into maps, green lances spring
from the melting fields, flags of rooks rise and tatter
the pierced light, the crumbling quiet avalanches
of an unsteady sky; the vole uncoils and the otter
worries his sleek head through the verge's branches;
crannies, culverts, and creeks roar with wrist-numbing water.
Deer vault invisible hurdles and sniff the sharp air,
squirrels spring up like questions, berries easily redden,
63
edges delight in their own shapes (whoever their shaper).
But here there is one season, our viridian Eden
is that of the primal garden that engendered decay,
from the seed of a beetle's shard or a dead hare
white and forgotten as winter with spring on its way.
There is no change now, no cycles of spring, autumn, winter,
nor an island's perpetual summer; she took time with her;
no climate, no calendar except for this bountiful day.
As poor Tom fed his last crust to trembling birds,
as by reeds and cold pools John Clare blest these thin musicians,
let the ants teach me again with the long lines of words,
my business and duty, the lesson you taught your sons,
to write of the light's bounty on familiar things
that stand on the verge of translating themselves into news:
the crab, the frigate that floats on cruciform wings,
and that nailed and thorn riddled tree that opens its pews
to the blackbird that hasn't forgotten her because it sings.
~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
815:The Deserted Garden
I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain
With tinted walls a space on either hand
And fed by many an olive-darkened lane
The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band
Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,
Winds off to that dim corner of the skies
Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.
Here, among trees whose overhanging shade
Strews petals on the little droves below,
Pattering townward in the morning weighed
With greens from many an upland garden-row,
Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed
Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro
Heard never from beyond its crumbling height
Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.
But here where little lizards bask and blink
The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run,
At whose red bells the humming bird to drink
Stops oft before his garden feast is done;
And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink
That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,
Have covered part of this old wall, entwined
With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.
And crowning other parts the wild white rose
Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees.
Above the old abandoned orchard shows
And all within beneath the dense-set trees,
Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows,
That settled in its wavy depth one sees
Grass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between,
Down fading avenues of implicated green;
Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night
With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay;
Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white
94
Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray,
Such as the fairy-queen before her knight
Waved in old story, luring him away
Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break
Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;
And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide,
And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet,
Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied,
Sometime on pathway borders neatly set,
Now blossom through the brake on either side,
Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette,
With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees,
Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,
That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave
In some blue rampart of the curving West,
Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave,
Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest,
Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave
Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest,
He steals across this plot of pleasant ground,
Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.
Here many a day right gladly have I sped,
Content amid the wavy plumes to lie,
And through the woven branches overhead
Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by,
And soaring birds make their dissolving bed
Far in the azure depths of summer sky,
Or nearer that small huntsman of the air,
The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;
Pillowed at case to hear the merry tune
Of mating warblers in the boughs above
And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon
Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove
Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon
That like the voice of visionary love
Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze
(Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);
95
And, parting tangled bushes as I passed
Down beechen allies beautiful and dim,
Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last
My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim,
And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed
Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim.
Here, then, that magic summoning would cease,
Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.
And here where the blanched lilies of the vale
And violets and yellow star-flowers teem,
And pink and purple hyacinths exhale
Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream
My head would sink, from many an olden tale
Drawing imagination's fervid theme,
Or haply peopling this enchanting spot
Only with fair creations of fantastic thought.
For oft I think, in years long since gone by,
That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands
Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify
The paradise of some unsung romance;
Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye,
'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance,
Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share
Their simple loveliness with the enamored air.
Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked
The altars of First Love were these green ways,
These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked
With the warm sunshine of midsummer days;
Oft where the long straight allies intersect
And marble seats surround the open space,
Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand,
Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.
When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade
Beneath that old titanic cypress row,
Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade
Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below,
Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed,
Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow
96
Grew less and patterning the garden floor
Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.
And the strange tempest that a touch imparts
Through the mid fibre of the molten frame,
When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts
Its heyday verve and little hints enflame,
Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts
Welled the soft word, and many a tender name
Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained
And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.
Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies
Set in the splendor of one upturned face
To beam adorably through half-closed eyes;
Love's body where the breadth of summer days
And all the beauty earth and air comprise
Come to the compass of an arm's embrace,
To burn a moment on impassioned lips
And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,
They knew; and here where morning-glories cling
Round carven forms of carefullest artifice,
They made a bower where every outward thing
Should comment on the cause of their own bliss;
With flowers of liveliest hue encompassing
That flower that the beloved body is
That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee
Has budded all the æons of past eternity.
But their choice seat was where the garden wall,
Crowning a little summit, far and near,
Looks over tufted treetops onto all
The pleasant outer country; rising here
From rustling foliage where cuckoos call
On summer evenings, stands a belvedere,
Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun
With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.
Still round the turrets of this antique tower
The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown,
Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower,
97
Wreathing the lower surface further down,
Hide the old plaster in a very shower
Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown.
Outside, ascending from the garden grove,
A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.
And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair
Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed,
Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare
Ringed all about with a twofold arcade.
Backward dense branches intercept the glare
Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade;
Eastward the level valley-plains expand,
Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,
Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,
Frequent with hamlet grove, and lucent lake
Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie;
Far to the east where billowy mountains break
In surf of snow against a sapphire sky,
Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,
Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;
And over plain and far sierra spread
The fulgent rays of fading afternoon,
Showing each utmost peak and watershed
All clarified, each tassel and festoon
Of floating cloud embroidered overhead,
Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn,
Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free
In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.
Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair;
Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strong
Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare,
Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song,
Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there
Far from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along,
With purple sail and steered by seraph hands
To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.
98
And out of this old house a flowery fane,
A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome,
They built, and furnished it with gold and grain,
And bade all spirits of beauty hither come,
And wingéd Love to enter with his train
And bless their pillow, and in this his home
Make them his priests as Hero was of yore
In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.
Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought,
Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste,
Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought
With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;
Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,
And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed
To light the lounger on some low divan,
Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.
And there was spread, upon the ample floors,
Work of the Levantine's laborious loom,
Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores
Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom.
Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery stores
Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom,
And little birds through wicker doors left wide
Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside.
And there was many a dainty attitude,
Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed,
Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood
Fain of the bath's delight, yet still afraid
Lest aught in that palatial solitude
Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid.
Therefore forever faltering she stands,
Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.
Close by upon a beryl column, clad
In the fresh flower of adolescent grace,
They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad,
The nude Antinous. That gentle face,
Forever beautiful, forever sad,
Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze,
99
Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile
At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.
And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more,
Clustering their rosy bridal bed around,
Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore
Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground,
Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore
Or Venus' bed in her enchanted mound,
While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes,
All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.
'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of,
Thither with one fair spirit to retire,
Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love
And feast on kisses to the heart's desire;
Where by a casement opening on a grove,
Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir,
A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs,
Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.
Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay,
Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned,
She lies and dreams eternity away,
Above the treetops in Broceliande,
Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray
And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande,
Waking to love, while up behind the trees
The large midsummer moon lifts-even so loved these.
For here, their pleasure was to come and sit
Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west,
Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit
The long light slant across the green earth's breast,
And clouds upon the ranges opposite,
Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest,
Topple and break and fall in purple rain,
And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.
Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung
Across the luminous azure overhead,
Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung
100
The fragmentary rainbow's green and red.
Joy it was here to love and to be young,
To watch the sun sink to his western bed,
And streaming back out of their flaming core
The vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar.
Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn,
Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli
That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn
Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high,
More delicate than sprays of maiden fern,
Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky,
Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night,
Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.
And they would watch the first faint stars appear,
The blue East blend with the blue hills below,
As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near
Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow.
New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere
Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow
Draw deeper down into the wondrous west
Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.
So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore,
The snow-peaks fade to frosty, opaline,
To pearl the doméd clouds the mountains bore,
Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been
Showing as darkness deepened more and more
The incandescent lightnings flare within,
And Night that furls the lily in the glen
And twines impatient arms would fall, and then---and then . . .
Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town
With empty panniers on his little drove
Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown
Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,
Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down
And voices singing through the leaves above
Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos
At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.
101
And he would pause under the garden wall,
Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,
With all the sultry South in it, and all
Its importunity of love and pain;
And he would wait till the last passionate fall
Died on the night, and all was still again.
Then to his upland village wander home,
Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.
O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,
Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays
Sweet opportunity for happiness
So brief, so passing beautiful---O days,
When to the heart's divine indulgences
All earth in smiling ministration pays
Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,
What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!
The wake of color that follows her when May
Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned,
The deep horizons of a summer's day,
Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound
Where music calls, and crowds in bright array
Gather by night to find and to be found;
What were these worth or all delightful things
Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings!
For thee the mountains open glorious gates,
To thee white arms put out from orient skies,
Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits,
Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes,
Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fêtes
Eternity has travailed to devise;
Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last!
Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorial
Let my sun set who found the world so fair!
Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal
Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,
Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!
Among the pious testimonials there,
102
Witness how sweetly on my heart as well
The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,
And, from the hues that far horizons take,
And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal,
Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake,
Whose only motive was the will to kneel
Where Beauty's purest benediction spake,
Who only coveted what grove and field
And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield--A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear
Seeking his faultless adolescent dream,
A pilgrim down the paths that disappear
In mist and rainbows on the world's extreme,
A helpless voyager who all too near
The mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream,
Clutched at Love's single respite in his need
More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed--That coming one whose feet in other days
Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more
Than any purpose, felt the need to praise
And seek the angelic image to adore,
In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways
Counting what most makes life worth living for,
That so some relic may be his to see
How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.
I sometimes think a conscious happiness
Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine
When summer winds with myriad calyces
Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine;
I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,
And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine
Are nerves through which that being drinks delight,
Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.
And such were theirs: the traveller without,
Pausing at night under the orchard trees,
Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,
103
For through their song and in the murmuring breeze
It seemed angelic choirs were all about
Mingling in universal harmonies,
As though, responsive to the chords they woke,
All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.
And still they think a spirit haunts the place:
'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace
Their mimic constellations, if it fall
That one should see the moon rise through the lace
Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall,
That surely would he take great ill thereof
And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.
But this I know not, for what time the wain
Was loosened and the lily's petal furled,
Then I would rise, climb the old wall again,
And pausing look forth on the sundown world,
Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain,
The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled,
The poplar-bordered roads, and far away
Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray.
Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar
Faint song and preludes of the summer night;
Deep in the cloudless west the evening star
Hung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light;
From the dark vale where shades crepuscular
Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,
Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,
Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.
~ Alan Seeger,#NFDB
816:Ballad Of Jesus Of Nazareth
I.
It matters not what place he drew
At first life's mortal breath,
Some say it was in Bethlehem,
And some in Nazareth.
But shame and sorrow were his lot
And shameful was his death.
The angels sang, and o'er the barn
Wherein the infant lay,
They hung a star, for they foresaw
The sad world's better day,
But well God knew what thyme and rue
Were planted by his way.
The children of the Pharisees
In hymn and orison
Worshipped the prophets, whom their sires
To cruel death had done,
And said, 'had we been there their death
We had not looked upon.'
While the star shone the angels saw
The tombs these children built
For those the world had driven out,
And smitten to the hilt,
God knew these wretched sons would bear
The self-same bloody guilt.
Always had he who strives for men
But done some other thing,
If he had not led a hermit life,
Or had not had his fling,
We would have followed him, they say,
And made him lord and King.
For John was clothed in camel's hair
And lived among the brutes;
26
But Jesus fared where the feast was spread
To the sound of shawms and lutes,
Where gathered knaves and publicans
And hapless prostitutes.
Like children in the market place
Who sullen sat and heard,
With John they would not mourn, nor yet
Rejoice at Jesus' word;
Had Jesus mourned, or John rejoiced,
He had been King and lord.
II.
From Bethlehem until the day
He came up to the feast
We hear no word, we only know
In wisdom he increased,
We know the marvelous boy did awe
The Pharisee and priest.
For wearied men wake to admire
A genius in the bud;
Before the passion of the world
Flows through him like a flood;
Ere he becomes a scourge to those
Who drink of mankind's blood.
Perhaps in him they saw an arm
To keep the people still;
And fool the meek and slay the weak
And give the King his will;
And put a wall for armZd men
'Round every pleasant hill.
And this is why in after years
The Galilean wept;
The cup of youth was sweet with truth
But a green worm in it crept;
And that was dullness clothed in power,
And hate which never slept.
27
Through twenty years he drove the plane,
And shaped with ax and saw;
And dreamed upon the Hebrew writ
Unto a day of awe,
When he felt the world fit to his grasp
As by a mighty law.
He looked upon the sunny sky,
And 'round the flowering earth;
He heard the poor man's groan of woe,
And the prince's song of mirth;
Then Jesus vowed the life of man
Should have another birth.
And this is why the Son of Man
Wept when he knew the loss,
The toil and sacrifice to cleanse
A little earthly dross;
And that a god to save twelve men
Must die upon the cross.
III.
'Twas on a pleasant day in June
Beneath an azure sky
That 'round him stood the multitude
And saw within his eye
The light that from nor sun nor star
Ever was known to fly.
And some came out to scoff and laugh,
And some to lay a snare;
The rhetorician gaped to see:
The learnZd carpenter.
The money changer, judge and priest,
And statesman all were there.
Some thought the Galilean mad;
Some asked, is he sincere?
Some said he played the demagogue
To gain the people's ear,
And raise a foe against the law
28
That lawful men should fear.
But all the while did C¾sar's might
Grow big with blood and lust;
And no one brooked his tyrant arm,
For the statesman said the crust
That paupers gnaw is by the law,
And that the law is just.
From hunger's hovel, from the streets;
From horror's blackened niche
Earth's mourners came and hands were stretched
To touch him from the ditch.
Then rose a Scribe and said he turned
The poor against the rich.
And those who hated C¾sar's rule,
Albeit sowed the lie
That Jesus stirred sedition up
That he might profit by
A revolution, which should clothe
Himself in monarchy.
Through twice a thousand years the world
Has missed the words he taught;
To forms and creeds and empty show
Christ never gave a thought,
But wrongs that men do unto men
They were the wrongs he fought.
He did not eat with washen hands,
Nor keep the Sabbath day;
He did not to the Synagogue
Repair to sing and pray.
Nor for to-morrow take a thought,
To mar life's pleasant way.
He saw that all of human woe
Takes root in hate and greed;
He saw until men love their kind
The human heart must bleed.
And that nor hymn nor sacrifice
29
Meets any human need.
And this is why he scourged the rich
And lashed the Pharisee,
And stripped from every pious face
The mask hypocrisy;
And so laced Mary Magdalene,
Caught in adultery.
And this is why with grievous fire
He smote the lawyer's lore.
And every wile of cunning guile
Which made the burden more
Upon the backs of wretched men,
Who heavy burdens bore.
Therefore when that the hour was come
For him to die, they blent
Of many things a lying charge,
But at last the argument
They killed him with was that he stirred
The people's discontent.
From thence the world has gone its way
Of this truth, deaf and blind,
And every man who struck the law
Has felt the halter bind,
Until his words were choked in death
Uttered for human kind.
Now did the dreams of Galilee
Awake as from a sleep,
Fly up from earth, and Life unmasked
Life's promise did not keep,
And Jesus saw the face of Life,
And all who see it weep.
God's spirit fled the damnZd earth
And left the earth forlorn.
No more did Jesus walk the fields,
And pluck the ripened corn;
Nor muse beside the silent sea,
30
Upon a summer's morn.
Before the heart of Christ was pierced
With agony divine,
He sat him down in a merry mood
With loving friends to dine.
And once in Cana he did turn
The water into wine.
Now put from shore, swept far to sea
His shallop caught the tide,
Arched o'er him was eternity
'Twixt starless wastes and wide.
God's spirit seemed withdrawn that once
Walked hourly at his side.
IV.
Gladly the common people heard
And called upon his name.
But yet he knew what they would do,
Christ Jesus knew their frame,
And that he should be left alone
Upon a day of shame.
Sharper than thorns upon the brow,
Or nails spiked through the hand
Is when the people fly for fear
And cannot understand;
And let their saviors die the death
As creatures contraband.
For wrongs that flourish by a lie
Are hard enough to bear;
But wrongs that take their root in truth
Shade every brow with care;
And this is why Gethsemane
Was shadowed with despair.
In dark and drear Gethsemane
Hell's devils laughed and raved,
When Jesus torn by fear and doubt
31
Reprieve from sorrow craved;
For who would lose his life, unless
Another's life he saved?
V.
In youth when all the world appeared
As fresh as any flower,
Satan besought the Son of Man,
New-clothed in godly power,
And took him to behold the world
Upon a lofty tower.
To every man of god-like might
Comes Satan once to give
The crown, the crosier and the sword
And bid him laugh and live,
While Hope hides in the wilderness,
A hunted fugitive.
But neither gold nor kingly crown
Tempted the Son of Man
He hoped as many souls have hoped,
Ever since time began,
That love itself can overcome,
Hate's foul leviathan
Some fix their faith to heaven's grace,
And some to saintly bones;
Some think that water doth contain
A virtue which atones;
And some believe that men are saved
By penitential groans.
But of all faith that ever fired
A spirit with its glow
That is supreme which thinks that truth
No power can overthrow;
And he believes who takes and cleaves
To the thorny way of woe!
For life is sweet, and sweet it is
32
With jeweled sandals shod
To trip where happy blossoms shoot
Up from the fragrant sod;
And what sustains the souls that pass
Alway beneath the rod?
The book of worldly lore he closed
And bound it with a hasp;
And in the hour of danger came
No king with friendly clasp.
It was the hand of love against
The anger of the asp.
Since Jesus died the lust of kings
Has linked the cross and crown;
And slaughtered millions whom to save
From heaven he came down;
And all to tame the mind of man
To his divine renown.
But whether he were man or god
This thing at least is true;
He hated with a lordly hate
The Gentile and the Jew,
Who robbed the poor and wronged the weak,
And kept the widow's due.
And those all clothed in raiment soft,
Who in kings' houses dwell;
And those who compass sea and land
Their proselytes to swell;
And when they make one he is made
Two-fold the child of hell.
