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Who preaches to the deaf, wastes the sermon.

Sicilian proverbs
Added by Lucian Velea
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Pinball Wizard

Local lad:
Ever since I was a young boy,
Ive played the silver ball.
Ever since I was a young boy,
>from soho down to brighton
Ive played the silver ball.
I must have played them all.
]from soho down to brighton
But I aint seen nothing like him
I must have played them all.
In any amusement hall...
But I aint seen nothing like him
That deaf dumb and blind kid
In any amusement hall...
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
He stands like a statue,
Becomes part of the machine.
He stands like a statue,
Feeling all the bumpers
Becomes part of the machine.
Always playing clean.
Feeling all the bumpers
He plays by intuition,
Always playing clean.
The digit counters fall.
He plays by intuition,
That deaf dumb and blind kid
The digit counters fall.
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball !
Hes a pin ball wizard
There has got to be a twist.
Hes a pin ball wizard
A pin ball wizard,
There has got to be a twist.
Sgot such a supple wrist.
A pin ball wizard,
Sgot such a supple wrist.
how do you think he does it? I dont know!
What makes him so good?
how do you think he does it? I dont know!
What makes him so good?
He aint got no distractions
Cant hear those buzzers and bells,
He aint got no distractions
Dont see lights a flashin
Cant hear those buzzers and bells,

[...] Read more

song performed by Who
Added by Lucian Velea
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Picking From A Grab Bag

Pick one.
Go ahead and pick one.
Just only pick one...
And pull it from the grab bag.

Pick one.
Why don't you pick one.
Just pick up any one,
And...
Pull it from the grab bag.

Do the children learn their ABC's,
Picking from a grab bag.
Is this the best that it can be,
To...
Pick from a grab bag.
What's learn by,
Picking from a grab bag.
What's earned by,
Picking from a grab bag.
Who teaches,
Picking from a grab bag.
Who preaches,
Picking from a grab bag.
And what lessons are really learned?

Who,
Teaches...
Picking from a grab bag.
Who preaches,
Picking from a grab bag.
What's learn by,
Picking from a grab bag.
What's earned by,
Picking from a grab bag.
And...
What lessons are really learned,
Picking from a grab bag.
Picking from a grab bag.
Picking from a grab bag.
Picking from a grab bag.

Who teaches,
Picking from a grab bag.
Who preaches,
Picking from a grab bag.
And...
What lessons are really learned,
Picking from a grab bag.
And...

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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A Preacher

"Lest that by any means
When I have preached to others I myself
Should be a castaway." If some one now
Would take that text and preach to us that preach, --
Some one who could forget his truths were old
And what were in a thousand bawling mouths
While they filled his -- some one who could so throw
His life into the old dull skeletons
Of points and morals, inferences, proofs,
Hopes, doubts, persuasions, all for time untold
Worn out of the flesh, that one could lose from mind
How well one knew his lesson, how oneself
Could with another, may be choicer, style
Enforce it, treat it from another view
And with another logic -- some one warm
With the rare heart that trusts itself and knows
Because it loves -- yes such a one perchance,
With such a theme, might waken me as I
Have wakened others, I who am no more
Than steward of an eloquence God gives
For others' use not mine. But no one bears
Apostleship for us. We teach and teach
Until, like drumming pedagogues, we lose
The thought that what we teach has higher ends
Than being taught and learned. And if a man
Out of ourselves should cry aloud, "I sin,
And ye are sinning, all of us who talk
Our Sunday half-hour on the love of God,
Trying to move our peoples, then go home
To sleep upon it and, when fresh again,
To plan another sermon, nothing moved,
Serving our God like clock-work sentinels,
We who have souls ourselves," why I like the rest
Should turn in anger: "Hush this charlatan
Who, in his blatant arrogance, assumes
Over us who know our duties."
Yet that text
Which galls me, what a sermon might be made
Upon its theme! How even I myself
Could stir some of our priesthood! Ah! but then
Who would stir me?
I know not how it is;
I take the faith in earnest, I believe,
Even at happy times I think I love,
I try to pattern me upon the type
My Master left us, am no hypocrite
Playing my soul against good men's applause,
Nor monger of the Gospel for a cure,
But serve a Master whom I chose because
It seemed to me I loved him, whom till now

[...] Read more

poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Christmas-Eve

I.
OUT of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common’s centre,
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter:
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch,
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,
Four feet long by two feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside—
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving:
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
The congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the mainroad, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common’s self thro’ the paling-gaps,—
—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,
“Mount Zion,” with Love-lane at the back of it,
They front you as little disconcerted,
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II.
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning
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Deaf Sentences

Deaf sentences cause the refrain,
“There’s failure to communicate, ”
which people who’ve been checked complain
when stymied by a dumb stalemate.
We ought to wonder who’s the cause
of silence in this failure? We
should, when we sense the silence, pause
and ask ourselves if it could be
the problems of our failure to
communicate. We often see,
but do not hear, when we pursue
our own agendas, sentencing
ourselves and those whom we ignore
with deafness, carrying a sting
that’s worse than wasps, and hurts much more.

