Share passages, poems, etc., by fav writers

Previous post: It would have been under one of the other names I use, on the many christian forums from which I have been banned, mainly because of my opposition to the belief of the so called virgin birth.

They say that tears are good for you
Especially when you're old
Because, they wash away the dirt
That stain the windows of your soul.
So, when you gaze upon the inner me
Through my windows crystal clear
Understand they once were stained with filth
And washed by blessed tears.

Okay, thanks.

"Llewellyn And His Dog" by Hon. W. R. Spencer

The spearman heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound,
Obeyed Llewellyn's horn.

And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a louder cheer:
"Come, Gelert, come, why are thou last
Llewellyn's horn to hear!

"Oh, where does faithful Gelert roam?
The flower of all his race!
So true, so brave -- a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase!"

'Twas only at Llewellyn's board
The faithful Gelert fed;
He watched, he served, he cheered his lord,
And sentinel'd his bed.

In sooth he was a peerless hound,
The gift of Royal John -
But now no Gelert could be found,
And all the chase rode on.

And now as over rocks and dells
The gallant chidings rise,
All Snowdon's craggy chaos yells
With many mingled cries.

That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart or hare;
And scant and small the booty proved,
For Gelert was not there.

Unpleased Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal-seat,
His truant, Gelert, he espied,
Bounding his lord to greet.

But when he gained the castle-door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound all o'er was smeared with gore --
His lips, his fangs ran blood!

Llewellyn gazed with fierce surprise,
Unused such looks to meet,
His favourite checked his joyful guise,
And crouched and licked his feet.

Onward in haste Llewellyn passed --
And on went Gelert too --
And still, where'er his eyes were cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shocked his view!

O'erturned his infant's bed he found,
The bloodstained covert rent,
And all around, the walls and ground,
With recent blood besprent.

He called his child -- no voice replied;
He searched -- with terror wild;
Blood! blood! he found on every side,
But nowhere found the child!

"Hell-hound! my child's by thee devoured!"
The frantic father cried;
And, to the hilt, his vengeful sword
He plunged in Gelert's side!

His suppliant looks, as prone he fell,
No pity could impart;
But still his Gelert's dying yell,
Passed heavy o'er his heart.

Aroused by Gelert's dying yell,
Some slumberer wakened nigh:
What words the parent's joy can tell,
To hear his infant cry?

Concealed beneath a tumbled heap,
His hurried search had missed,
All glowing from his rosy sleep
The cherub-boy he kissed.

Nor scathe had he, nor harm, nor dread --
But the same couch beneath
Lay a gaunt wolf, all torn and dead --
Tremendous still in death!

Ah! what was then Llewellyn's pain,
For now the truth was clear;
The gallant hound the wolf had slain,
To save Llewellyn's heir.

Vain, vain was all Llewellyn's woe;
"Best of thy kind, adieu!
The frantic deed which laid thee low
This heart shall ever rue!"

And now a gallant tomb they raise,
With costly sculpture decked;
And marbles, storied with his praise,
Poor Gelert's bones protect.

Here never could the spearman pass,
Or forester, unmoved;
Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass
Llewellyn's sorrow proved.

And here he hung his horn and spear,
And there, as evening fell,
In fancy's ear he oft would hear
Poor Gelert's dying yell.

Alice was fed up with sitting on the bench next to her sister and lazing about.
She glanced at the book her sister was reading once or twice. Unfortunately,
there were no pictures or conversations in the book. "What is a book worth -
Alice thought - in which there are no conversations or pictures? "
Alice was just thinking - or rather trying to think because
the heat made her very sleepy and sluggish - is it worth the trouble of picking daisies in order to make a wreath of them? Suddenly the White Rabbit with pink eyes ran right next to her.
There was actually nothing unusual about it. Alice was not surprised
even hearing too much Rabbit whispering to himself, "Gosh, gosh,
I will be late for sure. " Only when the Rabbit took his watch out of his vest pocket, he looked at it and set off on a rush, Alicja
she sprang to her feet. It occurred to her that she would never
before that, she had not seen a rabbit in a vest or a rabbit with a watch.
Burning with curiosity, she ran across the field behind the White Rabbit and managed to notice that he had disappeared in a large hole under the hedge. So she crawled after him into the rabbit hole without thinking about it,
how to get out of there later.
The burrow was initially straight like a tunnel, then turned downhill like this
suddenly that Alice could no longer stop and fell into a hole like the mouth of a deep well. The well was apparently as deep as it was

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (fragments)

'We're All Australians Now'

Australia takes her pen in hand
To write a line to you,
To let you fellows understand
How proud we are of you.