And those who tithe of anise give,
But sharpen beak and claw;
And those who plait the web of hate
The heart of man to flaw;
And hungry lawyers who pile up
The burdens of the law.
I wonder not they slew the Christ
33
And put upon his brow
The cruel crown of thorns, I know
The world would do it now;
And none shall live who on himself
Shall take the self-same vow.
And none shall live who tries to balk
The heavy hand of greed;
And he who hopes for human help
Against his hour of need
Will find the souls he tried to save
Ready to make him bleed.
For he who flays the hypocrite,
And scourges with a thong
The money changer, soon will find
The money changer strong;
And even the people will incline
To think his mission wrong.
And pious souls will say he is
At best a castaway;
Some will remember he blasphemed
And broke the Sabbath day.
And the coward friend will fool his heart
And then he will betray.
At last the Scribe and Pharisee
No longer could abide
The tumult which his words stirred up
In every country side;
And so they made a sign, which meant
He must be crucified.
For him no sword was raised, no king
Came forward for his sake;
And every son of mammon laughed
To see death overtake
The fool who fastened to the truth
And made his life the stake.
VI.
34
Upon a day when Jesus' soul
Like an angel's voice did quire,
The heart of all the people burned
With a white and holy fire;
And they did sweep to make him king
Over the world's empire.
His kingdom was not of this world,
But this they would not own;
And he to save themselves did go
To a mountain place alone,
And there did pray that holy Truth
Might find somewhere a throne.
When Henry was by Francis sought
To make him emperor,
They walked upon a cloth of gold,
As sovereign lords of war.
And trumpets blew and banners flew
About the royal car.
When Caesar back to Rome returned
With all the world subdued,
The soldiers and the priests did shout,
And cried the multitude;
For he had slain his country's foes,
And drenched their land with blood.
But all the triumph of the Christ
That ever came to pass
Was when he rode amidst a mob
Upon a borrowed ass;
And this is all the worldly pomp
A genius ever has.
His cloth of gold were branches cut
And strewn upon the ground;
And every money-changer laughed,
And the judges looked and frowned;
But no one saw a flag unfurled,
Or heard a bugle sound.
35
To-day whene'er a coxcomb king
Visits a foreign shore,
The simple people deck themselves
And all the cannon roar.
But it would not do such grace to show
To a soul of lordly lore.
VII.
Of all sad suppers ever spread
For broken hearts to eat,
That was the saddest where the Christ
Did serve the bread and meat;
And, ere he served them, washed with care
Each worn disciple's feet.
And who would hold in memory
That supper, let him call
His loved friends about his board
And serve them one and all;
And with a loving spirit crown
The simple festival.
For this I hold to be the truth,
And Jesus said the same;
That men who meet as brothers, they
Are gathered in his name;
And only for its evil deeds
A soul he will disclaim.
Through climes of sun and climes of snow
Full many a wretched knight,
The holy grail, without avail
Did make his life's delight,
And lo! the thing it symbolized
Was ever in their sight.
The cup whereof Christ Jesus drank
Was wholly without grace;
And whether made of stone or wood
Was lost or broke apace.
36
And no one thought to keep a cup
While looking in his face.
They kept no cup, their only thought
Was for the morrow morn.
And as he passed the wine and bread
With pallid hands and worn,
Peter did swear he would not leave
His stricken lord forlorn.
John, the beloved, on his breast,
Wept while the hour did pass.
Judas did groan when Jesus struck
Behind his soul's arras.
All trembled for the bitter hate,
And power of Caiaphas.
But for that simple, farewell feast
In Holland, France and Spain,
Ten million men as true as John
Were racked and burnt and slain,
As if they held remembrance of
The farewell feast of Cain.
Had Jesus known what fratricide
Over his words would fall
I think he would have gone straightway
Up to the judgment hall,
And never broken bread or drunk
The cup his friends withal.
Though a good tree brings forth good fruit,
What good bears naught but good?
What sum of saintly life contains
No grain of devil's food?
What purest truth when past its youth
Is not its own falsehood?
And every rod wherewith the wise
Have cleft each barrier sea,
That men might walk across and reach
The land of liberty,
37
In hands of kings were snakes whose stings
Were worse than slavery.
VIII.
The rulers thought it best to wait
Till Jesus were alone;
They had forgot the coward crowd
Never protects its own,
But leaves its leaders to the whim
Of wrong upon a throne.
Had malcontents for Pilate sought
To do a treasonous thing,
Ten thousand loyal fishermen
Had made the traitors swing;
For they are taught they cannot live
Unless they have a king.
But soldiers came with swords and staves
To sieze one helpless man.
And only Peter had a sword
To smite the craven clan
And only Peter stood his ground,
And all the people ran.
I wish, since Jesus by the world
Is held to be divine,
That he had lived to give to men
A perfect anodyne,
And raise to human liberty
A world compelling shrine.
A shrine 'round which should lie to-day
The world's discarded crowns,
And swords and guns and gilded gawds
And monkish beads and gowns;
But, as it is, upon these things,
They say, he never frowns.
And only by an argument
Can any being show
38
That Jesus would chop out and burn
These monstrous roots of woe.
And so these roots are living yet,
And still the roots do grow.
Unto this day in divers lands
Pilate is singled out
For curses that he did not save
Christ from the rabble's shout;
But they forget he was a judge,
And had a judge's doubt.
The sickly fear of the rulers' sneer
Clutches the judge's heart.
And to hide behind a hoary lie
Is the judge's highest art;
And the judgment hall has a door that leads
To the room of the money mart.
The laws wherewith men murder men
Are dark with skeptic slime;
They are not stars that point the way
To truth in every clime.
Wherefore was Jesus crucified,
For what was not a crime.
When Pilate questioned what is truth
He did not mean to jest;
He meant to show when life's at stake
How difficult the quest
Through hollow rules and empty forms
To truth's ingenuous test.
And Pilate might have pardoned him
Had not the lawyers said,
The Galilean strove to put
A crown upon his head.
And how could Jesus be a king,
Who blood had never shed?
The trial of Jesus long ago
Was cursed in solemn rhyme;
39
For the judgment hall was but farcical
And the trial a pantomime.
Save that it led to a felon's death
For what was not a crime.
The common people on that day
Had enough black-bread to eat.
And what to them was another's woe
Before the judgment seat?
They were content that day to keep
From pit-falls their own feet.
Had Herod stood, whate'er the charge,
Before the people's bar
The sophists would have cut it down
With reason's scimitar,
And called the peasants to enforce
The judgment near and far.
And had they failed to save their king
From every foul mischance
The banded Anarchs of the world
Had held them in durance,
As afterward the crownZd heads
Did punish recreant France.
IX.
So it fell out amid the rout
Of captain, lord and priest,
They bound his hands with felon bands
And they flogged him like a beast.
And Pilate washed his hands, and then
For them a thief released.
And only women solaced him,
And one mad courtesan,
'Save thou thyself,' the elders cried,
'Who came to rescue man.'
Where were the common people then?
The common people ran.
40
Between two thieves upon a hill
The terror to proclaim
They racked his body on a cross
Till his thirst was like a flame;
And they mocked his woe and they wagged their heads,
And they spat upon his name.
God thought a picture like to this,
Fire-limned against the sky,
Once seen, would never fade away
From the world's careless eye;
And that the lesson that it taught
No soul could wander by.
God thought the shadow of this cross,
Athwart the mad world's ken,
Would stay with shame the hands that kill
The men who die for men,
And that no soul for love of truth
Need ever die again.
Many a man the valley of death
With fearless step hath trod;
The prophet is a phoenix soul,
And the wretch is a sullen clod.
But Jesus in his death became
Liker unto a god
Liker unto a god he grew
Who walked through heaven and hell;
He died as he forgave the mob
That 'round the cross did yell.
They knew not what they did, and this
Jesus, the god, knew well.
For hate is spawned of ignorance
And ignorance of hate.
And all the fangZd shapes that creep
From their incestuous state
Enter the gardens of the world,
And cursZd keep their fate.
41
Near Gadara did Jesus drive
By an occult power and sign
The unclean devils from a loon
Into a herd of swine.
But the swinish devils entered the Scribes,
And slew a soul divine.
Christ healed the blind, but could not ope
The eyes of ignorance,
Nor turn to wands of peace and love
Hate's bloody sword and lance;
But the swinish fiends who took his life
Received a pardoning glance.
And Jesus raised the dead to life,
And he cured the lame and halt
But he could not heal a hateful soul,
And keep it free from fault;
Nor bring the savour back again
To the world's trampled salt.
X.
After his death the rulers slept,
And the judges were at ease;
For they had killed a rebel soul
And strewed his devotees;
But the imp of time is a thing perverse,
And laughs at men's decrees.
For it is vain to kill a man,
His life to stigmatize;
Herein the wisdom of the world
Is folly to the wise;
For those the world doth kill, the world
Will surely canonize.
To look upon a lovZd face
By the Gorgon Death made stone,
Will make the heart leap up with fear
And the soul with sorrow groan;
42
Alas! who knows what thing he knew
Ere the light of life was flown?
Who knows what tears did start to well,
But were frozen at their source?
Who knows his ashen grief who felt
That iron hand of force?
Or what black thing he saw before
He grew a lifeless corse?
And, much of hope, but more of woe
Falls with the chastening rod,
As the living think of an orphan soul
That the spectral ways may trod,
And how that orphan soul must cry
In its new world after God.
So the fisherman did sigh at night,
For a dream-face haunted them.
By day they hid as branded men
Within Jerusalem.
And the common people, safe at home,
Did breathe a requiem.
But where he lay, one fearless soul,
Mad Magdalene, from whom
Christ cast the seven devils out,
Came in the morning's gloom,
And thence arose the burning faith
That Christ rose from the tomb
But all do know the mind of man
Mixes the false and true,
And deifies each Son of God
That ever hatred slew;
And weaves him magic tales to tell
Of what the man could do.
The legends grow, as grow they must
The wonder to equip.
And ere they write the legends out,
They pass from lip to lip,
43
Till a simple life becomes a theme
For studied scholarship.
But this I know that after Christ
Did die on Calvary,
He never more did preach to men,
Nor scourge the Pharisee;
Else it was vain to still his voice
And nail him to a tree.
Nor scribe nor priest were ever more
By him disquieted.
And little did it mean to them
That he rose from the dead.
For greed can sleep when it has killed
The thing that it did dread.
And never a king or satrap knew
That Christ the tomb had rent;
He might have lived a second life,
With every lord's consent,
If never more he sought to stir
The people's discontent.
He might have risen from the dead
And gone to Galilee;
And there paced out a hundred years
In a sorrowed revery,
If he but never preached again
The creed humanity.
XI.
To distant lands did Jesus' words,
Like sparks that burst in flame,
Fly forth to light the ways of dole,
And blind the eyes of shame,
Till subtle kings, to staunch their wounds,
Did conjure with his name.
When kings did pilfer Jesus' might,
His words of love were turned
44
To swords and goads and heavy loads,
And rods and brands that burned;
And never had the world before
So piteously mourned.
Of peasant Mary they did make
A statue all of gold;
And placed a crown upon her head
With jewels manifold.
And Jesus' words were strained and drawn
This horror to uphold.
They robed a rebel royally,
And placed within his hand
A scepter, that himself should be
One of their murderous band.
And it is tragical that men
Can never understand.
For Herod crowned the carpenter
With woven thorns of hate.
And put a reed within his hand
A king to imitate.
Now kings have made a rebel soul
The patron of the state.
And kingcraft never hatched a lie,
This falsehood to surpass.
For Jesus' only hour of pomp
Was what a genius has;
He rode amidst a howling mob
Upon a borrowed ass.
Though his cloth of gold were branches cut
And strewed upon the ground;
And though the money-changers laughed,
While the judges looked and frowned;
To-day for him the flag is flown,
And all the bugles sound.
To-day where'er the treacherous sword
Takes lord-ship in the world,
45
The bloody rag they call the flag,
In his name is unfurled.
And round the standard of the cross
Is greed, the python, curled.
For wrongs that have the show of truth
Are hard enough to bear,
But wrongs that flourish by a lie,
Shade wisdom's brow with care.
And still in dark Gethsemane
There lurks the fiend Despair.
And still in drear Gethsemane,
Hell's devils laugh and rave,
Because the Prince of Peace hath failed
The wayward world to save.
For every word he spoke is made
A shackle to enslave.
Man's wingd hopes are white at dawn,
But the hand of malice smuts.
O, angel voices drowned and lost
Amid the growl of guts!
O spirit hands that strain to draw
A dead world from the ruts!
God made a stage of Palestine,
And the drama played was Life;
And the Eye of Heaven sat and watched
The true and false at strife;
While a masque o' the World did play the pimp,
And take a whore to wife.
I wonder not they slew the Christ,
And put upon his brow
A mocking crown of thorns, I know
The world would do it now;
And none shall live who on himself
Shall take the self-same vow.
And none shall live who tries to balk
The heavy hand of greed.
46
And who betakes him to the task,
That heart will surely bleed.
But a little truth, somehow is saved
Out of each dead man's creed.
Out of the life of him who scourged
The Scribe and Pharisee,
A willing world can take to heart
The creed humanity;
And all the wonder tales of Christ
Are naught to you and me.
And it matters not what place he drew,
At first life's mortal breath,
Nor how it was his spirit rose
And triumphed over death,
But good it is to hear and do
The word that Jesus saith.
Until the perfect truth shall lie
Treasured and set apart;
One whole, harmonious truth to set
A seal upon each heart;
And none may ever from that truth
In any wise depart.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
817:The Kalevala - Rune Xxiii
OSMOTAR THE BRIDE-ADVISER
Now the bride must be instructed,
Who will teach the Maid of Beauty,
Who instruct the Rainbow-daughter?
Osmotar, the wisdom-maiden,
Kalew's fair and lovely virgin,
Osmotar will give instructions
To the bride of Ilmarinen,
To the orphaned bride of Pohya,
Teach her how to live in pleasure,
How to live and reign in glory,
Win her second mother's praises,
Joyful in her husband's dwelling.
Osmotar in modest accents
Thus the anxious bride addresses;
'Maid of Beauty, lovely sister,
Tender plant of Louhi's gardens,
Hear thou what thy sister teaches,
Listen to her sage instructions:
Go thou hence, my much beloved,
Wander far away, my flower,
Travel on enwrapped in colors,
Glide away in silks and ribbons,
From this house renowned and ancient,
From thy father's halls and court-yards
Haste thee to thy husband's village,
Hasten to his mother's household;
Strange, the rooms in other dwellings,
Strange, the modes in other hamlets.
'Full of thought must be thy going,
And thy work be well considered,
Quite unlike thy home in Northland,
On the meadows of thy father,
On the high-lands of thy brother,
Singing through thy mother's fenlands,
Culling daisies with thy sister.
'When thou goest from thy father
375
Thou canst take whatever pleases,
Only three things leave behind thee:
Leave thy day-dreams to thy sister,
Leave thou kindness for thy mother,
To thy brother leave thy labors,
Take all else that thou desirest.
Throw away thine incantations,
Cast thy sighing to the pine-trees,
And thy maidenhood to zephyrs,
Thy rejoicings to the couches,
Cast thy trinkets to the children,
And thy leisure to the gray-beards,
Cast all pleasures to thy playmates,
Let them take them to the woodlands,
Bury them beneath the mountain.
'Thou must hence acquire new habits,
Must forget thy former customs,
Mother-love must be forsaken,
Thou must love thy husband's mother,
Lower must thy head be bended,
Kind words only must thou utter.
'Thou must hence acquire new habits,
Must forget thy former customs,
Father-love must be forsaken,
Thou must love thy husband's father,
Lower must thy head be bended,
Kind words only must thou utter.
'Thou must hence acquire new habits,
Must forget thy former customs,
Brother-love must be forsaken,
Thou must love thy husband's brother,
Lower must thy head be bended,
Kind words only must thou utter.
'Thou must hence acquire new habits
Must forget thy former customs,
Sister-love must be forsaken,
Thou must love thy husband's sister,
Lower must thy head be bended,
Kind words only must thou utter.
'Never in the course of ages,
Never while the moonlight glimmers,
Wickedly approach thy household,
376
Nor unworthily, thy servants,
Nor thy courts with indiscretion;
Let thy dwellings sing good manners,
And thy walls re-echo virtue.
After mind the hero searches.
And the best of men seek honor,
Seek for honesty and wisdom;
If thy home should be immoral,
If thine inmates fail in virtue,
Then thy gray-beards would be black-dogs
In sheep's clothing at thy firesides;
All thy women would be witches,
Wicked witches in thy chambers,
And thy brothers be as serpents
Crawling through thy husband's mansion;
All thy sisters would be famous
For their evil thoughts and conduct.
'Equal honors must be given
To thy husband's friends and kindred;
Lower must thy head be bended,
Than within thy mother's dwelling,
Than within thy father's guest-room,
When thou didst thy kindred honor.
Ever strive to give good counsel,
Wear a countenance of sunshine,
Bear a head upon thy shoulders
Filled with wise and ancient sayings;
Open bright thine eyes at morning
To behold the silver sunrise,
Sharpen well thine ears at evening,
Thus to hear the rooster crowing;
When he makes his second calling,
Straightway thou must rise from slumber,
Let the aged sleep in quiet;
Should the rooster fail to call thee,
Let the moonbeams touch thine eyelids,
Let the Great Bear be thy keeper
Often go thou and consult them,
Call upon the Moon for counsel,
Ask the Bear for ancient wisdom,
From the stars divine thy future;
When the Great Bear faces southward,
377
When his tail is pointing northward,
This is time to break with slumber,
Seek for fire within the ashes,
Place a spark upon the tinder,
Blow the fire through all the fuel.
If no spark is in the ashes,
Then go wake thy hero-husband,
Speak these words to him on waking:
'Give me fire, O my beloved,
Give a single spark, my husband,
Strike a little fire from flintstone,
Let it fall upon my tinder.'