Inspired by Michiko Kakutani’s review of “Deaf Sentences” by David Lodge (“Hearing and Dreams Both Fading, ” NYT, October 10,2008) :
The title of David Lodge’s latest novel, “Deaf Sentence, ” is, of course, a play on words, and there are many others scattered throughout these pages: “Deaf and the maiden, ” “Deaf Row, ” “I had not thought deaf had undone so many.” And for Mr. Lodge’s sad-sack,60-something narrator, Desmond Bates, who is losing his hearing, deafness is a kind of death — a symptom of mortality, a constant, embarrassing reminder of his aging body and diminishing hopes. After a couple of lackluster novels, Mr. Lodge is back to form: if “Deaf Sentence” lacks the uproarious academic satire found in “Changing Places” and “Small World, ” it nonetheless showcases the author’s ability to use sympathy and slapstick humor to create an appealingly hapless hero and to recount his adventures with Waugh-like verve. The humor is more muted here, not least because his hero is grappling with sobering matters like an ailing parent, a stale marriage and the frustrations and disappointments of advancing age, instead of the sort of career woes and sexual misalliances faced by Mr. Lodge’s earlier heroes. Indeed the novel occupies a similar place in Mr. Lodge’s career as “Exit, Ghost” does in Philip Roth’s, and “Villages” does in John Updike’s: the book is a veteran novelist’s meditation on aging and death and the diminution of youthful dreams.

10/10/08

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Preacher Needs More Ram

I took the modem off the podium...
Just before the preacher sneezed!
I asked a doctor in a pew...
If the sneeze would spread disease?
And Doctor Blye looked in my eyes,
As if I was there for church.
I looked him up and down and said,
'I am here doing research! '

I came to hook the preacher up,
To a new connection!
He wanted all his emails sent...
And downloaded to the chatrooms.
I came to hook the PC up for online sessions!
But the preacher is displeased...
'Cause the modem seems to need,
More ram!

I'm in the house of the Lord,
And the preacher needs more ram!
I hear the people pat their feet,
When the preacher's sermon's heated!

I'm in the house of the Lord,
And the preacher needs more ram!
Oh Lord...
What do I do with the modem?

I'm in the house of the Lord,
And the preacher needs more ram!
I hear the people pat their feet,
When the preacher's sermon's heated!

I'm in the house of the Lord,
And the preacher needs more ram!
Oh Lord...
What do I do with the modem?

I came to hook the preacher up,
To a new connection!
He wanted all his emails sent...
And downloaded to the chatrooms.
I came to hook the PC up for online sessions!
But the preacher is displeased...
'Cause the modem seems to need,
More ram!

oh Oh OHHH....

I'm in the house of the Lord,

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Holy-Cross Day

ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO
ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON
IN ROME.

[``Now was come about Holy-Cross Day,
and now must my lord preach his first sermon
to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in tine
merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to
speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous
table here in Rome should be, though but
once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled
and bespitten-upon beneath the feet
of the guests. And a moving sight in truth,
this, of so many of the besotted blind restif
and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally
brought---nay (for He saith, `Compel them
to come in') haled, as it were, by the head and
hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake
of the heavenly grace. What awakening,
what striving with tears, what working of a
yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting
to himself on so apt an occasion; witness
the abundance of conversions which did incontinently
reward him: though not to my
lord be altogether the glory.''---_Diary by the
Bishop's Secretary,_ 1600.]

What the Jews really said, on thus being
driven to church, was rather to this effect:---

I.

Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savoury, simug and gruff,
Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
Gives us the summons---'tis sermon-time!

II.

Bob, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you?
Up stumps Solomon---bustling too?
Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears?
Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch?
Stand on a line ere you start for the church!

III.

