Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

“

That God should let my soul fall out of his hand, into a bottomless pit, and roll an unremovable stone upon it, and leave it to that which it finds there, (and it shall find that there, which it never imagined, till it came thither) and never think more of that soul, never have more to do with it. That of that providence of God, that studies the life of every weed, and worm, and ant, and spider, and toad, and viper, there should never, never any beam flow out upon me; that that God, who looked upon me, when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb and depth of darkness, will not look upon me now, when, though a miserable, and a banished, and a damned creature, yet I am his creature still, and contribute something to his glory, even in my damnation; that that God, who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleanness, and when I had shut out the eye of the day, the sun, and the eye of the night, the taper, and the eyes of all the world, with curtains and windows, and doors, did yet see me, and see me in mercy, by making me see that he saw me, and sometimes brought me to a present remorse, and (for that time) to a forbearing of that sin, should so turn himself from me, to his glorious saints and angels, as that no saint nor angel, nor Christ Jesus himself, should ever pray him to look towards me, never remember him, that such a soul there is; that that God, who hath so often said to my soul, Quare morieris ? Why wilt thou die ? and so often sworn to my soul, Vivit Domimis, As the Lord liveth, I would not have thee die, but live, will neither let me die, nor let me live, but die an everlasting life, and live an everlasting death; that that God, who, when he could not get into me, by standing, and knocking, by his ordinary means of entering, by his word, his mercies, hath applied his judgments, and hath shaked the house, this body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on fire, with fevers and calentures, and frightened the master of the house, my soul, with horrors, and heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into me; that that God should frustrate all his own purposes and practices upon me, and leave me, and cast me away, as though I had cost him nothing, that this God at last, should let this soul go away, as a smoke, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then this soul cannot be a smoke, a vapour, nor a bubble, but must lie in darkness, as long as the Lord of light is light itself, and never spark of that light reach to my soul; what Tophet is not paradise, what brimstone is not amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage-bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God? especially to us, for as the perpetual loss of that is most heavy, with which we have been best acquainted, and to which we have been most accustomed ; so shall this damnation, which consists in the loss of the sight and presence of God, be heavier to us than others, because God hath so graciously, and so evidently, and so diversely appeared to us, in his pillar of fire, in the light of prosperity, and in the pillar of the cloud, in hiding himself for a while from us: we that have seen him in all the parts of this commission, in his word, in his sacraments, and in good example, and not believed, shall bo further removed from his sight, in the next world, than they to whom he never appeared in this. But vincenti et credenti, to him that believes aright, and overcomes all temptations to a wrong belief, God shall give the accomplishment of fulness, and fulness of joy, and joy rooted in glory, and glory established in eternity, and this eternity is God; to him that believes and overcomes, God shall give himself in an everlasting presence and fruition, Amen.

”

“ Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it ”

“ And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion ”

“ Jenny:
Ihr lehrt uns, wann ein Weib die Röcke heben
Und ihre Augen einwärts drehen kann
Zuerst müßt ihr uns was zu fressen geben
Dann könnt ihr reden: damit fängt es an.

Ihr, die auf unsrer Scham und eurer Lust besteht
Das eine wisset ein für allemal:
Wie ihr es immer dreht und wie ihr's immer schiebt
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.
Erst muß es möglich sein auch armen Leuten
Vom großen Brotlaib sich ihr Teil zu schneiden.

Macheath:
Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?

Jenny:
Denn wovon lebt der Mensch? Indem er stündlich
Den Menschen peinigt, auszieht, anfällt, abwürgt und frißt.
Nur dadurch lebt der Mensch, daß er so gründlich
Vergessen kann, daß er ein Mensch doch ist.

Chor:
Ihr Herren, bildet euch nur da nichts ein:
Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein! ”

“ In einem kühlen Grunde
da geht ein Mühlenrad
Mein Liebchen ist verschwunden
das dort gewohnet hat

Sie hat mir Treu´ versprochen,
Gab mir ein´ Ring dabei
Sie hat die Treu´ gebrochen,
das Ringlein sprang entzwei

Ich möcht' als Spielmann reisen
Wohl in die Welt hinaus
Und singen meine Weisen
Und geh von Haus zu Haus

Ich möcht' als Reiter fliegen
Wohl in die blut'ge Schlacht,
Um stille Feuer liegen
Im Feld bei dunkler Nacht.

Hör' ich das Mühlrad gehen,
Ich weiß nicht, was ich will;
Ich möcht' am liebsten sterben,
Da wär's auf einmal still ”

“ Und wenn ich jetzt vom Buch die Augen hebe,
wird nichts befremdlich sein und alles groß.
Dort draußen ist, was ich hier drinnen lebe,
und hier und dort ist alles grenzenlos;
nur dass ich mich noch mehr damit verwebe,
wenn meine Blicke an die Dinge passen
und an die ernste Einfachheit der Massen, -
da wächst die Erde über sich hinaus.
Den ganzen Himmel scheint sie zu umfassen:
der erste Stern ist wie das letzte Haus ”

“ The hardy warriors whom Boeotia bred,
Penelius, Leitus, Prothoenor, led:
With these Arcesilaus and Clonius stand,
Equal in arms, and equal in command.
These head the troops that rocky Aulis yields,
And Eteon’s hills, and Hyrie’s watery fields,
And Schoenos, Scholos, Graea near the main,
And Mycalessia’s ample piny plain;
Those who in Peteon or Ilesion dwell,
Or Harma where Apollo’s prophet fell;
Heleon and Hyle, which the springs o’erflow;
And Medeon lofty, and Ocalea low;
Or in the meads of Haliartus stray,
Or Thespia sacred to the god of day:
Onchestus, Neptune’s celebrated groves;
Copae, and Thisbe, famed for silver doves;
For flocks Erythrae, Glissa for the vine;
Platea green, and Nysa the divine;
And they whom Thebe’s well-built walls inclose,
Where Myde, Eutresis, Corone, rose;
And Arne rich, with purple harvests crown’d;
And Anthedon, Boeotia’s utmost bound.
Full fifty ships they send, and each conveys
Twice sixty warriors through the foaming seas.

To these succeed Aspledon’s martial train,
Who plough the spacious Orchomenian plain.
Two valiant brothers rule the undaunted throng,
Ialmen and Ascalaphus the strong:
Sons of Astyoche, the heavenly fair,
Whose virgin charms subdued the god of war:
(In Actor’s court as she retired to rest,
The strength of Mars the blushing maid compress’d)
Their troops in thirty sable vessels sweep,
With equal oars, the hoarse-resounding deep ”

“ The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas ”