A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

 

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

 

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine.

And he knew that it was mine,

 

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

William Blake

poring over this piece by the highly symbolic poet, I gleaned a morale put neatly beneath the words: that struggle is even more dangerous and more bizzare when elongated. As is clearly seen, language is hardly complex, yet the feeling it elicits is so deep that the readrer inescapably find out what may be the outcome of cold antagonism. such claim is valid so far as we take into account the elaborate Blakean tought which encompasses the fusion of opposites in his own terms. Furthermore it is a remote portrayal of a famous event, illustrated in his post.

Mehdi

فرخی ترجیع‌بند مشهوری در وصف نوروز دارد که بند اول آن چنین است:

ز باغ ای باغبان ما را همی بوی بهار آید کلید باغ ما را ده که فردامان به کار آید

 کلید باغ را فردا هزاران خواستار آید تو لختی صبر کن چندان که قمری بر چنار آید

 چو اندر باغ تو بلبل به دیدار بهار آید ترا مهمان ناخوانده به روزی صد هزار آید

 کنون گر گلبنی را پنج شش گل در شمار آید چنان‌دانی که هرکس را همی زو بوی یار آید

 بهار امسال پندار همی خوشتر ز پار آید وزین خوشتر شود فردا که خسرو از شکار اید

 بدین شایستگی جشنی بدین بایستگی روزی ملک را در جهان هر روز جشنی داد و نوروزی

ایران و سنت دیرینه بزرگداشت نوروز در این شعر فرخی مشهود است. و حالا کمی در مورد این سنت دیرینه:

نوروز برابر با یکم فروردین ماه (روزشمار خورشیدی)، جشن آغاز سال و یکی از کهن‌ترین جشن‌های به جا مانده از دوران باستان است. خاستگاه نوروز در ایران باستان می باشدو هنوز مردم مناطق مختلف فلات ایران نوروز را جشن می‌گیرند. امروزه زمان برگزاری نوروز، در آغاز فصل بهار است. نوروز در ایران و افغانستان آغاز سال نو محسوب می‌شود و در برخی دیگر از کشورها تعطیل رسمی است.

بنا به پیشنهاد جمهوری آذربایجان، مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل در نشست ۴ اسفند ۱۳۸۸ (۲۳ فوریه ۲۰۱۰) ۲۱ ماه مارس را به‌عنوان روز جهانی عید نوروز، با ریشهٔ ایرانی به‌رسمیت شناخت و آن را در تقویم خود جای داد. در متن به تصویب رسیده در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل، نوروز، جشنی با ریشه ایرانی که قدمتی بیش از ۳ هزار سال دارد و امروزه بیش از ۳۰۰ میلیون نفر آن را جشن می‌گیرند توصیف شده‌است.

پیش از آن در تاریخ ۸ مهر ۱۳۸۸ خورشیدی، نوروز توسط سازمان علمی و فرهنگی سازمان ملل متحد، به عنوان میراث غیر ملموس جهانی، به ثبت جهانی رسیده‌بود. در ۷ فروردین ۱۳۸۹ نخستین دورهٔ جشن جهانی نوروز در تهران برگزار شد و این شهر به عنوان «دبیرخانهٔ نوروز» شناخته شد.

When Keats died at 25, he had been writing poetry seriously for only about six years; from 1814 until the summer of 1820, and publishing for four. In his lifetime, sales of Keats's three volumes of poetry probably amounted to just 200 copies. His first poem, the sonnet O Solitude appeared in the Examiner in May 1816, while his collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other poems was published in July 1820 before his last visit to Rome. The compression of his poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so short a time is just one remarkable aspect of Keats's work.

Although prolific during his short career, and now one of the most studied and admired British poets, his reputation rests on a small body of work, centred on the Odes, and it was only in the creative outpouring in the last years of his short life able to express the inner intensity for which he has been lauded since his death. Keats was convinced that he had made no mark in his lifetime. Aware that he was dying, he wrote to Fanny Brawne in February 1820, "I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd."