'From the spark, O Bride of Beauty,
Light thy fires, and heat thine ovens,
In the holder, place the torch-light,
Find thy pathway to the stables,
There to fill the empty mangers;
If thy husband's cows be lowing,
If thy brother's steeds be neighing,
Then the cows await thy coming,
And the steeds for thee are calling,
Hasten, stooping through the hurdles,
Hasten through the yards and stables,
Feed thy husband's cows with pleasure,
Feed with care the gentle lambkins,
Give the cows the best of clover,
Hay, and barley, to the horses,
Feed the calves of lowing mothers,
Feed the fowl that fly to meet thee.
'Never rest upon the haymow,
Never sleep within the hurdles,
When the kine are fed and tended,
When the flocks have all been watered;
Hasten thence, my pretty matron,
Like the snow-flakes to thy dwelling,
There a crying babe awaits thee,
Weeping in his couch neglected,
Cannot speak and tell his troubles,
Speechless babe, and weeping infant,
Cannot say that he is hungry,
Whether pain or cold distresses,
Greets with joy his mother's footsteps.
378
Afterward repair in silence
To thy husband's rooms and presence,
Early visit thou his chambers,
In thy hand a golden pitcher,
On thine arm a broom of birch-wood,
In thy teeth a lighted taper,
And thyself the fourth in order.
Sweep thou then thy hero's dwelling,
Dust his benches and his tables,
Wash the flooring well with water.
'If the baby of thy sister
Play alone within his corner,
Show the little child attention,
Bathe his eyes and smoothe his ringlets,
Give the infant needed comforts;
Shouldst thou have no bread of barley,
In his hand adjust some trinket.
'Lastly, when the week has ended,
Give thy house a thorough cleansing,
Benches, tables, walls, and ceilings;
What of dust is on the windows,
Sweep away with broom of birch-twigs,
All thy rooms must first be sprinkled,
at the dust may not be scattered,
May not fill the halls and chambers.
Sweep the dust from every crevice,
Leave thou not a single atom;
Also sweep the chimney-corners,
Do not then forget the rafters,
Lest thy home should seem untidy,
Lest thy dwelling seem neglected.
'Hear, O maiden, what I tell thee,
Learn the tenor of my teaching:
Never dress in scanty raiment,
Let thy robes be plain and comely,
Ever wear the whitest linen,
On thy feet wear tidy fur-shoes,
For the glory of thy husband,
For the honor of thy hero.
Tend thou well the sacred sorb-tree,
Guard the mountain-ashes planted
In the court-yard, widely branching;
379
Beautiful the mountain-ashes,
Beautiful their leaves and flowers,
Still more beautiful the berries.
Thus the exiled one demonstrates
That she lives to please her husband,
Tries to make her hero happy.
'Like the mouse, have ears for hearing,
Like the hare, have feet for running,
Bend thy neck and turn thy visage
Like the juniper and aspen,
Thus to watch with care thy goings,
Thus to guard thy feet from stumbling,
That thou mayest walk in safety.
'When thy brother comes from plowing,
And thy father from his garners,
And thy husband from the woodlands,
From his chopping, thy beloved,
Give to each a water-basin,
Give to each a linen-towel,
Speak to each some pleasant greeting.
'When thy second mother hastens
To thy husband's home and kindred,
In her hand a corn-meal measure,
Haste thou to the court to meet her,
Happy-hearted, bow before her,
Take the measure from her fingers,
Happy, bear it to thy husband.
'If thou shouldst not see distinctly
What demands thy next attention,
Ask at once thy hero's mother:
'Second mother, my beloved,
Name the task to be accomplished
By thy willing second daughter,
Tell me how to best perform it.'
'This should be the mother's answer:
'This the manner of thy workings,
Thus thy daily work accomplish:
Stamp with diligence and courage,
Grind with will and great endurance,
Set the millstones well in order,
Fill the barley-pans with water,
Knead with strength the dough for baking,
380
Place the fagots on the fire-place,
That thy ovens may be heated,
Bake in love the honey-biscuit,
Bake the larger loaves of barley,
Rinse to cleanliness thy platters,
Polish well thy drinking-vessels.
'If thou hearest from the mother,
From the mother of thy husband,
That the cask for meal is empty,
Take the barley from the garners,
Hasten to the rooms for grinding.
When thou grindest in the chambers,
Do not sing in glee and joyance,
Turn the grinding-stones in silence,
To the mill give up thy singing,
Let the side-holes furnish music;
Do not sigh as if unhappy,
Do not groan as if in trouble,
Lest the father think thee weary,
Lest thy husband's mother fancy
That thy groans mean discontentment,
That thy sighing means displeasure.
Quickly sift the flour thou grindest,
Take it to the casks in buckets,
Bake thy hero's bread with pleasure,
Knead the dough with care and patience,
That thy biscuits may be worthy,
That the dough be light and airy.
'Shouldst thou see a bucket empty,
Take the bucket on thy shoulder,
On thine arm a silver-dipper,
Hasten off to fill with water
From the crystal river flowing;
Gracefully thy bucket carry,
Bear it firmly by the handles,
Hasten houseward like the zephyrs,
Hasten like the air of autumn;
Do not tarry near the streamlet,
At the waters do not linger,
That the father may not fancy,
Nor the ancient dame imagine,
That thou hast beheld thine image,
381
Hast admired thy form and features,
Hast admired thy grace and beauty
In the mirror of the fountain,
In the crystal streamlet's eddies.
'Shouldst thou journey to the woodlands,
There to gather aspen-fagots,
Do not go with noise and bustle,
Gather all thy sticks in silence,
Gather quietly the birch-wood,
That the father may not fancy,
And the mother not imagine,
That thy calling came from anger,
And thy noise from discontentment.
'If thou goest to the store-house
To obtain the flour of barley,
Do not tarry on thy journey,
On the threshold do not linger,
That the father may not fancy,
And the mother not imagine,
That the meal thou hast divided
With the women of the village.
'If thou goest to the river,
There to wash thy birchen platters,
There to cleanse thy pans and buckets,
Lest thy work be done in neatness,
Rinse the sides, and rinse the handles,
Rinse thy pitchers to perfection,
Spoons, and forks, and knives, and goblets,
Rinse with care thy cooking-vessels,
Closely watch the food-utensils,
That the dogs may not deface them,
That the kittens may not mar them,
That the eagles may not steal them,
That the children may not break them;
Many children in the village,
Many little heads and fingers,
That will need thy careful watching,
Lest they steal the things of value.
'When thou goest to thy bathing,
Have the brushes ready lying
In the bath-room clean and smokeless;
Do not, linger in the water,
382
At thy bathing do not tarry,
That the father may not fancy,
And the mother not imagine,
Thou art sleeping on the benches,
Rolling in the laps of comfort.
'From thy bath, when thou returnest,
To his bathing tempt the father,
Speak to him the words that follow:
'Father of my hero-husband,
Clean are all the bath-room benches,
Everything in perfect order;
Go and bathe for thine enjoyment,
Pour the water all-sufficient,
I will lend thee needed service.'
'When the time has come for spinning,
When the hours arrive for weaving,
Do not ask the help of others,
Look not in the stream for knowledge,
For advice ask not the servants,
Nor the spindle from the sisters,
Nor the weaving-comb from strangers.
Thou thyself must do the spinning,
With thine own hand ply the shuttle,
Loosely wind the skeins of wool-yarn,
Tightly wind the balls of flax-thread,
Wind them deftly in the shuttle
Fit the warp upon the rollers,
Beat the woof and warp together,
Swiftly ply the weaver's shuttle,
Weave good cloth for all thy vestments,
Weave of woolen, webs for dresses
From the finest wool of lambkins,
One thread only in thy weaving.
'Hear thou what I now advise thee:
Brew thy beer from early barley,
From the barley's new-grown kernels,
Brew it with the magic virtues,
Malt it with the sweets of honey,
Do not stir it with the birch-rod,
Stir it with thy skilful fingers;
When thou goest to the garners,
Do not let the seed bring evil,
383
Keep the dogs outside the brew-house,
Have no fear of wolves in hunger,
Nor the wild-beasts of the mountains,
When thou goest to thy brewing,
Shouldst thou wander forth at midnight.
'Should some stranger come to see thee,
Do not worry for his comfort;
Ever does the worthy household
Have provisions for the stranger,
Bits of meat, and bread, and biscuit,
Ample for the dinner-table;
Seat the stranger in thy dwelling,
Speak with him in friendly accents,
Entertain the guest with kindness,
While his dinner is preparing.
When the stranger leaves thy threshold,
When his farewell has been spoken,
Lead him only to the portals,
Do not step without the doorway,
That thy husband may not fancy,
And the mother not imagine,
Thou hast interest in strangers.
'Shouldst thou ever make a journey
To the centre of the village,
There to gain some needed object,
While thou speakest in the hamlet,
Let thy words be full of wisdom,
That thou shamest not thy kindred,
Nor disgrace thy husband's household.
'Village-maidens oft will ask thee,
Mothers of the hamlet question:
'Does thy husband's mother greet thee
As in childhood thou wert greeted,
In thy happy home in Pohya?'
Do not answer in negation,
Say that she has always given
Thee the best of her provisions,
Given thee the kindest greetings,
Though it be but once a season.
'Listen well to what I tell thee:
As thou goest from thy father
To thy husband's distant dwelling,
384
Thou must not forget thy mother,
Her that gave thee life and beauty,
Her that nurtured thee in childhood,
Many sleepless nights she nursed thee;
Often were her wants neglected,
Numberless the times she rocked thee;
Tender, true, and ever faithful,
Is the mother to her daughter.
She that can forget her mother,
Can neglect the one that nursed her,
Should not visit Mana's castle,
In the kingdom of Tuoni;
In Manala she would suffer,
Suffer frightful retribution,
Should her mother be forgotten;
Should her dear one be neglected,
Mana's daughters will torment her,
And Tuoni's sons revile her,
They will ask her much as follows:
'How couldst thou forget thy mother,
How neglect the one that nursed thee?
Great the pain thy mother suffered,
Great the trouble that thou gavest
When thy loving mother brought thee
Into life for good or evil,
When she gave thee earth-existence,
When she nursed thee but an infant,
When she fed thee in thy childhood,
When she taught thee what thou knowest,
Mana's punishments upon thee,
Since thy mother is forgotten!''
On the floor a witch was sitting,
Near the fire a beggar-woman,
One that knew the ways of people,
These the words the woman uttered:
'Thus the crow calls in the winter:
'Would that I could be a singer,
And my voice be full of sweetness,
But, alas! my songs are worthless,
Cannot charm the weakest creature;
I must live without the singing
Leave the songs to the musicians,
385
Those that live in golden houses,
In the homes of the beloved;
Homeless therefore I must wander,
Like a beggar in the corn-fields,
And with none to do me honor.'
'Hear now, sister, what I tell thee,
Enter thou thy husband's dwelling,
Follow not his mind, nor fancies,
As my husband's mind I followed;
As a flower was I when budding,
Sprouting like a rose in spring-time,
Growing like a slender maiden,
Like the honey-gem of glory,
Like the playmates of my childhood,
Like the goslings of my father,
Like the blue-ducks of my mother,
Like my brother's water-younglings,
Like the bullfinch of my sister;
Grew I like the heather-flower,
Like the berry of the meadow,
Played upon the sandy sea-shore,
Rocked upon the fragrant upland,
Sang all day adown the valley,
Thrilled with song the hill and mountain,
Filled with mirth the glen and forest,
Lived and frolicked in the woodlands.
'Into traps are foxes driven
By the cruel pangs of hunger,
Into traps, the cunning ermine;
Thus are maidens wooed and wedded,
In their hunger for a husband.
Thus created is the virgin,
Thus intended is the daughter,
Subject to her hero-husband,
Subject also to his mother.
'Then to other fields I hastened,
Like a berry from the border,
Like a cranberry for roasting,
Like a strawberry for dinner;
All the elm-trees seemed to wound me,
All the aspens tried to cut me,
All the willows tried to seize me,
386
All the forest tried to slay me.
Thus I journeyed to my husband,
Thus I travelled to his dwelling,
Was conducted to his mother.
Then there were, as was reported,
Six compartments built of pine-wood,
Twelve the number of the chambers,
And the mansion filled with garrets,
Studding all the forest border,
Every by-way filled with flowers
Streamlets bordered fields of barley,
Filled with wheat and corn, the islands,
Grain in plenty in the garners,
Rye unthrashed in great abundance,
Countless sums of gold and silver,
Other treasures without number.
When my journey I had ended,
When my hand at last was given,
Six supports were in his cabin,
Seven poles as rails for fencing.
Filled with anger were the bushes,
All the glens disfavor showing,
All the walks were lined with trouble,
Evil-tempered were the forests,
Hundred words of evil import,
Hundred others of unkindness.
Did not let this bring me sorrow,
Long I sought to merit praises,
Long I hoped to find some favor,
Strove most earnestly for kindness;
When they led me to the cottage,
There I tried some chips to gather,
Knocked my head against the portals
Of my husband's lowly dwelling.
'At the door were eyes of strangers,
Sable eyes at the partition,
Green with envy in his cabin,
Evil heroes in the back-ground,
From each mouth the fire was streaming,
From each tongue the sparks out-flying,
Flying from my second father,
From his eyeballs of unkindness.
387
Did not let this bring me trouble,
Tried to live in peace and pleasure,
In the homestead of my husband
In humility I suffered,
Skipped about with feet of rabbit,
Flew along with steps of ermine,
Late I laid my head to slumber,
Early rose as if a servant,
Could not win a touch of kindness,
Could not merit love nor honor,
Though I had dislodged the mountains,
Though the rocks had I torn open.
'Then I turned the heavy millstone,
Ground the flour with care and trouble,
Ground the barley-grains in patience,
That the mother might be nourished,
That her fury-throat might swallow
What might please her taste and fancy,.
From her gold-enamelled platters,
From the corner of her table.
'As for me, the hapless daughter,
All my flour was from the siftings
On the table near the oven,
Ate I from the birchen ladle;
Oftentimes I brought the mosses
Gathered in the lowland meadows,
Baked them into loaves for eating;
Brought the water from the river,
Thirsty, sipped it from the dipper,
Ate of fish the worst in Northland,
Only smelts, and worthless swimmers,
Rocking in my boat of birch-bark
Never ate I fish or biscuit
From my second mother's fingers.
'Blades I gathered in the summers,
Twisted barley-stalks in winter,
Like the laborers of heroes,
Like the servants sold in bondage.
In the thresh-house of my husband,
Evermore to me was given
Flail the heaviest and longest,
And to me the longest lever,
388
On the shore the strongest beater,
And the largest rake in haying;
No one thought my burden heavy,
No one thought that I could suffer,
Though the best of heroes faltered,
And the strongest women weakened.
'Thus did I, a youthful housewife,
At the right time, all my duties,
Drenched myself in perspiration,
Hoped for better times to follow;
But I only rose to labor,
Knowing neither rest nor pleasure.
I was blamed by all the household,
With ungrateful tongues derided,
Now about my awkward manners,
Now about my reputation,
Censuring my name and station.
Words unkind were heaped upon me,
Fell like hail on me unhappy,
Like the frightful flash of lightning,
Like the heavy hail of spring-time.
I did not despair entirely,
Would have lived to labor longer
Underneath the tongue of malice,
But the old-one spoiled Lay temper,
Roused my deepest ire and hatred
Then my husband grew a wild-bear,
Grew a savage wolf of Hisi.
'Only then I turned to weeping,
And reflected in my chamber,
Thought of all my former pleasures
Of the happy days of childhood,
Of my father's joyful firesides,
Of my mother's peaceful cottage,
Then began I thus to murmur:
'Well thou knowest, ancient mother,
How to make thy sweet bud blossom,
How to train thy tender shootlet;
Did not know where to ingraft it,
Placed, alas! the little scion
In the very worst of places,
On an unproductive hillock,
389
In the hardest limb of cherry,
Where it could not grow and flourish,
There to waste its life, in weeping,
Hapless in her lasting sorrow.
Worthier had been my conduct
In the regions that are better,
In the court-yards that are wider,
In compartments that are larger,
Living with a loving husband,
Living with a stronger hero.
Shoe of birch-bark was my suitor,
Shoe of Laplanders, my husband;
Had the body of a raven,
Voice and visage like the jackdaw,
Mouth and claws were from the black-wolf,
The remainder from the wild-bear.
Had I known that mine affianced
Was a fount of pain and evil,
To the hill-side I had wandered,
Been a pine-tree on the highway,
Been a linden on the border,
Like the black-earth made my visage,
Grown a beard of ugly bristles,
Head of loam and eyes of lightning,
For my ears the knots of birches,
For my limbs the trunks of aspens.'
'This the manner of my singing
In the hearing of my husband,
Thus I sang my cares and murmurs
Thus my hero near the portals
Heard the wail of my displeasure,
Then he hastened to my chamber;
Straightway knew I by his footsteps,
Well concluded be was angry,
'Knew it by his steps implanted;
All the winds were still in slumber,
Yet his sable locks stood endwise,
Fluttered round his bead in fury,
While his horrid mouth stood open;
To and fro his eyes were rolling,
In one hand a branch of willow,
In the other, club of alder;
390
Struck at me with might of malice,
Aimed the cudgel at my forehead.
'When the evening had descended,
When my husband thought of slumber
Took he in his hand a whip-stalk,
With a whip-lash made of deer-skin,
Was not made for any other,
Only made for me unhappy.
'When at last I begged for mercy,
When I sought a place for resting,
By his side I courted slumber,
Merciless, my husband seized me,
Struck me with his arm of envy,
Beat me with the whip of torture,
Deer-skin-lash and stalk of birch-wood.
From his couch I leaped impulsive,
In the coldest night of winter,
But the husband fleetly followed,
Caught me at the outer portals,
Grasped me by my streaming tresses,
Tore my ringlets from my forehead,
Cast in curls upon the night-winds
To the freezing winds of winter.
What the aid that I could ask for,
Who could free me from my torment?
