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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
 
Location: United Kingdom | Sorry, but, not wishng to patronise, how humble is that ? Owning to having a book on your shelf that you haven't read ?! That's very open of you Instinctual.
Now, how many of the books on my shelf have I actually read .... ?? xx |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 773
 
Location: Arizona | Uh I dunno, either all of em, some of them, most of them or somewhere in the middle, I'd venture to guess! ahaha
I thought you were off visiting Mum?
Lor |
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Regular
Posts: 66
Location: West Texas | Thank you sunflower for the kind words. i have always been a very quiet person, other than things in which i was sure of. you know the whole " dont speek and be thought a fool or speek and remove all dought." lol. but have begun a path that i dont belive i could stop even if i wanted to. so thank you again. Jerry |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | (today's poem from Poem of the Day web-site - won't do this everyday, but this .....
You stop to point at the moon in the sky
You stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger’s blind unless the moon is shining.
One moon, one careless finger pointing –
are these two things or one?
The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.
Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger — nothing there at all.
- Taigu Ryokan
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 773
Location: Arizona | Oh Marty-r, you make me smile! ahaha I relate to you about books although we come about ours in different ways, I have a book exchange with family and friends, I get enamored with garage sale reads and head to Border's and just have to read for example an author who was just on Book TV. Good intentions I must say, but life gets in the way!
That sounds like a really cool idea, "Book Thing". I like that.
Paul- thanks for the poem, it reminds me somewhat of the original poem that James posted.
Peace and Monkey Grease! |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 773
Location: Arizona |
The Tree
The Ethereal beauty carries You
At once it beckons Thee
Then the Light will shine on You
When see you do the Tree.
The beam will come from up above
And wake it will, your Core
Blue Jays, Robins, Pure White Doves
Have entered your Spirit Door.
The flutter is Yours now
They trusted You
With their Loving Energy
You must never forget the first time
Your Spirit saw the Tree.
The Earth gives Birth to Majesty
The Glen, so full of Love
Mystery surrounds this place!
And this- just one Octave.
Surrounding you is Sweetness
Ancient Secrets of The Sages
A pure sense of Completeness
For Us to write on Pages.
The Leaves in Autumn from The Tree
Blazing Fire on Earth's Floor.
Breezes and Rain
Make
Sensual Terrain
With a Sky of Pure Azure.
The Glorious Debris I see
turns into Magic mulch.
Giving back to Earth It's Gold
Some travels down the gulch.
This Gypsy Earth that was Created
from Elements and Winds And Time
Wherever it's needed it will be guided
It's use will be Sublime.
The Tree in Winter
Taking Slumber
Or so, it would appear
But in It's heart It knows the Truth
It knows that You are near.
The Buds of Spring, The Scent of God
The Birthing Process Starts
From in the Womb of Mother Earth
Pure Love it does Impart.
The Birds that flew into your Door
Are Timeless, Real and True
For without them
You would not know
Why They came for You.
These gorgeous Creatures In All Their Wisdom
Have a Truth to Quietly Share
Of where they lived
Before they Flew
Into Your Sacred Lair.
The Branches, Twigs, Sprouts and Leaves
Are Brimming with Their Beauty.
You see, The Tree in all It's Glory
Saw it as It's Duty.
It welcomes them and Beckons them
Invites Them to Their Nest
Where They can Eat and Play and Love
And Live Life at It's Best.
I Am Eternally Grateful To Them
For Migrating to My Heart
Because Now I understand the Truth
About From Where I Start.
There is no Beginning, No Middle or End
That Enters Into Me
That is Because
I am The Sun, The Wind, The Rain,
The Tree.
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | Lovely tree. Thanks |
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UMS Student
Location: Hirosaki, Japan | Paul Joseph - 7/15/2008 5:22 PM
(today's poem from Poem of the Day web-site - won't do this everyday, but this .....
You stop to point at the moon in the sky
You stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger’s blind unless the moon is shining.
One moon, one careless finger pointing –
are these two things or one?
The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.
Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger — nothing there at all.
