What state of life can be so blest,
As love that warms the gentle brest;
Two souls in one: the same desire
To grant the bliss, and to require?
If in this heaven a hell we find,
Tis all from thee
O Jealousie!
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
All other ills, though sharp they prove,
Serve to refine and perfect love:
In absence, or unkind disdaine,
Sweet hope relieves the lovers paine:
But, oh, no cure but death we find
To sett us free
From jealousie,
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
False in thy glass all objects are,
Some sett too near, and some too far;
Thou art the fire of endless night,
The fire that burns, and gives no light.
All torments of the damn’d we find
In only thee,
O Jealousie!
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
Dryden
(Source: books.google.com)
Poetry of Otagaki Rengetsu
Lotus Flower
If I, too, could somehow
Open the lotus blossom
Within my own heart
And color it pure white
How happy I would be…
Heart
Coming and going
Without beginning or end
Like ever changing
White clouds
The heart of things.
Incense Burner
A single line of
Fragrant smoke
From the incense stick
Trails off without a trace
One’s heart, as well?
Death Verse
How I hope to pass away
While gazing at a full moon
In a cloudless sky
That shines over lotus flowers
In full bloom.
(Source: books.google.com)
“Nothing, ere they fade away,
The little lines of yesterday.”
LIFE’S ”little lines;” how short, how faint,
How fast they fade away;
Its highest hopes, its brightest joys,
Are compassed, in a day.
Youth’s bright, and mild, and morning light,
Its sunshine, and its showers,
Its hopes and fears, its loves and tears,
Its heedless, happy hours;
And manhood’s high and brightened noon,
Its honours, dangers, cares,
The parents’ pains, the parents’ joys,
The parents’ anxious prayers;
Fade in old age’s evening gray,
The twilight of the mind;
Then sink, in death’s long, dreamless night,
And leave no trace, behind.
Yet, though so changing, and so brief,
Our life’s eventful page,
It has its charms, for every grief,
Its joys, for every age.
In youth’s, in manhood’s, golden hours,
Loves, friendships, strew the way
With April’s earliest, sweetest flowers,
And all the bloom of May;
And when old age, with wintry hand,
Has frosted o’er, the head,
Virtue’s fair fruits, survive the blast,
When all beside, are fled;
And faith, with pure, unwavering eye,
Can pierce the gathered gloom;
And smile upon the spoiler’s rage,
And live, beyond the tomb.
Be ours, then, virtue’s deathless charm,
And faith’s untiring flight;
Then shall we rise, from death’s dark sleep,
To worlds of cloudless light.
Rev. George Washington Doane, D.D., LL.D.
(Source: anglicanhistory.org)
