'I was a string in the harp of enchantment
for nine years.' --The Book of Taliesen,
tr Gwengvryn Evans (1915)

"Albus cunctorum quondam captator bonorum
Orbis in excidio minus ambitione laborat?"
('Albus, grasping eagerly all the honors of the
state, is he any less ambitious in this universal
catastrophe?') --St Paulinus of Beziers, 'Claudii
Marii Victoris [sic] de perversis suae aetatis moribus'
in: Early Christian Latin Poets, Otto Kuhn-
muench (1929)

'I know that the Telchines, who are ignorant and
no friends of the Muse, grumble at my poetry...'
--Callimachus, Aetia bk I, fragment 1

'Poet is angry against poet to the point of
assaulting him.' --Callimachus, fr 203 (Iambus
xiii)

'Purity of heart is to will one thing.' --Kierkegaard

I found out, Heraclitus, how long you had been dead;
you weren't that sad philosopher, but a satellite of the Pleiade.
Unless there's lurking, somewhere in the desert, bits we've missed,
your "Nightingales" are gone as though they never did exist.

3 13 86

"Mit der Dummheit kampfen
Gotter selbst vergebens." --Schiller, Jungfrau von Orleans
III vi ('Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.')

'Many are the thyrsus-bearers, few the initiated.' --Greek
Anthology x.106

'We are all kept and fed for death, like a herd of swine to
be slain without reason.' --Palladas [the whole poem, x.85]

"Nam fuit & fortassis erit felicius euum;
in medium sordes." --Petrarch ('For there has been and perhaps
will be a happier age; inbetween there is squalor.')

   "The Warning

Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk--as strange, as still--
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?"

--Adelaide Crapsey

'All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing,
for all that is cometh from unreason.' --Glycon,
x.125 tr Paten

'Hunger puts an end to love, or if not hunger,
time. But if neither of these put out the fire, the only
cure left for you is to hang yourself.' --Crates ix.497

73. 'With what joy in front
Of the executioner I walk
That from my shadow the head
Is two steps ahead of my feet...' --Asadullah Khan
Ghalib [1797-1869], tr Ahmed Ali (1973)

18. '...It is not even possible for man
To become man....' --Ghalib

68. '...This fire is not confined to earth...'
--Mohammed Taqi Mir [1723-1810], ibid

36. 'I did see the moth go up
To the lighted candle,
Then nothing else besides
A startled flame.
The life of the company
Was only a wink;
The cup departed taking
With it the eye-bedewed.
If a hundred roses bloomed
It mattered not;
How long ago was it
That I went to the garden?' --Mir

75. 'One day I walked into the shop of those who blow the glass
And asked: O makers of the cup, have you perchance a glass
Shaped like the heart? they laughed and said: Thou wanderest in vain,
O Mir; each cup thou seest, round or oval, every glass
was once a heart that we have melted on the fire and blown
Into a cup. That's all thou seest here, there is no glass.' --Mir

58. 'If one has the eye this world
Is like a house of mirrors:
Within the walls the face
Is visible...' --Mir

41. 'The clanking of the chain is now
Not heard, nor seen the flocks
Of gazelles. The desert seethed with life
But only during my madness...' --Mir

5. '...Who has the heart to hear/ the tale of Mir?
The mood of the company/ is strange and grim.'