Made I shoes of magic metals,
Made the straps of steel and copper,
Waited long without the dwelling,
Long I listened at the portals,
Hoping he would end his ravings,
Hoping he would sink to slumber,
But he did not seek for resting,
Did not wish to still his fury.
Finally the cold benumbed me;
As an outcast from his cabin,
I was forced to walk and wander,
When I, freezing, well reflected,
This the substance of my thinking:
'I will not endure this torture,
Will not bear this thing forever,
Will not bear this cruel treatment,
Such contempt I will not suffer
391
In the wicked tribe of Hisi,
In this nest of evil Piru.'
'Then I said, 'Farewell forever!'
To my husband's home and kindred,
To my much-loved home and husband;
Started forth upon a journey
To my father's distant hamlet,
Over swamps and over snow-fields,
Wandered over towering mountains,
Over hills and through the valleys,
To my brother's welcome meadows,
To my sister's home and birthplace.
'There were rustling withered pine-trees.
Finely-feathered firs were fading,
Countless ravens there were cawing,
All the jackdaws harshly singing,
This the chorus of the ravens:
'Thou hast here a home no longer,
This is not the happy homestead
Of thy merry days of childhood.'
'Heeding not this woodland chorus,
Straight I journeyed to the dwelling
Of my childhood's friend and brother,
Where the portals spake in concord,
And the hills and valleys answered,
This their saddened song and echo:
'Wherefore dost thou journey hither,
Comest thou for joy or sorrow,
To thy father's old dominions?
Here unhappiness awaits thee,
Long departed is thy father,
Dead and gone to visit Ukko,
Dead and gone thy faithful mother,
And thy brother is a stranger,
While his wife is chill and heartless!'
'Heeding not these many warnings,
Straightway to my brother's cottage
Were my weary feet directed,
Laid my hand upon the door-latch
Of my brother's dismal cottage,
But the latch was cold and lifeless.
When I wandered to the chamber,
392
When I waited at the doorway,
There I saw the heartless hostess,
But she did not give me greeting,
Did not give her hand in welcome;
Proud, alas! was I unhappy,
Did not make the first advances,
Did not offer her my friendship,
And my hand I did not proffer;
Laid my hand upon the oven,
All its former warmth departed!
On the coal I laid my fingers,
All the latent heat had left it.
On the rest-bench lay my brother,
Lay outstretched before the fire-place,
Heaps of soot upon his shoulders,
Heaps of ashes on his forehead.
Thus the brother asked the stranger,
Questioned thus his guest politely:
'Tell me what thy name and station,
Whence thou comest o'er the waters!'
This the answer that I gave him:
Hast thou then forgot thy sister,
Does my brother not remember,
Not recall his mother's daughter
We are children of one mother,
Of one bird were we the fledgelings,
In one nest were hatched and nurtured.'
'Then the brother fell to weeping,
From his eyes great tear-drops flowing,
To his wife the brother whispered,
Whispered thus unto the housewife.
'Bring thou beer to give my sister,
Quench her thirst and cheer her spirits.'
'Full of envy, brought the sister
Only water filled with evil,
Water for the infant's eyelids,
Soap and water from the bath-room.
'To his wife the brother whispered,
Whispered thus unto the housewife:
'Bring thou salmon for my sister,
For my sister so long absent,
Thus to still her pangs of hunger.'
393
'Thereupon the wife obeying,
Brought, in envy, only cabbage
That the children had been eating,
And the house-dogs had been licking,
Leavings of the black-dog's breakfast.
'Then I left my brother's dwelling,
Hastened to the ancient homestead,
To my mother's home deserted;
Onward, onward did I wander,
Hastened onward by the cold-sea,
Dragged my body on in anguish,
To the cottage-doors of strangers,
To the unfamiliar portals,
For the care of the neglected,
For the needy of the village,
For the children poor and orphaned.
'There are many wicked people,
Many slanderers of women,
Many women evil-minded,
That malign their sex through envy.
Many they with lips of evil,
That belie the best of maidens,
Prove the innocent are guilty
Of the worst of misdemeanors,
Speak aloud in tones unceasing,
Speak, alas! with wicked motives,
Spread the follies of their neighbors
Through the tongues of self-pollution.
Very few, indeed, the people
That will feed the poor and hungry,
That will bid the stranger welcome;
Very few to treat her kindly,
Innocent, and lone, and needy,
Few to offer her a shelter
From the chilling storms of winter,
When her skirts with ice are stiffened,
Coats of ice her only raiment!
'Never in my days of childhood,
Never in my maiden life-time,
Never would believe the story
Though a hundred tongues had told
Though a thousand voices sang it,
394
That such evil things could happen,
That such misery could follow,
Such misfortune could befall one
Who has tried to do her duty,
Who has tried to live uprightly,
Tried to make her people happy.'
Thus the young bride was instructed,
Beauteous Maiden of the Rainbow,
Thus by Osmotar, the teacher.
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
818:And the font took them: let our laurels lie!
Braid moonfern now with mystic trifoly
Because once more Goito gets, once more,
Sordello to itself! A dream is o'er,
And the suspended life begins anew;
Quiet those throbbing temples, then, subdue
That cheek's distortion! Nature's strict embrace,
Putting aside the past, shall soon efface
Its print as wellfactitious humours grown
Over the trueloves, hatreds not his own
And turn him pure as some forgotten vest
Woven of painted byssus, silkiest
Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted lip,
Left welter where a trireme let it slip
I' the sea, and vexed a satrap; so the stain
O' the world forsakes Sordello, with its pain,
Its pleasure: how the tinct loosening escapes,
Cloud after cloud! Mantua's familiar shapes
Die, fair and foul die, fading as they flit,
Men, women, and the pathos and the wit,
Wise speech and foolish, deeds to smile or sigh
For, good, bad, seemly or ignoble, die.
The last face glances through the eglantines,
The last voice murmurs, 'twixt the blossomed vines,
Of Men, of that machine supplied by thought
To compass self-perception with, he sought
By forcing half himselfan insane pulse
Of a god's blood, on clay it could convulse,
Never transmuteon human sights and sounds,
To watch the other half with; irksome bounds
It ebbs from to its source, a fountain sealed
Forever. Better sure be unrevealed
Than part revealed: Sordello well or ill
Is finished: then what further use of Will,
Point in the prime idea not realized,
An oversight? inordinately prized,
No less, and pampered with enough of each
Delight to prove the whole above its reach.
"To need become all natures, yet retain
"The law of my own natureto remain
"Myself, yet yearn . . . as if that chestnut, think,
"Should yearn for this first larch-bloom crisp and pink,
"Or those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs stanch
"March wounds along the fretted pine-tree branch!
"Will and the means to show will, great and small,
"Material, spiritual,abjure them all
"Save any so distinct, they may be left
"To amuse, not tempt become! and, thus bereft,
"Just as I first was fashioned would I be!
"Nor, moon, is it Apollo now, but me
"Thou visitest to comfort and befriend!
"Swim thou into my heart, and there an end,
"Since I possess thee!nay, thus shut mine eyes
"And know, quite know, by this heart's fall and rise,
"When thou dost bury thee in clouds, and when
"Out-standest: wherefore practise upon men
"To make that plainer to myself?"
Slide here
Over a sweet and solitary year
Wasted; or simply notice change in him
How eyes, once with exploring bright, grew dim
And satiate with receiving. Some distress
Was caused, too, by a sort of consciousness
Under the imbecility,nought kept
That down; he slept, but was aware he slept,
So, frustrated: as who brainsick made pact
Erst with the overhanging cataract
To deafen him, yet still distinguished plain
His own blood's measured clicking at his brain.
To finish. One declining Autumn day
Few birds about the heaven chill and grey,
No wind that cared trouble the tacit woods
He sauntered home complacently, their moods
According, his and nature's. Every spark
Of Mantua life was trodden out; so dark
The embers, that the Troubadour, who sung
Hundreds of songs, forgot, its trick his tongue,
Its craft his brain, how either brought to pass
Singing at all; that faculty might class
With any of Apollo's now. The year
Began to find its early promise sere
As well. Thus beauty vanishes; thus stone
Outlingers flesh: nature's and his youth gone,
They left the world to you, and wished you joy.
When, stopping his benevolent employ,
A presage shuddered through the welkin; harsh
The earth's remonstrance followed. 'T was the marsh
Gone of a sudden. Mincio, in its place,
Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face,
And, where the mists broke up immense and white
I' the steady wind, burned like a spilth of light
Out of the crashing of a myriad stars.
And here was nature, bound by the same bars
Of fate with him!
"No! youth once gone is gone:
"Deeds, let escape, are never to be done.
"Leaf-fall and grass-spring for the year; for us
"Oh forfeit I unalterably thus
"My chance? nor two lives wait me, this to spend,
"Learning save that? Nature has time, may mend
"Mistake, she knows occasion will recur;
"Landslip or seabreach, how affects it her
"With her magnificent resources?I
"Must perish once and perish utterly.
"Not any strollings now at even-close
"Down the field-path, Sordello! by thorn-rows
"Alive with lamp-flies, swimming spots of fire
"And dew, outlining the black cypress' spire
"She waits you at, Elys, who heard you first
"Woo her, the snow-month through, but ere she durst
"Answer 't was April. Linden-flower-time-long
"Her eyes were on the ground; 't is July, strong
"Now; and because white dust-clouds overwhelm
"The woodside, here or by the village elm
"That holds the moon, she meets you, somewhat pale,
"But letting you lift up her coarse flax veil
"And whisper (the damp little hand in yours)
"Of love, heart's love, your heart's love that endures
"Till death. Tush! No mad mixing with the rout
"Of haggard ribalds wandering about
"The hot torchlit wine-scented island-house
"Where Friedrich holds his wickedest carouse,
"Parading,to the gay Palermitans,
"Soft Messinese, dusk Saracenic clans
"Nuocera holds,those tall grave dazzling Norse,
"High-cheeked, lank-haired, toothed whiter than the morse,
"Queens of the caves of jet stalactites,
"He sent his barks to fetch through icy seas,
"The blind night seas without a saving star,
"And here in snowy birdskin robes they are,
"Sordello!here, mollitious alcoves gilt
"Superb as Byzant domes that devils built!
"Ah, Byzant, there again! no chance to go
"Ever like august cheery Dandolo,
"Worshipping hearts about him for a wall,
"Conducted, blind eyes, hundred years and all,
"Through vanquished Byzant where friends note for him
"What pillar, marble massive, sardius slim,
"'T were fittest he transport to Venice' Square
"Flattered and promised life to touch them there
"Soon, by those fervid sons of senators!
"No more lifes, deaths, loves, hatreds, peaces, wars!
"Ah, fragments of a whole ordained to be,
"Points in the life I waited! what are ye
"But roundels of a ladder which appeared
"Awhile the very platform it was reared
"To lift me on?that happiness I find
"Proofs of my faith in, even in the blind
"Instinct which bade forego you all unless
"Ye led me past yourselves. Ay, happiness
"Awaited me; the way life should be used
"Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced
"To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed
"Life's very use, so long! Whatever seemed
"Progress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayed
"My reaching itno pleasure. I have laid
"The ladder down; I climb not; still, aloft
"The platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft,
"I dared not entertain, elude me; yet
"Never of what they promised could I get
"A glimpse till now! The common sort, the crowd,
"Exist, perceive; with Being are endowed,
"However slight, distinct from what they See,
"However bounded; Happiness must be,
"To feed the first by gleanings from the last,
"Attain its qualities, and slow or fast
"Become what they behold; such peace-in-strife,
"By transmutation, is the Use of Life,
"The Alien turning Native to the soul
"Or bodywhich instructs me; I am whole
"There and demand a Palma; had the world
"Been from my soul to a like distance hurled,
"'T were Happiness to make it one with me:
"Whereas I must, ere I begin to Be,
"Include a world, in flesh, I comprehend
"In spirit now; and this done, what 's to blend
"With? Nought is Alien in the worldmy Will
"Owns all already; yet can turn itstill
"LessNative, since my Means to correspond
"With Will are so unworthy, 't was my bond
"To tread the very joys that tantalize
"Most now, into a grave, never to rise.
"I die then! Will the rest agree to die?
"Next Age or no? Shall its Sordello try
"Clue after clue, and catch at last the clue
"I miss?that 's underneath my finger too,
"Twice, thrice a day, perhaps,some yearning traced
"Deeper, some petty consequence embraced
"Closer! Why fled I Mantua, then?complained
"So much my Will was fettered, yet remained
"Content within a tether half the range
"I could assign it?able to exchange
"My ignorance (I felt) for knowledge, and
"Idle because I could thus understand
"Could e'en have penetrated to its core
"Our mortal mystery, yetfoolforbore,
"Preferred elaborating in the dark
"My casual stuff, by any wretched spark
"Born of my predecessors, though one stroke
"Of mine had brought the flame forth! Mantua's yoke,
"My minstrel's-trade, was to behold mankind,
"My own concern was just to bring my mind
"Behold, just extricate, for my acquist,
"Each object suffered stifle in the mist
"Which hazard, custom, blindness interpose
"Betwixt things and myself."
Whereat he rose.
The level wind carried above the firs
Clouds, the irrevocable travellers,
Onward.
"Pushed thus into a drowsy copse,
"Arms twine about my neck, each eyelid drops
"Under a humid finger; while there fleets,
"Outside the screen, a pageant time repeats
"Never again! To be deposed, immured
"Clandestinelystill petted, still assured
"To govern were fatiguing workthe Sight
"Fleeting meanwhile! 'T is noontide: wreak ere night
"Somehow my will upon it, rather! Slake
"This thirst somehow, the poorest impress take
"That serves! A blasted bud displays you, torn,
"Faint rudiments of the full flower unborn;
"But who divines what glory coats o'erclasp
"Of the bulb dormant in the mummy's grasp
"Taurello sent?" . . .
"Taurello? Palma sent
"Your Trouvere," (Naddo interposing leant
Over the lost bard's shoulder)"and, believe,
"You cannot more reluctantly receive
"Than I pronounce her message: we depart
"Together. What avail a poet's heart
"Verona's pomps and gauds? five blades of grass
"Suffice him. News? Why, where your marish was,
"On its mud-banks smoke rises after smoke
"I' the valley, like a spout of hell new-broke.
"Oh, the world's tidings! small your thanks, I guess,
"For them. The father of our Patroness,
"Has played Taurello an astounding trick,
"Parts between Ecelin and Alberic
"His wealth and goes into a convent: both
"Wed Guelfs: the Count and Palma plighted troth
"A week since at Verona: and they want
"You doubtless to contrive the marriage-chant
"Ere Richard storms Ferrara." Then was told
The tale from the beginninghow, made bold
By Salinguerra's absence, Guelfs had burned
And pillaged till he unawares returned
To take revenge: how Azzo and his friend
Were doing their endeavour, how the end
O' the siege was nigh, and how the Count, released
From further care, would with his marriage-feast
Inaugurate a new and better rule,
Absorbing thus Romano.
"Shall I school
"My master," added Naddo, "and suggest
"How you may clothe in a poetic vest
"These doings, at Verona? Your response
"To Palma! Wherefore jest? 'Depart at once?
"A good resolve! In truth, I hardly hoped
"So prompt an acquiescence. Have you groped
"Out wisdom in the wilds here?thoughts may be
"Over-poetical for poetry.
"Pearl-white, you poets liken Palma's neck;
"And yet what spoils an orient like some speck
"Of genuine white, turning its own white grey?
"You take me? Curse the cicala!"
One more day,
One eveappears Verona! Many a group,
(You mind) instructed of the osprey's swoop
On lynx and ounce, was gatheringChristendom
Sure to receive, whate'er the end was, from
The evening's purpose cheer or detriment,
Since Friedrich only waited some event
Like this, of Ghibellins establishing
Themselves within Ferrara, ere, as King
Of Lombardy, he 'd glad descend there, wage
Old warfare with the Pontiff, disengage
His barons from the burghers, and restore
The rule of Charlemagne, broken of yore
By Hildebrand.
I' the palace, each by each,
Sordello sat and Palma: little speech
At first in that dim closet, face with face
(Despite the tumult in the market-place)
Exchanging quick low laughters: now would rush
Word upon word to meet a sudden flush,
A look left off, a shifting lips' surmise
But for the most part their two histories
Ran best thro' the locked fingers and linked arms.
And so the night flew on with its alarms
Till in burst one of Palma's retinue;
"Now, Lady!" gasped he. Then arose the two
And leaned into Verona's air, dead-still.
A balcony lay black beneath until
Out, 'mid a gush of torchfire, grey-haired men
Came on it and harangued the people: then
Sea-like that people surging to and fro
Shouted, "Hale forth the carrochtrumpets, ho,
"A flourish! Run it in the ancient grooves!
"Back from the bell! Hammerthat whom behoves
"May hear the League is up! Peallearn who list,
"Verona means not first of towns break tryst
"To-morrow with the League!"
Enough. Now turn
Over the eastern cypresses: discern!
Is any beacon set a-glimmer?
Rang
The air with shouts that overpowered the clang
Of the incessant carroch, even: "Haste
"The candle 's at the gateway! ere it waste,
"Each soldier stand beside it, armed to march
"With Tiso Sampier through the eastern arch!"
Ferrara's succoured, Palma!
Once again
They sat together; some strange thing in train
To say, so difficult was Palma's place
In taking, with a coy fastidious grace
Like the bird's flutter ere it fix and feed.
