To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though “breathed through silver”
PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS
You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are `trees’, and growing is `to grow’);
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star’s a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o’erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain’s contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees’, until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, ‘twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams’ we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ‘twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
Thomas Jefferson in reference to this poem and another, dutifully you can be sure to their anti-slavery cause—
“The cause in which he embarks is so holy, the sentiments he expresses in his letter so friendly that it is highly painful to me to hesitate on a compliance which appears so small. But that is not it’s true character, and it would be injurious even to his views, for me to commit myself on paper by answering his letter. I have most carefully avoided every public act or manifestation on that subject. Should an occasion ever occur in which I can interpose with decisive effect, I shall certainly know & do my duty with promptitude & zeal. But in the meantime it would only be disarming myself of influence to be taking small means. The subscription to [investment in] a book on this subject is one of those little irritating measures, which, without advancing it’s end at all, would, by lessening the confidence & good will of a description of friends composing a large body, only lessen my powers of doing them good in the other great relations in which I stand to the publick.”
[by investing in the book, Jefferson would have been curtailing his ability to influence the topic at all, being immediately and widely dismissed for such action, at the time.]
Awake, my muse, tho’ sorrowful to name, The crimes of infidels
baptiz’d proclaim, Their complicated villanies explore From Afric’s
golden coast to India’s shore ; Their pride, rage, lust, and tyranny
extend, Then note with horror their tremendous end : Tell mankind, how
their Maker they defy, And force unwilling vengeance from the sky ; At
once their cruelty and av’rice show, Then boldly strike, and vindicate
the blow : From Scripture, feeling, common sense then prove The dire
resentment of the powers above. Expose oppression with an honest
frown, Till guilt shrinks back, tho’ seated on a throne ; With cruel
despots war eternal wage, Turn love celestial to terrestrial rage,
Till ev’ry visage be with grief impress’d, Till pity throb in ev’ry
human breast, Till tears and indignation rise by turns, Till ev’ry
heart with Christian anger burns, Till crimson paints each face, and
sorrows flow, Till mortals tribute pay to mortals’ wo. ” Not he who
cannot weep, but he who can, Shows the great soul, and proves himself
a man.” Beneath the pond’rous load what millions groan, For vice, for
guilt, for folly, not their own,…
Do you wonder if you’ve spoken
if anyone heard your call
if the sleeping have awoken
if anyone cared at all?
As the singing of your nightmares
are calling you to their beds
and those who mock you for your tears
claim they’ve halos on their heads;
and their laughter is derisive,
and they’ve hatred in their eyes
and even hope is elusive -
why not just embrace your lies?
They are honey, let them sweeten
all your sorrows, all your pain,
for your doom’s already written,
now illusion takes the rein.
Anesthetize, anesthetize.
You know your final outcome -
Why even try to claim surprise?
Just be numb. Be numb. Be numb.
So then, when you are all broken,
when all your strings are undone,
when your final words are spoken,
when your enemies have won,
their celebration’s in the air!
Hear the music of the ball?
Then you won’t despair, you won’t care,
you’ll feel nothing at all.
No you won’t care, you won’t despair,
best to feel nothing at.
Wise words warbled and mangled from a motionless mouth…
context censored,
& what’s left intoned as threats
of death and terror by symbol,
rather than a structured resolve of men.
Anarchy is not Liberty.
Honor is not dead.
Though the monster now has two heads.
Tyrant & Terrorist.
The humble truth endures.
As Satan smiles, behind a new mask.
______________________________
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” -From Behind a Guy Fawkes mask
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” -Thomas Jefferson
(via lovingforthelost)
The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.
George Washington
(via atimeforchoosing)
(via gloriesofthewest)
BLUE GRAY RAIN
Aint the world filled
Aint the world filled
to the brim
with sunshine
Underneath
this rainy day
Underneath
this rain
Won’t be comin back
Won’t be comin back
too soon
nor leavin
nor leavin
just now
Dancin alone on a smokey floor
in an empty room
just two steppin it up
so’s to not fall down
who’d be comin around
to dance with me?
No one at all.
No one at all
just two steppin it up
so’s I don’t fall down
Won’t be comin back
Won’t be comin back
too soon
nor leavin
nor leavin
just now
not now
not now
not now
7-27-12
259
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner
O say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I still think this is the most important part of our national anthem. It’s no wonder we don’t sing this part in schools…
“Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand,
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that has made and preserved us as a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
by Asderathos
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
In patience to abide,