Keats's ability and talent was acknowledged by several influential contemporary allies such as Shelley and Hunt. His admirers praised him for thinking "on his pulses", for having developed a style which was more heavily loaded with sensualities, more gorgeous in its effects, more voluptuously alive than any poet who had come before him: 'loading every rift with ore'. Shelley often corresponded with Keats in Rome, and loudly declared that Keats's death had been brought on by bad reviews in the Quarterly Review. Seven weeks after the funeral he wrote Adonaïs, a despairing elegy, stating that Keats's early death was a personal and public tragedy:

The loveliest and the last,

The bloom, whose petals nipped before

Died on the promise of the fruit.

She walks in beauty like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
meets in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
had half impair'd the nameless grace
which waves in every raven tress,
or softly lightens o'er her face -
where thoughts serenely sweet express
how pure, how dear their dwelling - place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
so soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
the smiles that win, the tints that glow,
but tells in days of goodness spent,
a mind at peace with all below,
a heart whose love is innocent.

George Gordon Byron

Mehdi

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

Hendiadys

Definition: The combination of two or three things to express the same meaning. Hendiadys is often used in Latin poetry; many examples occur in Virgil's Aeneid. Hendiadys in the Bible is attested by many references, although not every case of two nouns linked by a conjunction is hendiadys. It is a figure of speech used for emphasis — "The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea.

==================

The Lord is my light and my salvation -

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life -

of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1(

Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom,

prisoners suffering in iron chains,

for they had rebelled against the words of God. (Psalm 107:10(

...encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. (1 Thess. 2:12(

May the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 5:23(

...while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. (Tit. 2:13)

Mehdi

on

Song of Solomon

Due to its indubitable importance I found it a good idea to put a post on Song of Solomon

  TITLE

In the Hebrew Bible the title of this book is "The Song of Songs." It comes from 1:1. The Septuagint and Vulgate translators adopted this title. The Latin word for song is canticum from which we get the word Canticles, another title for this book. Some English translations have kept the title "Song of Songs" (e.g., NIV, TNIV), but many have changed it to "Song of Solomon" based on 1:1 (e.g., NASB, AV, RSV, NKJV).

      WRITER AND DATE

Many references to Solomon throughout the book confirm the claim of 1:1 that Solomon wrote this book (cf. 1:4-5, 12; 3:7, 9, 11; 6:12; 7:5; 8:11-12; 1 Kings 4:33). He reigned between 971 and 931 B.C. Richard Hess believed the writer is unknown and could have been anyone, even a woman, and that the female heroine viewed and described her lover as a king, as a Solomon. How could Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3), be the same faithful lover this book presents? He could be if he became polygamous after the events in this book took place. That seems a more likely explanation than that he was polygamous when these events occurred but just omitted reference to his other loves. Probably he wrote the book before he became polygamous. We do not know how old Solomon was when he married the second time. The history recorded in Kings and Chronicles is not in strict chronological order. The Shulammite was probably not Pharaoh's daughter in view of references in the book (1 Kings 3:1; cf. Song of Sol. 4:8). One writer contended that she was Pharaoh's daughter. Another view is that "Shulammite" is simply the feminine form of the name "Solomon."

Mehdi

 I came across it and found it much blessed with images peculiar to him; Iespecially liked the second image which deals with sobs of an abstract notion: Time... Now for an instant recall the time imagey of E Dickinson and see how these two are different (or alike). I want u readers to see if you can decode any that seems cool.

Mehdi

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,

Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper's eye,

Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.

So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man

And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,

Reaching a second ground far from the stars;

And there we wept I and a ghostly other,

My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees;

I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

'My fathers' globe knocks on its nave and sings.'

'This that we tread was, too, your father's land.'

'But this we tread bears the angelic gangs

Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings.'

'These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.'

Faded my elbow ghost, the mothers-eyed,

As, blowing on the angels, I was lost

On that cloud coast to each grave-grabbing shade;

I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed

Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost.

Then all the matter of the living air

Raised up a voice, and, climbing on the words,

I spelt my vision with a hand and hair,

How light the sleeping on this soily star,

How deep the waking in the worlded clouds.

There grows the hours' ladder to the sun,

Each rung a love or losing to the last,

The inches monkeyed by the blood of man.

And old, mad man still climbing in his ghost,

My fathers' ghost is climbing in the rain.