From shearing shed and cattle run,
From Broome to Hobson's Bay,
Each native-born Australian son
Stands straighter up today.

The man who used to "hump his drum",
On far-out Queensland runs
Is fighting side by side with some
Tasmanian farmer's sons.

The fisher-boys dropped sail and oar
To grimly stand the test,
Along that storm-swept Turkish shore,
With miners from the west.

The old state jealousies of yore
Are dead as Pharaoh's sow,
We're not State children any more —
We're all Australians now!

Our six-starred flag that used to fly
Half-shyly to the breeze,
Unknown where older nations ply
Their trade on foreign seas,

Flies out to meet the morning blue
With Vict'ry at the prow;
For that's the flag the Sydney flew,
The wide seas know it now!

The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.

The honoured graves beneath the crest
Of Gaba Tepe hill
May hold our bravest and our best,
But we have brave men still.

With all our petty quarrels done,
Dissensions overthrown,
We have, through what you boys have done,
A history of our own.

Our old world diff'rences are dead,
Like weeds beneath the plough,
For English, Scotch, and Irish-bred,
They're all Australians now!

So now we'll toast the Third Brigade
That led Australia's van,
For never shall their glory fade
In minds Australian.

Fight on, fight on, unflinchingly,
Till right and justice reign.
Fight on, fight on, till Victory
Shall send you home again.

And with Australia's flag shall fly
A spray of wattle-bough
To symbolise our unity —
We're all Australians now...... A. B Banjo Paterson.

A wild and woeful race he ran
Of lust and sin by land and sea;
Until, abhorred of God and man,
They swung him from the gallows tree.
And then he climbed the Starry Stair,
And dumb and naked and alone,
With head unbowed and brazen glare,
He stood before the Judgment Throne.

The Keeper of the Record spoke:
“This man, O Lord, has mocked thy name.
The weak have wept beneath his yoke,
The strong have fled before his flame.
The blood of babes is on his sword;
His life is evil to the brim:
Look down, decree his doom, O Lord!
Lo! There is none will speak for him.

The golden trumpets blew a blast
That echoed in the crypts of Hell,
For there was judgment to be past,
And lips were hushed and silence fell.
The man was mute, he made no stir,
Erect before the Judgment seat. . .
When all at once a mongrel cur
Crept out and cowered and licked his feet.

It licked his feet with whining cry.
Come Heav’n, come Hell, what did it care?
It leapt, it tried to catch his eye;
Its Master, yea, its God was there.
Then as a thrill of wonder sped
Through throngs of shining seraphim,
The Judge of All looked down and said:
Lo! Here is one who pleads for him.

And who shall love of these the least,
And who by word or look or deed
Shall pity show to bird or beast,
By Me shall have a friend in need.
Aye, though his sin be black as night,
And though he stand ‘Mid men alone,
He shall be softened in my sight,
And find a pleader by My Throne.

“So let this man to glory win,
From life to life salvation glean;
By pain and sacrifice and sin,
Until he stand before Me…..clean.
For he who loves the least of these
(And here I say and here repeat)
Shall win himself an angel’s plea
For Mercy at My Judgment Seat…..The wonderful Robert Service.

This might not be politically correct these days, but I like the poem itself.
The Highlanders in their brown kilts and bonnets bobbing as they advanced toward the battle behind the Screeching, wailing scotch pipes, were given by the Germans the nickname, “The Ladies from Hell.”

The battle sways backward and forward
In wedges and hollows and curves,
A hard-pressed battalion is yielding,
A leader has called for reserves.
Hark ! Drone of the pipes in the distance
That grows to a soul-stirring swell !
Brown-skirted, with bonnets a-bobbing,
Come up the gay Ladies from Hell !

O brightly the sunlight is gleaming
On the blades that the rifles reveal.
The Ladies are wearing their jewels;
Hurrah ! for the glint of the steel !
O fiercely they swing to the music.
Their faces alight with its spell ;
Brave-hearted, bare-kneed and triumphant.
The lean- featured Ladies from Hell !

