Poems & Reflections On Life By Hermann Hesse:Stages***Lying In Grass

Music:
Chris Spheeris - Eros

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps
you seek too much,that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.
When someone is seeking,it happens quite easily that he only sees
the thing that he is seeking;that he is unable to find anything,unable
to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is
seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal.

Seeking means: to have a goal;but finding means:to be free,to be
receptive,to have no goal.You,O worthy one,are perhaps indeed
a seeker, for in striving towards your goal,you do not see many
things that are under your nose.
Hermann Hesse

Stages
Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age,
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavour,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Lying In Grass
Hermann Hesse

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,
And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,
The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees' song,
Is this everything only a god's
Groaning dream,
The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?
The distant line of the mountain,
That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,
Is this too only a convulsion,
Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,
Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,
Never resting, never a blessed movement?

No! Leave me alone, you impure dream
Of the world in suffering!
The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,
The bird's cry cradles you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With consolation.
Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!
Let it all be pain.
Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-
But not this one sweet hour in the summer,
And not the fragrance of the red clover,
And not the deep tender pleasure
In my soul.

APRIL by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

April
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

TELL me, eyes, what 'tis ye're seeking;
For ye're saying something sweet,
Fit the ravish'd ear to greet,
Eloquently, softly speaking.

Yet I see now why ye're roving;
For behind those eyes so bright,
To itself abandon'd quite,
Lies a bosom, truthful, loving,--

One that it must fill with pleasure
'Mongst so many, dull and blind,
One true look at length to find,
That its worth can rightly treasure.

Whilst I'm lost in studying ever
To explain these cyphers duly,--
To unravel my looks truly
In return be your endeavour!

The original poem in German

APRIL
Goethe

Augen, sagt mir, sagt, was sagt ihr?
Denn ihr sagt was gar zu Schönes,
Gar des lieblichsten Getönes;
Und in gleichem Sinne fragt ihr.

Doch ich glaub' euch zu erfassen:
Hinter dieser Augen Klarheit
Ruht ein Herz in Lieb' und Wahrheit
Jetzt sich selber überlassen,

Dem es wohl behagen müßte,
Unter so viel stumpfen, blinden,
Endlich einen Blick zu finden,
Der es auch zu schätzen wüßte.

Und indem ich diese Chiffern
Mich versenke zu studiren,
Laßt euch ebenfalls verführen,
Meine Blicke zu entziffern!

APRIL(Another English Version)
Eyes tell, tell me, what you tell me,
Telling something all too sweet,
Making music out of beauty,
With a question hidden deep.

Still I think I know your meaning,
There behind your pupils’ brightness,
Love and truth are your heart’s lightness,
That, instead of its own gleaming,

Would so truly like to greet,
In a world of dullness, blindness,
One true look of human kindness,
Where two kindred spirits meet.

Only in Thought by BERTRAND RUSSELL

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire
we are the slaves of circumstance.
BERTRAND RUSSELL

Calm soul of all things! by MATTHEW ARNOLD

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
MATTHEW ARNOLD

Reason obeys itself by Thomas Paine

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits
to whatever is dictated to it.

When men yield up the privilege of thinking,
the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
Thomas Paine

EVERYBODY DIES, BUT NOT EVERYBODY LIVES-PRINCE AE

Inspirational Mother Earth Quotes

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
William Shakespeare

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.
William Blake

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep-sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
Lord Byron

Mother Earth Quotes by Kahlil Gibran & Hal Borland

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet,
and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel
of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
Hal Borland

Mother Earth by James B. Irwin

As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.
James B. Irwin

Hundreds Of Paths Up The Mountain-Hindu teaching

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn’t matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.
Hindu teaching

look under your feet BY John Burroughs

The lesson which life constantly repeats is to 'look under your feet.'
You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power
than you think.The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.
The great opportunity is where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars.
Every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature

Michel Pépé - Divine Oasis

The Thread of Truth by Arthur Hugh Clough

The Thread of Truth
Arthur Hugh Clough

TRUTH is a golden thread, seen here and there
In small bright specks upon the visible side
Of our strange being's parti-coloured web.
How rich the universe! 'Tis a vein of ore
Emerging now and then on Earth's rude breast,
But flowing full below. Like islands set
At distant intervals on Ocean's face,
We see it on our course; but in the depths
The mystic colonnade unbroken keeps
Its faithful way, invisible but sure.
Oh, if it be so, wherefore do we men
Pass by so many marks, so little heeding?

A Sonnet of the Moon by Charles Best

A Sonnet of the Moon
Charles Best

LOOK how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With her full tide is ready her to honor.
But when the silver waggon of the moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart
Have all my joys attending on your will;
My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,
When you return their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

A tear that trembles for a little by HENRY VAN DYKE

A tear that trembles for a little while
Upon the trembling eyelid, till the world
Wavers within its circle like a dream,
Holds more of meaning in its narrow orb
Than all the distant landscape that it blurs.
HENRY VAN DYKE, "Dulciora"

O peaceful Sleep! by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sleep
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound
Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;
Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought
As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound
The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;
For I am weary, and am overwrought
With too much toil, with too much care distraught,
And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.
Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,
O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released
I breathe again uninterrupted breath!
Ah, with what subtle meaning did the Greek
Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast
Whereof the greater mystery is death!

