Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Renascence (1917)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side;
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,--so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
Excerpt from Dante's Inferno
Dante Alleghieri
I am the way into the City of Woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred Justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine Omnipotence,
primoridal love and ultimate intellect.
Only those elements Time cannot wear
were made before me, and beyond Time I stand.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Fortress
S. K. Dapoz
The hidden city is silent now.
He fights no wars.
He goes no more to war,
wrapped in a warrior's red rage,
mind divided
between the song and the blood...
the sweet, high song of death
pulling him down the road of no return,
no knife in the boot
for the soft sound in the night,
no sleeping on the brittle edge of exhausted awareness,
tensed against the ambush
that must come,
yet does not come and does not come.
He fights no wars.
He goes no more to war.
Whose tears are these?
untitled
unknown
Don't stand beside my grave and weep
For I'm not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond's glint on snow
I am sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circle flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Don't stand beside my grave and cry
I am not there. I did not die.
Sonnet XXIV
William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deal heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.