I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing:
`Mercy, Pity, Peace
Is the world’s release.’
Thus he sang all day
Over the new-mown hay,
Till the sun went down,
And haycocks looked brown.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze:
`Mercy could be no more
If there was nobody poor,

`And Pity no more could be,
If all were as happy as we.’
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.

Down pour’d the heavy rain
Over the new reap’d grain;
And Misery’s increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.

- William Blake

I was warned against writing this book.
People said:
If one did not watch out,
It could be burned.
So I did as I used to do as a child.
When I was sad, I always had to pray.
I bowed to my Lover and said: “Alas, Lord,
Now I am saddened all because of your honor.
If I am going to receive no comfort from you now,
Then you led me astray,
Because you are the one who told me to write it.”

At once God revealed himself to my joyless soul, held this book in his right hand, and said:

“My dear one, do not be overly troubled,
No one can burn the truth….
The words symbolize my marvelous Godhead.
It flows continuously
Into your soul from my divine mouth.
The sound of the words is a sign of my living spirit
And through it achieves genuine truth.
Now examine all these words—
How admirably do they proclaim my personal secrets!
So have no doubts about yourself.”

“Ah, Lord, if I were a learned religious man,
And if you had performed this unique miracle using him,
You would receive everlasting honor for it.
But how is one supposed to believe
That you have built a golden house on filthy ooze…
Lord, earthly wisdom will not be able to find you there.”

“….One finds many a professor learned in scripture who actually is a fool in my eyes.
And I’ll tell you something else:
It is a great honor for me with regard to them, and it very much strengthens Holy Christianity
That the unlearned tongue, aided by my Holy Spirit, teaches the learned tongue.”

- Mechthild of Magdeburg

They are more delicate even than shrubs and they run
and run from one side to the other, always forgetting
something.
Surely they lack I don’t know what
basic ingredient, though they present themselves
as noble or serious, at times.
Oh, terribly serious,
even tragic.
Poor things, one would say that they hear
neither the song of the air nor the secrets of hay;
likewise they seem not to see what is visible
and common to each of us, in space.
And they are sad,
and in the wake of sadness they come to cruelty.
All their expression lives in their eyes–and loses itself
to a simple lowering of lids, to a shadow.
And since there is little of the mountain about them –
nothing in the hair or in the terribly fragile limbs
but coldness and secrecy — it is impossible for them
to settle themselves into forms that are calm, lasting
and necessary.
They have, perhaps, a kind
of melancholy grace (one minute) and with this they allow
themselves to forget the problems
and translucent inner emptiness
that make them so poor and so lacking
when it comes to uttering silly and painful sounds:
desire, love, jealousy
(what do we know?) — sounds that scatter and fall in the field
like troubled stones and burn the herbs and the water,
and after this it is hard to keep chewing away at our truth.

by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper’. At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap–
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all–
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart–
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then — the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little — less — nothing! — and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

- Robert Frost

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me–
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

- Langston Hughes