- Taigu Ryokan
Amazing, I left this as a blank comment at first because I could not let it go uncommented, and yet the only comment
worth writing was the silence I was left with.
I happen to have Ryokan's death poem.
Ryokan ??
Died on the sixth ay of the first month. 1831 at the age of 74.
Now it reveals its hidden side
and now the other-thus it falls,
an autumn leaf.
Ura o mise
omote o misete
chiru momiji.
spoken at his moment of death.
Edited by NothingEverything 7/15/2008 9:11 AM
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | 1. The Road Not Taken ( by Robert Frost)
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | Lovely NE; and great translation; I coincidentally had been in the process of posting Robert Frost's poem before reading your additional death poem; and yet they each seem to resonate with each other. |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | W H AUDEN:
Three Short Poems
"The underground roads
Are, as the dead prefer them,
Always tortuous."
"When he looked the cave in the eye,
Hercules
Had a moment of doubt."
"Leaning out over
The dreadful precipice,
One contemptuous tree."
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 750
| hi Jerry,i hav been reading your posts with great interest,and am so pleased you are finding the path you have craved for,i beleive you,ut of many herehave much to give,wisdom,knowledge,and much spiritual love from your lovely heart,i wish you well,and when this board finaly closes,i hope we will still be together,werever we may be,thankyou for beinga special friend to me,love and hugs always,irisxxx A bond never to be broken x |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | ... Shakespeare's life and doings remain litle kniown, really, and the identity of to whom he dedicated his sonnets is also not clear; he said, 'to the Dark Lady'; I thus like to think if them as dedicated to the Muse, to the Dark Goddess, Sophia, mother of Wisdom ... many think WS inaccessible, possibly ebcause they have not had direct access to his works, so here is a particularly lovely one, with, i feel, metaphysical content also. xx Busy day, but want to respond to all those other great threads/postys ebnfore the Board is woudn down, please !!
Shall I compare thee to a summers day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shall I compare thee to a summers day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | THE SECOND COMING
by W B Yeats, 1920
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | HEAVEN
by A S J Tessimond (1902 - 1962)
In the heaven of the god I hope for (call him X)
There is marriage and giving in marriage and transient sex
For those who will cast the body's vest aside
Soon, but are not yet rarified
And still embrace. For X is never annoyed
Or shocked; has read his Jung and knows his Freud,
He gives you time in heaven to do as you please,
To climb love's ladder by slow degrees,
Gently to rise from sense to soul, to ascend
To a world of timeless joy, world without end.
Here on the gates of pearl there hangs no sign
Limiting cakes and ale, forbidding wine.
No weakness here is hidden, no vice unknown.
Sin is a sickness to be cured, outgrown
With the help of a god who can laugh, an unsolemn god
Who smiles at old wives' tales of iron rod
And fiery hell, a God who's more at ease
With bawds and Falstaffs than with Pharisees.
Here the lame learn to leap, the blind to see,
Tyrants are taught to be humble, slaves to be free.
Fools become wise and wise men cease to be bores,
Here bishops learn from lips of back-street whores,
And white men follow black-faced angels' feet
Through fields of orient and immortal wheat.
Villon, Lautrec and Baudelaire are here.
Here Swift forgets his anger, Poe his fear.
Napoleon rests. Columbus, journeys done,
Has reached his new Atlantis, found his sun.
Verlaine and Dylan Thomas drink together.
Marx talks to Plato. Byron wonders whether
There's some mistake. Wordsworth has found a hill
That's home. Here Chopin plays the piano still.
Wren plans ethereal domes; and Renoir paints
Young girls as ripe as fruit but not yet saitns.
And X, of whom no coward is afraind,
Who's friend consulted, not fierce king obeyed;
Who hears the unspoken thought, the prayer unprayed;
Who expects not even the learned to understand
His universe, extends a prodigal hand,
Full of forgiveness, over his promised land
Edited by Paul Joseph 7/21/2008 9:41 AM
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | Stages
by Herman Hesse (though written as if by the central character, Joseph Knecht, Master of 'The Glass Bead Game', a deeply metaphysical work of literature, set in the 23rd century ....) Namaste ..
