93
What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale;
Opinion an omnipotence,- whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale
Lest their own judgements should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.
94
And thus they plod in sluggish misery,
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,
Bequeathing their hereditary rage
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
War for their chains, and rather than be free,
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
Within the same arena where they see
Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.
95
I speak not of men's creeds - they rest between
Man and his Maker - but of things allowed,
Averr'd, and known,- and daily, hourly seen -
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
And the intent of tyranny avowed,
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
Too glorious, were this all his might arm had done.
96
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
And Freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled?
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
97
But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,
And fatal have her Saturnalia been
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly fays which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that build up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant last upon the scene,
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's worst - his second fall.
98
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder storm against the wind;
Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts,- and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit brin
... keep reading on reddit ➡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,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: —there let him lay.
I HAVE not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d
To its idolatries a patient knee,—
Nor coin’d my cheek to smiles,—nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me,—
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem
O’er others’ griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack Not virtues,
were those virtues more mature.
Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
Who can so well the toil of war endure?
Their native fastnesses not more secure
Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,
When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,
Unshaken rushing on where'er their chief may lead.
(from Canto ii. Stanzas 25, 26)
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
"Our life is a false nature—'tis not inThe harmony of things,—this hard decree,This uneradicable taint of Sin,This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,Whose root is Earth—whose leaves and branches beThe skies which rain their plagues on men like dew—Disease, death, bondage—all the woes we see,And worse, the woes we see not—which throb throughThe immedicable soul,[1] with heart-aches ever new."
Outside of consciousness, according to Einstein and many other intellectuals we "reside" in a "Block Universe" where everything/life/ matter is held in superposition of space, or still in time and it is only with this self-awareness we seem to perceive a passing of space/time. When in reality it is energy becoming more efficiently spent within us.
Found this book of my grandmother or great grandmother. I am not sure, but I think they may have put their own cover on? Found it in an old drawer. Just curious if anyone knows anything about this particular version.
https://imgur.com/a/gQ282vV
https://librivox.org/childe-harolds-pilgrimage-by-george-gordon-lord-byron/
Has anyone else here read or listened to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ?
I have long been a fan a Byron but just recently decided to tackle this daunting piece of work in its entirety. It has not disappointed.
I need to come up with three more secondary sources to support a character analysis. Anything will help!
I think every parent has a favorite
I read this a few years ago and it was a recent release - so from the 2010s or late 2000s. I can't remember much about it, but the few stories I remember were quite striking and I'd love to revisit them:
- A story that is narrated as an old lady reminiscing about the war, meeting her husband, and other such things. All of this seemingly has little relevance ... right up until the last line where it is revealed she is in a hospital waiting room and is going to see "Dr Shipman" (real life serial killer Harold Shipman whose victims were all elderly patients in his care)
- Not quite horror, but the narrative style was very similar to the one above and I am pretty sure they were from the same book. This one was about a woman who works in a dress store and loves a beautiful ballgown the store is selling. She hides the dress, puts pins in it, stains it, and other tricks so customers won't buy it and she can wear it for her upcoming wedding. There are lots of details about the store, customers, and what she wants to do for the wedding. Again the relevance of this is not made clear until the reader discovers on the final page that she is completely deranged and her "fiancé" is just a mannequin. It's suggested he was a real person but abandoned her to marry someone else.
- A young tween/teenage girl is jealous of her baby sister and bullied by her stepmother. When her dad and stepmother go out and leave her to babysit, she kills the baby with a hammer. She says that she saw rats crawling all over the baby and was trying to defend her, IIRC it's left ambiguous whether the girl is lying or was genuinely hallucinating. There was a creepy line where her screaming stepmother has found the dead baby and the girl says something like "I swear she wasn't wearing a red coat when she went out ..."
- A story about a haunted convent school where a girl encounters a ghostly nun and ends up dying somehow, can't recall any more about this one
just some observations I have made on the influences behind childe/tartaglia/ajax so far;
first of all; ajax + how he parallels and takes influence from the greek hero!
- so as I said, Tartaglia’s original/birth name “Ajax” is obviously, taken from the famous greek hero featured in homers iliad.
- Ajax is one of the most skilled and powerful warriors in the Iliad, famed for his skill in battle and also said tall/strong in stature.
- He was known to be very intelligent especially in combat and the ways of battle, along with being fearless, brash, self-confident and as a classic greek hero, he lives for the thrill and enjoyment of the battle - very "estp" which I know tartaglia is too
- Unlike other heroes from the Iliad like Achilles, Hector, etc who are known as the strongest and are ALWAYS receiving buffs from gods, Ajax is only helped once in the entirety of the epic - fighting against warriors like hector and practically winning… the one time he does receive a buff is from the sea god Poseidon who infuses Ajax's spear with power - explains Childe's hydro vision in his melee/spear form., and therefore his hydro vision.
- Tartaglia's bow form could be explained through the fact that the greek Ajax's brother TEUCER was a bow user - and so both our Ajax and the greek Ajax also had brothers called teucer.
- I’m a bit sketchy on this part but here goes.. it says in his character storyline that Tartaglia always used to put himself at the centre of the great heroic stories his father told him. if i’m right these stories were ones from his fathers personal experience - he was a Great War hero with his own Iliad battles or something of the sort?.. Just like greek Ajax’s father really was; Telamon in fact fought in the first trojan war, alongside mythical legends such as Herakles
second; the name childe
- As you probably know, 'Childe' is the term given to a boy ready for knighthood, often seen as young/rich/foolish
- This Character was developed by Lord Byron in his epic poem childe harold's pilgrimage from 1812-1818, the romantic poetry era. In the poem, the hero is Childe Harold, a young lord, subject to violence and cynicism, Daring, adventurous and always testing moral limits. (the definition of what became known as the Byronic hero - this obviously holds some similarities with the classic greek hero too, for the Romantics were often influenced by Classical texts)
- a name which also suits
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