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Stories Of Hope Series #7 Is It Golden Or Is It Blind

Silence is golden or so they say
But how many can keep quite for a full day?
What about the people who were born to preach?
What would they do if they could not teach.

Then I take the opposite view: what would you do?
If you was born deaf never hearing a sound
No birds chirping, no dogs barking, no cats meowing
No laughter. These are the things the deaf are after.
SOUNDS! sounds of music, of joy, happiness.
But I was born blind.
I had hopes to one day see, and all my classmates laughed at me.
They said: you was born in darkness, and in darkness
You will be, from now and through eternity.
I learned colors, not by sight, but by emotions
And I practiced it with devotion.
They said my mother was traumatized during
her pregnancy, and somehow it affected me.
The doctors checked and could not understand why
That I had turned out blind.
My blindness became my greatest strength
Because it fine tuned my hearing.
I am blind and the deaf can not hear
But we have instincts beyond compare.
The deaf can not hear all the sounds of the world
Including a child at play, and for
my hearing I thank GOD every day.
The school then put me with a roommate who was deaf
And we got along swell, we showed each other how
It was to live in each others hell.
He covered up my ears so that I could not hear a sound
And I learned how to get around.
I did the same thing to him and blindfolded him
So that he could not see, and with all this we lived in harmony.
By doing this we learned a lesson that no one could teach
That even being deaf and blind, they could be reached.
I showed him that with a metal tip on a walking stick
You could feel the vibrations of different things
Foot steps, cars, “even music.’
Now that he could hear through the tip of a stick
He learned to dance really quick.
And although I could not see.
I held on to his waist
And he said: “follow me.’

Now I am going for some surgery, that they said
May help me see.
HOPE has rekindled in my heart, but from my friend
I did not want to part.
He let me know that he would stay by my side

[...] Read more

poem by Louis Rams
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Mariya The Preacher!

Mariya is a wondrous name!
Her face is sweet and kind...
Her heart, of course, is just the same!
Her mind is quite refined...
She preaches here, she preaches there,
Lost souls still need the Lord...
And when the Lord hears her in prayer,
He grants a new reward...

She proclaims a new beginning,
She sets her sights again
And her faith helps in the winning
Of lost souls now and then...
Compassion is the means by which
Evangelists reach out,
As if to help lost souls to switch,
The day they lose their doubt...

How wonderful it is to see
Mariya day-by-day,
For when she speaks of Calvary,
What more is there to say?
And yet our Lord has conquered death,
He lives in Christians now...
He is Jesus of Nazareth,
To whom all Christians bow...

Mariya has the Lord to praise
For blessings great and small
And yet for His amazing grace,
We ought to give our all...
So preach the Word and reach the lost!
Mariya hopes you will...
Because Lord Jesus paid the cost,
Mariya preaches still...

Denis Martindale, copyright, August 2012.

The Gospel poem is about a short video showing
Mariya giving out Christian tracts to passersby,
in the hope of preaching the Gospel to them.
The Gospel website is dikayo-dot-com and
God bless Mariya who emailed me the video link.

Video shortcut: bit.ly/2MinTip

It links to parts 1 and 2 and also the
dikayo username playlist for lots more!

[...] Read more

poem by Denis Martindale
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Experience, The Best Teacher

When I was a student,
Many a teacher preached a sermon.
A sermon of, surprisingly, same subject.
This tedious theme could be thus summarized:
‘ if I could my student life re-live,
Very differently would I behave'.

A discourse denoting a dirge
A communication connoting a caution
If not a counselling to student who have ears
Students who would not shed tears,
Because they have ears to hear
And wise enough to understand,
Words of wisdom, even few.

But why to us their sermon relate?
Why to us their stories declare?

It is because about our future they care.
Careful, concerned and committed teachers,
Eager their experience to share,
Aware of the facts, glaring,
Facts preserved in an axiom,
The often quoted and tested maxim,
That experience is the best teacher.

Experience is the best teacher,
To those without any experience,
The best teacher is experience shared.
Shared by fair and frank fellows,
Who When good opportunities
Came beggarly begging,
Refused to these opportunities utilise,
Reaping the result of their recklessness, fully
Learning first-hand from their folly,
That opportunity knocks but once,
And once unutilised is lost forever.

