/lit/ - Literature

The Kraken by Tennyson

>>445310
cool story bro

INVICTUS

Also, The Raven inspired me to NEVERMORE

Anyone lived in a pretty how town.

my antithesis to op.

>>445676

Cummings, btw.

Psalms. All of them.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home

We put the urn aboard ship
with this inscription:

This is the dust of little
Timas who unmarried was led
into Persephone's dark bedroom.

And she being far from home, girls
her age took new-edged blades
to cut, in mourning for her,
these curls of their soft hair.

Sappho, trans. Mary Barnard

The Inheritance by Kamala Das.

White Man's Burden

The prayer of St Francis ("Lord, make me an instrument of your peace ... "). I'm not christian, but I really love it.

And the Tao Te Ching.

Thanatopsis by Bryant.

Fearing death is dumb

>>445894
hurr

Through a Glass Darkly -- General Patton

Stopping By Wods On a Snowy Evening - Frost

It reminds me that I will have time enough to kill myself tomorrow, there are things I must do today.

Whenever I need to preserve my sense of perspective, I think of Ozymandias.

>>446961

Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today!

>>446978
I always messed up on the message of Ozymandias. Everyone tells me the poem is about the transient nature of life, and even the greatest of us will eventually be forgotten. My rebuttal is, that we still remember Ozymandias, King of kings.

>>445892

O, the irony!

>>446984
Firstly, he didn't exist.

Secondly, whether you remember him or not it doesn't diminish the hilarious irony of the fragment of monument in a desert wasteland that says "check all this shit out mofo, this is mine, I fuckin' rule, YEYAH!".

>>447011

It's like, yeah man, we can be remembered, but for what? A desert wasteland.

Ozymandias is still hot shit IMO

>>447011

>Firstly, he didn't exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

My soul, be not disturbed
By planetary war;
Remain securely orbed
In this contracted star.

(Address to my Soul by Elinor Wylie)

>>447011
Yes, but Ramses II, which the poem is based upon did exist, and a large portion of the monuments he erected still are in existence. So while it can't be refuted that we all die, the things we create or are responsible for, can last far longer than our lifetimes. Although when the human race dies out, it will all be a moot point. But I'm not too worried about that, you see my maman died today, or maybe yesterday.

>>447011
hurrderp?
Ozymandias is the Greek name of Rameses II, the longest serving king of Egypt. Ever.

THERE is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; 5
No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, 10
Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

>>447038

And yet he always compared himself Alexander the Great.