Quotes about height, page 15
The Centennial Cantata.
The Centennial Meditation of Columbia. 1776-1876. A Cantata.
[Musical Annotations, in angled brackets, precede each section.]
[Full chorus: sober, measured and yet majestic progressions of chords.]
From this hundred-terraced height,
Sight more large with nobler light
Ranges down yon towering years.
Humbler smiles and lordlier tears
Shine and fall, shine and fall,
While old voices rise and call
Yonder where the to-and-fro
Weltering of my Long-Ago
Moves about the moveless base
Far below my resting-place.
[Chorus: the sea and the winds mingling their voices with human sighs.]
Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying,
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poem by Sidney Lanier
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The City at the End of Things
Beside the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us
'Tis builded in the leafless tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.
Its roofs and iron towers have grown
None knoweth how high within the night,
But in its murky streets far down
A flaming terrible and bright
Shakes all the stalking shadows there,
Across the walls, across the floors,
And shifts upon the upper air
From out a thousand furnace doors;
And all the while an awful sound
Keeps roaring on continually,
And crashes in the ceaseless round
Of a gigantic harmony.
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poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Passing Show
I
I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
A city where the restless multitude,
Between the eastern and the western deep
Had reared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.
Colossal palaces crowned every height;
Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.
But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
Studding high spaces of the wide survey.
Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
Yet whispered of an hour when sleepers wake,
The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.
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poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Sappho - A Monodrama
Argument.
To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.
SAPPHO
(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)
This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love from this high towering rock
Leaps headlong to Oblivion or to Death.
Oh 'tis a giddy height! my dizzy head
Swims at the precipice--'tis death to fall!
Lie still, thou coward heart! this is no time
To shake with thy strong throbs the frame convuls'd.
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poem by Robert Southey
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Peace
I
IN EXCELSIS
Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light
Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all thy cares and fears have dropped away;
The night's fatigue, the fever-fret of day,
Are far below thee; and earth's weary wars,
In vain expense of passion, pass
Before thy sight like visions in a glass,
Or like the wrinkles of the storm that creep
Across the sea and leave no trace
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poem by Henry Van Dyke
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Dawendine
There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore,
They are chanting, they are singing through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence,
And the shadows of the shore.
You can hear them when the Northern candles light the Northern sky,
Those pale, uncertain candle flames, that shiver, dart and die,
Those dead men's icy finger tips,
Athwart the Northern sky.
You can hear the ringing war-cry of a long-forgotten brave
Echo through the midnight forest, echo o'er the midnight wave,
And the Northern lanterns tremble
At the war-cry of that brave.
And you hear a voice responding, but in soft and tender song;
It is Dawendine's spirit singing, singing all night long;
And the whisper of the night wind
Bears afar her Spirit song.
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poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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How Bárbad lamented Khusrau Parwiz
Now list the lamentation of Bárbod,
And grow forgetful of the world at large.
On hearing that the Sháh, not by advice
And 'gainst his will, no longer filled the throne,
That 'men are seeking how to murder him;
The soldiers are renouncing fealty,'
Bárbad came from Chahram to Taisafún
With tearful eyes and heart o'ercharged; he came
To that abode and saw the Sháh whereat
His tulip-cheeks became like fenugreek.
He bode awhile in presence of the Sháh,
Then went with wailing to the audience-hall.
His love flamed in his heart, his heart and soul
Burned in his anguish for Khusrau Parwiz;
His eyes rained like a cloud in Spring and made
His bosom as the margent of the sea.
He fashioned him a dirge upon the harp,
And to that dirge he sang a mournful plaint.
With visage wan and heart fulfilled with grief
He thus lamented in the olden tongue:-
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poem by Hakim Abu'l-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi Firdowsi
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To Baynard Taylor
To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;
With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn
Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll
By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,
Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew
When each small globe doth glass the morning-star,
Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through
With dappled revelations read afar,
Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue
As all the holy eastern heavens are, --
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poem by Sidney Lanier
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If I Ever Get To Look Back On All Of This
If I ever get to look back on all this
even if it's just to show me how wrong I was
about so much, how much I risked for so little,
I don't want to have been mean and petty here,
I don't want to have lived short-minded
as if my brain never grew to its proper height
and I had to live close to the ground
with burrowing wasps and centipedes
trading toxins in the grass like slumlords.
Tried to live like a magnanimous man
with an open hand whenever my luck kept pace
with my generosity. Didn't want to die
knowing nothing about the stars, that shining
that grew in time even brighter in the dark within.
Wanted to know the fury and compassion, genius,
the affable kindness, madness and love of humankind.
Used to say we were born to see and be happy,
and if you couldn't find a meaning that suited you,
make one up of your own. Don't waste
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poem by Patrick White
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Jean Chouan
The Whites fled, and the Blues fired down the glade.
A hill the plain commanded and surveyed,
And round this hill, of trees and verdure bare,
Wild forests closed th' horizon everywhere.
Safe hold and rampart were behind the mount:
There the Whites halt, and their small numbers count.
Jean Chouan rose, his long hair floating free:
'None can be dead, since here our chief we see,'
They cried. Jean Chouan listened to the shot:
'Are any missing? No! Then tarry not,
But fly!' Around him women, children stood,
In terror. 'Sons, re-entering quick the wood,
Disperse yourselves!' As swallows scattering fly
On rapid wings when storms invade the sky,
They fled to thickets drowned in mist and shade,
And ran,—e'en brave men run when they're afraid.
Dread the disorder, when in trembling flight
Old men and infants at the breast unite,
Fearing or to be killed, or captive ta'en.
Jean Chouan, last, did with slow steps remain,
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poem by Victor Hugo
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