God poems
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Orpheus
© Moritz Albert Frank
He glanced around to check if the treacherous godshad really given him the reward promised for his accomplished songand there she was, Eurydice restored, perfectly naked and fleshedin her rhyming body again, the upper and lower smiles and eyes,the line of mouth-sternum-navel-cleft, the chime of breasts and hipsand of the two knees, the feet, the toes, and that expressionof an unimaginable intelligence that yoked all these with a skillshe herself had forgotten the learning of: there she was, with him once morejust for an instant as she vanished
On the Preserved Body of an Inca Child Frozen to Death as a Sacrifice to the Sun
© Moritz Albert Frank
The priests collected your teeth,all your cut hairs from the ground,the parings of your nails,so that, dead, in another worldyou do not have to go searching farfor the parts of your body
The Little Walls Before China
© Moritz Albert Frank
A courtier speaks to Ch'in Shih-huang-ti, ca. 210 B.C.
The Erotic Civilization
© Moritz Albert Frank
The infinite erotic civilization we createdis declining now. Breast and penis wag in publicas in primitive times, when nothing was erotic but the gods,
Town Eclogues: Wednesday; The Tête à Tête
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
DANCINDA. " NO, fair DANCINDA, no ; you strive in vain" To calm my care and mitigate my pain ;" If all my sighs, my cares, can fail to move," Ah ! sooth me not with fruitless vows of love."
Midnight Lamentation
© Harold Monro
When you and I go downBreathless and cold,Our faces both worn backTo earthly mould,How lonely we shall be!What shall we do,You without me,I without you?
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© John Milton
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad successThe Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,Discover'd in his fraud, thrown from his hope,So oft, and the perswasive RhetoricThat sleek't his tongue, and won so much on Eve,So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve,This far his over-match, who self deceiv'dAnd rash, before-hand had no better weigh'dThe strength he was to cope with, or his own:But as a man who had been matchless heldIn cunning, over-reach't where least he thought,To salve his credit, and for very spightStill will be tempting him who foyls him still,And never cease, though to his shame the more;Or as a swarm of flies in vintage time,About the wine-press where sweet moust is powr'd,Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;Or surging waves against a solid rock,Though all to shivers dash't, the assault renew,Vain battry, and in froth or bubbles end;So Satan, whom repulse upon repulseMet ever; and to shameful silence brought,Yet gives not o're though desperate of success,And his vain importunity pursues
Paradise Regain'd: Book III (1671)
© John Milton
SO spake the Son of God, and Satan stoodA while as mute confounded what to say,What to reply, confuted and convinc'tOf his weak arguing, and fallacious drift;At length collecting all his Serpent wiles,With soothing words renew'd, him thus accosts
Paradise Regain'd: Book II (1671)
© John Milton
MEan while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'dAt Jordan with the Baptist, and had seenHim whom they heard so late expresly call'dJesus Messiah Son of God declar'd,And on that high Authority had believ'd,And with him talkt, and with him lodg'd, I meanAndrew and Simon, famous after knownWith others though in Holy Writ not nam'd,Now missing him thir joy so lately found,So lately found, and so abruptly gone,Began to doubt, and doubted many days,And as the days increas'd, increas'd thir doubt:Sometimes they thought he might be only shewn,And for a time caught up to God, as onceMoses was in the Mount, and missing long;And the great Thisbite who on fiery wheelsRode up to Heaven, yet once again to come
Paradise Regain'd: Book I (1671)
© John Milton
I Who e're while the happy Garden sung,By one mans disobedience lost, now singRecover'd Paradise to all mankind,By one mans firm obedience fully tri'dThrough all temptation, and the Tempter foil'dIn all his wiles, defeated and repuls't,And Eden rais'd in the wast Wilderness
