Frederick Buechner,'Whistling in the Dark' When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if they're smart. Assuming the Old Man doesn't run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he's smart he won't put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that's why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it's the risk he must take if they're ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they're to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there's no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible blnders will be made-dissapointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they'll keep making them even after they've found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get, knocks the father even harder still, if that's possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there's maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation. -Fatherhood.
Strike--for your altars and your fires; Strike--for the green graves of your sires. God--and your native land!
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Alternative Terror War Tanks rolled over to Jenin and its Refugee Camp As battlefields in a minute Clouds of black smokes belched From the nozzle of the missiles Turned the dwellings into debris And lives breathe under rubble Still desires of living That will never be fulfilled Sighing are heard in the air Unseen ghosts are roaming freely Searching their brotherhoods Living or dead Souls are still weeping bitterly With sorrows that never end In the war turned atmosphere Flying high in the sky appeared The hungry vultures that smell Odors of rotten human flesh As if the open graveyards To wipe the terrors and even its ghosts Out of the worldly atmosphere Reassuring pure peace In every peopleâs mind Isât the rebirth of terror Or alternative terror ? © Pushpa Ratna Tuladhar.
We Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Beasts We are the living graves of murdered beasts Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites We never pause to wonder at our feasts If animals, like men, can possibly have rights We pray on Sundays that we may have light To guide our footsteps on the path we tread We're sick of war We do not want to fight The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat Regardless of the suffering and pain We cause by doing so. If thus we treat Defenseless animals for sport or gain How can we hope in this world to attain the PEACE we say we are so anxious for We pray for it o'er hecatombs of slain To God, while outraging the moral law Thus cruelty begets its offspring: war.
Why should not grave Philosophy be styled. Herself, a dreamer of a kindred stock, A dreamer, yet more spiritless and dull?
Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Happy the poet who with ease can steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [Lat., Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix legere Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au severe.]
I was known as the chief grave robber of my state.
Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me.
Would I describe a preacher, . . . . I would express him simple, grave, sincere; In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impress'd Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty men.
Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.
Between today and tomorrow are graves, and between promising and fulfilling are chasms.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Christ's grave was the birthplace of an indestructible belief that death is vanquished and there is life eternal.
That it may please you leave these sad designs To him that hath most cause to be a mourner, And presently repair to Crosby House; Where--after I have solemnly interred At Chertsey monast'ry with noble king-- And wet his grave with my repentant tears-- I will with all expedient duty see you.
The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
There was a king of Thule, Was faithful till the grave, To whom his mistress dying, A golden goblet gave. [Ger., Es war ein Konig in Tule Gar treu bis an das Grab, Dem sterbend seine Buhle Einen gold'nen Becher gab.]
As ourselves your empires fall, And every kingdom hath a grave.
And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed: And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights: And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.
January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps--but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.
This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to outdo the life: Oh, could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face, the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass; But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book.