When You Came Into My Life by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile in my past life, so lonesome and dreary, my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes!
But you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful one.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Freedom by Lydia Maria Francis Child

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling
on them forever, because they are prostrate.
Lydia Maria Francis Child

The Voice Of SPRING by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Music:
The House of the Rising Sun-Razandina

The Voice of Spring
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

I COME , I come! ye have called me long,
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves, opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the south, and the chestnut flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest-bowers,
And the ancient graves, and the fallen fanes,
Are veil'd with wreaths on Italian plains; —
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

I have look'd o'er the hills of the stormy north,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright where my foot hath been.

I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And call'd out each voice of the deep blue sky;
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild notes by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.

From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain,
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest-boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves!

Come forth, O ye children of gladness, come!
Where the violets lie may be now your home.
Ye of the rose lip and dew-bright eye,
And the bounding footstep, to meet me fly!
With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay,
Come forth to the sunshine, I may not stay.

Away from the dwellings of care-worn men,
The waters are sparkling in grove and glen!
Away from the chamber and sullen hearth,
The young leaves are dancing in breezy mirth!
Their light stems thrill to the wild-wood strains,
And youth is abroad in my green domains.

But ye! — ye are changed since ye met me last!
There is something bright from your features pass'd!
There is that come over your brow and eye,
Which speaks of a world where the flowers must die!
— Ye smile! but your smile hath a dimness yet —
Oh! what have you look'd on since last we met?

Ye are changed, ye are changed! — and I see not here
All whom I saw in the vanish'd year!
There were graceful heads, with their ringlets bright,
Which toss'd in the breeze with a play of light,
There were eyes, in whose glistening laughter lay
No faint remembrance of dull decay!

There were steps that flew o'er the cowslip's head,
As if for a banquet all earth were spread;
There were voices that rung through the sapphire sky,
And had not a sound of mortality!
Are they gone? is their mirth from the mountains pass'd? —
Ye have look'd on death since ye met me last!

I know whence the shadow comes o'er you now,
Ye have strewn the dust on the sunny brow!
Ye have given the lovely to earth's embrace —
She hath taken the fairest of beauty's race,
With their laughing eyes and their festal crown,
They are gone from amongst you in silence down!

They are gone from amongst you, the young and fair,
Ye have lost the gleam of their shining hair! —
But I know of a land where there falls no blight,
I shall find them there, with their eyes of light!
Where Death 'midst the blooms of the morn may dwell,
I tarry no longer — farewell, farewell!

The summer is coming, on soft winds borne,
Ye may press the grape, ye may bind the corn!
For me, I depart to a brighter shore,
Ye are mark'd by care, ye are mine no more;
I go where the loved who have left you dwell,
And the flowers are not Death's — fare ye well, farewell!

Be cheerful by Arthur Helps

Be cheerful
Arthur Helps

Be cheerful, no matter what reverse obstruct your pathway,
or what plagues follow you in your trail to annoy you.
Ask yourself what is to be gained by looking or feeling sad
when troubles throng around you, or how your condition is to
be alleviated by abandoning yourself to despondency.

If you are a young man, nature designed you to “be of good cheer;”
and should you find your road to fortune, fame, or respectability,
or any other boon to which your young heart aspires, a little thorny,
consider it all for the best, and that these impediments are only
thrown in your way to induce greater efforts and more patient endurance
on your part. Far better spend a whole life in diligent, aye, cheerful
and unremitting toil, though you never attain the pinnacle of your
ambitious desires, than to turn back at the first appearance of misfortune,
and allow despair to unnerve your energies, or sour your naturally sweet and cheerful disposition.

If you are of the softer, fairer portion of humanity, be cheerful;
though we know full well that most affections are sweet to you when
compared with disappointment and neglect, yet let hope banish despair
and ill forebodings. Be cheerful: do not brood over fond hopes
unrealized, until a chain, link after link, is fastened on each
thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be
the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not
the travelling monument of despair and melancholy.

The Human touch by Spencer Michael Free

The Human Touch
Spencer Michael Free

’Tis the human touch
in this world that counts,
The touch of your hand and mine,
Which means far more
to the fainting heart
Than shelter and bread and wine.
For shelter is gone
when the night is o’er,
And bread lasts only a day.
But the touch of the hand
And the sound of the voice
Sing on in the soul always.

KEVIN KERN - Le Jardin(The garden)

The Face of a Friend by Henry van Dyke

The Face of a Friend
Henry van Dyke

Blessed is the man that beholdeth the face of a friend in a far country,
The darkness of his heart is melted in the dawning of day within him,
It is like the sound of sweet music heard long ago and half forgotten;
It is like the coming back of birds to a wood where the winter is ended.

Good Deeds by William Shakespeare

Good Deeds
William Shakespeare

How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not.