But shared experiences meticulously applied,
Will save one the superfluous suffering,
Subsequent from the silly slip-up,
Of turning deaf ears to sermons.
Signifying that total respect to advice,
Plays a crucial role in molding us,
And goes to lend credence
To the usually used saw, that
Experience is the best teacher.

poem by Emmanuel Oduro
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Seventh Book

'THE woman's motive? shall we daub ourselves
With finding roots for nettles? 'tis soft clay
And easily explored. She had the means,
The moneys, by the lady's liberal grace,
In trust for that Australian scheme and me,
Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,
And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,
She served me (after all it was not strange,;
'Twas only what my mother would have done)
A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.

'Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,
But smooth green grasses are more common still;
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;
A miller's wife at Clichy took me in
And spent her pity on me,–made me calm
And merely very reasonably sad.
She found me a servant's place in Paris where
I tried to take the cast-off life again,
And stood as quiet as a beaten ass
Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up
To let them charge him with another pack.

'A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,
Was easy with me, less for kindness than
Because she led, herself, an easy time
Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,
Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.
She felt so pretty and so pleased all day
She could not take the trouble to be cross,
But sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,
Would tap me softly with her slender foot
Still restless with the last night's dancing in't,
And say 'Fie, pale-face! are you English girls
'All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?
'And first-communion colours on your cheeks,
'Worn past the time for't? little fool, be gay!'
At which she vanished, like a fairy, through
A gap of silver laughter.
'Came an hour
When all went otherwise. She did not speak,
But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes
As if a viper with a pair of tongs,
Too far for any touch, yet near enough
To view the writhing creature,–then at last,
'Stand still there, in the holy Virgin's name,
'Thou Marian; thou'rt no reputable girl,
'Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!
'I think thou mock'st me and my house,' she said;
'Confess thou'lt be a mother in a month,

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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The best sermon is preached by the minister who has a sermon to preach and not by the man who has to preach a sermon.

quote by William Feather
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A Good Sermon

A good sermon should be like
A miniskirt:
Short enough to arouse interest
But long enough to cover the essentials.
Okay, seal my lips
Since silence is the only statement
That has zero misquote

Please this is not blasphemy
Forgive I if it is
Am I lost?

This's a message to
Him or her who hold
A position to address
Hear me say
A GIANT SERMON
Doesn't raise more converts
Neither does it make you a saint
Stick to this:
A GOOD SERMON!

poem by Buyunde Acura Sylivester
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Sunday Morning

Sunday morning silence, curtain stay closed late
No one thinks of kitchens mornings in a filthy state
Dishes cups and beer stains, ashtrays on the floor
Sunday morning papers are left outside the front door
Sunday school and sunday roast
Sunday papers sunday post
Sunday morning sunday rest
Sunday sermon sunday best
(sunday, bloody sunday rest)
Glass of fizzy water helps to start the day
Sit and listen to sunday silence, problems fade away
Sunday cars and drivers break the morning air
Uncollected milk outside reveals theres no one there
Sunday school and sunday roast
Sunday papers sunday post
Sunday morning sunday rest
Sunday sermon sunday best
Sunday school and sunday roast
Sunday papers sunday post
Sunday morning sunday rest
Sunday sermon sunday best
Bathrobes hang in waiting, windows steaming up
Somewhere in the sink downstairs lies an unwashed cup
Tea and toast for breakfast clear away the plates
Wash-up prepare for cooking sunday lunch awaits
Sunday lunch awaits
Sunday lunch awaits

song performed by Madness
Added by Lucian Velea
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A Little Christmas Basket

De win' is hollahin' 'Daih you' to de shuttahs an' de fiah,
De snow's a-sayin' 'Got you' to de groun',
Fu' de wintah weathah 's come widout a-askin' ouah desiah,
An' he 's laughin' in his sleeve at whut he foun';
Fu' dey ain't nobody ready wid dey fuel er dey food,
An' de money bag look timid lak, fu' sho',
So we want ouah Chrismus sermon, but we 'd lak it ef you could
Leave a little Chrismus basket at de do'.

Wha 's de use o' tellin' chillen 'bout a Santy er a Nick,
An' de sto'ies dat a body allus tol'?
When de harf is gray wid ashes an' you has n't got a stick
Fu' to warm dem when dey little toes is col'?
Wha 's de use o' preachin' 'ligion to a man dat's sta'ved to def,
An' a-tellin' him de Mastah will pu'vide?
Ef you want to tech his feelin's, save yo' sermons an' yo' bref,
Tek a little Chrismus basket by yo' side.