But when she felt she held her friend indeed
Safe, she threw back her curls, began implant
Her lessons; telling of another want
Goito's quiet nourished than his own;
Palmato serve himto be served, alone
Importing; Agnes' milk so neutralized
The blood of Ecelin. Nor be surprised
If, while Sordello fain had captive led
Nature, in dream was Palma subjected
To some out-soul, which dawned not though she pined
Delaying, till its advent, heart and mind
Their life. "How dared I let expand the force
"Within me, till some out-soul, whose resource
"It grew for, should direct it? Every law
"Of life, its every fitness, every flaw,
"Must One determine whose corporeal shape
"Would be no other than the prime escape
"And revelation to me of a Will
"Orb-like o'ershrouded and inscrutable
"Above, save at the point which, I should know,
"Shone that myself, my powers, might overflow
"So far, so much; as now it signified
"Which earthly shape it henceforth chose my guide,
"Whose mortal lip selected to declare
"Its oracles, what fleshly garb would wear
"The first of intimations, whom to love;
"The next, how love him. Seemed that orb, above
"The castle-covert and the mountain-close,
"Slow in appearing?if beneath it rose
"Cravings, aversions,did our green precinct
"Take pride in me, at unawares distinct
"With this or that endowment,how, repressed
"At once, such jetting power shrank to the rest!
"Was I to have a chance touch spoil me, leave
"My spirit thence unfitted to receive
"The consummating spell?that spell so near
"Moreover! 'Waits he not the waking year?
"'His almond-blossoms must be honey-ripe
"'By this; to welcome him, fresh runnels stripe
"'The thawed ravines; because of him, the wind
"'Walks like a herald. I shall surely find
"'Him now!'
"And chief, that earnest April morn
"Of Richard's Love-court, was it time, so worn
"And white my cheek, so idly my blood beat,
"Sitting that morn beside the Lady's feet
"And saying as she prompted; till outburst
"One face from all the faces. Not then first
"I knew it; where in maple chamber glooms,
"Crowned with what sanguine-heart pomegranate blooms,
"Advanced it ever? Men's acknowledgment
"Sanctioned my own: 't was taken, Palma's bent,
"Sordello,recognized, accepted.
"Dumb
"Sat she still scheming. Ecelin would come
"Gaunt, scared, 'Cesano baffles me,' he 'd say:
"'Better I fought it out, my father's way!
"'Strangle Ferrara in its drowning flats,
"'And you and your Taurello yonder!what's
"'Romano's business there?' An hour's concern
"To cure the froward Chief!induce return
"As heartened from those overmeaning eyes,
"Wound up to persevere,his enterprise
"Marked out anew, its exigent of wit
"Apportioned,she at liberty to sit
"And scheme against the next emergence, I
"To covet her Taurello-sprite, made fly
"Or fold the wingto con your horoscope
"For leave command those steely shafts shoot ope,
"Or straight assuage their blinding eagerness
"In blank smooth snow What semblance of success
"To any of my plans for making you
"Mine and Romano's? Break the first wall through,
"Tread o'er the ruins of the Chief, supplant
"His sons beside, still, vainest were the vaunt:
"There, Salinguerra would obstruct me sheer,
"And the insuperable Tuscan, here,
"Stay me! But one wild eve that Lady died
"In her lone chamber: only I beside:
"Taurello far at Naples, and my sire
"At Padua, Ecelin away in ire
"With Alberic. She held me thusa clutch
"To make our spirits as our bodies touch
"And so began flinging the past up heaps
"Of uncouth treasure from their sunless sleeps
"Within her soul; deeds rose along with dreams,
"Fragments of many miserable schemes,
"Secrets, more secrets, thenno, not the last
"'Mongst others, like a casual trick o' the past,
"How . . . ay, she told me, gathering up her face,
"All left of it, into one arch-grimace
"To die with . . .
"Friend, 't is gone! but not the fear
"Of that fell laughing, heard as now I hear.
"Nor faltered voice, nor seemed her heart grow weak
"When i' the midst abrupt she ceased to speak
"Dead, as to serve a purpose, mark!for in
"Rushed o' the very instant Ecelin
"(How summoned, who divines?)looking as if
"He understood why Adelaide lay stiff
"Already in my arms; for 'Girl, how must
"'I manage Este in the matter thrust
"'Upon me, how unravel your bad coil?
"'Since' (he declared) ''t is on your browa soil
"'Like hers there!' then in the same breath, 'he lacked
"'No counsel after all, had signed no pact
"'With devils, nor was treason here or there,
"'Goito or Vicenza, his affair:
"'He buried it in Adelaide's deep grave,
"'Would begin life afresh, now,would not slave
"'For any Friedrich's nor Taurello's sake!
"'What booted him to meddle or to make
"'In Lombardy?' And afterward I knew
"The meaning of his promise to undo
"All she had donewhy marriages were made,
"New friendships entered on, old followers paid
"With curses for their pains,new friends' amaze
"At height, when, passing out by Gate St. Blaise,
"He stopped short in Vicenza, bent his head
"Over a friar's neck,'had vowed,' he said,
"'Long since, nigh thirty years, because his wife
"'And child were saved there, to bestow his life
"'On God, his gettings on the Church.'
"Exiled
"Within Goito, still one dream beguiled
"My days and nights; 't was found, the orb I sought
"To serve, those glimpses came of Fomalhaut,
"No other: but how serve it?authorize
"You and Romano mingle destinies?
"And straight Romano's angel stood beside
"Me who had else been Boniface's bride,
"For Salinguerra 't was, with neck low bent,
"And voice lightened to music, (as he meant
"To learn, not teach me,) who withdrew the pall
"From the dead past and straight revived it all,
"Making me see how first Romano waxed,
"Wherefore he waned now, why, if I relaxed
"My grasp (even I!) would drop a thing effete,
"Frayed by itself, unequal to complete
"Its course, and counting every step astray
"A gain so much. Romano, every way
"Stable, a Lombard House nowwhy start back
"Into the very outset of its track?
"This patching principle which late allied
"Our House with other Houseswhat beside
"Concerned the apparition, the first Knight
"Who followed Conrad hither in such plight
"His utmost wealth was summed in his one steed?
"For Ecelo, that prowler, was decreed
"A task, in the beginning hazardous
"To him as ever task can be to us;
"But did the weather-beaten thief despair
"When first our crystal cincture of warm air
"That binds the Trevisan,as its spice-belt
"(Crusaders say) the tract where Jesus dwelt,
"Furtive he pierced, and Este was to face
"Despaired Saponian strength of Lombard grace?
"Tried he at making surer aught made sure,
"Maturing what already was mature?
"No; his heart prompted Ecelo, 'Confront
"'Este, inspect yourself. What 's nature? Wont.
"'Discard three-parts your nature, and adopt
"'The rest as an advantage!' Old strength propped
"The man who first grew Podest among
"The Vicentines, no less than, while there sprung
"His palace up in Padua like a threat,
"Their noblest spied a grace, unnoticed yet
"In Conrad's crew. Thus far the object gained,
"Romano was establishedhas remained
"'For are you not Italian, truly peers
"'With Este? Azzo better soothes our ears
"'Than Alberic? or is this lion's-crine
"'From over-mounts' (this yellow hair of mine)
"'So weak a graft on Agnes Este's stock?'
"(Thus went he on with something of a mock)
"'Wherefore recoil, then, from the very fate
"'Conceded you, refuse to imitate
"'Your model farther? Este long since left
"'Being mere Este: as a blade its heft,
"'Este required the Pope to further him:
"'And you, the Kaiserwhom your father's whim
"'Foregoes or, better, never shall forego
"'If Palma dare pursue what Ecelo
"'Commenced, but Ecelin desists from: just
"'As Adelaide of Susa could intrust
"'Her donative,her Piedmont given the Pope,
"'Her Alpine-pass for him to shut or ope
"''Twixt France and Italy,to the superb
"'Matilda's perfecting,so, lest aught curb
"'Our Adelaide's great counter-project for
"'Giving her Trentine to the Emperor
"'With passage here from Germany,shall you
"'Take it,my slender plodding talent, too!'
"Urged me Taurello with his half-smile
"He
"As Patron of the scattered family
"Conveyed me to his Mantua, kept in bruit
"Azzo's alliances and Richard's suit
"Until, the Kaiser excommunicate,
"'Nothing remains,' Taurello said, 'but wait
"'Some rash procedure: Palma was the link,
"'As Agnes' child, between us, and they shrink
"'From losing Palma: judge if we advance,
"'Your father's method, your inheritance!'
"The day I was betrothed to Boniface
"At Padua by Taurello's self, took place
"The outrage of the Ferrarese: again,
"The day I sought Verona with the train
"Agreed for,by Taurello's policy
"Convicting Richard of the fault, since we
"Were present to annul or to confirm,
"Richard, whose patience had outstayed its term,
"Quitted Verona for the siege.
"And now
"What glory may engird Sordello's brow
"Through this? A month since at Oliero slunk
"All that was Ecelin into a monk;
"But how could Salinguerra so forget
"His liege of thirty years as grudge even yet
"One effort to recover him? He sent
"Forthwith the tidings of this last event
"To Ecelindeclared that he, despite
"The recent folly, recognized his right
"To order Salinguerra: 'Should he wring
"'Its uttermost advantage out, or fling
"'This chance away? Or were his sons now Head
"'O' the House?' Through me Taurello's missive sped;
"My father's answer will by me return.
"Behold! 'For him,' he writes, 'no more concern
"'With strife than, for his children, with fresh plots
"'Of Friedrich. Old engagements out he blots
"'For aye: Taurello shall no more subserve,
"'Nor Ecelin impose.' Lest this unnerve
"Taurello at this juncture, slack his grip
"Of Richard, suffer the occasion slip,
"I, in his sons' default (who, mating with
"Este, forsake Romano as the frith
"Its mainsea for that firmland, sea makes head
"Against) I stand, Romano,in their stead
"Assume the station they desert, and give
"Still, as the Kaiser's representative,
"Taurello licence he demands. Midnight
"Morningby noon to-morrow, making light
"Of the League's issue, we, in some gay weed
"Like yours, disguised together, may precede
"The arbitrators to Ferrara: reach
"Him, let Taurello's noble accents teach
"The rest! Then say if I have misconceived
"Your destiny, too readily believed
"The Kaiser's cause your own!"
And Palma's fled.
Though no affirmative disturbs the head,
A dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er,
Like the alighted planet Pollux wore,
Until, morn breaking, he resolves to be
Gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy,
Soul of this bodyto wield this aggregate
Of souls and bodies, and so conquer fate
Though he should livea centre of disgust
Evenapart, core of the outward crust
He vivifies, assimilates. For thus
I bring Sordello to the rapturous
Exclaim at the crowd's cry, because one round
Of life was quite accomplished; and he found
Not only that a soul, whate'er its might,
Is insufficient to its own delight,
Both in corporeal organs and in skill
By means of such to body forth its Will
And, after, insufficient to apprise
Men of that Will, oblige them recognize
The Hid by the Revealedbut that,the last
Nor lightest of the struggles overpast,
Will, he bade abdicate, which would not void
The throne, might sit there, suffer he enjoyed
Mankind, a varied and divine array
Incapable of homage, the first way,
Nor fit to render incidentally
Tribute connived at, taken by the by,
In joys. If thus with warrant to rescind
The ignominious exile of mankind
Whose proper service, ascertained intact
As yet, (to be by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello acting each of them)
Was to secureif the true diadem
Seemed imminent while our Sordello drank
The wisdom of that golden Palma,thank
Verona's Lady in her citadel
Founded by Gaulish Brennus, legends tell:
And truly when she left him, the sun reared
A head like the first clamberer's who peered
A-top the Capitol, his face on flame
With triumph, triumphing till Manlius came.
Nor slight too much my rhymesthat spring, dispread,
Dispart, disperse, lingering over head
Like an escape of angels! Rather say,
My transcendental platan! mounting gay
(An archimage so courts a novice-queen)
With tremulous silvered trunk, whence branches sheen
Laugh out, thick-foliaged next, a-shiver soon
With coloured buds, then glowing like the moon
One mild flame,last a pause, a burst, and all
Her ivory limbs are smothered by a fall,
Bloom-flinders and fruit-sparkles and leaf-dust,
Ending the weird work prosecuted just
For her amusement; he decrepit, stark,
Dozes; her uncontrolled delight may mark
Apart
Yet not so, surely never so
Only, as good my soul were suffered go
O'er the lagune: forth fare thee, put aside
Entrance thy synod, as a god may glide
Out of the world he fills, and leave it mute
For myriad ages as we men compute,
Returning into it without a break
O' the consciousness! They sleep, and I awake
O'er the lagune, being at Venice.
Note,
In just such songs as Eglamor (say) wrote
With heart and soul and strength, for he believed
Himself achieving all to be achieved
By singerin such songs you find alone
Completeness, judge the song and singer one,
And either purpose answered, his in it
Or its in him: while from true works (to wit
Sordello's dream-performances that will
Never be more than dreamed) escapes there still
Some proof, the singer's proper life was 'neath
The life his song exhibits, this a sheath
To that; a passion and a knowledge far
Transcending these, majestic as they are,
Smouldered; his lay was but an episode
In the bard's life: which evidence you owed
To some slight weariness, some looking-off
Or start-away. The childish skit or scoff
In "Charlemagne," (his poem, dreamed divine
In every point except one silly line
About the restiff daughters)what may lurk
In that? "My life commenced before this work,"
(So I interpret the significance
Of the bard's start aside and look askance)
"My life continues after: on I fare
"With no more stopping, possibly, no care
"To note the undercurrent, the why and how,
"Where, when, o' the deeper life, as thus just now.
"But, silent, shall I cease to live? Alas
"For you! who sigh, 'When shall it come to pass
"'We read that story? How will he compress
"'The future gains, his life's true business,
"'Into the better lay whichthat one flout,
"'Howe'er inopportune it be, lets out
"'Engrosses him already, though professed
"'To meditate with us eternal rest,
"'And partnership in all his life has found?'"
'T is but a sailor's promise, weather-bound:
"Strike sail, slip cable, here the bark be moored
"For once, the awning stretched, the poles assured!
"Noontide above; except the wave's crisp dash,
"Or buzz of colibri, or tortoise' splash,
"The margin 's silent: out with every spoil
"Made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil,
"This serpent of a river to his head
"I' the midst! Admire each treasure, as we spread
"The bank, to help us tell our history
"Aright: give ear, endeavour to descry
"The groves of giant rushes, how they grew
"Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed through,
"What mountains yawned, forests to give us vent
"Opened, each doleful side, yet on we went
"Till . . . may that beetle (shake your cap) attest
"The springing of a land-wind from the West!"
Wherefore? Ah yes, you frolic it to-day!
To-morrow, and, the pageant moved away
Down to the poorest tent-pole, we and you
Part company: no other may pursue
Eastward your voyage, be informed what fate
Intends, if triumph or decline await
The tempter of the everlasting steppe.
I muse this on a ruined palace-step
At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit
Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit
England gave birth to? Who 's adorable
Enough reclaim a - no Sordello's Will
Alack!be queen to me? That Bassanese
Busied among her smoking fruit-boats? These
Perhaps from our delicious Asolo
Who twinkle, pigeons o'er the portico
Not prettier, bind June lilies into sheaves
To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves
Soiled by their own loose gold-meal? Ah, beneath
The cool arch stoops she, brownest cheek! Her wreath
Endures a montha half-monthif I make
A queen of her, continue for her sake
Sordello's story? Nay, that Paduan girl
Splashes with barer legs where a live whirl
In the dead black Giudecca proves sea-weed
Drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed
Save one pale-red striped, pale-blue turbaned post
For gondolas.
You sad dishevelled ghost
That pluck at me and point, are you advised
I breathe? Let stay those girls (e'en her disguised
Jewels i' the locks that love no crownet like
Their native field-buds and the green wheat-spike,
So fair!who left this end of June's turmoil,
Shook off, as might a lily its gold soil,
Pomp, save a foolish gem or two, and free
In dream, came join the peasants o'er the sea.)
Look they too happy, too tricked out? Confess
There is such ****rd stock of happiness
To share, that, do one's uttermost, dear wretch,
One labours ineffectually to stretch
It o'er you so that mother and children, both
May equitably flaunt the sumpter-cloth!
Divide the robe yet farther: be content
With seeing just a score pre-eminent
Through shreds of it, acknowledged happy wights,
Engrossing what should furnish all, by rights!
For, these in evidence, you clearlier claim
A like garb for the rest,grace all, the same
As these my peasants. I ask youth and strength
And health for each of you, not moreat length
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
But in this magic weather one discards
Much old requirement. Venice seems a type
Of Life'twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As Life, the somewhat, hangs 'twixt nought and nought:
'T is Venice, and 't is Lifeas good you sought
To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone
Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
As hinder Life the evil with the good
Which make up Living, rightly understood.
Only, do finish something! Peasants, queens,
Take them, made happy by whatever means,
Parade them for the common credit, vouch
That a luckless residue, we send to crouch
In corners out of sight, was just as framed
For happiness, its portion might have claimed
As well, and so, obtaining joy, had stalked
Fastuous as any!such my project, baulked
Already; I hardly venture to adjust
The first rags, when you find me. To mistrust
Me!nor unreasonably. You, no doubt,
Have the true knack of tiring suitors out
With those thin lips on tremble, lashless eyes
Inveterately tear-shot: there, be wise,
Mistress of mine, there, there, as if I meant
You insult!shall your friend (not slave) be shent
For speaking home? Beside, care-bit erased
Broken-up beauties ever took my taste
Supremely; and I love you more, far more
Than her I looked should foot Life's temple-floor.
Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where
A whisper came, "Let others seek!thy care
"Is found, thy life's provision; if thy race
"Should be thy mistress, and into one face
"The many faces crowd?" Ah, had I, judge,
Or no, your secret? Rough apparelgrudge
All ornaments save tag or tassel worn
To hint we are not thoroughly forlorn
Slouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go
Alone (that's saddest, but it must be so)
Through Venice, sing now and now glance aside,
Aught desultory or undignified,
Then, ravishingest lady, will you pass
Or not each formidable group, the mass
Before the Basilic (that feast gone by,
God's great day of the Corpus Domini)
And, wistfully foregoing proper men,
Come timid up to me for alms? And then
The luxury to hesitate, feign do
Some unexampled grace!when, whom but you
Dare I bestow your own upon? And hear
Further before you say, it is to sneer
I call you ravishing; for I regret
Little that she, whose early foot was set
Forth as she 'd plant it on a pedestal,
Now, i' the silent city, seems to fall
Toward meno wreath, only a lip's unrest
To quiet, surcharged eyelids to be pressed
Dry of their tears upon my bosom. Strange
Such sad chance should produce in thee such change,
My love! Warped souls and bodies! yet God spoke
Of right-hand, foot and eyeselects our yoke,
Sordello, as your poetship may find!
