I DO NOT LOVE YOU by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that you eyes close as I fall asleep.
LAUGH, AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth
It has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh! it is lost on the air;
The echoes rebound to a joyful sound
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of your pleasure,
But they do not want your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all --
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and you halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Forget and forgive, it helps you to live,
But no man can help you die.
There's a room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train:
But one by one we must file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
THE NEW REMORSE by Oscar Wilde
The sin was mine; I did not understand
so now music is prisoned in her cave
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug itself so deep a grave,
That hardly can leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter's hand
But who is this that cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!)
Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments
From the South
It is thy new found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished rose of thy mouth.
And I shall weep and worship as before.
I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN by Emily Dickenson
I felt a funeral in my brain
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they were all seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And I heard them left a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll.
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And i and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL by T.S. Eliot
Act 1 Scene 8
You know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer
You know and do not know, that action is suffering,
And suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still.
Act 2 Scene 17
Numb the hand and dry the eyelid,
Still the horror, but more horror
Than when tearing in the belly.
Still the horror, but more horror
Than when twisting in the fingers,
That when splitting in the skull.
More than footfall in the passage,
More than shadow in the doorway,
More than fury in the hall.
The agents of hell disappear, the human, they shrink and dissolve
Into dust on the wind, forgotten, unmemorable; only is here
The white flat face of Death, God's silent servant,
and behind the face of Death the Judgement
And behind the Judgement the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell;
Emptiness, absence, separation from God;
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,
Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind
To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretence,
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones
No colors, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,
We fear, we fear. Who shall then plead for me,
Who intercede for me, in my most need?
Dead upon the tree, my Savior,
Let not be in vain Thy labour;
Help me, Lord, in my last fear.
Dust I am, to dust am bending,
From the final doom impending
Help me, Lord, for death is near.
HAMLET by William Shakespeare
Act 5 Scene 2
We defy augury. There is (a) special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be (now), 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it (will) come.
The readiness is all.
Since no man of aught he leaves knows,
What is 't to leave betimes?
Let be.
THE AENEID of Virgil
Book IV
She breathes; the deep wound in
her chest is loud and hoarse. Three times she tried
to raise herself and strained, propped on her elbow;
and three times she fell back upon the couch.
Three times with wandering eyes she tried to find
high heaven's light and, when she found it, sighed. (949-954)
On saffron wings dew-glittering Iris glides
along the sky, drawing a thousand shifting
colors across the facing sun. She halted
above the head of Dido: "So commanded,
I take this lock as offering to Dis;
I free you from your body." So she speaks
and cuts the lock with her right hand; at once
the warmth was gone, the life passed to the winds. (964-971)