Our foes have made war upon women
By dastardly choice of their own.
The daughters of Belgium are weeping.
The mothers of Flanders make moan.
Ho! Slayers of maids and of mothers.
Do your bayonets serve you as well
When you're called up to stand in the open
And face the grim Ladies from Hell? ...... By R. Douglas Pinkerton

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and It is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”– Jane Eyre

Queenie was a blonde whose age stood still and she danced twice a day at the vaudeville.

You're not telling us where it comes from! I guess it's a classic in England.

It's an underground classic, banned for many years.

The Wild Party, it was written in the 1920s.

The Junior God

The Junior God looked from his place
In the conning towers of heaven,
And he saw the world through the span of space
Like a giant golf-ball driven.
And because he was bored, as some gods are,
With high celestial mirth,
He clutched the reins of a shooting star,
And he steered it down to earth.

The Junior God, 'mid leaf and bud,
Passed on with a weary air,
Till lo! he came to a pool of mud,
And some hogs were rolling there.
Then in he plunged with gleeful cries,
And down he lay supine;
For they had no mud in paradise,
And they likewise had no swine.

The Junior God forgot himself;
He squelched mud through his toes;
With the careless joy of a wanton boy
His reckless laughter rose.
Till, tired at last, in a brook close by,
He washed off every stain;
Then softly up to the radiant sky
He rose, a god again.

The Junior God now heads the roll
In the list of heaven's peers;
He sits in the House of High Control,
And he regulates the spheres.
Yet does he wonder, do you suppose,
If, even in gods divine,
The best and wisest may not be those
Who have wallowed awhile with the swine?.......... Robert Service.

What! from his helpless creature be repaid
Pure gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer---Oh the sorry trade!

Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Emmesh, and then impute my Fall to sin!

Oh Thou, who man of baser earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd---Man's forgiveness give----and take!

The wonderful Omar Khayyam--Edward Fitzgerald translation fifth edition.

Recrimination
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, my favorite female poet.

Said Life to Death: " Methinks, if I were you,
I would not carry such an awesome face
To terrify the helpless human race;
And if indeed those wondrous tales be true
Of happiness beyond, and if I knew
About the boasted blessings of that place,
I would not hide so miserly all trace
Of my vast knowledge, Death, if I were you:
But, like a glorious angel, I would lean
Above the pathway of each sorrowing soul,
Hope in my eyes, and comfort in my breath,
And strong conviction in my radiant mien,
The while I whispered of that beauteous goal.
This would I do if I were you, O Death. "

Said Death to Life: " If I were you, my friend,
I would not lure confiding souls each day
With fair, false smiles to enter on a way
So filled with pain and trouble to the end;
I would not tempt those whom I should defend,
Nor stand unmoved and see them go astray;
Nor would I force unwilling souls to stay
Who longed for freedom, were I you, my friend:
But, like a tender mother, I would take
The weary world upon my sheltering breast,
And wipe away its tears, and soothe its strife;
I would fulfil my promises, and make
My children bless me as they sank to rest
Where now they curse — if I were you, O Life. "

Life made no answer, and Death spoke again:
" I would not woo from God's sweet nothingness
A soul to being, if I could not bless
And crown it with all joy. If unto men
My face seems awesome, tell me, Life, why then
Do they pursue me, mad for my caress,
Believing in my silence lies redress
For your loud falsehoods? " (so Death spoke again).
" Oh, it is well for you I am not fair —
Well that I hide behind a voiceless tomb
The mighty secrets of that other place:
Else would you stand in impotent despair,
While unfledged souls straight from the mother's womb
Rushed to my arms and spat upon your face! "

Here is another beautiful poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, my favorite female poet.

The Birth Of The Opal

The Sunbeam loved the Moonbeam,
And followed her low and high,
But the Moonbeam fled and hid her head,
She was so shy -- so shy.

The Sunbeam wooed with passion;
Ah, he was a lover bold!
And his heart was afire with mad desire
For the Moonbeam pale and cold.

She fled like a dream before him,
Her hair was a shining sheen,
And oh, that Fate would annihilate
The space that lay between!

Just as the day lay panting
In the arms of the twilight dim,
The Sunbeam caught the one he sought
And drew her close to him.

But out of his warm arms, startled
And stirred by Love's first shock,
She sprang afraid, like a trembling maid,
And hid in the niche of a rock.

And the Sunbeam followed and found her,
And led her to Love's own feast;
And they were wed on that rocky bed,
And the dying Day was their priest.

And lo! the beautiful Opal --
That rare and wondrous gem --
Where the moon and sun blend into one,
Is the child that was born to them.