'T ain't de time to open Bibles an' to lock yo' cellah do',
'T ain't de time to talk o' bein' good to men;
Ef you want to preach a sermon ez you nevah preached befo',
Preach dat sermon wid a shoat er wid er hen;
Bein' good is heap sight bettah den a-dallyin' wid sin,
An' dey ain't nobody roun' dat knows it mo',
But I t'ink dat 'ligion 's sweeter w'en it kind o' mixes in
Wid a little Chrismus basket at de do'.

poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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The Sermon of the Birds

I was clearing thirty or forty acres once
Out in the western range near Nightcap Mountain.
And as I was working, I heard a gathering of the crows
Singing out in a jungle gully. Their clamorous cries
Drawed the attention of all the other birds.
Jackass and butcher-bird, soldier-bird, sparrow-bird,
Scrub-robin, magpie, and the black and white cockatoo,
They all flew down to the crows in the jungle-gully.

And I followed after their clamour, and in the midst
Of all the splendid excitement of the birds
I heard one feller was singing above them all.
It was the lyre-bird, the mimic of all the scrub,
And they held this beautiful sermon or half an hour.
The birds would stop and listen a while but still
That beautiful voice, the lyre-bird, would keep on singing
And draw then and join them all to a chorus again.

And as I stood there and listened, the Scriptures was
Hitting me all the time. The sermon seemed
Like the prophecy when Christ shall come and summon
The birds, the valleys, the hills, the mountains and the ocean
To sing in praise of the grace and the reckoning day,
And the beauty of earth in the splendour that He crated.
And I went back and told my people of what I had seen,
And the sermon of praise I heard in the mountain range.

poem by Roland Robinson
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Times

The Time hath been, a boyish, blushing Time,
When Modesty was scarcely held a crime,
When the most Wicked had some touch of grace,
And trembled to meet Virtue face to face,
When Those, who, in the cause of Sin grown grey,
Had serv'd her without grudging day by day,
Were yet so weak an awkward shame to feel,
And strove that glorious service to conceal;
We, better bred, and than our Sires more wise,
Such paltry narrowness of soul despise,
To Virtue ev'ry mean pretence disclaim,
Lay bare our crimes, and glory in our shame.
. . . .
ITALIA, nurse of ev'ry softer art,
Who, feigning to refine, unmans the heart,
Who lays the realms of Sense and Virtue waste,
Who marrs whilst she pretends to mend our taste,
ITALIA, to compleat and crown our shame,
Sends us a Fiend, and LEGION is his name.
The Farce of greatness, without being great,
Pride without Pow'r, Titles without Estate,
Souls without vigour, Bodies without force,
Hate without case, Revenge without remorse,
Dark, mean Revenge, Murder without defence,
Jealousy without Love, Sound without Sense,
Mirth without Humour, without Wit Grimace,
Faith without Reason, Gospel without Grace,
Zeal without Knowledge, without Nature Art,
Men without Manhood, Women without Heart,
Half-Men, who, dry and pithless, are debarr'd
From Man's best joys — no sooner made than marr'd —
Half-Men, whom many a rich and noble Dame,
To serve her lust, and yet secure her fame,
Keeps on high diet, as We Capons feed,
To glut our appetites at last decreed;
Women, who dance, in postures so obscene,
They might awaken shame in ARETINE,
Who, when, retir'd from the day's piercing light,
They celebrate the mysteries of night,
Might make the Muses, in a corner plac'd
To view their monstrous lusts, deem SAPPHO chaste;
These, and a thousand follies rank as these,
A thousand faults, ten thousand Fools, who please
Our pall'd and sickly taste, ten thousand knaves,
Who serve our foes as spies, and us as slaves,
Who by degrees, and unperceiv'd, prepare
Our necks for chains which they already wear,
Madly we entertain, at the expence
Of Fame, of Virtue, Taste, and Common-Sense.
Nor stop we here — the soft luxurious EAST,

[...] Read more

poem by Charles Churchill
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Man’s Wasted Pelf

Man squanders money in space;
Man puts big sums in futile wars;
Man wastes huge amounts to kill;
Man wastes big sums to get an easy thrill!

Man spends a lot in abortions;
Man spends for keeping vices alive;
Man wastes time to earn ill-got wealth;
Man has no time to keep his health!

And coffers remain empty;
Tax-money goes down the drain;
Budget is pilfered for kick-backs;
And debts keep mounting up steeply.
Copyright by Dr John Celes 1-12-11

poem by John Celes
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Wasting

Wealth wastes on the rich with no value
Beauty wastes on virgins with no access.
Youth wastes on the young with the denial.
The society is willingly witness.
11.11.2004

poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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