So, sleep upon my shoulder, child, nor mind
Their foolish talk; we 'll manage reinstate
Your old worth; ask moreover, when they prate
Of evil men past hope, "Don't each contrive,
"Despite the evil you abuse, to live?
"Keeping, each losel, through a maze of lies,
"His own conceit of truth? to which he hies
"By obscure windings, tortuous, if you will,
"But to himself not inaccessible;
"He sees truth, and his lies are for the crowd
"Who cannot see; some fancied right allowed
"His vilest wrong, empowered the losel clutch
"One pleasure from a multitude of such
"Denied him." Then assert, "All men appear
"To think all better than themselves, by here
"Trusting a crowd they wrong; but really," say,
"All men think all men stupider than they,
"Since, save themselves, no other comprehends
"The complicated scheme to make amends
"Evil, the scheme by which, thro' Ignorance,
"Good labours to exist." A slight advance,
Merely to find the sickness you die through,
And nought beside! but if one can't eschew
One's portion in the common lot, at least
One can avoid an ignorance increased
Tenfold by dealing out hint after hint
How nought were like dispensing without stint
The water of lifeso easy to dispense
Beside, when one has probed the centre whence
Commotion 's borncould tell you of it all!
"Meantime, just meditate my madrigal
"O' the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe!"
What, dullard? we and you in smothery chafe,
Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin
The Horrid, getting neither out nor in,
A hungry sun above us, sands that bung
Our throats,each dromedary lolls a tongue,
Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap,
And you, 'twixt tales of Potiphar's mishap,
And sonnets on the earliest **** that spoke,
Remark, you wonder any one needs choke
With founts about! Potsherd him, Gibeonites!
While awkwardly enough your Moses smites
The rock, though he forego his Promised Land
Thereby, have Satan claim his carcass, and
Figure as Metaphysic Poet . . . ah,
Mark ye the dim first oozings? Meribah!
Then, quaffing at the fount my courage gained,
Recallnot that I prompt yewho explained . . .
"Presumptuous!" interrupts one. You, not I
'T is brother, marvel at and magnify
Such office: "office," quotha? can we get
To the beginning of the office yet?
What do we here? simply experiment
Each on the other's power and its intent
When elsewhere tasked,if this of mine were trucked
For yours to either's good,we watch construct,
In short, an engine: with a finished one,
What it can do, is all,nought, how 't is done.
But this of ours yet in probation, dusk
A kernel of strange wheelwork through its husk
Grows into shape by quarters and by halves;
Remark this tooth's spring, wonder what that valve's
Fall bodes, presume each faculty's device,
Make out each other more or less precise
The scope of the whole engine 's to be proved;
We die: which means to say, the whole 's removed,
Dismounted wheel by wheel, this complex gin,
To be set up anew elsewhere, begin
A task indeed, but with a clearer clime
Than the murk lodgment of our building-time.
And then, I grant you, it behoves forget
How 't is doneall that must amuse us yet
So long: and, while you turn upon your heel,
Pray that I be not busy slitting steel
Or shredding brass, camped on some virgin shore
Under a cluster of fresh stars, before
I name a tithe o' the wheels I trust to do!
So occupied, then, are we: hitherto,
At present, and a weary while to come,
The office of ourselves,nor blind nor dumb,
And seeing somewhat of man's state,has been,
For the worst of us, to say they so have seen;
For the better, what it was they saw; the best
Impart the gift of seeing to the rest:
"So that I glance," says such an one, "around,
"And there 's no face but I can read profound
"Disclosures in; this stands for hope, thatfear,
"And for a speech, a deed in proof, look here!
"'Stoop, else the strings of blossom, where the nuts
"'O'erarch, will blind thee! Said I not? She shuts
"'Both eyes this time, so close the hazels meet!
"'Thus, prisoned in the Piombi, I repeat
"'Events one rove occasioned, o'er and o'er,
"'Putting 'twixt me and madness evermore
"'Thy sweet shape, Zanze! Therefore stoop!'
"'That's truth!'
"(Adjudge you) 'the incarcerated youth
"'Would say that!'
"Youth? Plara the bard? Set down
"That Plara spent his youth in a grim town
"Whose cramped ill-featured streets huddled about
"The minster for protection, never out
"Of its black belfry's shade and its bells' roar.
"The brighter shone the suburb,all the more
"Ugly and absolute that shade's reproof
"Of any chance escape of joy,some roof,
"Taller than they, allowed the rest detect,
"Before the sole permitted laugh (suspect
"Who could, 't was meant for laughter, that ploughed cheek's
"Repulsive gleam!) when the sun stopped both peaks
"Of the cleft belfry like a fiery wedge,
"Then sank, a huge flame on its socket edge,
"With leavings on the grey glass oriel-pane
"Ghastly some minutes more. No fear of rain
"The minster minded that! in heaps the dust
"Lay everywhere. This town, the minster's trust,
"Held Plara; who, its denizen, bade hail
"In twice twelve sonnets, Tempe's dewy vale."
"'Exact the town, the minster and the street!'"
"As all mirth triumphs, sadness means defeat:
"Lust triumphs and is gay, Love 's triumphed o'er
"And sad: but Lucio 's sad. I said before,
"Love's sad, not Lucio; one who loves may be
"As gay his love has leave to hope, as he
"Downcast that lusts' desire escapes the springe:
"'T is of the mood itself I speak, what tinge
"Determines it, else colourless,or mirth,
"Or melancholy, as from heaven or earth."
"'Ay, that 's the variation's gist!'
"Indeed?
"Thus far advanced in safety then, proceed!
"And having seen too what I saw, be bold
"And next encounter what I do behold
"(That's sure) but bid you take on trust!"
Attack
The use and purpose of such sights! Alack,
Not so unwisely does the crowd dispense
On Salinguerras praise in preference
To the Sordellos: men of action, these!
Who, seeing just as little as you please,
Yet turn that little to account,engage
With, do not gaze at,carry on, a stage,
The work o' the world, not merely make report
The work existed ere their day! In short,
When at some future no-time a brave band
Sees, using what it sees, then shake my hand
In heaven, my brother! Meanwhile where's the hurt
Of keeping the Makers-see on the alert,
At whose defection mortals stare aghast
As though heaven's bounteous windows were slammed fast
Incontinent? Whereas all you, beneath,
Should scowl at, bruise their lips and break their teeth
Who ply the pullies, for neglecting you:
And therefore have I moulded, made anew
A Man, and give him to be turned and tried,
Be angry with or pleased at. On your side,
Have ye times, places, actors of your own?
Try them upon Sordello when full-grown,
And thenah then! If Hercules first parched
His foot in Egypt only to be marched
A sacrifice for Jove with pomp to suit,
What chance have I? The demigod was mute
Till, at the altar, where time out of mind
Such guests became oblations, chaplets twined
His forehead long enough, and he began
Slaying the slayers, nor escaped a man.
Take not affront, my gentle audience! whom
No Hercules shall make his hecatomb,
Believe, nor from his brows your chaplet rend
That's your kind suffrage, yours, my patron-friend,
Whose great verse blares unintermittent on
Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,
You who, Plata and Salamis being scant,
Put up with tna for a stimulant
And did well, I acknowledged, as he loomed
Over the midland sea last month, presumed
Long, lay demolished in the blazing West
At eve, while towards him tilting cloudlets pressed
Like Persian ships at Salamis. Friend, wear
A crest proud as desert while I declare
Had I a flawless ruby fit to wring
Tears of its colour from that painted king
Who lost it, I would, for that smile which went
To my heart, fling it in the sea, content,
Wearing your verse in place, an amulet
Sovereign against all passion, wear and fret!
My English Eyebright, if you are not glad
That, as I stopped my task awhile, the sad
Dishevelled form, wherein I put mankind
To come at times and keep my pact in mind,
Renewed me,hear no crickets in the hedge,
Nor let a glowworm spot the river's edge
At home, and may the summer showers gush
Without a warning from the missel thrush!
So, to our business, nowthe fate of such
As find our common natureovermuch
Despised because restricted and unfit
To bear the burthen they impose on it
Cling when they would discard it; craving strength
To leap from the allotted world, at length
They do leap,flounder on without a term,
Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy, unless . . .
But that 's the storydull enough, confess!
There might be fitter subjects to allure;
Still, neither misconceive my portraiture
Nor undervalue its adornments quaint:
What seems a fiend perchance may prove a saint.
Ponder a story ancient pens transmit,
Then say if you condemn me or acquit.
John the Beloved, banished Antioch
For Patmos, bade collectively his flock
Farewell, but set apart the closing eve
To comfort those his exile most would grieve,
He knew: a touching spectacle, that house
In motion to receive him! Xanthus' spouse
You missed, made panther's meat a month since; but
Xanthus himself (his nephew 't was, they shut
'Twixt boards and sawed asunder) Polycarp,
Soft Charicle, next year no wheel could warp
To swear by Csar's fortune, with the rest
Were ranged; thro' whom the grey disciple pressed,
Busily blessing right and left, just stopped
To pat one infant's curls, the hangman cropped
Soon after, reached the portal. On its hinge
The door turns and he enters: what quick twinge
Ruins the smiling mouth, those wide eyes fix
Whereon, why like some spectral candlestick's
Branch the disciple's arms? Dead swooned he, woke
Anon, heaved sigh, made shift to gasp, heart-broke,
"Get thee behind me, Satan! Have I toiled
"To no more purpose? Is the gospel foiled
"Here too, and o'er my son's, my Xanthus' hearth,
"Portrayed with sooty garb and features swarth
"Ah Xanthus, am I to thy roof beguiled
"To see thethethe Devil domiciled?"
Whereto sobbed Xanthus, "Father, 't is yourself
"Installed, a limning which our utmost pelf
"Went to procure against to-morrow's loss;
"And that's no twy-prong, but a pastoral cross,
"You 're painted with!"
His puckered brows unfold
And you shall hear Sordello's story told.
~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Third
,#NFDB
819: Book IV: The Book of Partings
Eagerly, spurred by Ares swift in their souls to the war-cry,
All now pressed to their homes for the food of their strength in the battle.
Ilion turned her thoughts in a proud expectancy seaward
Waiting to hear the sounds that she loved and the cry of the mellay.
Now to their citadel Priams sons returned with their father,
Now from the gates Talthybius issued grey in his chariot;
But in the halls of Anchises Aeneas not doffing his breastpiece
Hastily ate of the corn of his country, cakes of the millet
Doubled with wild-deers flesh, from the quiet hands of Cresa.
She, as he ate, with her calm eyes watching him smiled on her husband:
Ever thou hastest to battle, O warrior, ever thou fightest
Far in the front of the ranks and thou seekest out Locrian Ajax,
Turnest thy ear to the roar for the dangerous shout of Tydides;
There, once heard, leaving all thou drivest, O stark in thy courage.
Yet am I blest among women who tremble not, left in thy mansion,
Quiet at old Anchises feet when I see thee in vision
Sole with the shafts hissing round thee and say to my quivering spirit,
Now he is striking at Ajax, now he has met Diomedes.
Such are the mighty twain who are ever near to protect thee,
Phoebus, the Thunderers son, and thy mother, gold Aphrodite;
Such are the Fates that demand thee, O destined head of the future.
But though my thoughts for their own are not troubled, always, Aeneas,
Sore is my heart with pity for other Ilian women
Who in this battle are losing their children and well-loved husbands,
Brothers too dear, for the eyes that are wet, for the hearts that are silent.
Will not this war then end that thunders for ever round Troya?
But to Cresa the hero answered, the son of Anchises:
Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
Striking their lives through their hearts he mows down their loves and their pleasures.
Truly thou sayst, thou needst not to fear for my life in the battle;
Ever for thine I fear lest he find thee out in his anger,
Missing my head in the fight, when he comes here crossed in his godhead.
Yet shall Phoebus protect and my mother, gold Aphrodite.
But to Aeneas answered the tranquil lips of Cresa:
So may it be that I go before thee, seeing, Aeneas,
Over my dying eyes thy lips bend down for the parting.
Blissfullest end is this for a woman here mid earths sorrows;
Afterwards there we hope that the hands shall join which were parted.
So she spoke, not knowing the gods: but Aeneas departing
Clasped his fathers knees, the ancient mighty Anchises.
Bless me, my father; I go to the battle. Strong with thy blessing
Even today may I hurl down Ajax, slay Diomedes,
And on the morrow gaze on the empty beaches of Troas.
Troubled and joyless, nought replying to warlike Aeneas
Long Anchises sat unmoving, silent, sombre,
Gazing into his soul with eyes that were closed to the sunlight.
Prosper, Aeneas, slowly he answered him, son of a goddess,
Prosper, Aeneas; and if for Troy some doom is preparing,
Suffer always the will of the gods with a piety constant.
Only they will what Necessity fashions compelled by the Silence.
Labour and war she has given to man as the law of his transience.
Work; she shall give thee the crown of thy deeds or their ending appointed,
Whether glorious thou pass or in silent shadows forgotten.
But what thy mother commands perform ever, loading thy vessels.
Who can know what the gods have hid with the mist of our hopings?
Then from the house of his fathers Aeneas rapidly striding
Came to the city echoing now with the wheels of the chariots,
Clanging with arms and astream with the warlike tramp of her thousands.
Fast through the press he strode and men turning knew Aeneas,
Greatened in heart and went on with loftier thoughts towards battle.
He through the noise and the crowd to Antenors high-built mansion
Striding came, and he turned to its courts and the bronze of its threshold
Trod which had suffered the feet of so many princes departed.
But as he crossed its brazen square from the hall there came running,
Leaping up light to his feet and laughing with sudden pleasure,
Eurus the youngest son of Polydamas. Clasping the fatal
War-hardened hand with a palm that was smooth as a maidens or infants,
Well art thou come, Aeneas, he said, and good fortune has sent thee!
Now I shall go to the field; thou wilt speak with my grandsire Antenor
And he shall hear thee though chid by his heart reluctant. Rejoicing
I shall go forth in thy car or warring by Penthesilea,
Famous, give to her grasp the spear that shall smite down Achilles.
Smiling answered Aeneas, Surely will, Eurus, thy prowess
Carry thee far to the front; thou shalt fight with Epeus and slay him.
Who shall say that this hand was not chosen to pierce Menelaus?
But for a while with the ball should it rather strive, O hero,
Till in the play and the wrestle its softness is trained for the smiting.
Eagerly Eurus answered, But they have told me, Aeneas,
This is the last of our fights; for today will Penthesilea
Meet Achilles in battle and slay him ending the Argives.
Then shall I never have mixed in this war that is famous for ever.
What shall I say when my hairs are white like the aged Antenors?
Men will ask, And what were thy deeds in the warfare Titanic?
Whom didst thou slay of the Argives, son of Polydamas, venging
Bravely thy father? Then must I say, I lurked in the city.
I was too young and only ascending the Ilian ramparts
Saw the return or the flight, but never the deed and the triumph.
Friend, if you take me not forth, I shall die of grief ere the sunset.
Plucking the hand of Aeneas he drew him into the mansion
Vast; and over the floor of the spacious hall they hastened
Laughing, the gracious child and the mighty hero and statesman,
Flower of a present stock and the burdened star of the future.
Meanwhile girt by his sons and the sons of his sons in his chamber
Cried to the remnants left of his blood the aged Antenor.
Hearken you who are sprung from my loins and children, their offspring!
None shall again go forth to the fight who is kin to Antenor.
Weighed with my curse he shall go and the spear-points athirst of the Argives
Meet him wroth; he shall die in his sin and his name be forgotten.
Oft have I sent forth my blood to be spilled in vain in the battle
Fighting for Troy and her greatness earned by my toil and my fathers.
Now all the debt has been paid; she rejects us driven by the immortals.
Much do we owe to the mother who bore us, much to our country;
But at the last our life is ours and the gods and the futures.
Gather the gold of my house and our kin, O ye sons of Antenor.
Warned by a voice in my soul I will go forth tonight from this city
Fleeing the doom and bearing my treasures; the ships shall receive them
Gathered, new-keeled by my care and the gods, in the narrow Propontis.
Over Gods waters guided, treading the rage of Poseidon,
Bellying out with their sails let them cleave to the untravelled distance
Oceans crests and resign to their Fates the doomed and the evil.
So Antenor spoke and his children heard him in silence;
Awed by his voice and the dread of his curse they obeyed, though in sorrow.
Halamus only replied to his father: Dire are the white hairs
Reverend, loved, of a father, dreadful his curse to his children.
Yet in my heart there is one who cries, tis the voice of my country,
She for whose sake I would be in Tartarus tortured for ever.
Pardon me then, if thou wilt; if the gods can, then let them pardon.
For I will sleep in the dust of Troy embracing her ashes,
There where Polydamas sleeps and the many comrades I cherished.
So let me go to the darkness remembered or wholly forgotten,
Yet having fought for my country, true in my fall to my nation.
Then in his aged wrath to Halamus answered Antenor:
Go then and perish doomed with the doomed and the hated of heaven;
Nor shall the gods forgive thee dying nor shall thy father.
Out from the chamber Halamus strode with grief in his bosom
Wrestling with wrath and he went to his doom nor looked back at his dear ones.
Crossing the hall the son of Antenor and son of Anchises
Met in the paths of their fates where they knotted and crossed for the parting,
One with the curse of the gods and his sire fast wending to Hades,
Fortunate, blessed the other; yet equal their minds were and virtues.
Cypris son to the Antenorid: Thee I have sought and thy brothers,
Bough of Antenor; sore is our need today of thy counsels,
Endless our want of their arms that are strong and their hearts that recoil not
Meeting myriads stark with the spear in unequal battle.
