JunoMagic ~ satismagic

“sunflower” by dragoncello64,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial” licence at Flickr.

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“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

Albert Camus

Beauty – Fragments of Three Poems

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

(Read more …)

– George Gordon Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty”

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For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone …

(Read more …)

– Sam Levenson, “Time-Tested Beauty Tips”

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(…)

They say the body accepts any kind of sorrow,
that our ancestors lay down on their stomachs
in school hallways, as children they lay down
like matches waiting for a nuclear fire.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this:
all ruin and beauty, vines waterfalling down
a century’s architecture; it wasn’t supposed to end
so quietly, without fanfare or fuss,

(Read more …)

– Patricia Young, “Ruin and Beauty”

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Beauty is a problem for poetry because we no longer imagine beauty as a serious way of knowing.

But it is. Beauty wedges into the artistic space a structure for continuously imagining what we do not know. This claim reverses Shelley’s formulation of poetry as the place where we “imagine that which we know,” which presumes that creativity translates knowledge into imagination. Our general lack of response to beauty nowadays–at least in critical literature–results, among other things, from an intuitive sense that beauty defies such translation. We can neither measure the knowledge that Shelley’s imagination turns to beauty, nor can we translate that beauty back into its components of knowledge and imagination.

(Read more …)

– Lisa Samuels, “Introduction to Poetry and the Problem of Beauty”

(Click me! I am a song!)

(Icon: Based on the Creative Commons “Attribution” licenced picture
“gelsomino” by dragoncello64 at Flickr.
Please credit appropriately!)

“Beauty”
by – Shaye

“Wisdom to the wise” by e³°°°,
Creative Commons “Attribution-ShareAlike” licence at Flickr.

“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.”

РAndr̩ Gide

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“To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Teaching

Then said a teacher, “Speak to us of Teaching.”

And he said:

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

– Khalil Gibran

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Maxims I [III], lines 138-204 [end], The Wisdom Poems, The Exeter Book

Advice must be said, secrets written, a song sung; fame is to be earned, judgment pronounced, the day be busy.

A good man knows and examines a tame and round-hoofed horse. No man can get too much. A man must well hold a friend in every way. Often a man fares far from town, where he does not know to find a friend. Friendless, an unhappy man takes with him the wolves as companions, treacherous beasts. Full often his companion attacks him. Fear is for the gray ones, the grave for the dead men. The gray one, the wolf, will lament for hunger, and it will circle the grave. Nor indeed will it weep on account of the slaughter, for the men violently killed, but it always wants more.

A wound must be wound, a hard man avenged. A bow must have an arrow, and both together must have a man to accompany them. Treasure rewards another; a man must give gold. God may give riches to owners and take them away afterwards. A hall must stand, and grow old.

A fallen tree grows least.

A tree must broaden, and truth increase, it arises in the breast of innocents. A faithless and reckless man, poison-hearted and false-hearted — God does not watch over him. The Ruler shaped many things, that which long ago which happened, he commands it to be afterwards.

Wise words are fitting for everybody. To the singer the song and to the man wisdom. As many as there are men on earth, so are there thoughts, each has his special ones. The man longs less who knows many songs, or knows how to play the harp with hands, has a gift for music which God gave to him.

(…)

– information about “The Exeter Book”

– read the rest and listen to the Wisdom Poems at “Anglo-Saxon Aloud”

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Wisdom”
by St. Martin’s Chamber Choir

“Praying” by ReefRaff,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr.

Trust

“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.”

– Billy Wilder

Faith

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

– D.H. Lawrence

Faith and Despondency

The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering grey,
We’ll talk its pensive hours away;–

‘Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November’s gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter’s hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast.

‘But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire’s cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I have loved of old.
And my heart aches, in hopeless pain
Exhausted with repinings vain,
That I shall greet them ne’er again!’

‘Father, in early infancy,
When you were far beyond the sea,
Such thoughts were tyrants over me!
I often sat, for hours together,
Through the long nights of angry weather,
Raised on my pillow, to descry
The dim moon struggling in the sky;

Or, with strained ear, to catch the shock,
Of rock with wave, and wave with rock;
So would I fearful vigil keep,
And, all for listening, never sleep.
But this world’s life has much to dread,
Not so, my Father, with the dead.

‘Oh! not for them, should we despair,
The grave is drear, but they are not there;
Their dust is mingled with the sod,
Their happy souls are gone to God!
You told me this, and yet you sigh,
And murmur that your friends must die.
Ah! my dear father, tell me why?

For, if your former words were true,
How useless would such sorrow be;
As wise, to mourn the seed which grew
Unnoticed on its parent tree,
Because it fell in fertile earth,
And sprang up to a glorious birth–
Struck deep its root, and lifted high
Its green boughs, in the breezy sky.

‘But, I’ll not fear, I will not weep
For those whose bodies rest in sleep,–
I know there is a blessed shore,
Opening its ports for me, and mine;
And, gazing Time’s wide waters o’er,
I weary for that land divine,
Where we were born, where you and I
Shall meet our Dearest, when we die;
From suffering and corruption free,
Restored into the Deity.’

‘Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child!
And wiser than thy sire;
And worldly tempests, raging wild,
Shall strengthen thy desire–
Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam,
Through wind and ocean’s roar,
To reach, at last, the eternal home,
The steadfast, changeless, shore!’

– Emily Jane Brontë

The Gardener XXVII: Trust Love

“Trust love even if it brings sorrow.
Do not close up your heart.”
“Ah no, my friend, your words are
dark, I cannot understand them.”
“Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop,
while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is
strong and abiding. Let sorrowful
love wake in your eyes.”
“Ah no, my friend, your words are
dark, I cannot understand them.”
“The lotus blooms in the sight of
the sun, and loses all that it has. It
would not remain in bud in the
eternal winter mist.”
“Ah no, my friend, your words are
dark, I cannot understand them.”

– Rabindranath Tagore

Based on “It’s like that …” by lounger, CC “Attr-NonC” at Flickr

Two songs today – clicky the titles!
“Faith”
“Trust”
by The Cure

by -stephantasy-,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike”
licence at Flickr.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Patience

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

– Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Patience”
by Julia Jordan

“The Cinquant of the Future” by DerrickT,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.”

– Robert Fulghum

Hope Is a Tattered Flag

Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.
Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white
The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,
The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,
The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,
The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,
The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,
The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,
The kiss and the comforting laugh and resolve—
Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
The spring grass showing itself where least expected,
The rolling fluff of white clouds on a changeable sky,
The broadcast of strings from Japan, bells from Moscow,
Of the voice of the prime minister of Sweden carried
Across the sea in behalf of a world family of nations
And children singing chorals of the Christ child
And Bach being broadcast from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
And tall skyscrapers practically empty of tenants
And the hands of strong men groping for handholds
And the Salvation Army singing God loves us….

– Carl Sandburg

(Click me! I am a song!)
(Icon based on the picture “hope” by ninaide CC Attr. at Flickr)

“Hope on Fire”
by Vienna Teng

“seen better days” by mcandrea,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial”-licence at Flickr.

“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

– Maya Angelou

Courage

It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

– Anne Sexton

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Courage”
by Jasper Van’t Hof’s Pili Pili

… and because you can never have enough courage, here’s another “Courage” song: “Courage” by Manowar

“Infinet Sound_JS” by circusvoltaire,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike”-licence at Flickr.

“Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed.”

– Buddha

Compassion

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

Bertrand Russell (adapted)

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Compassion”
by Dorje Lama (from the album: “Relaxations D’Ailleurs: Tibet”)