Poets From The United States

"Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit … Life, liberty, and thought — three persons in one substance, eternal, never-ending, and unceasing."

"I have existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end. I soared into limitless space and took wing in the imaginal world, approaching the circle of exalted light; and here I am now, mired in matter. I listened to the teachings of Confucius, imbibed the wisdom of Brahma, and sat beside Buddha beneath the tree of insight. And now I am here, wrestling with ignorance and unbelief. I was on Sinai when Yahweh shed his effulgence on Moses; at the River Jordan I witnessed the miracles of the Nazarene; and in Medina I heard the words of the Messenger to the Arabs. And here I am now, a captive of confusion."

"Poet, Singer, Great Heart, May our God bless your name, And the womb that held you, and the breasts that gave you milk. And may God forgive us all."

"But Master, Sky-heart, Knight of our fairer dream, You do still tread this day; Nor bows nor spears shall stay your steps. You walk through all our arrows."

"Master, Master of Light, Whose eye dwells in the seeking fingers of the blind, You are still despised and mocked, A man too weak and infirm to be God, A God too much man to call forth adoration."

"Master, Master Poet, Master of our silent desires, The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart, But it burns not with your song. The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight, But it rises not from its seat To scale the ridges of your hills. Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn Which is his greater dream. He would see with your vision, But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne. Yet many have been enthroned in your name And mitred with your power, And have turned your golden visit Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand."

"Here and there, betwixt the cradle and the coffin, I meet your silent brothers, The free men, unshackled, Sons of your mother earth and space. They are like the birds of the sky, And like the lilies of the field. They live your life and think your thoughts, And they echo your song. But they are empty-handed, And they are not crucified with the great crucifixion, And therein is their pain. The world crucifies them every day, But only in little ways. The sky is not shaken, And the earth travails not with her dead."

"You laughed for the marrow in their bones that was not yet ready for laughter; And you wept for their eyes that yet were dry. Your voice fathered their thoughts and their understanding. Your voice mothered their words and their breath."

"Master, Master Poet, Master of words sung and spoken, They have builded temples to house your name, And upon every height they have raised your cross, A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet, But not unto your joy. Your joy is a hill beyond their vision, And it does not comfort them. They would honour the man unknown to them. And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose kindliness is like their own kindliness, A god whose love is like their own love, And whose mercy is in their own mercy? They honour not the man, the living man, The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun With eyelids unquivering. Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him."

"Men would bless you or curse you; The curse, a protest against failure, The blessing, a hymn of the hunter Who comes back from the hills With provision for his mate."

"Master, master singer, Master of words unspoken, Seven times was I born, and seven times have I died Since your last hasty visit and our brief welcome. And behold I live again, Remembering a day and a night among the hills, When your tide lifted us up."

"You know not that the earth was given in marriage to the sun, and that earth it is who sends us forth to the mountain and the desert. There is a gulf that yawns between those who love Him and those who hate Him, between those who believe and those who do not believe. But when the years have bridged that gulf you shall know that He who lived in us is deathless, that He was the Son of God even as we are the children of God; that He was born of a virgin even as we are born of the husbandless earth."

"You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man."

"Once again I say that with death Jesus conquered death, and rose from the grave a spirit and a power. And He walked in our solitude and visited the gardens of our passion. He lies not there in that cleft rock behind the stone. We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth."

""And now let us play our reeds together." And they played together. And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things. I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not. I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey. And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together. All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard."

"In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long."

"I too died. But in the depth of my oblivion I heard Him speak and say, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." And His voice sought my drowned spirit and I was brought back to the shore. And I opened my eyes and I saw His white body hanging against the cloud, and His words that I had heard took the shape within me and became a new man. And I sorrowed no more. Who would sorrow for a sea that is unveiling its face, or for a mountain that laughs in the sun? Was it ever in the heart of man, when that heart was pierced, to say such words? What other judge of men has released His judges? And did ever love challenge hate with power more certain of itself? Was ever such a trumpet heard 'twixt heaven and earth? Was it known before that the murdered had compassion on his murderers? Or that the meteor stayed his footsteps for the mole? The seasons shall tire and the years grow old, ere they exhaust these words: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.""

"I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I? When love becomes vast love becomes wordless. And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep."

"Love is a gracious host to his guests though to the unbidden his house is a mirage and a mockery. Now you would have me explain the miracles of Jesus. We are all the miraculous gesture of the moment; our Lord and Master was the centre of that moment. Yet it was not in His desire that His gestures be known."