Halamus answered him: I will go forth to the palace of Priam,
There where Troy yet lives and far from the halls of my fathers;
There will I speak, not here. For my kin they repose in the mansion
Sitting unarmed in their halls while their brothers fall in the battle.
Eurus eagerly answered the hero: Me rather, therefore,
Take to the fight with you; I will make war on the Greeks for my uncles;
One for all I will fill their place in the shock with the foemen.
But from his chamber-door Antenor heard and rebuked him:
Scamp of my heart, thou torment! in to thy chamber and rest there,
Bound with cords lest thou cease, thou flutter-brain, scourged into quiet;
So shall thy lust of the fight be healed and our mansion grow tranquil.
Chid by the old man Eurus slunk from the hall discontented,
Yet with a dubious smile like a moonbeam lighting his beauty.
But to Antenor the Dardanid born from the white Aphrodite:
Late the Antenorids learn to flinch from the spears of the Argives,
Even this boy of their blood has Polydamas heart and his valour.
Nor should a life that was honoured and noble be stained in its ending.
Nay, then, the mood of a child would shame a grey-headed wisdom,
If for the fault of the people virtue and Troy were forgotten.
For, though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nations will we are ruled in the home and the battle
And for our nations weal we offer our lives and our childrens.
Not by their own wills led nor their passions men rise to their manhood,
Selfishly seeking their good, but the gods and the States and the fathers.
Wroth Antenor replied to the warlike son of Anchises:
Great is the soul in thee housed and stern is thy will, O Aeneas;
Onward it moves undismayed to its goal though a city be ruined.
They too guide thee who deepest see of the ageless immortals,
One with her heart and one in his spirit, Cypris and Phoebus.
Yet might a man not knowing this think as he watched thee, Aeneas,
Spurring Priams race to its fall he endangers this city,
Hoping to build a throne out of ruins sole in the Troad.
I too have gods who warn me and lead, Athene and Hera.
Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret.
Coldly Aeneas made answer, stirred into wrath by the taunting:
High wert thou always, nurtured in wisdom, ancient Antenor.
Walk then favoured and led, yet watch lest passion and evil
Feign auguster names and mimic the gait of the deathless.
And with a smile on his lips but wrath in his bosom answered,
Wisest of men but with wisdom of mortals, aged Antenor:
Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded.
Nor shalt thou hear in this battle the shout of the men of my lineage
Holding the Greeks as once and driving back Fate from their country.
His alone will be heard for a space while the stern gods are patient
Even now who went forth a victim self-offered to Hades,
Last whom their wills have plucked from the fated house of Antenor.
They now with wrath in their bosoms sundered for ever and parted.
Forth from the halls of Antenor Aeneas rapidly striding
Passed once more through the city hurrying now with its car-wheels,
Filled with a mightier rumour of war and the march of its thousands,
Till at Troys upward curve he found the Antenorid crestward
Mounting the steep incline that climbed to the palace of Priam
White in her proud and armed citadel. Silent, ascending
Hardly their feet had attempted the hill when behind them they hearkened
Sweet-tongued a call and the patter and hurry of light-running sandals,
Turning they beheld with a flush on his cheeks and a light on his lashes
Challenging mutely and pleading the boyish beauty of Eurus.
Racer to mischief, said Halamus, couldst thou not sit in thy chamber?
Surely cords and the rod await thee, Eurus, returning.
Answered with laughter the child, I have broken through ranks of the fighters,
Dived under chariot-wheels to arrive here and I return not.
I too for counsel of battle have come to the palace of Priam.
Burdened with thought they mounted slowly the road of their fathers
Breasting the Ilian hill where Laomedons mansion was seated,
They from the crest down-gazing saw their countrys housetops
Under their feet and heard the murmur of Troya below them.
But in the palace of Priam coming and going of house-thralls
Filled all the corridors; smoke from the kitchens curled in its plenty
Rich with savour and breathed from the labouring lungs of Hephaestus.
Far in the halls and the chambers voices travelled and clustered,
Anklets jangling ran and sang back from doorway to doorway
Mocking with music of speed and its laughters the haste of the happy,
Sound came of arms, there was tread of the great, there were murmurs of women,
Voices glad of the doomed in Laomedons marvellous mansion.
Six were the halls of its splendour, a hundred and one were its chambers
Lifted on high upon columns that soared like the thoughts of its dwellers,
Thoughts that transcended the earth though they sank down at last into ashes;
So had Apollo dreamed to his lyre; and its tops were a grandeur
Domed, as if seeking to roof mens lives with a hint of the heavens;
Marble his columns rose and with marble his roofs were appointed,
Conquered wealth of the world in its largeness suffered, supporting
Purities of marble, glories of gold. Nor only of matter
Blazed there the brutal pomps, but images mystic or mighty
Crowded ceiling and wall, a work that the gods even admire
Hardly believing that forms like these were imagined by mortals
Here upon earth where sight is a blur and the soul lives encumbered.
Scrolls that remembered in gems the thoughts austere of the ancients
Bordered the lines of the stone and the forms of serpent and Naiad
Ran in relief on those walls of pride in the palace of Priam
Mingled with Dryads who tempted and fled and Satyrs who followed,
Sports of the nymphs in the sea and the woods and their meetings with mortals,
Sessions and battles of Trojan demigods, deaths that were famous,
Wars and loves of men and the deeds of the golden immortals.
Pillars sculptured with gods and with giants soared up from bases
Lion-carved or were seated on bulls and bore into grandeur
Amply those halls where they soared, or in lordliness slenderly fashioned,
Dressed in flowers and reeds like virgins standing on Ida,
Guarded the screens of stone and divided alcove and chamber.
Ivory carved and broidered robes and the riches of Indus
Cherished in sandalwood triumphed and teemed in the palace of Priam;
Doors that were carven and fragrant sheltered the joys of its princes.
Here in a chamber of luminous privacy Paris was arming.
Near him moved Helen, a whiteness divine, and intent on her labour
Fastened his cuirass, bound the greaves and settled the hauberk
Thrilling his limbs with her touch that was heaven to the yearning of mortals.
She with her hands of delight caressing the senseless metal
Pressed her lips to his brilliant armour; she bowed down, she whispered:
Cuirass, allowed by the gods, protect the beauty of Paris;
Keep for me that for which country was lost and my child and my brothers.
Yearning she bent to his feet, to the sandal-strings of her lover;
Then as she gazed up, changed grew her mood; for the Daemon within her
Rose that had banded Greece and was burning Troy into ashes.
Slowly a smile that was perfect and perilous over her beauty
Dawned like the sunlight on Paradise; strangely she looked on her lover.
So might a goddess have gazed as she played with the love of a mortal
Passing an hour on the earth ere she rose up white to Olympus.
So art thou winner, Paris, yet and thy spirit ascendant
Leads this Troy where thou wilt, O thou mighty one veiled in thy beauty.
First in the dance and the revel, first in the joy of the mellay,
Who would not leave for thy sake and repent it not country and homestead?
Winning thou reignest still over Troy, over Fate, over Helen.
Always so canst thou win? Has Death no claim on thy beauty,
Fate no scourge for thy sins? How the years have passed by in a glory,
Years of this heaven of the gods, O ravisher, since from my hearthstone
Seizing thou borest me compelled to thy ships and my joy on the waters.
Troy is enringed with the spears, her children fall and her glories,
Mighty souls of heroes have gone down prone to the darkness;
Thou and I abide! the mothers wail for our pleasure.
Wilt thou then keep me for ever, O son of Priam, in Troya?
Fate was my mother, they say, and Zeus for this hour begot me.
Art thou a god too, O hero, disguised in this robe of the mortal,
Brilliant, careless of death and of sin as if sure of thy rapture?
What then if Fate today were to lay her hands on thee, Paris?
Calmly he looked on the face of which Greece was enamoured, the body
For whose desire great Troy was a sacrifice, tranquil regarded
Lovely and dire on the lips he loved that smile of a goddess,
Saw the daughter of Zeus in the woman, yet was not shaken.
Temptress of Argos, he answered, thou snare for the world to be seized in,
Thou then hopst to escape! But the gods could not take thee, O Helen,
How then thy will that to mine is a captive, or how, though with battle,
He who has lost thee, unhappy, the Spartan, bright Menelaus?
All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing.
Thou on this earth art mine since I claimed thee beheld, not speaking,
But with thy lids that fell thou veiledst thy heart of compliance.
Then in whatever beyond I shall know how to take thee, O Helen,
Even as here upon earth I knew, in heaven as in Sparta;
I on Elysian fields will enjoy thee as now in the Troad.
Silent a moment she lingered like one who is lured by a music
Rapturous, heard by himself alone and his lover in heaven,
Then in her beauty compelling she rose up divine among women.
Yes, it is good, she cried, what the gods do and actions of mortals;
Good is this play of the world; it is good, the joy and the torture.
Praised be the hour of the gods when I wedded bright Menelaus!
Praised, more praised the keels that severed the seas towards Helen
Churning the senseless waves that knew not the bliss of their burden!
Praised to the end the hour when I passed through the doors of my husband
Laughing with joy in my heart for the arms that bore and enchained me!
Never can Death undo what life has done for us, Paris.
Nor, whatsoever betide, can the hour be unlived of our rapture.
This too is good that nations should meet in the shock of the battle,
Heroes be slain and a theme be made for the songs of the poets,
Songs that shall thrill with the name of Helen, the beauty of Paris.
Well is this also that empires should fall for the eyes of a woman;
Well that for Helen Hector ended, Memnon was slaughtered,
Strong Sarpedon fell and Troilus ceased in his boyhood.
Troy for Helen burning, her glory, her empire, her riches,
This is the sign of the gods and the type of things that are mortal.
Thou who art kin to the masters of heaven, unconstrained like thy kindred
High on this ancient stage of the Troad with gods for spectators
Play till the end thy part, O thou wondrous and beautiful actor:
Fight and slay the Greeks, my countrymen; victor returning
Take for reward of the play, thy delight of Argive Helen.
Force from my bosom a hint of the joy denied to the death-claimed,
Rob in the kiss of my lips a pang from the raptures of heaven.
Clasping him wholly her arms of desire were a girdle of madness,
Cestus divine of the dread Aphrodite. He with her kisses
Flushed like the gods with unearthly wine and rejoiced in his ruin.
Thus while they conversed now in this hour that was near to their parting
Last upon earth, a fleet-footed slavegirl came to the chamber:
Paris, thy father and mother desire thee; there in the strangers
Outer hall Aeneas and Halamus wait for thy coming.
So with the Argive he wended to Priams ample chamber
Far in Laomedons house where Troy looked upwards to Ida.
Priam and Hecuba there, the ancient grey-haired rulers,
Waiting him sat in their chairs of ivory calm in their greatness;
Hid in her robes at their feet lay Cassandra crouched from her visions.
Since, O my father, said Paris, thy thoughts have been with me, thy blessing
Surely shall help me today in my strife with the strength of Achilles.
Surely the gods shall obey in the end the might of our spirits,
Pallas and Hera, flame-sandalled Artemis, Zeus and Apollo.
Ever serve the immortal brightnesses man when he stands up
Firm with his will uplifted a steadfast flame towards the heavens,
Ares works in his heart and Hephaestus burns in his labour.
Priam replied to his son: Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals,
Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us always
Drives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture.
So have the high gods fashioned these tools of their action and pleasure;
Failure and grief are their engines no less than the might of the victor;
They in the blow descend and resist in the sobs of the smitten.
Such are their goads that I too must walk in the paths that are common,
Even I who know must send for thee, moved by Cassandra.
Speak, O my child, since Apollo has willed it, once, and be silent.
But in her raiment hidden Cassandra answered her father:
No, for my heart has changed since I cried for him, vexed by Apollo.
Why should I speak? For who will believe me in Troy? who believed me
Ever in Troy or the world? Event and disaster approve me
Only, my comrades, not men in their thoughts, not my brothers and kinsmen.
All by their hopes are gladly deceived and grow wroth with the warner,
Half-blind prophets of hope entertained by the gods in the mortal!
Wiser blind, if nothing they saw or only the darkness.
I too once hoped when Apollo pursued me with love in his temple.
Round me already there gleamed the ray of the vision prophetic,
Thrill of that rapture I felt and the joy of the god in his seeing
Nor did I know that the knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood
Easily turns and leads them more stumbling astray than the sightless.
So are we either blind in a darkness or dazzled by seeing.
Thus have the gods protected their purpose and baffled the sages;
Over the face of the Truth their shield of gold is extended.
But I deemed otherwise, urged by the Dreadful One, he who sits always
Veiled in us fighting the gods whom he uses. I cried to Apollo,
Give me thy vision sheer, not such as thou givst to thy prophets,
Troubled though luminous; clear be the vision and ruthless to error,
Far-darting god who art veiled by the sun and by death thou art shielded.
Then I shall know that thou lovest. He gave, alarmed and reluctant,
Driven by Fate and his heart; but I mocked him, I broke from my promise,
Courage fatal helping my heart to its ruin with laughter.
Always now I remember his face that grew tranquil and ruthless,
Hear the voice divine and implacable: Since thou deceivest
Even the gods and thou hast not feared to lie to Apollo,
Speak shalt thou henceforth only truth, but none shall believe thee:
Scorned in thy words, rejected yet more for their bitter fulfilment,
Scourged by the gods thou must speak though thy sick heart yearns to be silent.
For in this play thou hast dared to play with the masters of heaven,
Girl, it is thou who hast lost; thy voice is mine and thy bosom.
Since then all I foreknow; therefore anguish is mine for my portion:
Since then all whom I love must perish slain by my loving.
Even of that I denied him, violent force shall bereave me
Grasped mid the flames of my city and shouts of her merciless victors.
But to Cassandra answered gently the voice of her brother:
Sister of mine, afflicted and seized by the dreadful Apollo,
All whose eyes can pierce that curtain, gaze into dimness;
This they have glimpsed and that they imagine deceived by their natures
Seeing the forms in their hearts of dreadful things and of joyous;
As in the darkness our eyes are deceived by shadows uncertain,
Such is their sight who rend the veil that the dire gods have woven.
Busy our hearts are weaving thoughts and images always:
After their kind they see what here we call truth. So thy nature
Tender and loving, plagued by this war and its fears for thy loved ones,
Sees calamity everywhere; when the event like the vision
Seems, as in every war the beloved must fall and the cherished,
Then the heart cries, It has happened as all shall happen I mourn for.
All that was bright it misses and only seizes on sorrow.
Dear, on the brightness look and if thou must prophesy, tell us
Rather of great Pelides slain by my spear in the onset.
But with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
Yes, he shall fall and his slayer too perish and Troy with his slayer.
But in his spirit rejoicing Paris answered Cassandra:
Let but this word come true; for the rest, the gods shall avert it.
Look once more, O Cassandra, and comfort the heart of thy mother,
See, O seer, my safe return with the spoils of Achilles.
And with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
Thou shalt return for thy hour while Troy yet stands in the sunshine.
But in his spirit exultant Paris seizing the omen:
Hearst thou, my father, my mother? She who still prophesied evil
Now perceives of our night this dawning. Yet is it grievous,
Since through a heart that we love must be pierced the heart of Achilles.
Fate, with this evil satisfied, turn in the end from Troya.
Bless me, my father, and thou, O Hecuba, mother long-patient,
Still forgive that thy children have fallen for Helen and Paris.
Tenderly yearning his mother drew him towards her and murmured:
All for thy hyacinth curls was forgiven even from childhood
And for thy sunlit looks, O wonder of charm, O Paris.
Paris, my son, though Troy must fall, thy mother forgives thee,
Blessing the gods who have lent thee to me for a while in their sunshine.
Theirs are fate and result, but ours is the joy of our children;
Even the griefs are dear that come from their hands while they love us.
Fight and slay Achilles, the murderer dire of thy brothers;
Venging Hector return, my son, to the clasp of thy mother.
But in his calm august to Paris Priam the monarch:
Victor so mightst thou come, so gladden the heart of thy mother.
Then to the aged father of Paris Helen the Argive
Bright and immortal and sad like a star that grows near to the dawning
And on its pale companions looks who now fade from its vision:
Me too pardon and love, my parents, even Helen,
Cause of all bane and all death; but I came from the gods for this ruin
Born as a torch for the burning of empires, cursed with this beauty.
Nor have I known a fathers embrace, a mothers caresses,
But to the distant gods I was born and nursed as an alien
Here by earth from fear, not affection, compelled by the thunders.
Two are her monstrous births, from the Furies and from the immortals;
Either touching mortality suffers and bears not the contact.
I have been both, a monster of doom and a portent of beauty.
Slowly Priam the monarch answered to Argive Helen:
That which thou art the gods have made thee; thou couldst not be other:
That which thou didst, the gods have done; thou couldst not prevent them.
Who here shall blame or whom shall he pardon? Should not my people
Rail at me murmuring, Priam has lost what his fathers had gathered;
Cursed is this king by heaven and cursed who are born as his subjects?
Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working.
Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed thats forgotten;
Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:
Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry.
Take, my child, the joy of the sunshine won by thy beauty.
I who lodge on this earth as an alien bound by the body,
Wearing my sorrow even as I wear the imperial purple,
Praise yet the gods for my days that have seen thee at last in my ending.
Fitly Troy may cease having gazed on thy beauty, O Helen.
He became silent, he ceased from words. But Paris and Helen
Lightly went and gladly; pursuing their footsteps the mother,
Mother once of Troilus, mother once of Hector,
Stood at the door with her death in her eyes, nor returned from her yearning,
But as one after a vanishing sunbeam gazes in prison,
Gazed down the corridors after him, long who had passed from her vision.
Then in the silent chamber Cassandra seized by Apollo
Staggered erect and tossing her snow-white arms of affliction
Cried to the heavens in her pain; for the fierce god tortured her bosom:
Woe is me, woe for the guile and the bitter gift of Apollo!
Woe, thrice woe, for my birth in Troy and the lineage of Teucer!
So do you deal, O gods, with those who have served you and laboured,
Those who have borne for your sake the evil burden of greatness.
Blessed is he who holds mattock in hand or who bends oer the furrow
Taking no thought for the good of mankind, with no yearnings for knowledge.
Woe unto me for my wisdom which none shall value nor hearken!
Woe unto thee, O King, for thy strength which shall not deliver!
Better the eye that is sealed, more blest is the spirit thats feeble.
Vainly your hopes with iron Necessity struggle, O mortals.
Virtue shall lie in her pangs, for the gods have need of her torture;
Sin shall be scourged, though her deeds were compelled by the gods in their anger.
None shall avail in the end, the coward shall die and the hero.
Troy shall fall in her sin and her virtues shall not protect her;
Argos shall grow by her crimes till the gods shall destroy her for ever.
Now have I fruit of thy love, O Loxias, dreadful Apollo.
Woe is me, woe for the flame that approaches the house of my fathers!
Woe is me, woe for the hand of Ajax laid on my tresses!
Woe, thrice woe to him who shall ravish and him who shall cherish!
Woe for the ships that shall bound too swift oer the azure Aegean!
Woe for thy splendid shambles of hell, O Argive Mycenae!
Woe for the evil spouse and the house accursd of Atreus!
So with her voice of the swan she clanged out doom on the peoples,
Over the palace of Priam and over the armd nation
Marching resolved to the war in the pride of its centuries conquered,
Centuries slain by a single day of the anger of heaven.
Dim to the thoughts like a vision of Hades the luminous chamber
Grew; in his ivory chair King Priam sat like a shadow
Throned mid the ghosts of departed kings and forgotten empires.
But in his valiance careless and bli the the Priamid hastened
Seeking the pillared megaron wide where Deiphobus armoured
Waited his coming forth with the warlike chiefs of the Trojans.
Now as he passed by the halls of the women, the chambers that harboured
Daughters and wives of King Priam and wives of his sons and their playmates,
Niches of joy that were peopled with murmurs and sweet-tongued laughters,
Troubled like trees with their birds in a morning of sun and of shadow
Where in some garden of kings one walks with his heart in the sunshine,
Out from her door where she stood for him waiting Polyxena started,
Seized his hand and looked in his face and spoke to her brother.
Then not even the brilliant strength of Paris availed him;
Joyless he turned his face from her eyes of beauty and sorrow.
So it is come, the hour that I feared, and thou goest, O Paris,
Armed with the strength of Fate to strike at my heart in the battle;
For he is doomed and thou and I, a victim to Hades.
This thou preferrest and neither thy father could move nor thy mother
Burning with Troy in their palace, nor could thy country persuade thee,
Nor dost thou care for thy sisters happiness pierced by thy arrows.
Will she remember it all, my sister Helen, in Argos
Passing tranquil days with her husband, bright Menelaus,
Holding her child on her knees? But we shall lie joyless in Hades.
Paris replied: O sister Polyxena, blame me not wholly.
We by the gods are ensnared; for the pitiless white Aphrodite
Doing her will with us both compels this. Helpless our hearts are
And when she drives perforce must love, for death or for gladness:
Weighed in unequal scales she deals them to one or another.
Happy who holding his love can go down into bottomless Hades.
But to her brother replied in her anguish the daughter of Priam:
Evilly deal with my days the immortals happy in heaven;
Yes, I accuse the gods and I curse them who heed not our sorrow.
This they have done with me, forcing my heart to the love of a foeman,
One whose terrible hands have been stained with the blood of my brothers.
This now they do, they have taken the two whom I love beyond heaven,
Brother and husband, and drive to the fight to be slain by each other.
Nay, go thou forth; for thou canst not help it, nor I, nor can Helen.
Since I must die as a pageant to satisfy Zeus and his daughter,
Since now my heart must be borne as a victim bleeding to please them,
So let it be, let me deck myself and be bright for the altar.
Into her chamber she turned with her great eyes blind, unregarding;
He for a moment stood, then passed to the megaron slowly;
Dim was the light in his eyes and clouded his glorious beauty.
Meanwhile armed in the palace of Priam Penthesilea.
Near her her captains silent and mighty stood, from the Orient
Distant clouds of war, Surabdas and iron Surenas,
Pharatus planned like the hills, Somaranes, Valarus, Tauron,
High-crested Sumalus, Arithon, Sambus and Artavoruxes.
There too the princes of Phrygian Troya gathered for counsel
And with them Eurus came, Polydamas son, who most dearly
Loved was of all the Trojan boys by the glorious virgin.
She from her arming stayed to caress his curls and to chide him:
Eurus, forgotten of grace, dost thou gad like a stray in the city
Eager to mix with the armoured men and the chariots gliding?
High on the roofs wouldst thou watch the swaying speck that is battle?
Better to aim with the dart or seek with thy kind the palaestra;
So wilt thou sooner be part of this greatness rather than straining
Yearn from afar to the distance that veils the deeds of the mighty.
But with an anxious lure in his smile on her Eurus answered:
Not that remoteness to see have I come to the palace of Priam
Leaving the house of my fathers, but for the spear and the breastpiece.
Hast thou not promised me long I shall fight in thy car with Achilles?
Doubtful he eyed her, a lions cub at play in his beauty,
And mid the heroes who heard him laughter arose for a moment,
Yet with a sympathy stirred; they remembered the days of their childhood,
Thought of Troy still mighty, life in its rose-touched dawning
When they had longed for the clash of the fight and the burden of armour.
Glad, with the pride of the lioness watching her cub in the desert,
Couchant she lies with her paws before her and joys in his gambols,
Over the prey as he frisks and is careless, answered the virgin:
Younger than thou in my nation have mounted the steed and the war-car.
Eurus, arm; from under my shield thou shalt gaze at the Phthian,
Reaching my shafts for the cast from the rim of my car in the battle
Handle perhaps the spear that shall smite down the Phthian Achilles.
What sayst thou, Halamus? Were not such prowess a perfect beginning
Worthy Polydamas son and the warlike house of Antenor?
Halamus started and smiting his hand on the grief of his bosom,
Sombre replied and threatened with Fate the high-hearted virgin.
Virgin armipotent, wherefore mockst thou thy friend, though unwitting?
Nay, for the world will know at the end and my death cannot hide it,
Slain by a fathers curse we fight who are kin to Antenor.
Take not the boy in thy car, lest the Furies, Penthesilea,
Aim through the shield and the shielder to wreak the curse of the grandsire.
They will not turn nor repent for thy strength nor his delicate beauty.
Swiftly to Halamus answered the high-crested might of the virgin:
Curses leave lightly the lips when the soul of a man is in anger
Even as blessings easily crowd round the head that is cherished.
Yet have I never seen that a curse has sharpened a spear-point;
Never Death drew back from the doomed by the power of a blessing.
Valour and skill and chance are Fate and the gods and the Furies.
Give me the boy; a hero shall come back formed from the onset.
Do as thou wilt, replied Halamus; Fate shall guard or shall end him.
Then to the boy delighted and smiling-eyed and exultant
Cried with her voice like the call of heavens bugles waking the heroes,
Blown by the lips of gold-haired Valkyries, Penthesilea.
Go, find the spear, gird the sword, don the cuirass, child of the mighty.
Armed when thou standst on the plain of the Xanthus, field of thy fathers,
See that thou fight on this day like the comrade of Penthesilea.
Bud of a hero, gaze unalarmed in the eyes of Achilles.
Light as a hound released he ran to the hall of the armour
Where were the shields of the mighty, the arms of the mansion of Teucer;
There from the house-thralls he wrung the greaves and the cuirass and helmet
Troilus wore, the wonderful boy who, ere ripened his prowess,
Conquered the Greeks and drove to the ships and fought with Achilles.
These on his boyish limbs he donned and ran back exulting
Bearing spears and a sword and rejoiced in the clank on his armour.
Meanwhile Deiphobus, head of the mellay, moved by Aeneas
Opened the doors of their warlike debate to the strength of the virgin:
Well do I hope that our courage outwearying every opponent
Triumph shall lift to her ancient seat on the Pergaman turrets;
Clouds from Zeus come and pass; his sunshine eternal survives them.
Yet we are few in the fight and armoured nations besiege us.
Surging on Troy today a numberless foe well-captained
Hardly pushed back in shock after shock with the Myrmidon numbers
Swelled returns; they fight with a hope that broken refashion
Helpful skies and a man now leads them who conquers and slaughters,
One of the sons of the gods and armed by the gods for the struggle.
We unhelped save by Ares stern and the mystic Apollo
And but as mortals striving with stubborn mortal courage,
Hated and scorned and alone in the world, by the nations rejected,
Fight with the gods and mankind and Achilles and numbers against us
Keeping our country from death in this bitter hour of her fortunes.
Therefore have prudence and hardihood severed contending our counsels
Whether far out to fight on the seaward plain with the Argives
Or behind Xanthus the river impetuous friendly to Troya.
This my brother approves and the son of Antenor advises,
Prudent masters of war who prepare by defence their aggression.
But for myself from rashness I seek a more far-seeing wisdom,
Not behind vain defences choosing a tardy destruction,
Rather as Zeus with his spear of the lightning and chariot of tempest
Scatters and chases the heavy mass of the clouds through the heavens,
So would I hunt the Greeks through the plains to their lair by the Ocean,
Straight at the throat of my foeman so would I leap in the battle.
Swiftly to smite at the foe is prudence for armies outnumbered.
Then to the Dardanid answered the high-crested Penthesilea:
There where I find my foe I will fight him, whether by Xanthus
Or at the fosse of the ships where they crouch behind bulwarks for shelter,
Or if they dare by Scamander the higher marching on Troya.
Sternly approved her the Trojan, So should they fight who would triumph
Meeting the foe ere he move in his will to the clash of encounter.
But with his careless laughter the brilliant Priamid Paris:
Joy of the battle, joy of the tempest, joy of the gamble
Mated are in thy blood, O virgin, daughter of Ares.
Thou like the deathless wouldst have us combat, us who are human?
Come, let the gods do their will with us, Ares let lead and his daughter!
Always the blood is wiser and knows what is hid from the thinker.
Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals.
Highly to Paris the virgin armipotent Penthesilea,
Paris and Halamus, shafts of the war-god, fear not for Troya.
Not as a vaunt do I speak it, you gods who stern-thoughted watch us,
But in my vision of strength and the soul that is seated within me,
Not while I live and war shall the host of the Myrmidon fighters
Forcing the currents lave, as once they were wont, in Scamander
Vaunting their victor car-wheels red with the blood of the vanquished.
Then when I lie by some war-god slain on the fields of the Troad,
Fight again if you will behind high-banked fast-flowing Xanthus.
Halamus answered her, Never so by my will would I battle
Flinging Troy as a stake on the doubtful diceboard of Ares.
But you have willed it and so let it be; yet hearken my counsel.
Massed in the fight let us aim the storm of our spears at one greatness,
Mighty Pelides head who gives victory still to the Argives.
Easy the Greeks to destroy lay Achilles once slain on the Troad,
But if the Peleid lives the fire shall yet finish with Troya.
Join then Orestes speed to the stubborn might of Aeneas,
Paris fatal shafts and the missiles of Penthesilea.
Others meanwhile, a puissant screen of our bravest and strongest,
Fighting shall hold back Pylos and Argolis, Crete and the Locrian.
Thou, Deiphobus, front the bronze-clad stern Diomedes,
I with Polydamas spear will dare to restrain and discourage
Ajax feet though they yearn for pursuit and are hungry for swiftness.
Knot of retreat behind let some strong experienced captain
Stand with our younger levies guarding the fords of the Xanthus,
Fortify the wavering line and dawn as fresh strength on the wearied.
Then if the fierce gods prevail we shall perish not driven like cattle
Over the plains, but draw back sternly and slowly to Troya.
Answered the Priamid, Wise is thy counsel, branch of Antenor.
Chaff are the southern Achaians, only the hardihood Hellene,
Only the savage speed of the Locrian rescues their legions.
Marshal we so this field. Stand, Halamus, covering Xanthus,
Helping our need when the foe press hard on the Ilian fighters.
Paris, my brother, thou with our masses aid the Eoan.
I with Aeneas single spear am enough for the Argive.
Gladlier Halamus cried would I fight in the front with the Locrian!
This too let be as you will; for one is the glory and service
Fighting in front or guarding behind the fate of our country.
So in their thoughts they ordered battle. Meanwhile Eurus
Gleaming returned and the room grew glad with the light of his armour.
Glad were its conscious walls of that vision of boyhood and valour;
Gods of the household sighed and smiled at his courage and beauty,
They who had seen so many pass over their floors and return not
Hasting to battle, the fair and the mighty, the curled and the grizzled,
All of them treading one path like the conscious masks of one pageant
Winding past through the glare of a light to the shadows beyond them.
But on her captains proudly smiling Penthesilea
Seized him and cried aloud, her wild and warlike nature
Moved by the mothers heart that the woman loses not ever.
Who then shall fear for the fate of Troy when such are her children?
Verily, Eurus, yearning has seized me to meet thee in battle
Rather than Locrian Ajax, rather than Phthian Achilles.
There acquiring a deathless fame I would make thee my captive,
Greedy and glad who feel as a lioness eyeing her booty.
Nay, I can never leave thee behind, my delicate Trojan,
But, when this war ends, will bear thee away to the hills of my country
And, as a robber might, with my captive glad and unwilling
Bring thee a perfect gift to my sisters Ditis and Anna.
Eurus, there in my land thou shalt look on such hills as thy vision
Gazed not on yet, with their craggy tops besieging Cronion,
Sheeted in virgin white and chilling his feet with their vastness.
Thou shalt rejoice in our wooded peaks and our fruit-bearing valleys,
Lakes of Elysium dreaming and wide and rivers of wonder.
All day long thou shalt glide between mystic woodlands in silence
Broken only by call of the birds and the plashing of waters.
There shalt thou see, O Eurus, the childhood of Penthesilea.
Thou shalt repose in my fathers house and walk in the gardens
Green where I played at the ball with my sisters, Ditis and Anna.
Musing she ceased, but if any god had touched her with prescience
Bidding her think for the last time now of the haunts of her childhood,
Gaze in her soul with a parting love at the thought of her sisters
And of the lovely and distant land where she played through her summers,
Brief was the touch; for she changed at once and only of triumph
Dreamed and only yearned in her heart for the shock of Achilles.
So they passed from the halls of Priam fated and lofty,
Halls where the air seemed sobbing yet with the cry of Cassandra;
Clad in their brilliant armour, bright in their beauty and courage,
Sons of the passing demigods, they to their latest battle
Down the ancestral hill of the Pergamans moved to the gateway.
Loud with an endless march, with a tireless gliding to meet them,
All Troy streamed from her streets and her palaces armed for the combat.
Then to the voice of Deiphobus clanging high oer the rumour
Wide the portals swung that shall close on a blood-red evening,
Slow, foreboding, reluctant, and through the yawn of the gateway
Drove with a cry her steeds the virgin Penthesilea
Calling aloud, O steeds of my east, we drive to Achilles.
Bli the in the car behind her Eurus scouted around him
Scared with his eyes lest Antenor his grandsire should rise in the gateway,
Hardly believing his fate that led him safe through the portals.
After her trampled and crashed the ranks of her orient fighters.
Paris next with his hosts came brilliant, gold on his armour,
Gold on his helm; a mighty bow hung slack on his shoulder,
Propped oer his arm a spear, as he drove his car through the gateway.
Next Deiphobus drove and the hero strong Aeneas,
Leading their numbers on. Behind them Dus and Polites,
Helenus, Priams son, Thrasymachus, grizzled Aretes,
Came like the tempest his father, Adamas, son of the Northwind
Orus old in the fight and Eumachus, kin to Aeneas,
Who was Cresas brother and richest of men in the Troad
After Antenor only and Priam, Ilions monarch.
Halamus drove and Arintheus led on his Lycian levies.
Who were the last to speed out of Troya of all those legions
Doomed to the sword? for never again from the ancient city
Foot would march or chariots crash in their pride to the Xanthus.
Aetor the old and Tryas the conqueror known by the Oxus.
They in the portals met and their ancient eyes on each other
Looked amazed, admiring on age the harness of battle.
They in the turreted head of the gateway halted and conversed.
Twenty years have passed, O Tryas, chief of the Trojans,
Since in the battle thy car was seen and the arm of thy prowess
Age has wronged. Why now to the crowded ways of the battle
Move once more thy body infirm and thy eyes that are faded?
And to Antenors brother the Teucrian, Thou too, O Aetor,
Old and weary hast sat in thy halls and desisted from battle.
Now in Troys portals I meet thee driving forth to the mellay.
Aetor answered, Which then is better, to wretchedly perish
Crushed by the stones of my falling house or slain like a victim
Dragged through the blood of my kin on the sacred hearth of my fathers,
Or in the battle to cease mid the war-cry and hymn of the chariots
Knowing that Troy yet stands in her pride though doomed in her morrows?
So have the young men willed and the old like thee who age not,
Old are thy limbs, but thy heart is still young and hot for the war-din.
Tryas replied, To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection.
So have I come here to offer this shoulder Laomedon leaned on,
Arms that have fought by the Oxus and conquered the Orients heroes
Famous in Priams wars, and a heart that is faithful to Troya.
These I will offer to death on his splendid altar of battle,
Tri bute from Ilion. If she must fall, I shall see not her ending.
Aetor replied to Tryas, Then let us perish together,
Joined by the love of our race who in life were divided in counsel.
All things embrace in death and the strife and the hatred are ended.
Silent together they drove for the last time through Ilions portals
Out with the rest to the fight towards the sea and the spears of the Argives.
Only once, as they drove, they gazed back silent on Troya
Lifting her marble pride in the golden joy of the morning.
So through the ripening morn the army, crossing Scamander,
Filling the heavens with the dust and the war-cry, marched on the Argives.
Far in front Troys plain spread wide to the echoing Ocean.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 4 - The Book of Partings
,#NFDB