Life and Existence

Child! do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you— It takes life to love life.

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

A great nose indicates a great man— Genial, courteous, intellectual, Virile, courageous.

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

An old man’s eagle mind.

Grant me an old man’s frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

If soul may look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear.

The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrowbone.

I pray—for fashion’s word is out And prayer comes round again— That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes, But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead… That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

“Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,” I cried. “My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.”

“Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,” I cried. “My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.”