"Jesus loved me and I knew not why. And I loved Him because He quickened my spirit to heights beyond my stature, and to depths beyond my sounding. Love is a sacred mystery. To those who love, it remains forever wordless; But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest."

"I have pondered long, and I know now that only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters. And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles."

"We are all sons and daughters of the Most High, but the Anointed One was His first-born, who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and He walked among us and we beheld Him. All this I say that you may understand not only in the mind but rather in the spirit. The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret; and the seed of the spirit is deathless. The wind may blow and then cease, and the sea shall swell and then weary, but the heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and the star that shines therein is fixed for evermore."

"You ask why I call Him the first Word. Listen, and I will answer: In the beginning God moved in space, and out of His measureless stirring the earth was born and the seasons thereof. Then God moved again, and life streamed forth, and the longing of life sought the height and the depth and would have more of itself. Then God spoke thus, and His words were man, and man was a spirit begotten by God's Spirit. And when God spoke thus, the Christ was His first Word and that Word was perfect; and when Jesus of Nazareth came to the world the first Word was uttered unto us and the sound was made flesh and blood."

"In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth. He saw the Father's face reflected in the quiet pools, and the faint print of His feet upon the sand; and He often closed His eyes to gaze into the Holy Eyes. The night spoke to Him with the voice of the Father, and in solitude He heard the angel of the Lord calling to Him. And when He stilled Himself to sleep He heard the whispering of the heavens in His dreams. He was often happy with us, and He would call us brothers. Behold, He who was the first Word called us brothers, though we were but syllables uttered yesterday."

"I admired Him as a man rather than as a leader. He preached something beyond my liking, perhaps beyond my reason. And I would have no man preach to me. I was taken by His voice and His gestures, not by the substance of His speech. He charmed me but never convinced me; for He was too vague, too distant and obscure to reach my mind. I have known other men like Him. They are never constant nor are they consistent. It is with eloquence not with principles that they hold your ear and your passing thought, but never the core of your heart."

"He was gentle, like a man mindful of his own strength. In my dreams I beheld the kings of the earth standing in awe in His presence."

"Am I less man because I believe in a greater man? The barriers of flesh and bone fell down when the Poet of Galilee spoke to me; and I was held by a spirit, and was lifted to the heights, and in midair my wings gathered the song of passion. And when I dismounted from the wind and in the Sanhedrim my pinions were shorn, even then my ribs, my featherless wings, kept and guarded the song. And all the poverties of the lowlands cannot rob me of my treasure. I have said enough. Let the deaf bury the humming of life in their dead ears. I am content with the sound of His lyre, which He held and struck while the hands of His body were nailed and bleeding."

"Do you not remember me, Nicodemus, who believed in naught but the laws and decrees and was in continual subjection to observances? And behold me now, a man who walks with life and laughs with the sun from the first moment it smiles upon the mountain until it yields itself to bed behind the hills."

"There are the men who say, "He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem." They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day. His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory."

"Many are the fools who say that Jesus stood in His own path and opposed Himself; that He knew not His own mind, and in the absence of that knowledge confounded Himself. Many indeed are the owls who know no song unlike their own hooting. You and I know the jugglers of words who would honor only a greater juggler, men who carry their heads in baskets to the market-place and sell them to the first bidder. We know the pygmies who abuse the sky-man. And we know what the weed would say of the oak tree and the cedar. I pity them that they cannot rise to the heights."

"In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world."

"He knew the depth of beauty, He was for ever surprised by its peace and its majesty; and He stood before the earth as the first man had stood before the first day. We whose senses have been dulled, we gaze in full daylight and yet we do not see. We would cup our ears, but we do not hear; and stretch forth our hands, but we do not touch. And though all the incense of Arabia is burned, we go our way and do not smell."

"He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons might look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: "All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself." And then He walked away. But no other man ever walked the way He walked. Was it a breath born in my garden that moved to the east? Or was it a storm that would shake all things to their foundations? I knew not, but on that day the sunset of His eyes slew the dragon in me, and I became a woman, I became Miriam, Miriam of Mijdel."

"I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied. But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places."

""My face and your faces shall not be masked; our hand shall hold neither sword nor sceptre, and our subjects shall love us in peace and shall not be in fear of us." Thus spoke Jesus, and unto all the kingdoms of the earth I was blinded, and unto all the cities of walls and towers; and it was in my heart to follow the Master to His kingdom."

"I would be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires."

"There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea"

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."

"Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells."

"Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth."

"If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience."

"A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes."

"When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind."

"My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues."

"The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say."

"A sense of humour is a sense of proportion."

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

"For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness."

"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain."