Stowarzyszenie umarłych poetów

ROBERT HERRICK 1591-1674

Robert Herrick was born in London in 1591. The son of a goldsmith, he was apprenticed to his uncle, also a goldsmith but went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge at the age of 22. He graduated in 1620 and took holy orders and commenced duties in a parish in Devon. As a Royalist he was forced to give up the parish in 1647. He was restored to it in 1662 and died in 1674. Herrick wrote on a number of themes. Often, and most famously, on the attributes of young women but also on rural life, religious themes and in his later life on his approaching death.

George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824)

George Gordon Byron was the son of Captain John Byron by his marriage to the Scottish Catherine Gordon of Gight. He was born with a club foot of which he was very self-conscious and educated in Aberdeen, where his family had moved to escape their debts, and at Harrow and Cambridge. Byron inherited the family home, Newstead Abbey, following the deaths of his father in 1791 and grandfather in 1798. He took up his seat in the House of Lords in 1808 and then left to travel in Europe, at which time he began writing his immensely popular poem Childe Harolde, returning to a political role again in 1813 when he spoke on liberal themes in the House. In 1815 he married Annabella Milbanke, but she left him soon afterwards, taking their child with her. Throughout his life he fathered several illegitimate children and had numerous scandalous affairs, the most notorious being with his half-sister Augusta, his father's daughter by an earlier marriage. This affair horrified English society and encouraged Byron in his decision to leave England for good in 1816. He stayed with the Shelleys in Geneva, where he wrote The Prisoner of Chillon, then after a trip to Rome in 1817 he returned to Venice where he wrote Beppo his first work in a new ironic style. Don Juan was begun the following year. Fired by the Greek battle for independence from Turkey, Byron sailed to Missolonghi in 1824, where he gave money and inspiration to the rebels but died of a fever before seeing action.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy – Ode

We are the music-makers And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams;-World– losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying, To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

was a British poet, born in London. At the age of seventeen, in June 1861, he received the post of transcriber in the library of the British Museum, reportedly through the influence of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Two years later, at the age of nineteen, he became an assistant in the natural history department, where he specialized in Ichthyology. However, his true passion was for literature. He published his first collection, Epic of Women, in 1870. He published two more collections of poetry, in 1872 and 1874. When he was thirty he married and did not print any more volumes of poetry for the last seven years of his life. His last volume, Songs of a Worker, was published posthumously in 1881.

Sonnet XVIII

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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare's sonnets (1598-1609): A loosely related series of one hundred fifty-four Sonnets. The first part of the collection is addressed to a young friend; the last part is addressed to a mysterious „dark lady.

Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)

American writer, ranscendentalist, and naturalist whose journal was the source of all his writings. Thoreau published only two books during his lifetime but has since grown to be regarded as an important literary figure. Walden or Life in the Woods (1854) – Thoreau's most famous work describes his experiment in essential living in a cabin at Walden Pond. It sets forth his philosophies and urges that life should be lived more simply.

Frost, Robert (1874-1963)

American poet best known for his realistic depictions of rural New England life. First published in Englan d, his work was long ignored in his own country. Once established, he became one of America's bestloved and most honored poets. Fros t won four Pulitzer Prizes.

The Prophet – Abraham Cowley

Teach me to Love? go teach thy self more wit;
I am chief Professor of it.
Teach craft to Scots, and thrift to Jews,
Teach boldness to the Stews;
In tyrants courts teach supple flattery,
Teach Jesuits, that have traveled far, to Lye.
Teach fire to burn and Winds to blow.
Teach restless Fountains how to flow,
Teach the dull earth, fix, to abide,
Teach Woman-kind inconstancy and Pride.
See if your diligence here will useful prove;
But, pr'ithee, teach not me to love.

The God of Love, if such a thing there be,
May learn to love from me,
He who does boast that he has bin,
In every Heart since Adams sin,
I'll lay my Life, nay Mistress on't, that's more;
I'll teach him things he never knew before;
I'll teach him a receipt to make
Words that weep, and Tears that speak,
I'll teach him Sighs, like those in death,
At which the Souls go out too with the breath;
Still the Soul stays, yet still does from me run;
As Light and Heat does with the Sun.

'Tis I who Love's Columbus am; 'tis I, Who must new Worlds in it descry;
Rich Worlds, that yield of Treasure more,
than that has been known before,
And yet like his (I fear) my fate must be,
To find them out for others; not for Me.
Me Times to come, I know it, shall
Loves last and greatest prophet call.
But, ah, what's that, if she refuse,
To hear the whole doctrines of my Muse?
If to my share the Prophets fate must come;
Hereafter fame, here Martyrdom.

The Congo – Vachel Lindsay

A Study of the Negro Race

I. Their Basic Savagery

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

# A deep rolling bass. #

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.

# More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. #

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

# A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. #

And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.
And „BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
„BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,
„Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,„

# With a philosophic pause. #

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,

# Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. #

Torch-eyed and horrible,
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM, kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.