As every flower fades and
as all youth departs
So life at every stage
So every virtue
So our grasp of truth
Blooms in its day and
may not last forever
Since life may summon us
at every stage
Be ready heart, for parting
new endeavor
Be ready bravely
and without remorse
To find new light
that old ties cannot give
IN ALL BEGINNINGS
dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us
to LIVE
Serenely let us move to distant places
and let no sentiments of home
detain us
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not
to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage
to wider spaces
If we accept a home
of our own making
Familiar habit makes for indolence
We must prepare for parting
and leave taking
Or else remain the slaves
of permanence
Even the hour of our death
may send us speeding on to
fresh and newer spaces
And life may summon us
to newer races
So be it heart:
bid farewell without end
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | from Today's Poem of the Day
(I know I said I wouldn;t keep doing this and I won;t; but felt this was so metaphysical, felt I had to share it!)
Sleep On
[Posted: 22 Jul 2008 03:48 PM CDT]
You who are not kept anxiously awake for love’s sake, sleep on.
In restless search for that river, we hurry along;
you whose heart such anxiety has not disturbed, sleep on.
Love’s place is out beyond the many separate sects;
since you love choosing and excluding, sleep on.
Love’s dawn cup is our sunrise, his dusk our supper;
you whose longing is for sweets and whose passion is for supper, sleep on.
In search of the philosopher’s stone, we are melting like copper;
you whose philosopher’s stone is cushion and pillow, sleep on.
I have abandoned hope for my brain and head; you who wish for
a clear head and fresh brain, sleep on.
I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words go;
you who are still dressed in your clothes, sleep on.
Translated by Jack Marshall
Arabian Nights Coffeehouse Press, October 1986
from Poem of the Day
Edited by Paul Joseph 7/23/2008 3:59 AM
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Regular
Posts: 66
Location: West Texas | God said come to the edge.
I said i t's to high.
God said come to the edge.
I said i might fall.
God said come to the edge.
I said i am not worthy.
God said come to the edge.
I said i am afraid.
God said come to the edge.
so i came to the edge.
God pushed me over the edge.
And I flew... |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | Namaste Searching. Keep aloft xx |
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
by John Keats, 1819
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/labelledamesansmerci.html
Namaste
Edited by Paul Joseph 7/25/2008 4:42 AM
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | Unending Love
Posted: 24 Jul 2008 03:42 PM CDT
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
by Rabindranath Tagore
from Poem of the Day
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | A. E. Housman 1859 -1936
From Last Poems No. XL
Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.
On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller's joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.
On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.
Possess, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger's feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | one for Sunflower today ...[relayed by a olde poor knight returning from the East after many bizarre, outlandish and unbeleivable adventures ... enjoy]
JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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PhD Alumni
Posts: 4414
Location: United Kingdom | ... though, in response to the sentiments in Jabberwocky, we are meant to love the serpents into their bliss rather than slay the dragons in our hearts ...
(couldn't resist that one !) |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 750
| hi sir gallahad ye knight of olde,i don,t understand what the poem means,oh i know you must think me stupid,thick,whatever,but honest now,i,m not good at picking out riddles.Is it a nice peom,or a not so nice one,to the recipient,do i sound paranoid,ok,thats alright,i am a bit,but i,m also sensitive and true,i mean this with respect,and thankyou for the poem,i know of alice through the looking glass,i know of the tea party,thats is lovely.Okay,having a bad day today,like we all do,anyway,coming on here and jabbering,keeps me sane,and safe.Okay,this is a poem i wrote for a true spirtiual friend,who helped me through bad times...
FRIENDS
it can sometimes take a lifetime
to find a friend thats true
but i,ve been very lucky
in friendship i,ve found you
my prayer for each and everyone
is faith,and love so bright
an everlasting candle
to light the darkest night
if life seems sometimes hard to bare
when troubles never end
just hold the hand right next to you
your very closest friend
and as i thankyou one and all
for all the love youv,e sent
the precious gift that means the most
is your love and prayers were meant.
love and hugs,irisxx |
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Poetry for the soul