# Like the wind in the chimney. #

Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,
Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,
Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: – „Be careful what you do,

# All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy.
Light accents very light. Last line whispered. #

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.„

II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits

# Rather shrill and high. #

Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call
Danced the juba in their gambling-hall
And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,
And guyed the policemen and laughed them down
With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

# Read exactly as in first section. #

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

# Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.
Keep as light-footed as possible. #

A negro fairyland swung into view,
A minstrel river
Where dreams come true.
The ebony palace soared on high
Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.
The inlaid porches and casements shone
With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.
And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore
At the baboon butler in the agate door,
And the well-known tunes of the parrot band
That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.

# With pomposity. #

A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came
Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,
Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust
And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.
And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call
And danced the juba from wall to wall.

# With a great deliberation and ghostliness. #

But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng
With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: – „Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” . . .

# With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. #

Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,
Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,
Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,
And tall silk hats that were red as wine.

# With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. #

And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,
Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,
Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet,
And bells on their ankles and little black feet.
And the couples railed at the chant and the frown
Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.
(O rare was the revel, and well worth while
That made those glowering witch-men smile.)
The cake-walk royalty then began
To walk for a cake that was tall as a man
To the tune of „Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,„

# With a touch of negro dialect,
and as rapidly as possible toward the end. #

While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air,
And sang with the scalawags prancing there: – „Walk with care, walk with care,
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Beware, beware, walk with care,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,
BOOM.„

# Slow philosophic calm. #

Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while
That made those glowering witch-men smile.

III. The Hope of their Religion

# Heavy bass. With a literal imitation
of camp-meeting racket, and trance. #

A good old negro in the slums of the town
Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.
Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,
His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.
Beat on the Bible till he wore it out
Starting the jubilee revival shout.
And some had visions, as they stood on chairs,
And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs,
And they all repented, a thousand strong
From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong
And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room
With „glory, glory, glory,” And „Boom, boom, BOOM.„

# Exactly as in the first section.
Begin with terror and power, end with joy. #

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK
CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil
And showed the apostles with their coats of mail.
In bright white steele they were seated round
And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.
And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high
Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: – -

# Sung to the tune of „Hark, ten thousand
harps and voices” . #

„Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle;
Never again will he hoo-doo you,
Never again will he hoo-doo you.„

# With growing deliberation and joy. #

Then along that river, a thousand miles
The vine-snared trees fell down in files.
Pioneer angels cleared the way
For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,
For sacred capitals, for temples clean.
Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.

# In a rather high key – as delicately as possible. #

There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed
A million boats of the angels sailed
With oars of silver, and prows of blue
And silken pennants that the sun shone through.
'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.
Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation
And on through the backwoods clearing flew: – -

# To the tune of „Hark, ten thousand harps and voices” . #

„Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.
Never again will he hoo-doo you.
Never again will he hoo-doo you.”
Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,
And only the vulture dared again
By the far, lone mountains of the moon
To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: – -

# Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper. #

„Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo . . . Jumbo . . . will . . . hoo-doo . . . you.”

Raymond Calvert: The Ballad of William Bloat

In a mean abode on the Skankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash
Oh never was crime so quick
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip '
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.

And yet he was glad he had done what he had
When she lay there stiff and still
But a sudden awe of the angry law
Struck his heart with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun
He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from the wife's coul' feet
And twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
'Twas an easy end, let's hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she's still alive and sinning.
For the razor blade was German made
But the sheet was Belfast linen.

Excerpt from Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,–
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me–
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Większość ludzi żyje życiem cichej desperacji i idzie do grobów z pieśnią ciągle w sobie.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau · Karta sentencji

Jesteś tym, czym są napędzające cię z głębi pragnienia. A jakie są te pragnienia, taka jest twoja wola. Jaka jest twoja wola, takie uczynki. A jakie uczynki, takie przeznaczenie.

You are what your deep driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad · Karta sentencji

Czasem chciałbym być tym, kim byłem wtedy, gdy chciałem być tym, kim jestem teraz.

Sometimes I really wish I could be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.

(Bez rodowodu) · Karta sentencji

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/05/02/now/

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain · Karta sentencji

When you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

Barbara J. Winter · Karta sentencji

W sprawach ludzi jest fala, która, wzięta w czasie potopu, prowadzi do fortuny; Pominięte, wszystkie podróże ich życia Jest związany w mielizny i niedoli. Na takim pełnym morzu jesteśmy teraz na powierzchni, I musimy wziąć prąd, gdy służy Lub stracić nasze przedsięwzięcia

There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
On such a full sea are we now afloat, 
And we must take the current when it serves 
Or lose our ventures

William Shakespeare · Karta sentencji !!!

nic nie jest więcej warte ponad dzień dzisiejszy.

Nothing is worth more than this day

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe · Karta sentencji

Jest tylko my, jest tylko to. Zapomnij o żalach, albo twoje życie jest już stracone..... Jest tylko teraz, jest tylko tutaj. Poddaj się miłości lub żyj w strachu. Żadnej innej drogi, żadnej innej ścieżki, żaden inny sposób, żaden inny dzień się nie liczy, ale dzień dzisiejszy.

There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret or life is yours to miss.... There's only now, there's only here. Give in to love or live in fear. No other path, no other way, no day but today.

Jonathan Larson · Karta sentencji

O dziwo, to jest przeszłość, do której ktoś w przyszłości będzie pragnął powrócić.

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

Ashleigh Brilliant · Karta sentencji

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan · Karta sentencji